in Conover, NC. Anybody know about the quality of this furniture? My understanding is that it is still made in the U.S.
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in Conover, NC. Anybody know about the quality of this furniture? My understanding is that it is still made in the U.S.
I bought several million dollars of furniture from Southern of Conover in the early 1980s. They were known for making matching living room, bedroom and dining room groups using solid wood.
The 2 best selling living rooms, bedrooms and dining rooms out of nearly 100 in the store came from Southern of Conover.
They are not a high end company, but at least at the time that I bought from them they were by far the best value in the industry.
It was a very strange company also. Buyers were only allowed to visit their showroom by invitation. Most buyers who asked to visit were turned down. They sold only one account in each city and would not speak with any other retailers in those cities unless they wanted to make a change. Also, all of their customers were on allocation. Southern decided how much furniture it would sell to each retailer and the retailer was not allowed to order more when they ran out of stock until the next allocation was due.
I have a funny story about the company when I can find the time.
Anyway, that was a long time ago. I have no knowledge how they have changed over the past 30 years.
Jeff Frank
Simplicity Sofas
Now that is TRULY a bizarre company. I bet in the current market, they'll be more than happy to make all that anyone wanted <G>
I realize that in my previous response I omitted to say whether the company is importing from overseas. I'm not sure since it has been a long time, but at the time I bought from them the company prided itself on doing everything in Conover. They did their own upholstering and their own woodwork. I believe they even owned their own lumbermill.
To finish the story about Southern of Conover -- We had never shopped the line before, but one market my merchandise manager decided to take the entire buying crew (3 of us) down to Conover to see if they would let us shop the line. We knocked on the door and were asked to wait (outside in a drizzling rain) while they located the Sales Representative for the Washington DC area.
The representative came to the door, looked at us and greeted my merchandise manager by his first name. The merchandise manager had never seen the sales rep before. The sales rep then said, "I've been thinking about you. I was trying to decide whether or not to drop ________ (a very large high end chain now out of business) and now that you're here I'm going to let you buy a group.
We entered the showroom and for the next 3 hours took notes on all kinds of fantastic values in living room, bedroom, dining room and occasional furniture. We met back up, each of us very excited with all the great values we had found.
After sharing our finds with the merchandise manager he called the sales rep over and told him that we were ready to place some orders. The merchandise manager then started listing about half a dozen groupings that we wanted to buy right away with others for later.
The sales rep listened to all of this and then said to the Merchandise Manager, "That's very nice, but I told you you can have 1 group." No amount of arguing, begging or pleading was able to move him.
We picked out one group consisting of living room, bedroom, dining room, occasional tables and matching bookcases. We bought a full rail car of this furniture. Immediately it became far and away the best selling furniture in the store.
The next market we were really excited. Now that we were a customer, we were going to buy everything they had. The sales rep met us at the door of the showroom again and said, "That group you chose is doing pretty well for you. I'll let you buy one more group." That 2nd group became the 2nd best selling furniture group in the store.
Jeff Frank
Simplicity Sofas
That's trippy!
That's one of the weirdest--and funniest--stories I've ever heard. People can be so bizarre! Thanks, Jeff. :)
I'll add just one little factoid. We bought over $1 million annually from Southern of Conover and the sales rep never came into our store during the remaining 3 years that I worked there.
Jeff