The Design Legacy Behind America’s Most Iconic Furniture Brands: Alex Shuford III

A fabric mill, a poker-legend origin story, and a furniture factory that almost never sleeps—until a global shutdown forced the lights off. We invited Alex Schuford III, CEO of Century Furniture and the Rock House Farm Family of Brands, to share how a third-generation leader protects legacy without freezing it in amber. From buying Hancock & Moore and Hickory Chair to keeping nine North Carolina factories humming, Alex opens the playbook on brand autonomy, storytelling, and the small details that separate timeless from forgettable.

We dig into the retail lessons that shaped his operator’s eye—why asking for the order still matters, how factory utilization drives culture and profit, and what makes a showroom genuinely inspiring in a world trained by RH and Arhaus. Alex explains why conglomerates stumble when they homogenize identities, and how empowering presidents at Century, Hickory Chair, Highland House, Hancock & Moore, Jessica Charles, and Maitland-Smith keeps each brand sharp—even when they compete with each other. He also makes a compelling case for why interior designers are AI-proof: taste, empathy, and on-site orchestration can be augmented by tools, but not replaced.

You’ll hear the story of a product review where Thomas O’Brien spotted a molding mistake from 25 feet away, and a crisis moment where the team found touchless thermometers in the baby aisle to legally restart operations—a tiny win that became cultural lore. The throughline is clear: craftsmanship lives in people, details compound into beauty, and trust is earned one consistent decision at a time. If you care about design, legacy brands, or how to lead through pressure, this conversation delivers practical wisdom and good company.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a design-obsessed friend, and leave a quick review—what detail do you always notice first?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Alex’s Family Legacy
• 2:00 Post‑War Origins and Century’s Early Strategy
• 7:40 Retail Grit and Lessons from the Sales Floor
• 13:20 Mentors, Factories, and Leading People
• 18:40 Conglomerates, Failures, and Brand Autonomy
• 25:30 Acquisitions: Hancock & Moore to Hickory Chair
• 32:20 Craft, Storytelling, and Intentional Design
• 38:30 Culture, Tenure, and Community in Furniture
• 44:30 Portfolio, Structure, and Healthy Competition
• 50:00 AI, Human Work, and Designer Value
• 55:00 Elevating Retail and the Luxury Experience
• 1:01:00 Risk, Iteration, and Learning from Failure
• 1:07:00 Durable Goods, Trust, and Repeat Delight
• 1:12:30 Weight of Legacy and Leading Through Crisis

Transcript

Voice Over: 0:00

This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design. Curator of interiors, furnishings, and lifestyles, hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott. iDesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast, where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends. Today on the iDesign Lab, we're joined by Alex Schuford III, president and CEO of Century Furniture and the Rock House Farm Family of Brands, including legendary names like Hickory Chair, Hancock and Moore, and Maitland Smith. A third-generation design leader, Alex has spent his life shaping how craftsmanship, innovation, and timeless design come together in the luxury furniture world. Please welcome Alex Schuford.

Tiffany Woolley: 0:51

Welcome to the iDesign Lab Podcast. Today we are luckily to be in studio with Alex Schuffert of Rock House Farm Family Brands.

Alex Shuford III: 1:02

Yeah. Rockhouse Family Brands, sure. CEO.

Tiffany Woolley: 1:05

CEO. So welcome not only to South Florida, but to the iDesign Lab podcast. You have such a lengthy story that we hope to get into today about the family business of designing a life around a beautiful business of furniture.

Scott Woolley: 1:24

I think the first thing I want to bring up or talk about is your third generation. Your grandfather started the company. And your uncle?

Alex Shuford III: 1:32

My uncle was uh president after my grandfather, and uh my dad worked with my uncle, was uh ran all the upholstery operations, and and then for a short period of time we had managers not the family running it. Really? And then family stepped back in and has run it for the last year.

Scott Woolley: 1:48

But three drench generations, that's three generations. That's a wonderful thing to talk about.

Tiffany Woolley: 1:52

So American, I believe, too. Iconic.

Alex Shuford III: 1:55

When did your grandfather start it? 1947. We were a textile family before that, so we were yarn and twine from the turn of the century, 1800s, and then slowly got into fabric weaving. Uh and in the 30s, my grandfather bought a fabric company called Bowdy's Weavers during the tough times. The family legend is he either won it in a poker game or bought it for a dollar and assumed the debt, right? So whichever one you prefer. Uh but he turned the fabric company around, was doing fairly well, and and then once the the war effort broke out, all the factories were turned over to the war effort. Then post-World War II, obviously a lot of GIs were coming back, it was a little bit of a boom time. People were starting families and households, and there wasn't enough furniture production, and there were a lot of shortages of materials. So if you were trying to get into furniture production or already making furniture, you were struggling to find metal springs and fabric, things of that nature. He happened to own a fabric company, so he had access to that material. And he was a connector, he was one of these great people that could uh walk into a room and twenty minutes later know everybody. And so we knew a guy in the government who had access to metal springs. And uh so he put two and two together, went around town, and talked to a lot of the small furniture companies about producing specific designs just for him. So we literally started as a white label buyer of other people's capacity. Um famously Buddy Cheryl's dad actually made furniture for my granddad for a while. That's right. And then after about six months, he realized that almost anybody could get into the upholstery business. Right. He started his own facility, but also then began construction on our case goods factory.

Scott Woolley: 3:43

Um somewhere in the late 40s, early fifties.

Alex Shuford III: 3:50

Uh we still own the first facility they ever had. Uh we actually produce furniture in it right now. All in North Carolina. Still all in North Carolina.

Scott Woolley: 3:59

So it's started in North Carolina and started and stayed.

Alex Shuford III: 4:02

Yeah. And the fabric company still does wonderfully, uh sells fabric to most of the major players in the industry. They're now actually a 100% employee-owned company. We sold it to the employees. What a beautiful story. It's a good it's a good little uh American story. And third generation messes it up, so maybe I'm that guy. Uh so far we've been able to navigate through at least the obvious and major hurdles, like you know, global pandemic, housing collapse, things like that. So we'll we'll see. Maybe this next one will catch us. But uh so far I've got enough smart people around me to keep me from my my worst decisions.

Scott Woolley: 4:40

Aaron Ross Powell So growing up, you grew up in the furniture business. But as a kid or as a teenager, were your aspirations and goals to Were not.

Alex Shuford III: 4:48

So my first summer job, uh so I grew up on a horse farm. Um my mom raised us thoroughbred horses, and so as kids we were mucking stalls and feeding horses and baling hay, and and she always would remind us that if we failed in life there was a pitchfork with our name on it. We could come back and muck stalls. Um but my first real summer job was working in the furniture facilities. Uh I worked in distribution and then I worked one summer in the case goods factory gluing corner blocks onto the underside of drawers, and and then when I got into college, you know, my dad, to his credit, was you know, told me do something other than furniture. Really? And uh, you know, and so I sort of ran from it as as for a while, and then I went to college out in California, and then post-college ended up staying out there. Um and as gravity is, I ended up buying a little fabric and decorating store in Northern California outside of San Francisco from two ladies that were running a little operation selling fabric by the yard and doing window treatments and top of the bed. And um and I sort of got my teeth into it and thought that I was better than I was, so I opened up a second one and then we bought a third one and we opened up a fourth one.

Tiffany Woolley: 6:04

And so the entrepreneurial spirit was there as well.

Alex Shuford III: 6:06

And it was the category I knew at least something about, or at least I thought I did in my twenties. You know, it later in life you realize you knew nothing about it, and thank God for a couple of really wonderful ladies that kept me from messing up more than I would have otherwise. But but that early experience in retail and in design really helped sort of set me up to come back into the quote unquote family business. Um and in about the 2001 time frame, I came back into the town.

Scott Woolley: 6:35

So did they pursue and go after you, or did you have Coles wanting to go back to North Carolina?

Alex Shuford III: 6:41

Yeah, no, I I uh I was living in Northern California, so no one ever wants to leave Northern California. But you can't afford to live there, so then you have to make practical decisions. Um and I had just gotten married um and uh and we wanted to buy a house and start a family, and so there was a temptation to uh to kind of go somewhere where it was more uh sort of affordable to live. Um and we had as a family company, the the the corporate entity, Sentry, had bought a company called Expressions Furniture. And Expressions was a custom upholstery operation that had franchised stores. Um but we didn't know anything about running retail stores because we were a manufacturer. But I was out in Northern California running retail stores and so my dad asked me if I would go take a look at it and just give him an assessment of how this operation was running. And so as a favor, I said, sure, I'll you know, I'll find something.

