By PAUL NOWELL  / Associated Press

The future of artist Bob Timberlake’s popular original furniture collection is in jeopardy as its manufacturer decides whether to continue the domestic production Timberlake insists on, according to the artist.
Word of the apparent standoff between Timberlake and manufacturer Lexington Home Brands offers a dramatic illustration of the free-trade challenges facing North Carolina’s once-robust furniture industry, which shed more than 20,000 jobs — over 27 percent of total employment — in the first half of this decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Production of the Timberlake line has idled since December, when Lexington closed the last plant that was making it. For now, stockpiled inventory is being sold, Timberlake said Thursday, but he has refused to give the company permission to move production of his core line of original furniture overseas.
Lexington Home Brands did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the future of the line, saying chief executive Bob Stec would not be available to speak until next week.
“They’ve stopped making it now, but they are seeking to still to make it domestically,” Timberlake said Thursday following a ceremony at which he received an award from Gov. Mike Easley. “They’ve stockpiled quite a lot of it.”
The artist’s relationship with Lexington Home Brands goes back some 15 years, when he was one of the first celebrities to attach his name to a furniture line. In recent years, he has given permission to Lexington Home Brands to introduce lower-priced spinoff lines that include some imported pieces.
But Timberlake has refused to allow the most expensive line to be off-shored, saying quality will suffer if the pieces are made in China or another foreign country. For the past several years he has spoken openly of his determination to keep the original Timberlake line exclusively made in America.
“I feel like the original stuff needs to be made here and I made a stand,” he said. “We kind of kept it going for three or four years, but there’s only so much you can do.”
Lexington Home Brands, once a major Davidson County employer, has shed about 2,000 jobs since 2001 as the company has moved more and more production overseas.
Lexington Mayor Richard Thomas said Timberlake has done all that could be expected to protect North Carolina furniture jobs.
“He kept it going and we’re hoping it can be resurrected,” Thomas said. “It would be nice to have it, but we realize these companies need to be profitable and they are competing against China.”
In 2002, the most recent year for which sales figures were available, Lexington manufactured an estimated $70 million worth of Timberlake-brand furniture. The company has since been taken private and no longer regularly releases sales figures.
Timberlake said he and Lexington Home Brands reached an impasse over the line during negotiations last fall.
“They kept asking and asking and pushing,” he said. “In October, I said, `Quit asking. Take it off the table.'”
In the past two years, Timberlake has signed off on production of two lower-priced, imported lines under the Timberlake brand: “Studio Traditions” and “Salt Aire.”
In a statement announcing “Salt Aire” last fall, Lexington said the collection “takes advantage of worldwide sourcing to introduce the brand to a new and younger audience through lower price points, value-engineered construction, beautiful veneers, a great mix of materials, and fresh styling.”
Timberlake said he tried to be realistic while also preserving the quality of his core line.
“I know some of the stuff has to be made offshore. We have to do that,” he said. He then pointed at a solid cherry cabinet on a showroom floor: “But I didn’t think they could make this and keep up the quality.”
He said workers at Lexington — many of them relatives or people he grew up with in Davidson County — know he has done his best to save furniture jobs in North Carolina.
“They all know we did all we could,” he said. “The (furniture) industry changes, sometimes for the better, other times for the worse. … We saved these jobs for about three or four years.”

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