Manufacturing theory applied at Tubbs furniture

Vermont Business Magazine, Jan 01, 2003 by Barna, Ed

Lee Houston is trying to increase productivity at one of Vermont's signature furniture makers. He was recruited by William Carris, whose Rutland holding company has come to include Tubbs Furniture in Brandon, to see if more efficient production methods could hold off the effects of the economic downturn on the sales of their upscale furniture.

The jury is still out on whether that will be possible, given the discretionary nature of purchasing fashion-designer, all-hardwood Tubbs bedroom furnishings. In a recent interview, Houston said teambuilding and reductions in set-up time had made significant gains in productivity - but not enough to prevent laying off 25 regular and 25 temporary workers.

It wasn't a case of moving production to a factory outside Vermont, as was the case in the closing of Ethan Allen's operation in Island Pond. Ethan Allen is another high-end furniture maker with its main facility in Beecher Falls.

But for Tubbs, it did mean closing a factory: the space-crunched, fireprone, flood-plain-sited complex of buildings in the outlying village of Forest Dale. It was shuttered in favor of unifying work at the nearly new, massive, 200-plus-worker Tubbs facility in Brandon's industrial park.

It was a historic decision, in its local context. The Newton Road location had seen Tubbs Snowshoes, and before that Rollers by Baker, and previously the Newton-Thompson plant - all wood products companies in aptly named Forest Dale. There, if anywhere, a pool of skilled labor and a tradition of hard work coincided to make a go of furniture in Vermont (Indeed, New England Woodcraft's Forest Date factory is still very much in business, serving institutional markets).

Houston said he decided to make Tubbs his next stop in a long career of inspiring turnarounds because he does see the basis for profitable production. The Carris organization, with its employee stock ownership program and emphasis on worker responsibility, was wellsuited to what he believes is a necessary paradigm shift in the furniture industry.

For too long, Houston said, American furniture companies have equated success with design and marketing. That approach underestimates the threat of global competition, which in his view is using unsound environmental practices and serious exploitation of workforces to undercut American prices.

Without serious attention to "lean manufacturing" of the type promoted by the Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center in Randolph, lowball imports will do to furniture-making what it has done to the steel industry, the garment industry, and more, Houston said. It's a message he wants to deliver nationally, not just 'in Vermont, because this is only one of the states affected.

The hopeful part of the message is that he believes sweatshop workers can never do their jobs as well as empowered American workers, assuming they realize they have to help manage production. Not that Houston is preaching, exactly.

His management style is given by the saying on the wall he looks at every day: "Don't talk. Listen!!!"

But after spending more than half his life in the industry, setting up plants as well as running them, and doing academic work as well as practical work, and spending time in 19 countries as well as in various parts of the United States, he feels he has something to say.

In the Shadow of High Point

Many industries have major trade shows, but few if any can match the role of the bi-annual North Carolina event commonly and appropriately referred to as "High Point." Houston, a North Carolina native who has been closely involved in the furniture industry since his school days, might be said to have grown up in its shadow.

"I've been going there since 1971," he said.

One of his practical suggestions to Vermont is to have a permanent office there, representing the state's furniture industry as a whole. "There" is the International Home Furnishings Market, held twice a year in High Point (and now in nearby Thomasville as well), in buildings totaling more than 11 million square feet. It is larger than the next five such shows (Cologne, Tokyo, Guadalajara, Milan, Sao Paolo) combined.

About 90 percent of the US home furnishings buying power attends: about 83,000 people (industry professionals only) from all 50 states and at least 110 countries. More than 3,000 exhibitors arrive, with showcase furniture that someone has calculated would, if piled, reach the height of Everest about 150 times.

Almost as a footnote to that information from the American Furniture Manufacturers Association, there is a statement that, "International companies now represent 10 percent of the Market's total exhibitors. International attendees numbered 10,000 in 2000, more than a 125 percent increase over international attendance in 1990."

Not to overlook Tubbs, they have done well at the Market with furniture designed by Blake Tovin and others. They have had more than 600 accounts, large and small, winning places in the catalogs of LL Bean and Crate & Barrel, among others.