Scott Woolley: 7:33

So you came with a different perspective.

Alex Shuford III: 7:34

That's right. I had a little bit more of that. What does it look like to run a seven-day-a-week business and to deal with the consumer? And then so after a couple of months of of sort of checking out a couple of stores, he and I had a long conversation and he asked me if I would come help run the expressions operation. And I sort of did it as a part-time thing with my retail stores on the other side. Because everybody forgets the original dot com bust was in that 2000 time frame where pets.com and you know all the original companies went, you know, went under. And I was in Northern California running high-end luxury furniture and decorating services. So I had some time on my hands because things were a little slow. Uh and after I got more involved, it's you know, businesses are sticky. When you find I'm a fix-it guy, I like to fix things. And so once I got involved with Expressions, it was plenty of stuff that needed to be. So how many stores did Expressions have? At that point in time, they were just under forty, most of them franchise.

Tiffany Woolley: 8:30

That's a lot.

Alex Shuford III: 8:31

It was a lot. It was a big operation. Small stores, they were all, you know, I call it 8,000 to 12,000 square foot stores.

Tiffany Woolley: 8:38

Brick and mortar.

Alex Shuford III: 8:39

Yeah, brick and mortar, and and run by people franchising is a funny thing. You know, when somebody buys a franchise, they expect it to be easy and successful. Um and the the problem is it was also furniture, so it also had the element of being difficult and low margin. And so that combination uh required a lot of coaching, a lot of you know, sort of management attention to make sure the franchisees were successful. Some of them were were wonderful business people and ran great operations, and other ones struggled more and took more hand holding. And and you know, we also owned a factory that supported them, so that uh eventually fell underneath my uh umbrella, and I had to make sure the factory was full, which was you know something I think a lot of people in the industry don't think about when they think about this this you know, this industry is we really uh uh our success is determined by how full we keep our factories. You know, and so you do that with fashion, you do that with relationship, you you do that with newness, you do that with pricing and promotion and discount, you whatever tool you can pull out of your toolkit, the deal is run your people 40 hours a week. Because if they're getting a full 40-hour work week, then you're probably making money, they're probably staying with you, you're probably having some success. But if you start underfilling your factory, now you've got a reputational problem locally, you've got all kinds of headaches financially, and and so my job was keep that factory full.

Tiffany Woolley: 10:01

And busy.

Alex Shuford III: 10:02

That's right. But I only had those stores to do it with. So I was trying to find my way out of that.

Scott Woolley: 10:07

When you were in college, did what was your good degree? Was it marketing or because you have an interesting background in terms of jumping into retail Yeah and understanding retail is Absolutely?

Alex Shuford III: 10:18

It was so I'm an English major. Trevor Burrus, Jr. An English major creative writing as my concentration. Um and people always kind of raise their eyebrow at that, and I tell them, well, at at its base, you know, it was a liberal arts education. Right. So it was critical thinking, analysis, uh comparative analysis.

Tiffany Woolley: 10:36

What a great base.

Alex Shuford III: 10:37

But also communication, the ability to get an idea across, to be able to verbalize that and say it eloquently so that you can influence others to kind of move forward with you. And um, I'm a big fan of people that um have a broad concept of education, again, the ability to critically think, but have learned to communicate. And if you think about where we are heading, and we may delve into this with AI coming on board as quickly as it is, your hard science degree may not be as valuable as that person next to you who used to make fun of who has a softer degree in something that's more aligned with communications. But but yeah, I was um I took a lot of business classes uh also uh sort of uh alongside of that English major. And then I was just interested in the way businesses operated. I I did a lot of sort of uh self-education, uh reading uh and listening and being around business people. But there's no better education in business than to go work retail. Like that's where the rubber meets the road in almost every business in America. And and retail, you know, we always think it's selling a physical item, but it's not. You could be selling a service, you know, you could be selling a concept, you could be selling marketing, but that ability to interact with the buyer, the customer, to get them to feel good about what's happening, to trust you as the seller, and then to consummate the transaction. Because a lot of people fail at that level, right? Don't forget to ask for the order. Right. You spend an hour getting them to like you, and then they walk out the door and you forgot to ask them for the order.

Tiffany Woolley: 12:15

Oh, he was a nice guy.

Alex Shuford III: 12:16

Yeah, that was wonderful. I had a nice pleasant afternoon. Now I'm gonna go somewhere else somewhere else and buy the product. But but that was a big part of my early education was getting into retail and then having the success and failure of my little operation out in California be my pers personal success or failure. Like I was a sole proprietor. So the checks I wrote were out of my checking account, right? If we were short money that week to pay a supplier, it was m my issue. Yeah. Um and uh You were eating less that week. I was eating less, that's right. I was sleeping on the conference room table.

Scott Woolley: 12:47

I was figuring it out. So I I opened a grocery store at 21 years old, 32,000 square feet, grew it to 42 stores in 11 years. My first two years, I basically I would say slept in the back room. I would take like scarlet towel towel boxes, put them all together. Put them together, and that's what I slept on most nights because I would finish work at 2 30 in the morning and the store was open back at seven and so I slept two hours in the back room.

Alex Shuford III: 13:14

It is such a I I had a very similar story where I sold the my friend and I had a house in the Bay Area. We sold it, and I kept saying, Well, I'll find an apartment, I'll find an apartment. And because I was working 80 hours a week, I never got around to finding an apartment. I lived for two months in my office.

Scott Woolley: 13:31

I actually I actually had a a shower installed in the back room with just like a wire with a screen and at six o'clock before anyone can't got into the store, I'd take my shower.

Alex Shuford III: 13:43

That's it. I would wake up and go to the health club every morning at like 4 35, take a shower, I'd be back in the office. And you do, and it's that grit. It is an underappreciated element in business success. You a lot of people read about, well, you fail and you learn from your failures, but but they don't, I think, feel what that means, which is you're willing to do anything and everything to make sure that this entity you have stays alive. And it's it's like raising a child. It is, it's your first baby. It's your first baby, right? It really is. Um yeah, so that for me was was sort of seminal. And I'm uh when I interview people, it uh it's usually something I'm looking for. Have you ever worked in retail? Because there's an empathy that comes with that, both for the customer but also for your fellow business person. Um you know, to realize how hard it is to deal at the point of contact with the person that's buying the good. And and if you have that empathy, then it changes your whole perspective in relationships and how you develop trust. So 42, that's no small feat. That's in 11 years.

Scott Woolley: 14:49

Yeah, 42 grocery stores, six liquor stores, and four pharmacies. Oh wow. Well, you need to put liquor stores because you were in the grocery business. My most frustrating thing was that we had pharmacies in four stores, but I was not allowed to ever go into or walk in the pharmacy because I didn't have a pharmacy license. And then I would have arguments with some of the pharmacists that I had that I hired to run the pharmacist, right?

Tiffany Woolley: 15:12

That's where trust comes in.

Alex Shuford III: 15:16

You're not allowed in there. I love it.

Speaker 5: 15:18

That's kind of crazy.

Alex Shuford III: 15:20

But you were allowed in the liquor store, right?

Scott Woolley: 15:23

Yeah. So along the way in your early years, was did you have any mentors or people that kind of guided you, you looked up to, you got advice from?

Alex Shuford III: 15:32

Well, I mean, primarily, obviously, my father was a big one, a big influence. Um and I knew my grandfather, but uh he wasn't active mentoring me. Uh he was more of this sort of idea of success. Okay. But my dad was someone I would reach out to and uh and help me along the way quite a bit. And then and then in retail early in California, um I had there was a an operation uh in one of the areas where I had opened my last store, uh, and he was a really successful little decorating business there, and um and for for a long time I competed with him poorly. He continued to beat me. And he's a classic story. I finally invited him out to lunch. I said, I you know, like if I can't beat you, I'm gonna at least talk to you about why. And uh and I won't name his name, but I took him out to lunch and we had a nice long lunch, and at the end of the lunch I looked at him and I said, Finally, he said, How do you do it? Like I, you know, I do X and you do X minus Y, and you I do Y and you do Z. And I I just can't I can't win. And I was just down the street from him, and he looked at me and he goes, So you rent? And I went, Yes, sir. He goes, Yeah. You're probably never gonna beat me. I own. And it was lots of little tidbits like that over time where people had given me just really good, simple advice. Yeah. The the first two ladies that I bought the first store from were fabulous mentors. You know, because I was 24. I was a kid.

