Hancock and Moore tour

[Marjflowers]

If you're considering H&M, I cannot strongly enough recommend taking the factory tour. What a day! Jimmy Moore is a delight, and seeing the various pieces at various stages of completion is enough to convince anyone that the quality of H&M is totally worth the money. It was simply fascinating and just plain fun. I learned quite a bit, but just as important, I saw in action their corporate values -- commitment to excellence, treating employees well, etc. -- that matter to me. I wish everything I bought could be from a company like this. And it was just plain fun.

I made the 800 mile round trip, and it was a lovely getaway. Asheville is about an hour away, and it's a great little city to visit. I could have spent a whole day at the Folk Art Center, and we did spend a day at the Biltmore Estate. Driving a bit of the Blue Ridge Parkway is lovely, and downtown Asheville is a miracle of downtown revival -- lots of funky shops, fantastic restaurants, beautiful architecture, street artists and musicians, etc.

This is a great little 3-4 day getaway. If you cannot justify a long trip just to tour the Hancock and Moore factory, it's no problem turning it into a bona fide mini-vacation. Totally worth it!!!

Thank you, Duane, for suggesting the H&M tour!

[drcollie]

Jimmy Moore loves to give tours, he's in his upper 70's now and proud to show what he's built at H&M as one of the two driving forces behind the brand. To watch him banter with all the workers there is better than a stand-up comedy routine. The tour is quite a treat and I've done it 3x myself. You come away with a real appreciation of what it means to be American-Made and you see pride in workmanship at that facility, which you don't always see at some of the competitors. When you go there, you truly are an honored guest and not some pain-in-the-neck that they want to rush through the place in order to get back to what they were doing. You can ask 1,000 questions and you will get 1,000 answers! I'm always fascinated by the trimmers and how fast they cut out the leather with this electric shears - how they have any fingers left is something I haven't figured out yet. And the man that stuffs the cushions into the casings....that's a heck of a job and he's so happy when you stop and talk with him about his job, because no one pays much attention to the cushion-stuffer-guy, but its not an easy task. And I don't know how the finish nailers do it -set every one of the brass tacks by hand with those little hammers, nail after nail after nail Ugh.

I think the factory tours are one of the main reasons I'm such a fan of the brand. They really do operate at a different level than most. Glad you enjoyed it.