Factory Man : How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town (9780316322607)
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Never-married company secretary: Georgia Witt recalled in a 1966 newspaper article, “You came here to work and that’s what you did, six days a week, ten hours a day.” At the time, she had been with the company more than fifty years, had the number one parking space, and had no plans to retire.
J.D. Bassett’s obituary: “John David Bassett Sr. Leaves Great Heritage to Our People,” Martinsville Bulletin, March 1, 1965.
Chapter 8: Navigating the New Landscape
Interviews: Anna Logan Lawson, Coy Young, Jane Bassett Spilman, Bill Young, Frank Snyder, Mick Micklem, Spencer Morten, Howard Hodges, John Bassett, Bernard “Bunny” Wampler
Gallaudet University controversy: New York Times stories, March 1988; Jace Lacob, “ABC Family’s ‘Switched at Birth’ ASL Episode Recalls Gallaudet Protest,” Daily Beast, February 28, 2013; “A New President Signs on a Gallaudet as Deaf Students Make the Hearing World Listen,” People, March 28, 1988.
Jane Spilman’s invitation to join the Gallaudet board: Rob Spilman e-mail with the author, January 27, 2014.
Aftermath of the controversy: Ben Beagle, “Gallaudet Decision Defended,” Roanoke Times, March 17, 1988.
County deputies driving Bob Spilman to Market: Bob Spilman, interview with E. L. Briggs, American Furniture Hall of Fame Foundation Oral Histories, April 4 and 7, 2005.
Bob Spilman’s cost-cutting acumen: Frank Snyder, interview with the author, September 21, 2012.
Flexibility to make big acquisitions: SEC records; Thomas O’Hanlon, “5,350 Companies = a Mixed-Up Furniture Industry,” Fortune, February 1967; and Estelle Jackson, “Sweet Ole Bob: The Furniture Industry Is No Game for Patsies,” Virginia Business, February 1987.
“so many damn plants”: Bob Spilman, interview with E. L. Briggs.
Chapter 9: Sweet Ole Bob (SOB)
Interviews: Frank Snyder, Maury Hammack, Naomi Hodge-Muse, Reuben Scott, Garet Bosiger, Bob Merriman, Howard Altizer, Joe Philpott, Jim Philpott, Junior Thomas, Bill Young, Coy Young, James Riddle, Rob Spilman, Jerry Epperson, Carolyn Blue
Segregated factory departments: Bassett wasn’t alone in its discriminatory practices. According to a 1998 analysis by Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin, at the time, just 20 percent of American employers had established affirmative-action policies. By 1976, more than 80 percent of large firms had equal-employment policies, according to the Bureau of National Affairs.
First to make alcohol and “do it legal!”: Dwayne Yancey, “Hey, Sugar, She’s No Average Republican,” Roanoke Times, October 20, 1991.
Naomi Hodge-Muse family: Her husband, William Muse, got his Imperial Savings and Loan federal insurance during the Nixon administration—via a connection with a White House cook (Naomi Hodge-Muse, interview with the author, September 18, 2012).
Nixon’s redwood-sapling symbol: “Richard Nixon, Remarks Upon Returning from China, Feb. 28, 1972,” from the archives of the University of Southern California–China Institute.
Mr. Ed worked at fourteen: Bassett Furniture was found to be guilty of violating child-labor laws as far back as 1915, when it was fined twenty-five dollars (Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, State of Virginia, 1916).
Spilman’s feet on John Bassett’s desk: Garet Bosiger, interview with the author, November 22, 2012.
“My brother-in-law is still a child”: Bob Merriman, interview with the author, November 26, 2012.
Lunchtime poker with Bob Spilman: Frank Snyder, Howard Altizer, and Joe Philpott, interviews with the author, November 27, 2012 (Altizer).
“Bifold” doors: Bill Young, interview with the author, July 25, 2013.
Spilman’s charitable deeds: Jim Philpott, interview with the author, October 15, 2012.
Prisoners on work release in factory: Joe Meadors, interview with the author, September 12, 2012. He said some of the prisoners were such good workers that the company hired them after they got out of prison.
Bob Spilman on union-busting: Bob Spilman, interview with E. L. Briggs, American Furniture Hall of Fame Foundation Oral Histories, April 4 and 7, 2005.
Barbs exchanged between Bob Spilman and Smith Young: Estelle Jackson, “Sweet Ole Bob: The Furniture Industry Is No Game for Patsies,” Virginia Business, February 1987.
