Factory Man : How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town by Macy Beth

Author:Macy, Beth [Macy, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Business & Economics / Industries / Manufacturing, Business & Economics / Outsourcing, Business & Economics / General, Biography & Autobiography / Business, Business & Economics / Small Business, Business & Economics / International / General
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2014-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

By the time Shirley retired, things in the American furniture industry were dire. By 2001, no production incentive could compete with dressers as cheap as the ones from Dalian.

The Chinese imports were cutting into everyone’s sales. In 2001, Vaughan-Bassett’s sales were down almost 10 percent from 2000. Bassett Furniture sales had also slumped over that same period, by 20.1 percent, as did sales at Furniture Brands International (13.8 percent), Hooker (16.4 percent), La-Z-Boy (5.8 percent), and Stanley (26.6 percent). Dozens of factories had closed in North Carolina and Virginia, including the J.D. Bassett factory where John Bassett had first worked as a plant manager, his old #1 tiepins now collecting dust in dresser drawers.

He bought some of the factory’s joinery equipment at the going-out-of-business auction, which lacked the drama of the W.M. plant ordeal—though he had to scramble to make sure Bassett included a key set of parts that had inadvertently been left out when the machinery was auctioned. (“How did I know [those parts] were missing?” he asked Wyatt on the way home. “Because I’m the one who bought the damn machine in the first place.”)

Driving back to Galax, he thought about his place in the industry. He was one of the few third-generation furniture makers still left in it. He had worked for or against Bob Spilman for most of his career, and if that full-contact rivalry had taught him anything, it was this: It’s better to think through a problem than it is to panic.

After the W.M. debacle, after the quadrupling of Vaughan-Bassett’s annual sales over the past twenty years, even the guys at Bassett had to admit it: John’s scrappy little factory was worth worrying about. He was a player now.

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