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HIGH POINT — The Parker Southern and Temple Furniture showrooms were buzzing during High Point Market, and during the standing-room-only Friday night party, many attending said the atmosphere was reminiscent of the pre-COVID years.
Adrian Parker, CEO at Parker Southern, Temple and direct-to-consumer brand Mantle Furniture based in Maiden, N.C., welcomed the festive ambiance, noting that it was great to see people enjoying themselves after the difficulties of the past 30-plus months. He also noted that he has developed new strategies to help mitigate future disruptions and shared three things he learned during the pandemic with Furniture Today.
“There wasn’t a book written about how to shut down a furniture factory,” Parker said. “That being said, e-commerce was what kept going strong. We love our retail customers and will continue to serve them as we always have; their market increased too as we all know. However, since the pandemic, e-commerce has been our focus.”
Parker said that a challenging labor pool as well as shifting consumer habits are also key factors in his forward-facing business strategies, leading to solutions implemented during the pandemic that will be maintained in the future.
“You have to hire the personnel you need to keep your lead time short,” he explained. “We taught young people the furniture trade with training. This was a win-win as we were able to create workers that we needed, but that are hard to find.
“Also, we know we have to keep moving forward with new style and fabric introductions,” Parker continued. “Don’t slow down when times get tough. You have to stay in the ballgame by keeping fresh with design. We continued to show in High Point even though we had plenty of orders to keep us going. Our customers appreciated that.”
Parker Southern and Temple are now fourth-generation companies with the children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren of the founder on location at the North Carolina factories every day. Parker says the variety of generational perspectives also plays a significant role in how the companies evolve, including in e-commerce, and that he anticipates continued growth for direct-to-consumer brand Mantle Furniture.
“The shopping experience has definitely changed,” he says. “I learned mostly watching my daughter-in-law as she works 40-hour weeks while raising three children. Her shopping mostly went online after 9 p.m. when the kids are in bed. However, I am the kind of shopper that enjoys the retail experience. That said, I am not 25-45 years of age. My day is very different from that age group.”
Along with varying shopping habits, consumers have differing expectations about delivery and trends, Parker said.
“We are always staying on trend with design as that is a must in our industry,” he noted. “The next generation of buyers are used to getting things quickly. We are already doing this with our four-to-six week shipment and our 10-day shipment program. Our big hit at High Point Market was our four-to-six week shipment and our 10-day program which included 25 frames and 90 fabrics.”
As to future “musts” for the furniture industry at large, Parker said several are continuances of lessons learned during COVID.
“We must stay on top of fashion, and we will continue to grow our technology and social media to fill the needs of the next generation of consumers,” he concluded. “We must get back down to lean management. We must get more manufacturers back to the High Point showrooms, and we must service our dealers more.”