Tiffany Woolley: 16:59

I know, and how did you even get to that? Yeah, it was crazy. I was 24.

Alex Shuford III: 17:04

I was doing um high net worth advising, you know, where they hire young kids recently college educated that can speak well, and they send them out there to try to build up a book of business. And I uh was focusing on kind of the one area I knew, which was textiles and furniture, et cetera. And I wandered into this little store owned by the a couple of ladies out in California, and they were delightful. Uh and after a long conversation at the end of it, I left them a card and said, If you're interested. If you ever want to sell it, call me. Did something spark an interest when you saw the operation? It was a it was a fabulous location, um, but it was they had they were struggling with uh with brand identity and a few elements that I thought, gosh, I could fix these things. Um, and you know, just where they were, what they were getting 5,000 cars a day past it, but they had named it you know in a way that everybody thought was an Italian restaurant. So I was like, because it took me a long time to find it, and so I said, gosh, I can fix this. And they laughed at me when I when I left them my cart and walked out, and then a couple weeks later they called me and said, Are you serious? What we might want to sell it. And you know, and post-buying it from them, they really they were you know they were in their mid to late fifties. I was in my twenties. They taught me a lot about how to deal with the customer, about just the the sort of finer points of design and decadently. They stay on with you for a period. They stayed on with you to the to the very end. Um, you know, and uh Sheila and Linda, if you're out there listening, they love this a shout-out for you. But they um wonderful ladies, and they were patient with me, they were stern when they needed to be, you know, even though I was the quote unquote boss, they were they were effectively raising me as an empathetic uh executive. And then when I got back into the family business, there were any number of people. Um the guy that brought me back into the business himself, uh a gentleman named Bob Merisich, who you know famously went on later to to run the Las Vegas Market Center, and their company ended up buying you know about 60-70 percent of the real estate in High Point, where the big show is. But he was the president of Century at the time, and he was an incredibly charismatic leader. Um and from everybody I've worked for, I you know you always try to take away the elements that you think are are really valuable. And from from Bob, that ability to sort of command a room, that charisma, to to get people on board quickly with a concept and get them moving as a group towards the execution of it, you know, was a was kind of a superpower he had, and something that again, I'm people are often surprised by this. I'm introverted by nature. If you give me a personality test, I'm an introvert. Um they say, wow, you don't come across as an introvert, even though I'm very extroverted. But it's all about at the end of the day, does that wear you out and do you need to recharge or whether does that charge you up? But the skill of learning how to r understand a group of people, feel their energy, and then move them together as a group towards a goal, that's a that's a learned skill. You can do that. It's like I tell my kids, like public speaking is just a learned skill. It is. It may make you nervous, but you do it you know enough times in a row, you will get good at it.

Speaker 5: 20:15

Right.

Alex Shuford III: 20:15

Um, and I I learned a lot from him. Uh there was a great upholstery person. I've actually just hired him back as a uh consultant at the company matter of fact named Bob Choppa, who was a wonderful merchant, but even more so was fabulous in a factory. And that's a whole different skill than being in front of a customer. You know, people in a factory see things differently. They they come with a little bit more um uh I guess skepticism uh when they you know when you when you approach them as an executive. You've got to show them. You've got to, you know, you have to show you. And if you're an executive, they they're you know that that sort of skepticism of, well, uh you're just trying to make my day difficult, you're just trying to you know you're trying to make, you know. What and his ability to get them aligned, you know, uh, you know, an employee that is actually producing the furniture was something that was a unique trait. He was, you know, a uh uh baseball player, he connected with them on sports, he you know, he could communicate with them in plain um language to get across a concept, not demean them, not assume you know, not assume that their opinion didn't matter, and create real, again, esprit de corps, you know. And so each one of those along the way was an element that was important. And frankly, a lot of my competitors have been mentors over the years, some active where I literally meet with them and and they share and I share, and some who I seldom met with but watched what they do from a distance. Buddy Cheryl was an unbelievable competitor for many, many years. And I probably only met Buddy Cheryl two or three times in my life, but I watched what he did, studied what he did, learned a lot from seeing how he ran his company. And um you know, I think again, if you're if you're a student of your industry and a student of business, um you're always looking for what somebody something uh somebody does that's successful and something that somebody does that isn't. Um the maybe biggest lesson I ever learned was from a company that went out of business twice.

Speaker 5: 22:22

Literally went bankrupt twice.

Alex Shuford III: 22:24

So it was a company called Furniture Brands International. They Henry Don, Drexel Heritage, Thomasville, Broyhill. They were they were world beaters. All the big brands. They were, when we when I was in the industry early, they were the example of the successful conglomerate. Um they were driven out of business. Were they family owned or all the brands had originally been family brands, but they had gotten uh organized into a public company. Okay. So this company went out of business and then it got reassembled uh as a company called Heritage Home Group, all the same brands, bought out of bankruptcy by a private equity firm and and sort of relabeled, and then went bankrupt again. You know, and so you say, wow, what what kind of lesson can there's a lot of lessons in watching a company that goes bankrupt and what they did and what you should maybe think about not doing. And we are, in many ways today, a bit of a multi-brand conglomerate. And they were an example of us as a public company. And you say, Well, what mistakes did they make that led them to that? So you know, and there are a lot of them. One is they probably undervalued relationship, they they undervalued individual brand leadership and the autonomy of each brand to find its own way stylistically and and from a uh a marketing and distribution standpoint. Yep, and and we take those uh lessons and w they are bedrock for us. Like all of our brands have independent leadership and they have their own autonomy for direction setting. Uh what they want to do from a product standpoint, they do. Like I'm aware, but I don't tell Highland House that it can or can't do something. Right. I don't tell Hickory Chair what next new dining room table to work on from a marketing standpoint, from a distribution standpoint. Like we we work really hard to make sure we don't think in a homogenized way. And you know, I think that's really important.

Scott Woolley: 24:13

Yeah.

Alex Shuford III: 24:14

And so people look at us all the time and say, why do you let that brand that you own compete with this other brand that you own? And I say, that's what makes them sharp. I was going to say makes them sharp. They sharpen themselves against each other all day long.

Tiffany Woolley: 24:24

So twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago, when you came back into the family fold, was it under I mean, that other company you mentioned? Expressions. Expressions. But was that just century and expressions at the time? And all of this newness and all these other brands are under your guidance and leadership.

Alex Shuford III: 24:45

So at the time, um the family company at that moment in time was Valdi's Weavers, the fabric company. Um we had just spun off um our yarn and duct tape company. So there's a branch of the company that uh at the time was one of the country's biggest makers of adhesive tape. That's and so my cousins run that business and own that business today. It's called SureTape. And y'all would know them as duct tape. Tape, yes. So that's that's one branch of the family. They do quite well with the adhesive tape. Who knew? Duct tape? Oh, yeah. But at the time, so we had just spun them off, so the company was was Valdies Weaver's Sentry Furniture and Expressions Furniture. Um and so when I came back, I was working for Expressions, and then after a period of a few years, I kind of got moved back into the Century fold uh and I was running some upholstery offerings for Century. Um and then kind of middle of the 2000s, um, you know, as families do, you know, that different branches of the family wanted different outcomes uh with their investment. And my immediate branch of the family was pretty dedicated to the furniture business. And so my father and my sisters and I bought the furniture brand Century from the rest of the family. And the rest of the family, a couple of branches, kept the textile company along with real estate and some other assets, and and we took home the furniture entity in a pile of debt. So I'm very comfortable in the debt world, um, but I like to be debt-free because those early lessons in the motive, it's a motive. That's right. Guess what? You great news is you own a wonderful old furniture brand that makes a small profit margin. Bad news is you have a pile of debt with Bank of America figured out. Um so over the next couple of years, that was 2013, uh, we paid down all that debt, you know, worked really hard to get back to basically debt-free. And a couple of years after we bought Sentry, a great competitor and another mentor, we talked about mentors earlier, but another mentor of uh to me, Jack Glasheen and his company, uh, which was Hancock and Moore, Jessica Charles, um, and Cabot Wren um uh approached us. We actually had had a conversation about trying to it's another one of those. I invited him to have coffee one morning because I'd always been competing with him. And at the end of this cup of coffee, I was a precocious young executive. And I said, you know, Mr. Glassine, it's been such a delight, you know, chatting with you this morning. I've learned so much. And if and if you ever want to sell Hancock and Moore, call me. Yeah, and and he sort of again kind of laughed at me, and then a few months later reached back out uh, you know, uh, and and we had a conversation and and ended up buying Hancock and Moore, and again, borrowing a bunch of money to do it. And then we spent the next couple of years paying the debt back down and got back down to sort of debt-free again, and and we had a really nice operation between Century and Hancock and Jessica. And at about that point in time, um this company I just mentioned, uh Heritage Home Group, which was the the second entity after furniture brands, was trying to sell assets because they were on the verge of bankruptcy again, and one of the assets they were trying to sell was Hickory Chair. Jeez. And so they reached out to us, and we had an old history with Hickory Chair.

