by HIGH POINT — Hank Cravey, CEO and co-founder of Home Trends & Design, is a true Renaissance man.
Raised in Red Mud, Texas, Cravey, who comes from a long line of ranchers and cowboys, was playing lead guitar for a local band when he was 12 years old.
He went to the University of Texas in Austin, became a CPA and spent years in the corporate playing field as a vice president for a powerful financial company.
He also somehow found time for one of his hobbies — woodworking. By 1999, he was designing lifestyle furniture for successful companies, including Z Gallerie, Crate & Barrel, Arhaus and others.
In 1999, he joined home furnishings importer FourHands as COO/CFO, and in 2005, he co-founded HTD with Dhaval Lodhavia, who he met in India where they collaborated on several projects together.
In addition to showcasing 50 to 60 new items at the most recent High Point Market, HTD, located at 118 N. Wrenn St., is also celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
With that milestone in mind, Home News Now’s Ray Allegrezza sat with Cravey to talk about the company’s dual-decade journey.
What follows are portions of that conversation.
HNN: Hank, so much has happened at HTD since you and Dhaval Lodhavia launched it in 2005. Talk to me about that journey.
Cravey: You are right. There have been lots of changes. The company has grown so much and in so many ways. Like other companies, we went through difficult times, but we’ve also seemed to come out of those tough situations better than some others did. The fact that we’ve succeeded is not attributable to just one or two people here. It has been a team effort.
HNN: The company has seen consistent growth year over year. What do you attribute that to?
Cravey: You get something that you put into it. And at HTD, each of us strives to provide a great product that also has a great story. It is not just about making money for us. We have a passion for making the best furniture we can from the best materials. We want to make furniture that will last for generations.
HNN: I know you were a founding member of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, so is that a part of the story?
Cravey: Yes, but there are lots of stories here. When we launched, we said we wanted to be known as the best solid-wood manufacturer — somebody that would be compared to a Stickley. Being a woodworker myself, I felt that while lots of the furniture being made in other countries was using good wood, the craftsmanship and those time-honored wood construction techniques were not being honored.
HNN: Can you give me a few examples?
Cravey: Sure. Techniques like just using nails instead of more intricate joining techniques including using dovetail drawers. Things like that. We spend lots of time researching the best construction methods and also apply a continuous improvement approach to our processes.
HNN: Who do you look to for guidance in these areas?
Cravey: If you are familiar with Edwards Deming, he was one of the scientific pioneers of quality control and is a widely known proponent of statistical quality control. That was what was used to rebuild the state of the Japanese economy, which really took that country to a whole new world and you know, blew away even the American manufacturing capabilities. We started using that to apply to our manufacturing and it made that process so much better.
HNN: What other elements play a part in your yearly growth?
Cravey: A concept of going to your customers and finding what they need and what they don’t need, then eliminating what they don’t need and providing more of what they do need. And this next statement is very important. Realizing that your customer isn’t always outside your company. Lots of times, the needs are inside the company, which means you have to have communication and teamwork. When people work in isolated silos and may not understand the big picture, it creates a lot of waste and inefficiencies. So, we go for more of the goal of total quality management throughout the company.
HNN: But as you said earlier, there have been some challenging times as well. Talk to me about that.
Cravey: Well, for openers, you can’t be all things to all people. So that in itself is always a challenge. Then when the bottom dropped out of the market in 2008, we had only been around for three years. But we told our story of quality and continuous improvement and at a time when other companies struggled, we managed to grow. And these were hard times with plenty of bankruptcies in our sector.
Then, of course, Covid happened and we had to re-gear. Nobody could travel, the person who had been our accountant left, and with my background as a CPA and with me needing to see the numbers anyway, I also took on that role.
And since we had already established a strong presence online, our online business grew significantly during the pandemic as home-bound people began buying more of everything online.
We had already decided we weren’t going to do Vegas because it was redundant for us. Our leasing agent got us a great showroom in Showplace and that really helped our visibility and exposure to buyers. I would say the move to Showplace was a milestone, for sure.
We saved our money and in 2022 we bought this building and that, too, was a milestone, because it really changed the game for us in terms of our cost to show here.
HNN: My understanding is that HTD is debt-free. Am I right?
Cravey. You are. We have no debt whatsoever. This means if we need to do something for a customer or vendor or whatever, we want to do it because that’s more important than just trying to make a buck.
HNN: How have the Trump tariffs impacted your business so far?
Cravey: And even now, with all these tariffs, our vendors have been bending over backward to help us so we can keep our prices on level, which for now they are. Even our Chinese staff are not raising their prices which is amazing considering all that’s going on,
HNN: OK, next-to-last question: What did you bring new to this market?
Cravey: For this market, we chose to be a bit conservative so rather than offer a ton of new stuff, we probably have 50-60 new introductions with a focus on our specialty — solid wood. We make furniture for the bedroom, upholstered goods, occasional furniture, dining and dining chairs, and brand-new for us, a full line of wall art, which is a great add-on for the sales team.
HNN: What are you planning to do right after market?
Cravey: Hopefully, catching up on playing my guitar.
