HIGH POINT — Case goods manufacturers Pulaski Furniture and SLF (Samuel Lawrence Furniture) merged last week under a new holding company called Home Meridian International.


Sources close to the deal say the combined companies will have sales of around $270 million in bedroom, dining, occasional, youth, home entertainment and home office, making it one of the top 10 case goods suppliers to the U.S. market.

Quad-C Management, a private-equity firm that has held a majority stake in Pulaski, becomes the majority stockholder of Home Meridian, with senior management of both manufacturers having an ownership interest.

George Revington, president and CEO of SLF, will have the same title with Meridian and will oversee the combined companies. John Oakley, the current chief financial officer of Pulaski, will be the CFO.

Larry Webb will resign as president and CEO of Pulaski after assisting in the transition.

Pulaski and SLF will operate as standalone entities and brands under their existing management, Revington said, while leveraging their combined resources and strong executive teams.

SLF has been considering expansion for years and began actively searching for a partner four or five months ago, he said. Discussions with Pulaski have gone on for more than three months.

“The two companies are quite complementary,” he said. Both sell to Top 100 retailers, but Pulaski’s price points traditionally have been better and best, while SLF covers the area from promotional to better. The dealer base “has some crossover, but not as much as you might think,” Revington said.

“For 20 years, the furniture industry has been in a process of globalization,” he said. “Both SLF and Pulaski are positioned to take advantage of globalization.”

Both companies are active importers. “These trends will continue and accelerate, and Home Meridian International is perfectly positioned to build the best global business model to serve the furniture industry and to be a platform for future growth,” he said.

Jim Kelly, Pulaski’s executive vice president of product development and marketing, said the two companies will maintain their individuality and brands, but could combine some backroom activities such as insurance and possibly shipping.

Revington said executives are looking at where each company is strongest.

“There is tremendous potential to leverage best business practices to increase our sales growth and accelerate our operational efficiencies,” he said. “Our combined scale makes it possible to implement world-class supply chain, quality and new-product development systems.”

With SLF’s Phoenix distribution center and Pulaski’s North Carolina operation, Home Meridian will have more than a million square feet of space. The company also has on-site inventory in Asia to support quick-ship direct container and mixed-container programs. Some Pulaski product could be shipped through Phoenix, and SLF goods could flow through North Carolina, Revington said.

Pulaski imports much of its product, but still builds curios at a plant in Virginia. Earlier this year, the company initiated a series of lean-manufacturing techniques to make the plant more profitable.

“Pulaski has the largest market share in curios, and it’s a very important part of their product line,” said Revington, who added that it makes sense to manufacture curios domestically rather than import them.

The combined companies have more than 90,000 square feet of showroom space in High Point and 25,000 square feet in Las Vegas.

Virginia-based Pulaski is known for leadership in design and integrated marketing. Its portfolio of licensed brands includes The Antiques Roadshow collection; Casa Cristina, based on the Latin media star Cristina Saralegui; and the upcoming Build-A-Bear Workshop Home collection. Pulaski’s in-house brands are Accentrics in accent furniture, Keepsakes in curios and Keepsakes Home, a recently launched series of promotional bedroom groups.

SLF was once owned by bedding major Sealy, which sold the company, then known as Samuel Lawrence, in 1997 when its sales were about $67 million. A domestic manufacturer at its plant in Phoenix, the company’s business suffered from import competition, leading the company to source more and more of its product. It finally closed its 250,000-square-foot Phoenix plant in March 2004.

Last year, the company changed its name to SLF to reflect better its business model and focus on a new brand identity. Revington, who learned about importing during his years with Universal, said last year that SLF was positioned to be an importer that is “low-cost, nimble and more responsive to the retail environment.”

SLF is a design, sourcing and marketing company with annual sales that Furniture/Today estimates at about $100 million through four marketing business units: SLF Signature (full-line furniture collections), SLF Select (promotional), SLF Solutions (mass merchants division) and SLF Creations (a new juvenile division debuting at the ABC Kids Expo starting Saturday in Las Vegas). The recent expansion into youth and home office furniture has accelerated SLF’s growth.

SLF has offices in Phoenix, High Point and Dongguan City, China, all linked electronically. Designers, engineers, executives and factory personnel communicate through videoconferencing and computer connections.

With the addition of Pulaski, Revington said the scale of Home Meridian will allow the company to have a greater presence in Asian factories, improving its buying power and making the company more important to the plants.