Six N.C. furniture makers form export team

Will promote plan at High Point Market

Joan Gunin -- Furniture Today, October 17, 2008

HICKORY, N.C. - Six small to mid-sized, high-end custom furniture manufacturers based in this area have joined forces to create a cost-effective program for export sales.

Calling itself American Furniture Exporters, the group is targeting some 2,000 international buyers at next week's High Point Market. It also will recruit sales representatives to help it find foreign customers interested in long-term sales and servicing relationships.

Members are upholstery producers C.R. Laine, Leathercraft, McKinley Leather and Paladin Inds.; dining chair specialist Designmaster and case goods manufacturer Wright Table. All show at market and are privately owned.

Some of the companies have an overlapping customer base as well as some sharing of sales representatives.

At market, the manufacturers will introduce their international buyers to the American Furniture Exporters concept and refer them to other members of the consortium. The group has prepared explanatory brochures for the buyers.

The consortium will coordinate orders and shipments with Consolidated Services, a distribution and freight-forwarding operation based in Hickory. The cooperative effort will help international customers fill containers with a diversified product mix.

Shipping documents and credit instruments will be negotiated under one umbrella rather for each manufacturer.

By simplifying the logistics, the group aims to dramatically reduce shipping costs for the buyer and shorten lead times to receive merchandise.

Rick Moose

"In the domestic arena we may be competitors, but in the international market we are partners," said AFE proponent Rick Moose, sales manager for Designmaster.

"We need to make the international markets a consistent, growing part of our business," he added.

"We are finding ways to entice a buyer that visits the market to be able to pick up come manufacturers and to build a mixed container," Moose said. "We are offering them the convenience of consolidation, invoicing, one letter of credit, and then saving a tremendous amount of money with organization and the time factor. We're offering one-stop shopping."

Helping with the rollout of the consortium is the Center for Emerging Manufacturing Solutions, a new program based at Hickory-based Catawba Valley Community College. The North Carolina Department of Commerce and the U.S. Commerce Department are assisting in the marketing.

A Web site is planned.