By Joshua McKerrow – The Capital
TOP: Lauren and Kevin Russell with their daughters Sawyer, left, and Libby, at the Russel and Mackenna showroom.
BOTTOM: Local funiture company Russell and McKenna opened its first showroom in Severna Park in January.
By ANDREW CHILDERS Staff Writer
It’s a modest goal Lauren Russell has set for herself and her family’s handcrafted furniture business.
“One day I want Russell and Mackenna to be to Severna Park what L.L. Bean is to Portland, (Maine),” she said. “It’s a great little town.”
From Lauren Russell and her husband Kevin’s Severna Park garage three years ago, the couple has grown a multimillion-dollar custom cottage-style furniture firm, Russell and Mackenna, with 30 dealers up and down the East Coast.
This summer the factory doubled its space by moving to a 6,000-square-foot production facility in Jessup, and the Russells opened their first showroom in Severna Park, which is already outselling the other licensed dealers.
The burgeoning furniture empire was born of vanity. Or at least one vanity.
The Russells needed the bathroom fixture when they renovated their home, so Mr. Russell set off for the garage with a handful of power tools. A neighbor was so impressed by the craftsmanship that she ordered 30 pieces for her home, essentially seeding the company.
Orders really started rolling in when the couple’s work was featured in Coastal Living magazine in March 2012.
“The phone started ringing off the hook,” Mrs. Russell said.
That’s when they decided to make a full-time go of the business. Mr. Russell had left his job at T. Rowe Price, coincidentally just ahead of a round of layoffs in his section.
“I got out at a great time,” he said.
Though his father was a woodworker, Mr. Russell said he didn’t take up the hobby until he and his wife renovated their home. It was then that he learned to carve decorative designs by trial and error.
Combing his new interest in woodworking with Mrs. Russell’s background in art and graphic design, the company settled on an aesthetic marked by clean lines and a palette of soothing pastels that mix and match well with each other. Mrs. Russell recruited her father, Larry Strassner, to manage the company’s books.
Though they didn’t know it at the time, their success bucked the national trend.
While hundreds of furniture companies gathered in Las Vegas last week to bemoan the decline in domestic production, Anne Arundel County has become a haven for boutique dealers who have weathered the market’s slide.
Furniture builders say they have trouble competing with cheaper products imported from overseas. The slowing housing market has also moderated demand for new furniture.
But Russell and Mackenna and the Pine Away furniture store in Annapolis both say they’ve identified their niches.
“There’s that segment of people that wants nice hardwood furniture and doesn’t want junk,” said Lori Livingston, who owns Pine Away with her sister, Terri Livingston Kozel.
The sisters sell custom-made furniture that’s handcrafted at their plant in Jacksonville, Fla., where labor is cheaper.
Boutique shops that appeal to high-end consumers typically have a better chance of surviving market dips, said Kathy Floam, president of the Pomerantz Agency, an Annapolis marketing firm.
“They’re offering something that’s better quality …,” she said. “There’s a whole lot of people who don’t think cheaper is better.”
For its next venture, moving into upholstered furniture, Russell and Mackenna is looking south to High Point, N.C., America’s furniture capital. It’s also the home of the American Home Furnishings Alliance, a furniture trade group.
On Oct. 1 Russell and Mackenna will launch its line of upholstered furniture, in design for more than a year.
The company’s 12 employees can turn out 150 pieces of custom handcrafted furniture a month. Despite moving the business in July, the company took four times as many orders as in that same month last year, and expects to hit $5 million in annual sales within three years.
All of that because Lauren Russell couldn’t afford the vanity of her choice.
“I just wanted great furniture, and the only company that got me jazzed, I couldn’t afford,” she said. “So I figured out a way to build it myself.”
