Download Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town AudioBook Free
With over $500 million yearly in sales, the Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest solid wood furniture company. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for three generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, VA-an unincorporated town that been around solely for the folks who built the business's products. But from the 1980s, the Bassett company experienced an influx of cheap Chinese language furniture as the first waves of Asian competition strike, and in the end was obligated to send its development offshore to Asia. Only 1 man fought back. That man is John Bassett III, a descendant of the Bassetts who's now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which uses more than 700 Virginians and has sales of over $90 million. In Manufacturing plant Man, Beth Macy brings alive Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family report. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, manufacturing plant efficiencies, and absolute grit, cunning, and can to save hundreds of careers, she also discovers the concealed and shocking real truth about industry and America.