Tiffany Woolley: 28:00

I was just gonna say, how did you know that that would be something you'd be interested in?

Alex Shuford III: 28:04

Well, I had when we bought Sentry from the rest of the family, I at that point in time I had made a short list of other brands that if we ever got the opportunity, we should be interested in. That was on the list. And Hickory Chair was on the list. Well, what put that on the list? So it was what did you like about it? Yeah, it was one of the oldest operating furniture companies in the United States, founded in 1911. Um when it was founded, there was a Schuford family member on the founding charter. We were an original owner in the company, but shortly thereafter the the Schuford family member had sold out their shares. Right. In the 30s, during the Depression, um a private equity firm out of New York had bought a group of furniture companies down in North Carolina, and it was the original Hickory Manufacturing, which became Hickory White, which is now a division of Cheryl, but also Hickory Chair at the time. And so they came down, they were gonna liquidate the assets. They were, you know, the classic robber barons. They bought it for nothing. They were coming to town, they were gonna liquidate all the factories and sell everything off. And my grandfather and his brother and another person in town caught wind of the fact that these New York sort of private equity people were coming to town on the train to to look at the assets they just bought and figure out how to dissolve it.

Tiffany Woolley: 29:18

Dismantle it, yeah.

Alex Shuford III: 29:19

And so my my grandfather and his brother and this other gentleman met them at the train station, and when they stepped off the train, introduced themselves and said, We will pay you two hundred thousand dollars more than you just paid for these companies if you get right back on the train and head back to New York. The deal is done right here on this train station. Right. And the guy said, quickest, easiest two hundred thousand we've ever made, did the deal, got back on the train, and went right back up to New York. And so f for a moment in time, we owned Hickory Chair again in the 30s. That's but they went back to the parlor at my grandfather's house and divvied up the companies, and the other gentleman took Hickory Chair. You know, so we had these sort of multiple. Like connections with Hickory Chair over time. And Hickory Chair had always been one of our best competitors. And I mean competitor is a competitor. But competition's good. Yeah, somebody we respected. They ran a great company. At the time before we bought them, Jay Reardon, who was a legend in the business, had really rebuilt Hickory Chair back to glory. And what we saw was one of the marquee brands and an important employer, excuse me, in Hickory, North Carolina, that was at risk of losing all the good work they'd done because they were just caught up in a company that had lost their way. And so we agreed, you know, in principle to buy it. We structured a deal. Everything was going along swimmingly. And literally, the Heritage Home people caught us up in the middle of the summer, and we were about 30 days away from closing the deal. And they said, Bad news, we want to still do our deal with you to sell you Hickory Chair, but things are going so poorly everywhere else that we're going to have to file bankruptcy before we can complete the deal. And we said, No, just let us just let us peel it out before you do it. Just let us complete our deal. And they said, I'm sorry, it's just we're draining too much money. We're going to file bankruptcy on Monday, like four days later. And so then we had to become the stalking horse in the auction process. And we got a whole new education. Drug out for months and months, and you know, and it was the whole bankruptcy auction in court and the whole deal. And which we had, by the way, it was another chapter in my uh MBA that I didn't actually go to school to get. And we ended up in the end actually being able to acquire Hickory Chair, but then we had to go out and do a PR campaign that, hey, Hickory Chair is in really good shape. They were just caught up in this company. We own them now. It's okay, trust us, you know. And and that's been, I think, one of our strategies as we look at companies to buy is A, we want to we want to buy good companies with good people, right? We want companies that control their means of production, which is important to us. We run nine factories up in North Carolina. We're we're makers of furniture, and so we feel pretty strongly about that. But we don't ever want to buy something so broken that it distracts us from our primary companies and then causes us to, after we fix the broken thing, to have a problem on the main ships. Um and and Hickory Chair was that way. They were a great company, they were just caught up in a bad situation. The other thing we we want to provide is safe harbor for the sort of classic legacy brands in the industry. We think there's something wonderful about these brands that have been around for decades. And that the the up-and-coming consumers of furniture in this in the industry and up-and-coming designers, when they're told the story of the legacy, they begin to appreciate what that means because most of that hundred-plus year history of Hickory Chair goes into their product that they make today. Like you can't replace a hundred years of knowledge, right? And and that sort of inertia and legacy and how they go about things. You know, and for us to have enough competitive brands in the upper end that people, consumers, still see it as a space to buy it.

Tiffany Woolley: 33:15

The names. Right?

Alex Shuford III: 33:16

If if all those brands go away, because Henry Don, Henry Don, which a lot of young designers won't even know today, when I was in the industry, was the upper end brand. They were they were, you know, owning Henry Don was you really made it in life. They were a 200 plus million dollar company selling the finest furniture made in America. They don't exist today.

Tiffany Woolley: 33:38

I know, that's what breaks my heart. Incredible. It really does.

Alex Shuford III: 33:41

And if you'd have told my father and my uncle, who competed with Henry Don for 40 years that that company, by the time that their nephew son was running Century, that that competitor would not exist, they would have lashed you out of the room. It was inconceivable that a company that strong and that iconic, it would be like Why do you think they don't exist now?

Scott Woolley: 34:02

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Alex Shuford III: 34:02

It was it was a lot of choices made over a long So no one decision can kill a company as good as Henry Don, right? You you've got to string together twenty-five bad choices. Bad decision. Very true. I mean, it's just you have to work at converting bad. It was just too too strong. And you know, and so there was a lot of, I think, timing challenges, a lot of decisions made that didn't pan out well. Uh I'm sure the people involved in the company at the time would point to the offshoring of production that happened in the late 90s, early 2000s as a as a component in it. I mean, so a combination of bad luck, bad decisions, bad timing, you know, and then ownership that at the time, you know, was challenged with understanding an industry that is very nuanced, right? From from the outside, I think investors see furniture and think it's it's heavily branded, it's a big uh uh dollar purchase. We ought to be able to drive efficiency and make a lot of money. Like why can't we just do what Louis Vuitton does. I was just gonna say, like LVMH group does. They look at other luxury hoods and they go, This we should be able to have huge margins in this business. And what they underappreciate is that it's incredibly competitive to the point where the margins are very, very low. You know, that uh my staff will tell you, I I kind of laugh, that you know, if you want to be in the hall of fame in the furniture industry, you make four to five percent profit for ten years in a row and they'll put you in the hall of fame. Four or five percent profit margins in the industry that is as difficult as this one. And if you want to get run out of town, then you lose four or five percent for three years in a row and they'll run you out of town. Right. But success or failure in our industry is less than seven or eight percent swing on the margin side. And and so, you know, and the other thing that they underappreciate is the the distribution world is very fra it's thousand mom and pop retail stores and design firms and showrooms and and those are all driven by trust and relationship, right? Because when they come to the furniture market in High Point, they have a thousand choices for who to buy from.

Tiffany Woolley: 36:10

So crazy, yeah.

Alex Shuford III: 36:11

And so all of that is relationship, low margin, and then high turnover, meaning we're on a fashion cycle twice a year coming out with new product and all the development that goes with it, and all the inventory risk that comes with it. But an outsider doesn't see all that. They just see big multi-thousand dollar transactions and branded merchandise, and we ought to be able to kill it. Get one of our MBAs off the bench, some some guy, some lady that was educated at Harvard, plop them in there, and they'll they'll fix this and they'll run it smoothly and we'll make a ton of money.

