Wilson-Bates Discount Furniture Center

Wilson-Bates Discount Furniture Center is a furniture store in Twin Falls, Idaho. It offers living room furniture in contemporary, traditional, casual and transitional styles, along with bedroom furniture and dining room furniture. The store also carries laundry appliances, including washers and steamers and clothing systems, and outdoor seating such as the C.R. Plastic Products Generation Adirondack line in turquoise, red, white, blue, yellow, sky blue, orange and chocolate. Kitchen appliances from major brands are part of the selection as well. The store holds a rating of 4.30 from customer reviews.

The business has been family-run since 1935, when Mr. and Mrs. E.E. White opened it in Twin Falls. Mr. White had been selling Maytag washers since his teens in Utah, Colorado and Nevada, and earned a reputation as the Maytag Man in Ely, Nevada, where he went door to door with washers strapped to his Oakland automobile. O.G. Bates, a Nevada banker, took Mr. White and the Maytag laundry line under his wing, and that relationship brought the Whites to Twin Falls, where they opened a branch of the Nevada store and bought it a year later. The Whites went on to open stores across the Magic Valley, adding Ely, Nevada in 1955 and Elko in 2013. Two sons and a daughter now operate the business, with their own children involved as well. Mr. White retired in the late 1970s and Mrs. White worked until 1983.

The store sits on Blue Lakes Boulevard North, about a third of a mile from the United States Post Office and the same distance from North College Road, and roughly half a mile from the Chamber of Commerce and Falls Avenue East.

Wilson-Bates is known for helping customers find furniture that fits their budget and their needs, and it operates as a social-purpose business, supporting school fundraisers and community outreach. Organizations it has worked with include the Boys & Girls Club, the Salvation Army, the Idaho Food Bank, Valley House, the College of Southern Idaho Scholarship Fund, United Way, the Red Cross, Toys For Tots and the Special Olympics, among others across Idaho and Nevada.

For Twin Falls shoppers, that combination of a long family history and a broad range of furniture and appliances makes Wilson-Bates a familiar name in the Magic Valley.