Increasing output just to break even: Frank Snyder, then secretary of the BFI board, interview with the author.
Chapter 10: The Mount Airy Ploy
Interviews: Reuben Scott, Brent Carrick, Ruth Phillips, Russ Ashburn, Mick Micklem, George Fricke, Eddie Wall, John Bassett, Pat Bassett, Duke Taylor, Sherwood Robertson, Frank Snyder, Bob Merriman, Howard Hodges, Linda McMillian, Spencer Morten, Jerry Epperson
Mount Airy plant closing: Bassett closed the plant in November 2005, putting three hundred out of work (Furniture Today, July 23, 2006).
Bassett textile plant sold for an eight-figure sum: In 1984, Bassett-Walker Knitting Company was sold for $293 million to VF Imagewear, which was then Henry County’s largest employer, with 2,300 workers. It closed in 2001, a year when 91,000 American textile workers lost their jobs.
Executive office layout: Over coffee at a Bassett Forks McDonald’s in September 2012, retired lawyer Frank Snyder drew me a sketch of the Taj Mahal suites before and after John Bassett’s stint in Mount Airy.
Chapter 11: The Family Elbow
Interviews: Frank Snyder, Claude Cobler, John Bassett, Jane Bassett Spilman, Jerry Epperson, Spencer Morten, Bernard “Bunny” Wampler, Junior Thomas, Joe Meadors, Howard White, Pat Bassett
“To get rich is glorious”: The quote is widely attributed to Teng Hsiao-p’ing, but there’s no proof he actually said it (per Evelyn Iritani, “Great Idea But Don’t Quote Him,” Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2004).
Offshoring model pioneered at Taiping Handbag Factory: Recounted in Leslie T. Chang, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2008).
Growth of Chinese exports: Ding Qingfen, “Evolving Export Strategy,” China Daily, June 1, 2011.
American occasional tables to become extinct: “Bassett Expects No Business Increase,” Roanoke Times, January 5, 1985.
Wages in China and the United States: Estelle Jackson, “Sweet Ole Bob: The Furniture Industry Is No Game for Patsies,” Virginia Business, February 1987.
Record sales of $301 million: “Bassett Reports Sales and Income Gains,” Roanoke Times, December 30, 1981.
Cause of death was pneumonia, not choking: Chuck Burress, “Crib Deaths Haunt Bassett,” Roanoke Times and World-News, December 10, 1978.
Stinging rebuke for crib deaths: Jack Anderson, “Baby Cribs Investigated,” syndicated column, April 30, 1980; Jackson, “Sweet Ole Bob.”
Warning posters issued: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission news report, February 1980 and February 1984.
$1 million cost to company to send warnings: Mag Poff, “Bassett Beginning Campaign to Warn of Dangerous Cribs,” Roanoke Times, February 14, 1980.
Nine deaths associated with cribs: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission news report, revised June 21, 2001.
Spilman has “got to know”: Gregg Jones, “A Long Slowdown? Bassett Furniture Chief Strives to Minimize the Effects of Recession,” Roanoke Times, March 14, 1982.
Press coverage of John Bassett’s move to Galax: “Bassett Resigns Posts,” Martinsville Bulletin, December 29, 1982.
Chapter 12: Schooling the Chinese
Interviews: Jerry Epperson, Laurence Zung, Michael Moh, Joe Meadors, Michael Dugan, Buck Gale, Jim Philpott, Paul Fulton, Steve Kincaid, Joe Philpott, Tom Word, Reuben Scott, Richard Bennington
“A businessman setting up shop”: Quote from a 1977 Economist article recounted in “End of an Experiment: The Introduction of a Minimum Wage Marks the Further Erosion of Hong Kong’s Free-Market Ways,” Economist, July 15, 2010.
17 percent of the Chinese population in cities: United Nations Development Programme, Rapport mondial sur le développement humain 1999 (Paris: De Boeck Université, 1999), 198.
; American embargo and government attitudes toward China: Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 2012), 176. The United Nations imposed a similar Cold War embargo on China in 1951. The United States didn’t recognize the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate China until 1979.
China was half a century behind Virginia: By the 1950s, for the first time in Virginia’s history, most Virginians lived in towns, cities, or suburbs, as people moved from farm to factory. Charles F. Bryan Jr., “Manufacturing a New Virginia, One Box at a Time,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 17, 2012.