Scott Woolley: 36:40

There's one thing you didn't say which I think has a big factor in it, is storytelling. Storytelling is allowed stories behind the business, stories behind the name, stories behind the items and the furniture. I've always been a firm believer in selling anything. Yeah. If you've got a great story, because a story people will tell, you know, they'll tell their friend that story, and then that friend will tell another person that's how that brand grows. And I agree with you. Your brands, and I know that I've heard uh a podcast that you were on. I you're a believer in stories and stories about just the individual items. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Alex Shuford III: 37:12

Yeah. And I think there's an authenticity around the ability to even tell a story. Like that you know, that there are a lot of quickly developed companies that have sort of a marketing position, but they don't have a legacy and a story behind them.

Tiffany Woolley: 37:27

No, and that's what's so special.

Alex Shuford III: 37:29

The story behind the entity itself, and then and then how a product was developed how it came to be, right? We we work with a lot of great um product designers out there, and you know, they're passionate about the item, you know, the object, the why, the why there is that little step detail in the carving around the molding of the top. And one of my favorites is Thomas O'Brien, who is maybe the finest furniture designer who is an interior designer that you know maybe has ever walked the industry. You know, and and every element of every piece for him is not accidental. It's very purposeful.

Tiffany Woolley: 38:02

Intentional.

Alex Shuford III: 38:03

Intentional. And if you leave it out, he's gonna notice from across the room. And I remember that.

Tiffany Woolley: 38:10

Yeah.

Alex Shuford III: 38:11

One of the first things we ever developed for him are uh our product engineers, uh, you know, is a small table and there was this little step detail, and you know, and they didn't have the right tooling to do it just the size he drew it, and so they used a knife that you know cut that step detail that was different, it was just a little thicker. And they said, Well, look, it's save us a few hundred dollars. We don't have to cut a new knife, it's no big deal, it's not important. And he walked in the room, we had 12, 14 people in the room for this product development review meeting, and from 25 feet away, he stopped and looked at the table and he said, The molding's not right. The engineers, of course, right off the bat were like, Well, no, no, it's right, you know, and he was like, No, no, it's not right. Get the detail out and somebody give me a ruler.

Tiffany Woolley: 38:53

Yeah, that's what I always say to on the job sites.

Alex Shuford III: 38:56

Where's my where's my give me my ruler and where's my detail? Where's my field plan? Um, because those things matter. And then the engineer thought, why would anybody notice Thomas's response when we got into discussion about it later is that that's a bad thing. That's right. Don't don't allow yourself to slip like that. And also, it's the combination of all the details in that table that make the whole a beautiful thing. And and once you start letting one or two of those details go, right, there's a point where it tips, right? And you may not be able to recognize that that detail completes it, but you just know it's beautiful. And every time you remove something, it's a little less so, and eventually it becomes less sellable and not sellable, and then not attractive, and then not a table you want to develop.

Scott Woolley: 39:41

Each and every other detail, just elevating that's right more.

Alex Shuford III: 39:44

Every time you are purposeful, and you know, and so I that storytelling of the why on the item, the storytelling of the why on the collection, the why on the brand, the who we are, um, and then the connection of all that back through relationship. You know, that when you walk into one of our showrooms at market, you typically see the same faces. Like we we're big believers and we want our people to be with us a long time. If you walk through our factories and do factory tours, we have 35-year employees, 40-year employees. We have we have a 53-year employee right now working in our main office at Century who's been with us. I'm 52 years old. She started a year before I was born. So amazing Debbie, if you're if you're listening, Debbie, uh, shout out to you. But like that, that is the the sort of bedrock of the company is that tribal knowledge, and it gets handed down. We do a retirement breakfast, so our retirees come back to Century a couple of times a year and we'll feed them and we tell them how the company's doing. And you know, these are people that have been retired 10, 15, 20 years. Right, but we probably love the room with retirees. And I tell them at the end of every breakfast, um, I say, look, thank you for being here. Thank you for caring about us and for letting us stand on your shoulders. And if you continue to want to help the company, when you're out in the community and you see a great young person who is earnest and wants to find a company that they want to make a career with, send them our way. Said, I don't really care what their skill set is, I care what their personality is. If they show up on time, they want to learn, they want to work hard, you'll know who they are and put in a good word for us because you pay it forward by getting us the next you that'll be with us for 30 or 40 years. So we can't.

Scott Woolley: 41:26

You could do all the things that are the right things. Right. And a lot of things that people don't even think about doing or don't want to put the effort into doing. Yeah.

Alex Shuford III: 41:34

It's the culture piece, right?

Scott Woolley: 41:35

And that word gets it gets tossed around a lot, but I think at its root again, that goes back to stories, because people will tell that story. I retired 10 years or five years ago, and I would came back for a breakfast. And they'll tell five friends, and those friends will say they took you back for a breakfast. That's right. And you retired there five years ago, what kind of company?

Alex Shuford III: 41:58

I may send Billy over there. I might send Jane over there because and I think you know, for me, culture is a real simple thing to define. It's what your people do when you're not around to keep an eye on them. Yeah. It's like, do they make the extra effort? Do they pick up the piece of trash or walk past it? Do they, you know, it's when they're not being watched, how do they carry themselves? Right.

Tiffany Woolley: 42:20

And do they have that heart in them? You know, Scott and I both came from family businesses, and I appreciate that so tremendously. And one thing I love about iDesign Lab and all the wonderful representatives of businesses, and even the ones I meet with regularly in the office, a lot of them are family-ran operations. And I feel like the industry, even though it's been my world for so many years, my whole life really, I feel like it's an untapped industry at the same time. Like I feel like it's not the one people are talking about all the time or the one you don't really hear about. You know, and I just part of with iDesign Lab is really selling that story that this is a family industry and a great place to hang your hat. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Alex Shuford III: 43:10

And it's and it's unlike a lot of industries, it's a very tightly networked industry that people are supportive of each other, um, that there's a great community thread that runs through it. Like, I mean, some of my uh good friends are some of my you know biggest competitors, you know, and we look between the hours of eight and five, we're trying to, you know, get each other's floor sample opportunity, you know, figure out how to get more of our business from them. And you know, but before and after, we we share information all the time. Like how, you know, do you need to come by and look at a piece of equipment? What are you doing in this area from a healthcare standpoint? Right. You know, just trying to make sure that the overall industry is healthy. And then I think that network and relationship back with our customers uh and then among our customers with each other, it's different than you see in a lot of other industries that have become very uh uh sort of polarized, just two or three brands dominating it. Um the the last of the great sort of cottage industries that is scaled large. I mean it's a huge industry. It's a fifty billion dollar industry, but it's a cottage industry. It is, it is what I think it makes it sort of fun. So and there's no better place to see that. You go to the trade shows and it's just no you know, people you know, people that haven't seen each other in a year or six months, and oh my god, how are you doing? Let's go have a drink, let's catch up. It is oh what are you doing about this in your business? How are you using these tools? Or what are you doing on Instagram? You know, and and people are sharing and they're networking, and it's and it's really pretty fabulous.

Tiffany Woolley: 44:43

So as you know, the industry is continuing to grow as I are. How do you um see like the future with the growth? I mean, it's interesting because I do talk to reps who come in and you know, like I know Cravit was recently purchased, which kind of shocked me, I guess. I don't know why. I guess I was kind of in love with their family story too.

