Furniture a big business

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/03/2011 (5481 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Press a button and the chair reclines.

Your back goes down and your legs go up. Blue LED lighting comes on beneath the chair and inside the cup holder “in case you’re watching a movie in the dark,” says Palliser Furniture production manager Conrad Kiesman.

And this button here launches a missile from the recliner’s cushioned arm that kills an unsuspecting SMERSH agent in the James Bond movie you’re watching.

It’s the newest HTS recliner — HTS stands for home theatre seating — straight out of Palliser’s 40-person R&D department. You’re probably not the only person surprised that sofas and loveseats have a large research and development department, although it doesn’t really include inventions by character Q from the Bond flicks.

The dart thrown at the map to find the latest destination in the Free Press Dropping In series landed in the vicinity of Furniture Park in North Kildonan. Furniture Park is an actual street name. It used to be called Vulcan Avenue when the Vulcan Iron Works operated there.

In 1990, Art and Frank Defehr bought the street, a city block long, from the city to house their furniture empire. The street now has over one million square feet of building space dedicated to making furniture. Security gates block both entrances and security guards are on-scene 24/7, so you can’t just drive in.

Its location is north on Gateway Road, which parallels the first CPR main line that entered Winnipeg in 1881 and is now a foot/bike path. Furniture Park is just past McLeod Avenue, named after Donald McLeod, an early pioneer who lived in a cabin at the corner of McLeod and Henderson Highway.

About a half dozen years ago, brothers Art and Frank Defehr split their empire.

Now, Frank operates the buildings on the north side of Furniture Park, and Art on the south side. Frank makes mainly wooden furniture (DeFehr Furniture), Art makes upholstered furniture (Palliser Furniture).

Back to Palliser R&D creations; those powered recliners now make up 20 per cent of production, said production manager Kiesman. Palliser’s high-end recliners are made with top-of-the-line cowhide leather, the only leather Palliser uses. Other furniture makers use leathers made from water buffalo hide or pigskin. You may be watching TV tonight on a water buffalo hide and not know it.

“We used to have $10 million in leather on hand at all times. Now, most of the leather is in our Mexico plant,” Kiesman said.

Half of the Winnipeg Palliser plant’s production used to go to the U.S. and half to Canada. Now, just 15 per cent is sold to the U.S. The rest is sold from its Mexican plant.

The recession in the United States and having to tap into cheaper labour in developing countries like Mexico to compete, has reduced production and staff at Furniture Park.

Palliser once had about 1,000 people working in upholstering, versus 500 today, Kiesman said.

The plant produces 400 pieces of furniture per day.

The number of people sewing has been especially hard-hit. There are now just 35 sewers in the plant, versus about 250 in 2005, Kiesman said. Most of the sewing jobs moved to Mexico, too.

 

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Dropping In is a ‘random act of journalism’ that starts with a thumbtack on a city map and ends with a story from the street. See more Dropping In articles using the map below.