Moh borrowed $80,000 to start his business: Lee Buchanan, “Man of the Year: Laurence Moh,” InFurniture, December 2002.
Wage differentials: Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, “International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs for Production Workers in Manufacturing,” 1997.
Imports “will be with us forever”: George Kegley, “Bassett Upgrades Products, Enters Motel and Office Markets,” Roanoke Times, February 5, 1987.
Factory closures in 1986: Ibid.
Estelle Jackson, “Sweet Ole Bob: The Furniture Industry Is No Game for Patsies”: Virginia Business, February 1987; and Jim Philpott, interview with the author.
A family-controlled industry: Michael Dugan, The Furniture Wars: How America Lost a Fifty Billion Dollar Industry (Conover, NC: Goosepen Press, 2009), 17.
Conglomerates acquired furniture companies: James Flanigan, “Merger Mania Strikes Again in Furniture Field,” Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1987.
Raiders mainly pursuing high-end furniture makers: “Bassett Denies Takeover Rumors,” Roanoke Times, September 9, 1988.
Sales down from previous year: American Association of Furniture Manufacturers data, quoted in George Kegley, “Furniture Outlook Drab, Prospects Worst in 35 Years, Bassett Stockholders Told,” Roanoke Times, February 8, 1990.
Chapter 13: Bird-Doggin’ the Backwaters
Interviews: Pat Bassett, John Bassett, Tom Word, Garet Bosiger, Hope Antonoff, Jerome Neff, Bob Merriman, Eddie Wall, Sheila Key, Spencer Morten, Joyce Phillips, Duke Taylor, Bernard “Bunny” Wampler, Jill Burcham, Joe Meadors, Joe Philpott, Linda McMillian
Dick Cheney: Daily Show correspondents and others mocked the absurdity of a sitting vice president shooting a seventy-eight-year-old friend in the face while hunting quail that had been raised in a pen and were released mere seconds before they were shot.
Bassett couple’s hunting prowess: Pat Bassett was named to the 1973 All-American team by Sports Afield magazine in recognition of her being one of the top ten women gunners in the country. In one statewide competition she hit 99 out of 100 shots, according to “Bassetts Are Top Guns,” Martinsville Bulletin, March 3, 1974.
Company losses in 1982/1983: Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Company financial statements, December 3, 1983.
George Vaughan’s lobbying for highway: John Vaughan, interview with Roy Briggs, American Furniture Hall of Fame Foundation Oral Histories, November 26, 2001.
Chapter 14: Selling the Masses
Interviews: Garet Bosiger, John Bassett, Bob Merriman, Wyatt Bassett, Laurence Zung, Michael Moh, Hugh McLarty
Business prospects for selling paper-on-particleboard furniture: Tom Word, The Price of Admission: Reflections on Some Personal Heroes (self-published, 2011).
Civil War heritage of Sumter region: Sumter was home to Potter’s Raid, a series of battles that happened after the war ended (but before word of its ending reached the town). Sumter was also an hour away from Columbia, which was burned by Union troops in 1865, an event that still resonates as an act of Northern malice, especially in the South Carolina midlands.
Webb Turner’s rise and fall in furniture: Michael Dugan, The Furniture Wars: How America Lost a Fifty Billion Dollar Industry (Conover, NC: Goosepen Press, 2009), chapter 9.
Borax as slang for flashy, cheaply made furniture: The term derives from furniture acquired by saving Kirkman’s Borax Soap wrappers, according to Richard R. Bennington, Furniture Marketing: From Product Development to Distribution (New York: Fairchild Publications, 2004).
Sumter wages: Garet Bosiger, interview with the author; Galax wage information came from Doug Bassett and industry average from Steve Walker, furniture expert at North Carolina State University.
Background on the Market: The semiannual trade show occurs in April and October in High Point, North Carolina. Sales representatives and sales managers try to win orders for placements of the new goods in stores nationwide while retailers try to get access to as many lines as possible without ceding valuable floor space (as described in Dugan, The Furniture Wars).
Vaughan-Bassett’s sales figures: By 1996, the company was selling $108 million and had a net annual income of $5.7 million, according to the Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Company annual report, 1996.
Fears about NAFTA: Anthony DePalma, “Clear Today; Tomorrow, Who Knows?; Culture Clash,” New York Times, January 2, 1994.
Asian work ethic: Richard Burkholder and Raksha Arora, “Is China’s Famed ‘Work Ethic’ Waning?,” Gallup, January 25, 2005.