Alex Shuford III: 45:08

And you know, you just start to wonder, especially since I first started in the industry, everything was more segregated, and now it's all kind of I think, you know, and I mean the Kravitz are good friends, wonderful family, um, and are still obviously very involved in the business. I I think w their situation is is sort of a a good example. Like businesses reach a certain size where it's not a guarantee that the next generation is uh necessarily going to want to run it or be ready to run it or whatever the case may be. And it may be that that next leg of the journey needs to be in partnership with you know another group. And um I don't know the the people that bought into Kravit. I know the Kravitz kept a large share of the company themselves and are still involved, but I think the group, as I hear them described, is very interested in operating businesses and you know, and I think you know, kind of famously they've also they've got a rug company they own and a lighting company, and they're trying to knit together a nice group. Um but even even our family, when we look at you know where we are, we've got a you know, we've we've built a business that's now big enough and complex enough that it's you know that that it's hard to run. It like fortunately we've got a lot of good people and they overcome my bad management. Um But at the end of the day, it's it's a it's a big, messy company. We have 1,700 employees, nine factories, five different management teams, you know, it's a big old cacophony of chaos that happens to work. How many brands are what are the So the total brand portfolio is is really kind of seven brands, and and there's six of them that are residential facing. So Century, Hickory Chair, Highland House, Hancock and Moore, Jessica Charles, and Maitland Smith. And then we have a commercial brand called Cabot Wren uh with a little sub brand called St. Timothy's, and they sell uh commercial seating for office and country clubs and things of that nature. We show that brand up at Neocon. Um but the other brands are you know, there's sort of all this sort of commingled, each with a little bit of an identity. Um, but each one of them has, again, that that sort of self-directed autonomy, uh, which is wonderful because it makes us, I think, vibrant. But it's it's also you can imagine sometimes the sub you know all the kids fight with each other. So you know, and sometimes we have to get in a room and we have to talk it out.

Scott Woolley: 47:32

Like, hey, you're do they all have their own separate offices and different offices, separate sales managers, separate marketing staff, separate sales rooms. Do you share any of the uh manufacturing between them?

Alex Shuford III: 47:42

Some of the brands sell uh share a little bit of manufacturing, so they're fabrics. That's right. We do allow famously we allow you to move all the fabrics around between brands. Um but uh we we operate legally in three silos. So the there's a Century Highland House legal entity, and then there's a Hickory Chair legal entity, and then there's a Hancock and more Jessica Charles Maitland Smith legal entity that also rolls up Cabot Ren there, and then those three legal entities are all owned by the Rock House company, the parent company. And then so my day job is sort of CEO of Rock House, but I'm also president of Sentry Furniture. So I'm down there amongst the brand presidents fighting it out with the other brand presidents.

Tiffany Woolley: 48:24

That's funny.

Alex Shuford III: 48:25

Which is funny, yeah. So we you know it's a lot of fun, and it and uh you know, and again, it keeps us, I think, vibrant because each of those brands is exploring, and and oftentimes we're stepping on each other's toes because if somebody sees something in the zeitgeist of the customer base that is becoming interesting and popular, hopefully I've got enough smart brand presidents that more than one person is seeing it and they're pursuing the same thing. And then we'll get that well, I saw it first and I want to do it, and you know, well, why don't you keep them? You know, no, no, no. Let's see who does it better. Like chase it. Let's, you know, if that's what's popular, if that's what our designers and our salespeople are interested in, then by all means, let's have multiple boats chasing that point in the in the on the horizon. Um but yeah, no, I think one of the things in this business that you know is is sort of the calling card for young people to get in it for is that that feeling of community and that ability to make a difference. Because look, I I get that it's appealing to go after a big Fortune 500 job and you know you're gonna but if you are creative, if you are somebody that is empathetic, that knows how to connect with people, uh a AI-proof job of the future is somebody that can interact with other human beings in a personable way.

Speaker 5: 49:45

Right.

Alex Shuford III: 49:45

Because guess what? If you can do your job completely behind a computer screen remotely, probably some version of the future JAT GPT is going to be able to do that better than being cheaper. But if part of your job and so much of design and so much of furniture is that that interaction with the client, that ability to see them, feel them, understand them, you know, administer a project, make sure it goes smoothly, be physically on site while the drapery installer is there, and the countertop people, like that is an in-person, human-to-human job, and it's not going to be replaced by AI tools. Now, it may be enhanced by AI tools. But it won't be replaced.

Tiffany Woolley: 50:24

And I've, you know, that's been some of my own research that I've been coming across that it's really an industry that really AI won't tap into. And and I think that should be celebrated as having teenage daughters. You know, I like we keep pushing towards like a high point concept for college and like learn life skills. Learn life skills. And, you know, I just like want to bring in, you know, as much information for this industry. Where do you see designers and consumers as part of the industry growth for you and your brands?

Alex Shuford III: 51:01

I mean, the biggest part of what we do is we sell to and through the trade. You know, so we have corporate showrooms around the country, great agent partners around the country that are our sort of physical representation in the local markets. We sell a lot of wonderful design firms through those networks that are vibrant, that are, that are interacting with what I would say is the upper sort of uh layer of consumers. Um, you know, and we're obviously a luxury products company, so we're, you know, we're we're sort of focused on that niche. Um but a lot of our retailers are are figuring out how to remake themselves and do a better job of capturing the sort of uh excitement component that has to go along with luxury sales these days. And you know, and that wasn't the case when I first got back in the business. A lot of the retail stores that were out there, you know, had suspect housekeeping. You'd walk in and it was underwhelming. They had they had a lot of space, but they might not be using that space wisely. Totally. You know, and and sums up the interests. That's right. So and I think that transition is afoot right now where where people are realizing, and and partly credit to Gary Friedman and what he did with restoration hardware, credit to John Reed and what he did with our house. But you know, what those uh mob brand retailers do really well is is they make the space beautiful in which they show their product. Without it. So when you walk in, you're inspired. And I think our retailers um had to relearn that lesson.

Tiffany Woolley: 52:35

Right.

Alex Shuford III: 52:36

You know, it's not about just the bulk of space. Right. It's about how well you utilize it. Is it inspiring? That's right. And and does it reflect to that high-end customer uh confidence that this is somebody that I feel like can handle a transaction for me? Because every other product that they buy is bought from someone that reflects back to them a feeling of of you know of high-end execution. You walk into a Mercedes-Benz dealership and it is reflecting precision and confidence. You walk into a Louis Vuitton, you know, store and it is reflecting that same thing. And and so that elevation, and I think we're in the early stages of it of retail re-elevating from a display standpoint will, I hope, create a revitalization in U.S. furniture retail. Um the design side, I think, is always going to be strong. I think if you are um if you're doing anything more than simply buying a couple of pieces that have have have worn out in your house, if you're doing a room or you're doing a floor or you're doing a house, you want somebody to administer that for you. You know, and and part of administration is somebody with great taste that's saying, no, let's do A and not B. You know, and again we talk AI. AI can render your room 400 times. Right. But it can't tell you which one's in good taste. No. So the designer needs to do that. But even more importantly, then it's the designer that says, okay, we've put together something beautiful. Now we actually have to make it a physical reality. And that's a journey. It is a journey. If you've been on that journey ever alone, it is arduous and lonely and full of mistakes.

Tiffany Woolley: 54:13

And it shouldn't be walked alone. I feel like I try to paint that picture all the time. That again, I kind of repeat that this industry still has so much growth because you know we'll spend money on clothing, like you said, a car. And then when it comes to like selling a room or a sofa, people are like, well, I mean, meanwhile, that's your life. That is your more time on that sofa than you do in your car.

Alex Shuford III: 54:38

Correct. More time on that sofa than you do almost anything else.

Tiffany Woolley: 54:41

Exactly.

Alex Shuford III: 54:41

And I think most people keep that sofa for way too long, but replace it more frequently. Right, right.

Tiffany Woolley: 54:47

Exactly.

Alex Shuford III: 54:48

No, absolutely. You're making a decision that is going to influence your happiness at the beginning and end of every day and your most important time. You know, uh look, there's a lot of cultures who have a history of this idea that space is a is a health component. It it's something that can make you live better, live longer, and live healthier, you know, and the Japanese famously so, but lots of cultures. I think in America we're waking up to that, but we haven't appreciated it as much as we should. That beauty around you will lift your spirits. Being a better, more positive person will make your life healthier and happier. If you are healthier and happier, you're likely to live longer. I mean, it's just And it's the pride thing too.

Tiffany Woolley: 55:34

You work hard, you spend your hard-earned money on curate in a beautiful curated space on quality products. Like it makes you want to entertain, it makes you want to keep you know, you're comfortable in that pride, I guess.

Alex Shuford III: 55:48

I have never been disappointed in life when I spend a little bit more for something nicer. You know, and and at the like in the moment, you you go, uh, and you you sort of squint and you go, should I? But then on the back side of it, I'm always a big thing.

Tiffany Woolley: 56:00

The reward is there.

