A Profile of the Furniture Manufacturing Industry, Second Edition

This book highlights the role of global networks, lean and green production methods, customized quality versus price competitiveness, online outreach along with showroom access, labor issues, and related factors that continue to compel location shifts and extensions of the furniture industry.

The furniture industry serves as an indicator for the changing state of American manufacturing. A brief history of U.S. furniture manufacturing creates the context for continuing geographic shifts among Asian locations, foreign ownership impacts and global market considerations, as well as the demands of three significant domestic market demographics.

The furniture industry is separated into its various parts from wood to metal, home to institutional markets. Government actions including tariffs, health, and environmental regulations are also considered. Based on numerous interviews and site visits, strategies of corporate survivors in the face of mergers, and emergence of new players are profiled to indicate practices for increasing adaptive capacity and marketing the appeal of “made here”.

This book highlights the role of global networks, lean and green production methods, customized quality versus price competitiveness, online outreach along with showroom access, labor issues, and related factors that continue to compel location shifts and extensions of the furniture industry.

About the Author

Susan M. Walcott is a Professor of Geography Emerita at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, and formerly at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Her research interests concern regional economic development, particularly in rapidly transitioning areas throughout Asia and the United States. Books, chapters and articles focus on high technology parks and industry clusters (the life sciences, furniture, tea) across the U.S. and China, modernization in Bhutan, and immigrant entrepreneurs. Book chapters and journal articles expand on these topics that she draws on for book examinations.