MULTIZ321
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The Decline of An American Furniture Maker - by Beth Macy/ Currency: Stories and Analysis of Wall Street and the World of Business/ TheNewYorker.com
"In the mid-twentieth century, Bassett Furniture Industries, in Bassett, Virginia, was one of the largest wood-furniture makers in the world. Its name was the one often inscribed on the back of the bedroom suites behind Door Number Three on “Let’s Make a Deal.” The Baby Boom was on, and people needed to furnish the homes they were buying in the suburbs.
Bassett employed thousands of local people in several factories in town. The J. D. Bassett Manufacturing Company, one of the firm’s subsidiaries, built mid-priced bedroom and dining-room furniture, and Bassett Superior Lines made the company’s lower-priced suites. In between, other plants specialized in chairs, tables, and fiberboard supplies.
Then, in recent decades, came a familiar challenge: Bassett was undercut by imports from Asia and under pressure from shareholders to improve its profit margins. By 2007, it had closed all the plants in Bassett and decided to focus on importing wood products from lower-wage factories in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. These days, Bassett Furniture places more emphasis, in the U.S., on retail stores, called Bassett Home Furnishings, where it sells mostly imported wood products and custom-made upholstery. In Bassett’s home county, the company now employs only two hundred and fifty people or so. Counting those stores, corporate and warehouse facilities, and its two remaining factories—both outside of Bassett—it now employs fifteen hundred people, down from ten thousand workers at its peak in the eighties..."
Bassett Furniture Corporate Office in Bassett, Virginia, 2012.
Photograph by Jared Soares.
Beth Macy is a journalist based in Roanoke, Virginia. Her book, “Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local—and Helped Save an American Town,” was the winner of the 2013 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and will be published July 15th by Little, Brown and Company.
Richard
"In the mid-twentieth century, Bassett Furniture Industries, in Bassett, Virginia, was one of the largest wood-furniture makers in the world. Its name was the one often inscribed on the back of the bedroom suites behind Door Number Three on “Let’s Make a Deal.” The Baby Boom was on, and people needed to furnish the homes they were buying in the suburbs.
Bassett employed thousands of local people in several factories in town. The J. D. Bassett Manufacturing Company, one of the firm’s subsidiaries, built mid-priced bedroom and dining-room furniture, and Bassett Superior Lines made the company’s lower-priced suites. In between, other plants specialized in chairs, tables, and fiberboard supplies.
Then, in recent decades, came a familiar challenge: Bassett was undercut by imports from Asia and under pressure from shareholders to improve its profit margins. By 2007, it had closed all the plants in Bassett and decided to focus on importing wood products from lower-wage factories in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. These days, Bassett Furniture places more emphasis, in the U.S., on retail stores, called Bassett Home Furnishings, where it sells mostly imported wood products and custom-made upholstery. In Bassett’s home county, the company now employs only two hundred and fifty people or so. Counting those stores, corporate and warehouse facilities, and its two remaining factories—both outside of Bassett—it now employs fifteen hundred people, down from ten thousand workers at its peak in the eighties..."
Bassett Furniture Corporate Office in Bassett, Virginia, 2012.
Photograph by Jared Soares.
Beth Macy is a journalist based in Roanoke, Virginia. Her book, “Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local—and Helped Save an American Town,” was the winner of the 2013 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and will be published July 15th by Little, Brown and Company.
Richard