Alex Shuford III: 56:02

By myself into a nicer hotel room, I'm always happier. A little bit nicer meal, I'm always happier. Nicer pair of pants, always happier. Nicer pair of shoes, I'll, you know, and and you know, same thing. Like, could I get a dollar a cup of coffee or can I go get a five dollar cup of coffee? I'm happier at the end of the coffee.

Tiffany Woolley: 56:15

It is so much. It is, it's all based in that experience.

Alex Shuford III: 56:19

But to your point about a designer, a designer is a companion to come along with you on your design journey, who is, you know, a guide, uh, a sherpa to make sure that things go smoothly and well, that you end up at the destination that you want to end up at, which may not be the destination you set off to end up at. But along that way, you're sharing it, of course, with your partner, your spouse, and your family, but you're also sharing it with this designer who becomes this like this lifestyle coach.

Tiffany Woolley: 56:47

Yes.

Alex Shuford III: 56:47

Right? And oftentimes, and I talk to people a lot that have designers that they've worked with for decades, and they are some of their closest friends and confidants. And when they list their advisors, they say, my accountant, my lawyer, my designer, and my doctor. And I'm like, wow.

Tiffany Woolley: 57:03

It's true, but all of them are wonderful relationships that continue, evolve, and that process should be fun.

Alex Shuford III: 57:12

Like you're you're redoing your house. Like, guess what? It's not gonna all happen on time. Something is gonna go wrong along the way. Like, roll with it, enjoy it as a process. I I I'm a well, I'd like to say I'm a big fisherman. I am a fisherman who's not that good at it. But part of going fly fishing is not the two fish you're gonna catch. It's the day of going fly fishing it's the art of the outfit. It's like getting your gear ready ahead of time. It's it's driving there and enjoying the beauty, it's putting your waders on and getting your rod set up, it's walking down to the river, it's figuring out what fly you're gonna- Taking it all in. It's not the minute and a half where you catch the fish, it's the day of fishing. And that's the same thing in design. It's the process, it's fun, it's interesting.

Tiffany Woolley: 57:57

And there's just so much beauty out there. I mean, I wish I could take every client to a high point showroom. You know, I wish people could see all that beauty that is out there. And I hope that as a design team, you know, that's what we do bring to the table, bring them, you know, all this extra elegance that is out there. Because even with the restoration hardware of the world, I mean, I get a little it's it's you know, it's again trying to pigeonhole uh con you know, it's like the cookie cutter house mentality, which I understand. They have their looking look, but I'm all wanting to like. There's so much more variety out there.

Alex Shuford III: 58:40

And is their look appropriate for some people? Sure. But not for everybody. And the amount of pattern and color and and surface detail and you know the and that's again in our industry, it's the cacophony. It's all of the different instruments in that orchestra where you walk into a show and you go, My goodness, you know, we have not fallen prey to homogenization as an industry where everybody has to look the same. Find your identity, be unique, do something that makes you happy. Don't buy page 32.

Tiffany Woolley: 59:12

Right.

Alex Shuford III: 59:13

Do you, right? Do you.

Tiffany Woolley: 59:15

I like that. So with the social media world we live in, I always say, like, you know, people are your own brand now from literally from childhood. These kids are on there. Do you guys use social media as a big tool?

Alex Shuford III: 59:31

We do. I don't I don't know that we use it as well as we could, but I think probably every company CEO says that. Um it's a fundamental part of our marketing and our messaging and and our storytelling, as we mentioned earlier, and and we're trying to show some behind the scenes, you know, what it looks like what's happening in the factory, what's happening in the showrooms, uh trying to connect people back to us. Um, but I think that revolution of democratization. Of customer access. You know, and it it's been tough, obviously, for our shelter magazine partners. It used to be if you wanted to put your image and your message in front of a customer, you had to go through architectural digest or traditional home or whoever it was. And it was expensive, so it was done infrequently, it was hard to do. Nowadays you can get your message out there incredibly easily and affordably. But because you they're not these only sort of narrow, bully pulpits, the you have these narrow pipelines like they used to be in the past. Now it's everybody has the same access. The audience is smaller and smaller. Where, you know, if you ran an ad and still today, if you run an ad in architectural digest, you know, hundreds of thousands of people may see it. If you go put something up on on Instagram, well, you know, dozens and dozens of people may see it. You know, so you have to be more active and it's changed the way we think. Uh again, are we good at it? We're okay. Can we be better for sure? Do I think it's an improvement over what used to exist? It's like everything. It's better in some ways and worse in others.

Tiffany Woolley: 1:01:05

Right.

Alex Shuford III: 1:01:05

Um and we're we're still big fans of our Shelter magazine friends. We're about to do, uh matter of fact, the the flower show house in Nashville with a lot of our partners. Uh and I think a lot of those media properties have figured out how to go beyond just the printed publication. Now they they are event organizers, they're experience organizers, you know, and then their printed publication is sort of this platform that they then showcase all this experience creation they do. And so they've evolved. Um and that's the you know, I tell our young people all the time that you know, look, I don't know what it's gonna look like in three years, but I can guarantee you it's gonna be 100% different than it is today, dramatically so. And we need to be nimble, we need to be comfortable with evolution, we need to be willing to break parts of our business and throw parts of our business away and engage with new things and experiment and and m mess up. Like I trust me, I before 10 o'clock every morning I mess up four or five times, right? And some of them are quite expensive. It's like but you gotta you have to be durable enough to survive them and you have to be comfortable enough with risk that you're willing to roll the dice. Um and the companies that get rigid and and start to move into the protectionist mentality. Let's just not lose any of what we've gathered. Right. Well, guess what? They're always gonna leak between your fingers, and if you squeeze harder, they leak faster. So it's much better to say, be willing to lose it all, you know, be willing to lose big chunks of it and and be out there. Take the risk. And it's very hard for our young executives because I think they've grown up in a very risk-averse world. You get the right grade, go to the right school, do the right situation, like always do the right situation. Yeah, and and you know, always get a trophy for, you know, but sometimes you're gonna lose. And when you lose, it's okay. And and we spend a lot of time uh talking about what we did wrong in a very easy, comfortable conversation. But why did that not work? We thought we thought that sofa was gonna be wonderful. No one bought it. Why? Let's let's audit our own problem. You know, what did what did we get wrong about it? We thought that marketing message would really land, but my gosh, the comments on social media are terrible. Like, what did we miss here? Um we thought this new brand that we were gonna stand up was gonna be this huge success, you know, because uh for me and for a lot of people, the failures that we've had are a whole lot more constructive than the successes we've had. And uh and I want to teach that to our our next generation that it's okay to put yourself out there, to take responsibility, to have it not work out, and to raise your hand and say, I'm sorry, but I've thought through it. I think I did these two or three things differently, um, and I should have done them this way. I want to try again, that grit to get back up, make it sleep on the Scotts towels boxes for a few nights, figure it out, re reshelve the shelves and put something else there next to the cash register, because what I had right there no one's buying. Right. Write it those lessons you learn. It was a great book. I'm curious if you ever read it. Um, it was by a uh author named Paco Underhill, and it's called Why We Buy. And it's about the science of retail. And as a former grocery store owner, it would be right up your alley.

Scott Woolley: 1:04:15

I I just finished writing a book called it's called Pitch Sell Sold.

Alex Shuford III: 1:04:19

Pitch Sell Sold. I'll look it up. That's cool. But yeah, the the why we buy, a lot of it is the psychology of where you place a product, how it's packaged, that whole like the psychology of all those things that matter. And there's a great lesson in there when I was a retailer of if you put your aisles too close together and you put a product mid-aisle, and a lady has to reach down to grab it, she's concerned about somebody bumping into her from behind, and she will not do that. And so you have to give her space to reach down to grab a product, and if you don't, then that product placement mid-location, which you think is wonderful because it's reachable, is terrible. And you'll kill your product sales. And you go, my goodness.

Scott Woolley: 1:04:58

Well, just being on the bottom shelf compared to eye level. Bottom left eye level.

