The Charlotte Observer
JEN ARONOFF GILLIAN MAY-LIAN WEE
In another five years, I’ll say it all will be shut.

Lunch was once the busiest time of day at D&D Miller Hill Grocery, just up the road from Broyhill Furniture Industries’ massive Pacemaker plant.

‘I used to have three registers working at lunch,’ owner Doug McGalliard said Monday. ‘Now I’ve got one, sitting idle.’

Business at the store is about half of what it was five years ago, before the furniture company began shutting plants and laying off thousands of workers.

Two years ago, McGalliard stopped serving breakfast. Two weeks ago, he stopped serving lunch. Now, the food counter sits closed and darkened and figures to stay that way.

On Friday, Broyhill announced it would shut Pacemaker and lay off almost 700 workers, another reminder that the United States can no longer compete with other countries in certain sectors.

‘This isn’t unexpected,’ said Jerry Epperson, an industry analyst and the managing director of Mann, Armistead & Epperson in Richmond, Va., who noted that the company has spotlighted made-in-Asia furniture at two recent trade shows. ‘Broyhill has not performed as well in the past 18 months.’

Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, furniture production in the United States has dropped as it became much cheaper to manufacture elsewhere, experts say.

That’s also when Broyhill started closing its plants.

Analysts also speculate that Broyhill’s struggle is related to a management change in April 2012. Unlike its previous chief executive, the company’s new head, Harvey Dondero, is known for sourcing from overseas. He previously led a company owned by Lacquer Craft, a Chinese furniture maker.

Broyhill has brokered agreements with furniture factories in Asian countries such as China and Vietnam, said Tom Lentz, the company’s vice president of consumer marketing. And over the past two years, Broyhill tried to make its U.S.-made products attractive to retailers. The company offered different colors and finishes and quicker turn times.

Its efforts failed.

‘The decision (to cut jobs) was based on our products and their competitiveness at retail,’ Lentz said. ‘It really had nothing to do with what management is in place.’

Though Broyhill employees had long expected the plant closing, the company’s justification for the move provided little consolation. Many workers have given their lives to furniture — and now find themselves in middle age, on the brink of unemployment, wondering what to do next.

‘They say (the closing was due to) overseas furniture, but they’re the ones who brought the overseas furniture in, and that wasn’t right,’ said Pacemaker employee Mike Johnson, 48, a 26-year furniture worker.

When times were good, Johnson moved from company to company in search of the best pay.

Now, he figures he’ll go back to school and find work in heating, cooling or ‘anything that will make good money.’

Steve McKinney, 52, a foreman at the Pacemaker plant, has worked at Broyhill for about 30 years and said the company has been a good employer. But the closing, he said, makes him feel ‘like I’ve been working for nothing.’

‘(Company leaders) are not concerned about what any of us are gonna do,’ said his wife, Lois, who was laid off from another Broyhill plant that closed late last year and is still looking for work.

In 1999, Broyhill employed more than 7,000 people. The company’s most recent cuts leave about 1,900 workers in the United States, of which 68 percent, or 1,300 workers, are in manufacturing. Lentz said he couldn’t say how long those jobs will remain in the U.S.

Workers and community members suspect the industry’s days here are numbered, at least as far as large-scale manufacturing is concerned. Already, most believe Broyhill’s remaining U.S. plant that makes wood furniture will close by the end of the year.

‘Furniture’s a dying business in Lenoir,’ Johnson said. ‘In another five years, I’ll say it all will be shut.’

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