Townhouse Bouncing Back
Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, May 27, 2011
MANTACHIE, Miss. - After a ferocious storm blew a Townhouse Furniture factory apart, the company's people and a community of volunteers are putting it back together again.
Less than two weeks after a devastating storm leveled Smithville, Miss. on April 27, including the upholstery factory that employed 160 workers, Townhouse is moving into a new home and expects to be back in production within two weeks, according to company executive Mark Dauler.
Meanwhile, the promotional furniture source had $1 million in inventory stored in a standalone warehouse 250 feet from its destroyed factory that wasn't affected and is ready for immediate shipment.
Most of the inventory was moved recently to Townhouse's new facility in nearby Mantachie, a plant formerly owned by Gerald Washington, who has had several upholstery operations in the area. The facility housed the now defunct Kensington Furniture and was last occupied by the former PeopLoungers until about two years ago, when it went out of business. (A new company has since taken the Peoploungers name.)
Dauler said Townhouse was looking for a site for expansion before the EF 5, 200-plus mph storm hit. The empty 200,000- square-foot facility here was on its list, but company officials had not visited it.
The company looked at the facility on Thursday, a week after the devastation, Dauler said, "and they handed us the keys on Friday." The building is owned by Itawamba County, whose Economic Development Council, along with the Mississippi Development Authority, provided assistance for building improvements to facilitate the move.
Then the community turned out. "Volunteers showed up, just happy to have that building occupied again," said Dauler. "I bet we had a hundred people." That included residents, players and coaches from nearby baseball and football teams, and inmates from three counties sent to help out.
The volunteers helped move inventory from the Townhouse warehouse in Smithville to the new facility.
The Smithville warehouse, the only sizable building left standing in the community, was taken over by the Federal Emergency Management Agency so the agency could establish its headquarters there for recovery efforts. FEMA requested that Townhouse move its inventory immediately, and after the weekend, two-thirds of it had been relocated.
The Townhouse factory that was destroyed in Smithville was about 300,000 square feet. The company also has its Madison Park facility in Amory, Miss., which employs 120 people. Because of growing sales, Dauler said, the company already was looking for room to expand.
He said the new factory in Mantachie is about 100,000 square feet smaller than the former Smithville operation, but is expected to produce as much furniture because of its efficiency.
"In my opinion, the way it's laid out, this is the best manufacturing building in Mississippi for promotional," he said.
The company says it plans to rebuild its facility in Smithville. In addition to the volunteer help, Dauler said that many of Townhouse's competitors "have done everything to help us," and retail customers have pledged support.
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