by The commercial furniture specialist has bought the former Woodmark upholstery plant and is building new offices and a showroom and plant on West Market Center Drive in High Point
HIGH POINT — Commercial furniture specialist Davis Furniture International has acquired the former Woodmark upholstery plant here and also is planning to build a new office and showroom facility just behind its existing corporate headquarters building on College Drive.
Company President and CEO Danny Davis told Home News Now that the company broke ground at 500 W. Market Center Drive for its new estimated 45,000-square-foot facility just last week. The company previously leased the land to the High Point Market Authority for use as a parking lot during the April and October markets.
The facility being built there will be used for advanced manufacturing, expanded sales and marketing, and a showroom “designed to enhance the client experience during factory tours and visits.”
Davis said that the facility will be very similar in size to its current headquarters operation which has some new products on display throughout the building. However, the difference with the new facility is that it will have a dedicated showroom that will occupy about 5,000 to 6,000 square feet of the estimated 15,000 in office space. The remainder will be used for manufacturing, Davis said.
“It also will house our sales and marketing team, which are now in our oldest facility, which is one of the very first facilities that we had,” Davis said. “So we are moving our sales and marketing team from that building into the new facility along with the showroom where we bring in a lot of architects and designers.”
He estimates the building will be completed 14-15 months from now.
The company also purchased the former Woodmark upholstery plant at 1920 Jarrell St. that closed last year along with sister companies Howard Miller and Hekman. Davis told Home News Now that while the company is still evaluating its options for the 124,000-square-foot building, it likely will use it to produce molded foam that it currently imports from Italy and Germany.
“We currently bring in about 80-90 containers per year of that, and we are considering putting a molded foam plant in there,” he said, adding that it also plans to use part of the building as a warehouse. “Those are our plans today, but things are still up in the air.”
Initially, he noted, the company plans to start using it as a warehouse. However, he noted that the company has a lot of renovation work to do on the building before other areas can be utilized.
“It’s an old facility and it needs a lot of work on it,” he said, noting that a lot of the old dust collection systems and other mechanical systems need to be torn down. “It has had very little TLC over the years. So we are going to spend some time there figuring out what we are going to do and how we are going to renovate it.”
Renovations that are expected to begin later this year also will include retrofitting office and restroom facilities along with other areas formerly used for upholstery production.
“It will be a work in progress,’’ Davis added, noting that the facility has one electric fabric cutting machine that it can use in the near future. “We will probably have some people in there in the next six months, but there is still a lot of junk to clean up in the facility.”
With these projects, the company said it will expand its campus from nine to 11 buildings, which will bring its office and manufacturing footprint to more than 500,000 square feet in south High Point.
The company specializes in commercial office furniture including seating, tables, storage and outdoor furniture products. While these products are commercial grade in terms of their materials and functionality, their styling also allows some of the mix to be used in residential settings, which the company and others describe as “resimercial.”
Founded in 1944, Davis Furniture continues to be family-owned and operated and currently employs nearly 350 people. The company noted that while it collaborates with leading international designers and maintains showrooms in New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C., “its operations remain rooted in American manufacturing in High Point, North Carolina.”
