1930: THE FURNITURE INDUSTRY

Recalling the abundant greenery of colonial days (see “Naval Store Industry”), it should come as no surprise that trees would play an important role in the economy of NC. So large was their role that by the early 1900s, most of NC’s virgin timber had been chopped down, de-branched, dragged down to a railroad and sent north for processing. George Vanderbilt, who had seen the rampant deforestation around Asheville, hoped his Biltmore Forest School would develop techniques to conserve what was left. Ernest Ansel Snow had different ideas.

Ernest was raised in a lumber family in High Point, NC, and helped his father sell timber to furniture companies in the North. After returning from one of his long trips to Baltimore, it occurred to Snow that it might be more efficient to “make this stuff at home.” He quickly engaged a few business partners and was soon shipping furniture from his High Point Furniture Company. Within a few short years, Snow was building furniture for the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, establishing other factories (for pianos, chairs and wheels) and managing his hardwood forests for maximum output—that is, for deforestation.

Thanks to centralized railroad routes, an agricultural depression, cheap labor and a vast supply of lumber, other entrepreneurs promptly joined the rapidly growing furniture mecca of High Point, constructing thirteen furniture factories by 1900. As production soared, manufacturers began looking for better ways to showcase their furniture to dealers and buyers. The solution was simple: a big furniture party. In 1905, the first Southern Furniture Exposition (SFE) was held in High Point, eventually becoming a semiannual event that today attracts over eighty thousand buyers from one hundred countries.*

By 1930, Ernest Snow had converted High Point into the “Furniture Capital of the World”—an amazing feat for a small-town lumberman with an eye for efficiency. Though the Swedish (IKEA) and Chinese (Broyhill) have made substantial inroads into NC furniture production, in 2015 High Point still holds its own as the place to see and order the latest, greatest furniture.

*Imagine walking through a furniture store with ten million square feet while trying to find a nice coffee table for your rustic cabin. After reviewing thirty-six hundred coffee tables, you are overwhelmed. This is the essence of the SFE, now conveniently called the High Point Market.