NORTHEAST MISSISSIPPI DAILY JOURNAL
By Dennis Seid
Friday, October 26, 2007
ASHLEY FURNITURE EXPANDS ECRU FACILITY AGAIN
The country's largest upholstered furniture manufacturing plant just got bigger.
An additional 175,000 square feet was added to Ashley Furniture's Ecru facility, making it a whopping 2.4 million square feet, enough to fit 67 football fields.
Ashley Chairman and founder Ron Wanek and CEO Todd Wanek dedicated the latest expansion on Thursday with some of the plant's 3,000 workers.
"This is the biggest upholstery production plant in the nation by far, and we're proud to be here in Ecru," said Ron Wanek.
Todd Wanek noted that when the company bought the facility in 1994, it was about 135,000 square feet and had 135 employees.
Ashley also has a motion furniture plant in Ripley that employs another 900.
"We have a wonderful management group and great employees," Todd Wanek said. "We've invested in our plants and in our people ... we've learned to make things better."
That has translated to unparalleled success for privately owned Ashley, which last year became the largest furniture industry supplier, according to Furniture Today magazine. Its Ashley HomeStore retail network also became the first furniture retailer to top $2 billion in sales.
The company's upholstered furniture accounted for some $1.2 billion in sales alone last year, a figure that should be topped this year. ...
For the full story, visit the Daily Journal website: http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=255561&pub=1&div=News