Alex Shuford III: 1:05:03

Everybody used to think that putting it right in a pop-up display right as somebody comes in the store, but it takes them 20, 30 feet to like gather themselves and get their wits about them. So that first ten feet is useless. And well, they see it on the way out. Well, they're already past the cash register, it's too late. You know, it's just those those basics. And I it always fascinated me. It's like the the psychology of how you make somebody see, feel, and want your product, and then post-purchase, how do you deliver in a way that makes them want to repeat? And you know, our brands are very much that way, which is we survive because people's parents owned Hickory Chair in Century. Oh, yeah. And then they bought a piece of the thing. That was back to the story. That's right. Trust and confidence that, well, why did you choose us over another brand? Well, because because I've heard about you from others that love what they bought from you. Or I made a purchase four or five years ago, and now I'm ready to add to it, and that has held up so well, and my experience has been so good with it that I want to buy again from you. Very different from the disposable. We're we're durable. So and with a durable purchase, it has to continue to provide delight and enjoyment over a long period of time. Because if it in six months it starts to fail on you, well, you have failed the durable purchase test. Right. Right.

Scott Woolley: 1:06:20

So I have to ask you one last question. You know, everyone gets a job for the first time where they get hired to be run a company. You got hired to run a company, but it wasn't just running a company, it was running a company that your family started, your grandfather started. How did that weigh on you? Does it still to this day? Still to this day. Absolutely.

Alex Shuford III: 1:06:42

Um Because that's a lot I I feel to carry. Trevor Burrus, Jr. It was a lot of anxiety. And I you know, so when they when they put me in charge, so I had worked there for a while and and then when when we bought Century from the rest of the family at that point in time, you know, my dad made me president and said, All right, you know, don't mess it up.

Scott Woolley: 1:07:00

Did you ever have a goal of wanting to run your family's business?

Alex Shuford III: 1:07:03

I think early. Um but at some point uh while working at Century in various uh different layers or levels, you know, I started to have that aspiration that I that I thought I could. Right. Right. You you end up with sort of vague goal of, well, maybe one day if it's possible, and then you start to get the confidence that well I think I could do this. And then as any sort of mid-level executive will tell you that over time you see enough decisions that you think you would have made differently that you start thinking, well, I maybe not only do I think I can, but I think I might be able to even do it better. Um but then when you get you get handed the keys, you go, literally, ooh, hang on. And there's a moment of of anxiety, and and I was I'm very comfortable in risk. Um, you know, so you know, I as hobbies, you know, I was a rock climber and a mountain biker, and you know, and you know, like plunging off a cliff and not knowing what's at the bottom was something that you know and and then that sort of carried over into getting into my own retail operation and you know, which you know, like that that sort of tolerant um risk kind of mindset is I think an important part of my early running of century, which was, you know, we were rolling the dice. We, you know, we were buying this furniture company and it was at an interesting time because it was post-the 2008-9 housing collapse. We had not completely rebuilt the revenue level of the company, and here you are, good luck, and by the way, there's a pile of debt figured out. Um, I had some pretty good shepherds, some pretty good mentors. Uh, but for that first five, six months, what I did is sort of I I I kind of doubled down on what I knew. Like I was a product guy, I knew the upholstery side really well, um, I knew the customer and what they were dealing with because I had come from retail. You know, and so I think anytime you get that anxiety of, you know, gosh, I could make a decision big enough here to to lose the company, you sort of double down on you know the bedrocks uh of what you've learned before. But but probably the bigger one for me was not really post-purchase of century, but the scariest time of my career was the pandemic in May when we were forced to shut the factories down. So the government order came in, and you know, a good example is our our case goods factory in Hickory, North Carolina has never been closed for more than a week at a time since 1949, right? And there I was in week three, and when I mean shut down, it was everything was shut down. It was the air compressors were shut down, that it it didn't hum. You know, even when it shut down for holiday for a week, you know, the there's all these systems that are still running, it's still noisy, it's still I mean, it was dead quiet, dead dark, no one coming in to work, and I would drive in just because I couldn't sit at home, so I'd drive in, park my car, unlock the factory, and I would just walk around just to kind of get my head straight. And I'd do it almost obsessively every day. I'd walk, I'd drive to the office, and our case goods factory, it's huge, eight, nine hundred squirrel thousand square foot building connected to the main office. So I I'd sit in my office, I'd get you know kind of twitchy, and I'd walk out in the factory, and I'd just walk the whole factory. I'd just make it almost like a daily ritual. And uh every day I'd think, it's got to reopen.

Scott Woolley: 1:10:20

It's gonna be you know and then those other documentary in that in what we were talking about. It was uh it was a interesting story.

Alex Shuford III: 1:10:27

Yeah, and and but that fear of if it doesn't reopen, that's that's kind of on me. Like there'll be extenuating circumstances, but history will still write that like it closed, never reopened, and it was Alex Schuford III running it when it did, third generation, and here it is. And you know, and so that that determination to figure it out, to you know, like we will uh is a funny story when when we finally got the order to be able to reopen the facility.

Scott Woolley: 1:10:57

How much time passed?

Alex Shuford III: 1:10:58

We were closed for a total, I think, of five weeks. We were able for one week in the tail end to kind of reopen and and then close back down, kind of pulse our way back open. Um you know, but the longest stretch was I think we were pushing three and a half uh to nearly four weeks where we were closed down completely. And that was that affect employees. We we continued to pay most of our we didn't get a we were too big to get a PPP loan. Um so a little known fact, but any company over a thousand employees uh didn't qualify for a loan. Um and so I was pretty irritated about it. We had done everything that the government had told us to do, keep jobs in America, employ people, et cetera. And then when when it came down to it, they said, Yeah, you did too good a job, you have too many employees, no loans for you. So but we we figured it out. Um we kept the employees uh own uh the payroll, we you know, we did all those things that you kind of needed to do to retain your ability to reopen. You know, but it was tough. We we did salary cuts across all of our management team. Everybody shared in the pain. You know, and and and then when we reopened, it was, you know, it's difficult to get people back in the swing. Sometimes you don't know if the systems you turn back on are gonna run again. You know, that the compressor hadn't been shut down for 15 years. Will it start back up? Will that will that router run when we go to restart it up? You know, but the day before we were restarting all the factories. Um, and we were super excited, and we had all the management team together, and we read the the executive order on the requirements to restart. And one of them was that you had to take the temperature of everybody that came into your factory, a touch list temperature. And we said, geez, how many thermometers do we have? And we sent everybody out to count thermometers. We had like three touchless because no one had infrared thermometers. And we said, Oh, panic. You know, we have to have something like 29 thermometers to cover all the places our employees come in. So we were like, everybody go out and buy thermometers. And we're all on cell phones calling each other, and there were no touchless thermometers available at any pharmacy in a three-county area. We kept going further and further out, and I was just dejected. At the end of the day, it's whatever, 3:30. We can't find any thermometers, we're not going to be able to open because we can't take people's temperature. Is this really my life? And I'm standing in a Walmart and I'm looking in, I'm in the pharmacy and I'm looking out across the Walmart, just shaking my head, and I see against the far back wall, there's a children's department. And I was like, I wonder if they have thermometers in the children's department. And so I walk over to the kids and children department and I'm looking around, and next to this little display of like strollers, there's a little wall and it's got thermometers sitting there.

Tiffany Woolley: 1:13:44

Oh god blood.

Alex Shuford III: 1:13:45

They're sold out in the pharmacy, but no one thought to go to the baby section. And I bought all three of them they had, and I got on the cell phone and I called everybody. I said, go to the wall department, go to the kids' department. They've got thermometers. And we came back and everybody had arm, we poured them all out on the conference room table. We must have had 40 thermometers. And we were literally dancing in the boardroom. We were so excited that we were able to buy thermometers so that we could reopen the factory the next day. And I mean, we're high-fiving, and you would have thought we would have just won a Nobel Prize. But it's those, and like, and by the way, that sticks in my memory. That moment of collective, like uh a collective win. It was a small win, but it was fundamental, and it created a cultural moment. Like everyone wanted the same thing. Get our people back to work. They want to be back to work, we want them back to work. We're not going to be held up by a thermometer.

Tiffany Woolley: 1:14:38

Well, I think that's a great way to wrap up because it means that Rock House Family Farm brands is in very good hands.

Alex Shuford III: 1:14:45

Well, at least we have the ability to take a temperature. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate the delight. Been a delight. Thank you.

Tiffany Woolley: 1:14:54

Thank you.

Voice Over: 1:14:56

iDesign Labs Podcast is an SW Group production in association with the five-star and TW interiors. To learn more about iDesign Lab or TW Interiors, please visit TWInteriors.com.