About Us

Cedar River Finance Company (CRF) is a financial service company born out of over 120 years of furniture lending history.  Starting in 1889 when Henry Smulekoff opened a furniture store on May's Island, CRF was originally known as the finance department at Smulekoff's Home Store.  During that time, financing was offered primarily to Smulekoff's Home Store customers, while also providing to a few other local businesses.  An epic flood of historic proportions happened in 2008 and Smulekoff's Home Store tried to recover the catastrophic losses, but alas in 2014, the very difficult decision to close Smulekoff's was made.  The very same family who had run Smulekoff's Home store all those years in downtown Cedar Rapids made the choice to create a finance company.  A finance company that kept the very same ideals that Henry Smulekoff had envisioned in 1889 and had been kept for the next 125 years led to the birth of Cedar River Financing.  Taking into account the needs of both the business and customer, CRF now does financing for companies across the broad spectrum of products and services.

What separates CRF?  We buy deeper than most finance companies.  This means we don't use computerized scoring models to make our credit decisions.  Good customers don't always fit into the same boxes.  We understand bad things happen to good people.  CRF does all of it's own collecting.  This means your customer isn't passed to collection companies.  We at Cedar River Finance can also customize your finance package to meet your needs, not ours.