Great River, linked with Dalian, gets fast start
By Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, May 7, 2007
Greensboro, N.C. — A new case goods importer with ties to one of the largest furniture makers in China debuted at the spring High Point Market with an array of bedroom and formal dining room sets.
Great River Trading Company Ltd. is aligned with Dalian Huafeng Furniture Co., a manufacturer that, according to its Web site, has 16 factories in the Zhuanghe Liaoning Province just east of Beijing, totaling more than 3 million square feet.
Among its main U.S. customers are case goods importers Trade Masters and SLF.
Great River Senior Vice President Michael Waggoner declined to reveal specifics about the alignment, other than to say that the company is sourcing from Dalian to provide container-direct service from the factory to U.S. retailers.
He also declined to identify other top management at Great River except for its vice president of sales, Lee Eisen.
Waggoner, who has worked in management and sales at Bassett and Universal, is listed as one of the three company principals in Great River on a Greensboro city business license. The others are Jian Zhao and Ni He.
Jian and Ni also are listed as vice president and secretary, respectively, of Dalian Huafeng Furniture USA, a furniture wholesaler formed in November 2005 and later incorporated in North Carolina. Great River started operations in October 2006, according to the city business license.
Great River also has a controller and office manager, a director of customer service and a network of 43 sales reps, Waggoner said.
At the spring market, the company offered 55 five-piece bedroom groups retailing between $799 and $1,499. A dozen had matching dining sets with a typical retail of $1,399 for a table, six chairs, server and/or buffet/hutch.
It also launched nine entertainment wall units, but is revamping the line for October, Waggoner said.
He said some 450 accounts visited the Great River showroom during market.
"Market was a feeding frenzy and our market is still going on," he said. "I am humbled by our success out of the box."
In October, the company plans to introduce another 50 bedrooms plus a line of leather upholstery.
Keith Koenig, president of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based City Furniture, is among those who visited the Great River showroom. He said officials referred to their sourcing potential at Dalian.
"I don't know if we will order anything, but there was some good product at market," Koenig said. "They had stellar values in the starting price range. There were big beds and well-scaled cases at impressive values."
The startup company is among a growing number of companies with distribution relationships with Chinese manufacturers.
In his post-market electronic newsletter, industry analyst Jerry Epperson of Richmond, Va.-based Mann, Armistead & Epperson referred to "lots of new companies at the High Point Market, including several companies that are clearly U.S. marketing wings of Asian factories." He said Great River "has a relationship" with Dalian Huafeng, but didn't define what it was.
Epperson said the move to establish U.S. marketing arms began in 2001 with China-based Lacquer Craft's acquisition of Universal Furniture. Other examples of Asian manufacturers with U.S. marketing arms include Kinwai International Furniture (Kinwai USA) and Fine Furniture Shanghai (Fine Furniture Design & Marketing).
By establishing U.S.-based marketing arms, factories have created a more direct relationship with the U.S. retailer.
While Waggoner touted the fact that Great River is sourcing from Dalian, he stopped short of saying the company is a marketing arm for the manufacturer or is supported financially or otherwise by Dalian.
"We are aligned with that factory. That is the extent of it," he said.
