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Massoud Furniture focuses on growth

Tom Skipper joins manufacturer as president

Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, March 3, 2010

DALLAS — Upholstery manufacturer Massoud Furniture here has hired a new president, Tom Skipper, as part of a growth program that includes an expansion of product lines, fast delivery and a continued emphasis on domestic capabilities, high value and near-perfect quality.

Traditional styling, as on this sofa, continues to be what Massoud Furniture CEO Chuck Massoud describes as what “brought us to the party.”

Skipper has more than 30 years of experience in high-end furniture. He has held sales and marketing management roles with Thomasville, Drexel Heritage and most recently Habersham, where he was vice president of sales. He reports to Chuck Massoud, who remains Massoud Furniture's CEO.

"We've got a nice dealer base as it is," said Massoud, adding that the company's product line has evolved over the past few years so that it has something for everyone in its price point.

"This line is so diversified now from where it used to be and where it is versus the competition," he said. "I don't want to say that we have one-stop shopping but we have strong categories now that we feel real comfortable with."

Known for over-scaled and posh traditional styling, the 47-year-old domestic manufacturer has moved steadily into transitional to catch the trend toward smaller and cleaner, more neutral seating. But there's still plenty of traditional, which after all "is the one that brought us to the party," said Massoud.

Besides traditional and transitional fabric upholstery, the third segment that has been strengthening for the past several years is leather - all-leather, including some exotic looks, and fabric-and-leather combinations.

The fabric-and-leather segment, in fact, now accounts for almost a third of the company's business.

In addition to style diversification, delivery and quality are core components of management's business model. The company says it relies on strong domestic suppliers with creative design teams - such as Valdese Mills for fabrics - and uses foreign components only when they come through a domestic third-party supplier.

In addition, the Massoud factory here racks rolls of fabric to maintain a 35-day delivery cycle that includes everything it its custom lineup - from do-it-yourself design programs that allow consumers to choose from arm, back, leg and other options, to a variety of trims and finishes, and different seating depths, from standard to extra deep.

Massoud said speedy delivery of custom product is necessary to compete in today's market.

"Really, we (as an industry) should have been doing this all along if we don't want the Wall Street Journal to talk about the fact that you can get a house built faster than you can get a sofa," he said.

As for quality, the company says the defect level for goods made in its highly automated 60,000-square-foot plant here is an amazing one quarter of 1%, versus an industry standard that is many times higher.

Massoud began converting to automated cutters and CNC routers for cutting wood parts for frames several years ago as a way to compete against offshore companies using cheaper labor.

"Our factory is completely automated so our production model is that we put the money in raw material and not the labor," said Chuck Massoud said. "We can't gain any more efficiencies. We don't hand cut anything, neither our frames nor our fabrics. Everything is totally automated."

By putting its resources into fabrics and other materials, the company can offer higher value, he said.

"The difference between bargain and value is that bargains are at very low price points and value can extend to any price point," he said.

In a climate in which stability is paramount as dealers have watch some longtime suppliers close up shop, Massoud said his company is debt-free and well-funded, with a comfortable account list that includes upper-end retailers in Furniture/Today's Top 100 retailers to strong independents.

The company shows in High Point and is redesigning its showroom at 310 N. Hamilton, S-104, for the spring market opening April 17.

Skipper, the new president, said that diversification of styles is the engine that will drive new business for Massoud.

"I look at it from a national standpoint. We have broadened our appeal from a very generous scale in Texas to more moderate scaling for making greater penetration in the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic states and on up (to the Northeast)," he said.

"We want to go into those areas and develop partnerships with key retailers and take a fresh look at the number of ways we can work with them. We have a product that can be very compelling and service that is terrific."

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