Creative Kitchens celebrates its 60th anniversary with a new showroom in Teays Valley.
By James E. Casto
HQ 106 | SUMMER 2019
“I like to say I was born to be in this business,” said Rob Stepp, the president of Creative Kitchens, a Huntington firm that this year is celebrating its 60th anniversary.
“My father, Bob Stepp, founded the business in 1959, and I was born in 1960,” Stepp said. “I’ve never held another job other than passing newspapers.”
Today, the long-time business is run by Stepp and his sister, Nancy Rigney, the firm’s vice president. Their sister Lee, who lives in Cincinnati, is a one-third owner but plays no active role in the business.
The brother and sister said they function as a team. Stepp focuses on sales and the design aspects of the business, while Rigney handles accounting and logistical matters. Their spouses, Jeanne Stepp and Mike Rigney, also work in the family business.
“My dad retired in 1999,” Stepp said. “In the 20 years since then I don’t recall a single instance in which Nancy and I have had a significant disagreement that we couldn’t resolve. If she’s emphatic about something I will go along with it. And the same is true in reverse.”
Creative Kitchens started in a small white brick storeroom that had been built onto the front of a house in the 1200 block of Fifth Avenue. Today, it’s in the same location but has steadily expanded to cover roughly a third of a block with its showrooms, offices, warehouse and fabrication shop. It also operates branches in Hurricane and Lewisburg.
“My grandfather was in the furniture sales business and my father started working for the same company,” Stepp said. “He left there, getting a business degree at Marshall University and going to work as an accountant for Ashland Oil. He worked there a year or so before his dad convinced him that he needed to go into his own business. The result was the birth of Creative Kitchens. For at least a year, he kept his job at Ashland Oil, working there during the day and at the new business in the evenings and on weekends.”
The kitchen business looked a lot different in the firm’s early years, Stepp said. “There were laminate countertops, two or three choices of cabinetry and that was pretty much it. Now there’s a multitude of choices.”
Today, he said, families look on their kitchens as more than just a place to prepare food but rather as the heart of their home. “Often people want an open-concept kitchen, even if it means knocking out a wall. If that’s what they want, we can work with them every step of the way and make it happen.”
