Allen thinks outside the box
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, September 29, 2003
High Point — Walking by a display at the Decosit fabric show in Brussels, Terry Allen was blown away by a design he saw.
"There was this most adorable woman selling tapestries and rugs," Allen said. "I told her I wanted to buy a rug, but I wanted the fabric left on the roll. She thought I was a nut. She wouldn't pay me any attention until she learned from others in the industry that this was the kind of thing that I liked to do."
Most who know Allen expect the unusual and unpredictable.
For nearly 26 years, the affable vice president of design for the upper-end Pearson Co. has been delighting his customers with one surprise after another.
"If you compete on nothing but price, someone will always beat you out," he said. "We compete on our uniqueness and on service. The Pearson service is legendary."
Allen said that he considers himself lucky to have an organization and a boss, Pearson President Sam Boyd, that foster creativity. "I can sit and dream about what would be nice," he noted. "I admit, I'm sort of spoiled with this job."
Pearson's line appeals to specialized upper-end stores and the designer trade, Allen said, "because we have things that are interesting and unique enough that they can't get them from anyone else."
Allen joined Alderman's Studios right out of college, where he majored in interior design. He left Alderman's for a stint in the Navy, and then returned to the University of North Carolina for a Master's degree in art history.
"This is the only job I've had in furniture, and only my second job. I can hardly be described as shiftless," he joked.
After graduate studies, Allen said he felt "ten times better at design and enjoyed it ten times more" than he had previously, and felt it easy to return to furniture instead of another career path.
Allen draws inspiration by attending international shows and by travel in general. He may, for instance, pick up an idea from a chateau in a remote part of France or see a fabric in Brussels that he thinks won't make it to the U.S. market unless he buys it.
"That's resulted in a lot of items that we do," he said. "I look at things and say, I haven't seen that in the market and maybe we can do something like that."
Allen is an avid collector of books on architecture and period houses, so some of his inspiration is historical. He also listens to the ideas of sales representatives and others within the company.
"I guess I'm an iconoclast in that I never look at magazines except for the World of Interiors," said Allen. "And except for our customers, I avoid furniture stores like the plague."
