by One of the largest full-line furniture resources in the market has been fully absorbed under the umbrella of sister company Albany Industries
BAY MINETTE, Ala. — Those who remember the old Standard Furniture Manufacturing may recall a resource whose full line of lower-mid- to midpriced case goods eventually was expanded with a line of motion upholstery.
Standard was founded in 1946 by Mack Hodgson, and its main focus for years was wood furniture produced in its Bay Minette and Frisco City, Alabama, production facilities. Second-generation owner and executive Billy Hodgson took the reins of the company around 1992, sources note.
Standard also ran an import division called IFM that imported wood product from countries such as China and later Vietnam.
By the early to mid-2000s, Standard reached an estimated $270 million in sales, which later grew sequentially with the addition of upholstery and home entertainment furniture.
It reached new heights with the 2015 launch of its licensed Magnolia Home brand in cooperation with Joanna and Chip Gaines of HGTV fame, adding full case goods collections along with accent and youth furniture that broadened the mix into a whole home offering. This brought the company to an estimated $320 million in sales, making it among the industry’s top resources at least while the partnership lasted.
Yet today, the Standard brand that buyers knew previously no longer exists as it has been totally absorbed under the umbrella of sister company Albany Industries, an upholstery resource with a network of manufacturing and distribution facilities.
What remains from the Standard line that is now part of Albany includes motion upholstery, accent chairs and upholstered beds, officials noted. Gone are full wood bedroom and dining furniture collections along with wood youth bedroom, occasional furniture and entertainment centers once part of Standard Furniture’s case goods mix.
While the upholstery segment complements the Albany mix of product, it also represents a shift that few would have foreseen when Standard’s showroom was teeming with dealers eager to shop the Magnolia line and also meet the Magnolia Home personalities themselves — Joanna and Chip Gaines, who also were instrumental in many of the designs.
Sources familiar with the licensed line said it was so popular, it added about $50 million in volume the first year alone, as the initial introduction included some 500 SKUs. Subsequent introductions indeed were smaller, but still added a vibrant mix of product across multiple style categories.
Enter private equity firm Aterian Investment Partners, which acquired a stake in Standard around the summer of 2017. Less than a year later, in June 2018, Standard announced its acquisition of upholstery manufacturer Albany, a move that Aterian said at the time was aimed at helping the company expand in the stationary upholstery market. It brought the combined companies to just over $400 million in sales, with Albany contributing an estimated $90 million of the total, sources have said.
Founded in 1995 by Hugh and Richie McLarty, Albany was already well known as a producer of “value-oriented” stationary and motion upholstery, with production in Mississippi, Virginia, Vietnam and Mexico.
While sister companies, both businesses initially focused on their respective product lines, with Standard largely focused on case goods and motion upholstery and Albany focused on its stationary and motion upholstery mix.
However, Standard would come to focus solely on imports after ceasing its domestic manufacturing of laminate case goods in Bay Minette around the spring of 2019. With this move, it also shifted warehousing operations from its Frisco City, Alabama, facilities to Bay Minette. The Frisco City wood production facility ceased operations about six years earlier.
Enter the pandemic, around early 2020, which forced Standard to reevaluate its mix, notably on the wood side. Supply chain disruptions, particularly from Asia, caused the company to shift sourcing on many bedrooms and entertainment units to Mexico, offering both different styles and price points including in solid pine.
Mexico remained a popular resource for Standard and other importers particularly because of its proximity to the U.S. market. It was also able to ship at lower costs than Asia where container shortages resulted in shipping costs as high as $20,000 or more for a 40-foot container.
As container costs eventually came down, the industry once again shifted back to Asian countries such as Vietnam, where Standard maintained a presence in motion and wood furniture, allowing it to realign with existing factories.
Yet by the time the partnership with Magnolia wound down sometime last year, sources note, there were other challenges on the horizon. This included the bankruptcies of large retail customers such as Conn’s/Badcock (July 2024) and American Freight (November 2024), which eliminated two major accounts overnight.
And still considered largely a wood furniture specialist serving a lackluster market for bedroom and dining, Standard was at a disadvantage compared to upholstery producers like Albany which continued to see strong demand for the ever-popular living room category despite the contraction at retail.
By this point, ownership thus determined that the focus needed to align with Albany’s core upholstery business. This also led to what officials described as a SKU rationalization that eliminated a proliferation of SKUs on the wood side of the business and kept those that most complemented the Albany line, thus making the two lines a one-stop resource in the upholstery segment.
“Frankly, it had just become a little too broad,” an Albany executive said of the former Standard line during the April High Point Market. “We like to be a little more narrow in our focus, where we can control it and can be very good at what we do.”
Albany’s focus on upholstery and fabric selection also helps the company leverage its strengths within the former Standard line, both on the motion upholstery side of the business as well as accent seating and upholstered beds.
Officials said the Standard name actually officially went away a year ago April and noted that the last physical element of the brand — a distribution center with some staff offices in Bay Minette near the former Standard headquarters — closed in May.
Albany customers now receive container-direct shipments from Asia and from a network of domestic distribution centers in Galax, Virginia, serving the Northeast; New Albany, Mississippi, serving the Southeast; and Salt Lake City, serving the West Coast.
In retrospect, officials noted, the elimination of the Standard name has been an evolution that has occurred over the past couple of years or longer in order to narrow the number of SKUs. The closing of major customers to which Standard would ship some 30 truckload a week was, in effect, a final nail in the coffin.
Before this past April High Point Market, Albany officials said little publicly about the wind-down of Standard Furniture. Background and follow-up discussions with Home News Now during and after the market were the first time they had addressed the issue and the reasoning behind the move.
The company offered this statement to Home News Now for this story:
“Albany offers a comprehensive line of upholstery that includes living room, accent and upholstered beds. Across the existing Albany product line (primarily stationary upholstery) and the new Albany product lines (previously Standard that includes motion upholstery, accent chairs and upholstered beds), we can now offer our customers both motion and stationary upholstery on one truck from all of Albany’s ship points.”
Officials also confirmed that the Bay Minette warehouse closed in May, “and the space varied greatly over the years through our SKU rationalization and merger with Albany operations.”
“Now that Albany has incorporated the bestselling motion upholstery, accent chairs and upholstered beds from the prior Standard line, we are able to offer our customers a full lineup of upholstered goods while leveraging some of our greatest strengths — multiple ship points, quality craftsmanship and excellence in customer service,” Albany shared with Home News Now.
