NHFA president has taste for challenge
Adventurous Cavitt paves furniture highway to Alaska
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, December 2, 2001
HIGH POINT — The hustle and bustle of the International Home Furnishings Market here is a walk in the park for Dave Cavitt, the resilient Alaska retailer who marches to his own drummer and currently serves as president of the National Home Furnishings Assn.
Cavitt, 45, president of five-store Furniture Enterprises of Alaska, has survived a couple of close brushes with death in the state where he has lived happily since 1974. And he has mastered the tricky logistics of getting furniture into Alaska. This year, he expects sales to top $30 million, up $4 million from last year.
From the bottom up
He stumbled into a job at an Anchorage furniture store where his first assignment was to paint a back room. The owner liked him and put him to work in the warehouse, where he gained an abiding appreciation for the operational side of the business.
Nowadays he loves the opportunity to tackle industry issues like bringing retailers and manufacturers closer together.
That's certainly a much tamer assignment than surviving some of the challenges he faced in Alaska, where he did everything from working on an oil rig to a stint as a commercial fisherman. It was the latter job that was almost his last.
Caught in "very, very bad seas" in the Gulf of Alaska, his 48-foot boat was battered by 40-foot waves. It was like something out of the movie "The Perfect Storm," which Cavitt finds unsettling to watch. It's no wonder: The storm that battered his lifeless boat was so rough the Coast Guard couldn't come to his aid. Winds of 75 knots lashed the seas.
"I thought we were going to die," Cavitt admits.
A tanker rescued him and his crewmates. They escaped with only the clothes on their backs.
Then there was the time he was lost above the clouds in a small plane, running low on gas. Luck was with him that day too and he managed to land safely.
Those experiences might have scared a lesser man. Not Cavitt. He loves the wildness and wilderness of Alaska. He still flies in small planes; that's just what you do in Alaska. And he still likes to fish. "It's neat to be out in areas where there is no one else around," he says.
Attendance may have been off at the last High Point market, but it was still a teeming metropolis compared to Alaska, where Cavitt occasionally has to shoo moose away from his stores.
A native Californian, he has been hooked on Alaska for a long time.
"When I was in the fifth grade I did a book report on Alaska. I knew I had to go there," he recalled.
Two weeks out of high school, he hitchhiked to Alaska. "I have no desire to live anywhere else," he said.
He is, not surprisingly, the first NHFA president from Alaska. He has traveled far and wide this year attending functions for the retail association.
"I have a debt to repay to NHFA," Cavitt said. "My success was based on some NHFA seminars I attended."
He emerged from the Western Home Furnishings Assn., NHFA's largest affiliate, a group that has produced several strong industry leaders. Cavitt credits outgoing WHFA executive director Dave Lane with building a team spirit in that association.
"He has energized the board to do a lot of participating," Cavitt said. "The board feels it is important and sees that its participation matters. That sense of contributing and giving back to the industry is why people remain strong participants."
Cavitt is on the WHFA's board and is a member of the association's Information Services and Member Services committees. WHFA is successful, in Cavitt's view, because it "truly produces a benefit to its members. Everyone on the staff knows and embraces that."
Networking makes the man
His work with WHFA and NHFA has given him a deeper understanding of industry issues. He has worked hard to educate himself on issues like financial performance, inventory controls and long-range planning.
"I can learn something from everyone," he said. "I like meeting people and networking with them."
He admitted to being "floored" when he was asked to assume the presidency of NHFA. "When they asked me to take the office, my heart almost stopped," he said.
But this tough Alaskan overcame his anxiety and plunged into the job at hand.
Cavitt has brought a highly focused approach to his work for NHFA, fostering even closer ties between NHFA and its affiliates and encouraging cooperative approaches to industry issues.
"Furniture retailers are losing business to other industries, not to other furniture stores," he said. "Manufacturers need to remove the roadblocks. They need to look at issues from the consumer's point of view."
Manufacturers and retailers are working more closely together, he said. When NHFA officers meet with officers of the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn., he said, "the issues are pretty close to being the same."
When his term as NHFA president concludes in a few weeks, Cavitt will have more time to devote to his thriving furniture empire in Alaska, where he and his wife, Rachel, who together own the company, operate stores under the Sadlers, La-Z-Boy and Williams & Kay banners.
Unlike the economy in the "Lower 48," Alaska's economy has been strong most of this year and its residents have confidence in their state's future. It's the same kind of confidence that has made Cavitt an effective ambassador for NHFA.
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| This store in Fairbanks, Alaska, was a former JCPenney that Sadlers Home Furnishings moved into last year, helping add life to the city's downtown. Sadlers is a division of Dave and Rachel Cavitt's company, Furniture Enterprises of Alaska. |
| The 35,000-square-foot retail floor of Sadlers in Fairbanks carries a wide array of mid-priced and higher-end goods. A "Northern Nights" sign at right shows the way to a bedroom furniture area. |
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