CURRENT ISSUE
| Cover Story |
| Columns |
| Built to Last |
| Furniture | |
| By Kathryn Jones | |
| Sunday, 01 July 2007 | |
 The Walkerton, Ontario, Canada-based company makes customized furniture from maple and ash woods. Customers are encouraged to personalize their pieces by choosing the shape, make and finish. “Our slogan, or [what] we live by, is ‘We handcraft your dreams,’” Hofmann says. “If you dream what your furniture should be and look at the various collections we have, you can select from those items. If you want something that we don’t even offer, all you have to do is ask and we can do that for you. Solid wood is known and understood by customers. It’s an heirloom product; it will last for generations.” And so, he notes, has the company. ‘Good Times and Bad Times’ The family owned business experienced tremendous success from its first generation to the second, with the 1950s being exceptionally prosperous. “Those were boom times,” Hofmann says. “There was more demand than supply; it was hard to do anything wrong in the industry. “Then, when the free trade hit in the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of manufacturers were not prepared. They had not modernized their plants or changed their products to be competitive. BG Furniture stayed in the game because of its location in a more rural area. Costs of various resources were lower.” However, he says, the company’s outlook began to worsen in the 1990s. Third-generation owner Winston Bogdon passed away at a young age, and his father, second-generation owner George Bogdon, died three months later. Barbara Bogdon, Winston’s wife, became president but hadn’t been active in the business up to that time. “The company had been profitable,” Hofmann says. “It had managed to go through the good times and bad times, but the market was changing, and it needed to change with the market conditions. There was a recession in Canada, and with the onslaught of Asian products, import products were being sold for a third of the price. The demand went down and the ability to charge more was reduced.” Unfortunately, he continues, the company didn’t have the products or technology to be competitive in the industry. By 2002, it was several million dollars in debt. Management Changes At that point, the board of directors, with Barbara Bogdon at the helm, used an agency to find someone to take over leadership and rebuild the company. Hofmann was hired in October 2002. Previously, he was part-owner of a custom furniture manufacturing business in Montreal, and later served in senior management roles at Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg. “I looked at BG Furniture and said, ‘How am I going to turn this company around?’” he says. Hofmann wanted to utilize value stream mapping and lean manufacturing tools, based on the Toyota Production System model, which he used when working for Palliser. “When you look at a Toyota Production System, they can make a car in three shifts from the time they start the process to the time they ship the car,” Hofmann points out. “In two or three days, they could convert their raw materials to a sold product. “That’s a benchmark in this industry. I designed a system where we had a supermarket of components [that enabled us] to assemble every product based on what the customer wanted, and have the capability to ship it within five working days.” “In Henry Ford’s days, they used to say you could buy a Model T in any color as long as it was black,” he continues. “Where the state of the furniture industry is today, with the onslaught of Asian products, I recognized in 2002 that the only way to compete in North America was to produce an exceptionally high-quality product for the customer, but steer away from the ‘as long as it’s black’ approach used by the majority of the furniture industry. “They were so focused on producing finished goods of a certain style and pushing it onto the customer. I said, ‘No, we have to produce the product in a manufacturing system like the Japanese were doing, but also provide a product that the customer can personalize or configure.’” Between 2002 and 2005, BG Furniture developed a new company direction and replaced 80 percent of its original products. It began spending eight percent of its sales on R&D annually. In 2006, Hofmann purchased the company from the Bogdon family and continues to design the furniture. Timeless Collections On the company’s 75th anniversary, it unveiled its Diamond Anniversary collection. Hofmann had noticed the growing trend of open-floor-plan homes and designed the collection to create room-to-room cohesion. “If they want end tables in their living rooms, and their dining room is open next to it, they can have it in that same style,” he says. “We provided a bed where you could configure it with various posts and choices of moldings. This confirmed that customers really do want to personalize their own furniture.” This spring, BG Furniture will release its Chateau Philippe collection, which is inspired by 18th century craftsmanship during the reign of King Louis Philippe in France. “We offer this product in a variety of [hardware and finishes] to be personalized,” Hofmann says. “If our competition wants to copy us today, that’s OK, because tomorrow we are going to be doing something different.” |
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