Cowboy capitalism: China joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in 1986 and was granted observer status in GATT in 1982. In the early 1990s, the American brand of capitalism exerted growing influence there, and was heightened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the growing dynamism of Silicon Valley; see Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 2012), chapter 11.
Chapter 15: The Storm Before the Tsunami
Interviews: Garet Bosiger, John Bassett, Pat Bassett, Wyatt Bassett, Tim Prillaman, Michael Moh, Doug Bassett Lane, Joe Meadors, Warren Zirkle, Bob Merriman, Bernard “Bunny” Wampler
Hurricane Hugo damage: “Hurricane Hugo Today Would Cause $20 Billion in Damage in South Carolina,” Insurance Journal, September 22, 2009.
Hurricane Hugo severity: Jesse Ferrell, “Remembering Hugo from 1989,” AccuWeather.com, September 22, 2011.
Container lines building larger ships: Heightened competition among ports and the economics of global shipping are detailed in Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
Popularity of Victorian Sampler: From closing arguments in the case Lexington Furniture Industries v. Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co., in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, June 3, 1996.
Size of Lexington Home Brands: Scott Andron, “Lexington Furniture Loses Lawsuit,” Greensboro News and Record, June 6, 1996.
Size of Masco: In 1996, Masco sold a majority stake in the furniture and fabric companies that made up its home furnishings division for $1.1 billion (Jay McIntosh, “LifeStyle Value Plummets,” Furniture/Today, November 4, 2001).
Deconstructing the Lexington suite: Wyatt Bassett, interview with the author, December 18, 2012. Court transcripts indicate Lexington’s suite sold for 32 percent more than Vaughan-Bassett’s.
“nullify our whole design program”: Doug Bassett Lane, interview with the author, October 8, 2012. Doug Lane is the son of Minnie Bassett Lane (John’s sister), who was the daughter of a Bassett CEO and the wife of a Lane CEO. Lane recorded the quote from his uncle Edward Lane Jr., a longtime executive with Lane Furniture, as he lay dying in a Roanoke hospital in 2004.
Leo Jiranek’s fending off of Lane lawsuit: Joe Meadors, interview with the author.
Lexington’s patent-pending claim: Scott Andron, “Furniture Copying Still Unclear,” Greensboro News and Record, June 9, 1996; and Wyatt Bassett, interview with the author.
One dollar in damages: The judgment was later overturned when the judge ruled that the jury couldn’t properly award punitive damages without also awarding actual damages. Vaughan-Bassett had not presented a firm figure on how much Lexington’s unfair competition cost in term
s of lost sales (“$1 Judgment Against Company Overturned,” Greensboro News and Record, July 24, 1996).
Chapter 16: Trouble in the ’Ville
Interviews: John Bassett, Wyatt Bassett, Spencer and Mary Elizabeth Morten, Rob Spilman, Joe Philpott, Paul Fulton, Joe Meadors, Coy Young, Dave Phillips, Mike Micklem, Ralph Spillman, Frances Kissee, Buck Gale
“giant sucking sound”: The phrase was coined in 1992 by presidential candidate Ross Perot during his debate with President George H. W. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton. Perot opposed NAFTA and predicted it would lead to jobs being shipped to countries where young workers would be paid minimally by companies that could operate without regard to employee health or environmental controls. Transcript available at http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/16/us/the-1992-campaign-transcript-of-2d-tv-debate-between-bush-clinton-and-perot.html
CalPERS proposal to separate positions of CEO and chairman: “CalPERS Seeks to Divide Top 2 Posts at Bassett,” Bloomberg News, May 13, 1997.
“little more than a claque of the CEO’s cronies”: John A. Byrne, “The Best & Worst Boards: Our New Report Card on Corporate Governance,” Businessweek, November 25, 1996.
Bob Spilman’s efforts to keep the Market in High Point: “Natural Born Leader,” High Points, March 1997.
Bob Spilman’s contributions to the Port of Virginia: Al Roberts, “The Men Who Put the Port on Track,” Virginian-Pilot, November 26, 1990.
Paul Fulton’s influence: Douglas C. McGill, “At Sara Lee, It’s All in the Names,” New York Times, June 19, 1989.
Imports making up a third of all wood furniture sold in America: Scott Andron, “Furniture Imports the Talk of Market,” Greensboro News and Record, May 3, 1998.
J’Amy Owens’s marketing acumen: “Sales Guru to the Stars,” Inc., October 1999.