With so many U.S. furniture manufacturers moving production to China the last thing needed would be another furniture manufacturer doing the same thing. That was the thinking of Bill Lawrence and Jarrett Ouellette back in 2001 when they created the William & Wesley Company, manufacturer of traditional, transitional, Art Deco and contemporary style furniture – all made in the U.S. It was a novel startup approach at that time to say the least, but that very strategy has proved to be the right one for the Dallas, Tex.-based company. With time as its focus, William & Wesley succeeded exponentially from its very beginning and continues to flourish even in today’s economic downturn.

"When we created William & Wesley we didn’t benchmark ourselves against any other furniture manufacturer of the time because furniture manufacturers and the industry as a whole were so poorly run," says Ouellette. "When we looked at our own business model, we knew we would be the paradigm shift. The most important thing in our methodology would be that we would sell time."

Lawrence had started out in business as a furniture retailer. He saw furniture manufacturing as only focused on how to achieve the lowest cost. The lowest cost meant manufacturing overseas, but what came along with that was a loss of time and control. It just made more sense to produce furniture locally. The standard turnaround time in the industry for custom furniture at that time was 16 weeks. Both Lawrence and Ouellette believed they could produce furniture in four to six weeks. "There was no reason why furniture should take 16 weeks to manufacture – absolutely no reason at all," says Ouellette, who then joined Lawrence as a partner and consultant to help move him from retailer to "to the trade" wholesale and furniture manufacturing.

The two partners felt that the manufacturing of any product, whether furniture or tires, for example, should be based on the same basic principles. Their "bible" was a book called "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt. "It was and still is essential to everything we do," says Ouellette. "Manufacturing is not about machinery, but rather about understanding the bottlenecks. We took that premise from "The Goal" and put it to work in furniture manufacturing. We have a very rudimentary job shop, but it allows us to be totally flexible. If we are behind in one area, we can put another man in that production mode or add other resources to make production flow smoothly. We now have 29 employees in a manufacturing area of 25,000-sq.-ft."

"Our goal is completion"

The target at William & Wesley is throughput. Ouellette and Lawrence believe large manufacturers all have the same problem – a tremendous amount of work in process – but work in process can’t be sold. Components are deemed a waste of time here, too. From start to finish is the company’s mantra. "Our goal is completion – to get the product sold, engineered, manufactured and finished to the specifications of the designer," says Ouellette. "We don’t have inventory, and we don’t have receivables."

William & Wesley decided from the beginning to go "to the trade" only, which involves ultra premium, high-end furniture only. Everything is bench quality, one at a time. Interior designers bring in their own designs or designs they may have seen elsewhere but of which they need a larger or smaller version. They also need it more quickly. "We can make adjustments to most any design and manufacture it on a timely basis," says Ouellette. "People just don’t want to wait 16 weeks. In our industry, manufacturers don’t represent themselves; they are represented in showrooms, and a lot of showrooms are going out of business because that 16-week model is old and needs to be adjusted. Our model is new, and that’s why people are bringing their business to us. Custom is custom. We’re not limited by our line because we really definitively don’t have a line."

"We define the critical points"

The critical path of all furniture manufacturing lies in its engineering, believe Ouellette and Lawrence. Furniture manufacturers aren’t necessarily good designers, and good designers aren’t necessarily good engineers. Different skill sets are required. "We don’t use software," says Ouellette. "We have craftsmen with the expertise to engineer it. That’s what makes us so flexible. We can see the limitation of the design, make changes if necessary and then manufacture it. The design may look good, but the question is always whether or not it can be made or be made cost effectively. When we manufacture, we do so from the ground up. We break down all the skill sets. We follow it up the critical path and find the critical points.

"We know what it takes to make a piece of furniture, and sometimes we have to pass on a project because it’s not cost effective. We also know what our capabilities are. If it’s something that must be made with automated equipment, we don’t touch it, but that would be a rare occurrence because we are into the high-end, custom, cutting-edge furniture. We have tremendous latitude."

"Give us a try"

William & Wesley’s initial marketing plan was to approach designers and architects who had made mistakes on projects and needed fill-ins on a timely basis. They call it "trial and repeat." They encouraged clients who needed a particular piece of furniture in two to four weeks to give them a try. The furniture was of high quality and was delivered on time, which is said to be an anomaly in their niche, and thus they began to establish their reputation. Repeat business subsequently built up a steady clientele of designers and architects who now use William & Wesley regularly. Dallas is a lucrative design market because many top design firms in the country are headquartered there. "We are well-positioned here," says Lawrence. "We also get a lot of corporate clients from other parts of the country. They are nervous about us at first, but once they’ve tried us, we start getting other jobs from them that have nothing to do with the original path into their design firm."

"Time is our product"

William & Wesley typically has 12 to 13 relatively large projects going at once. As soon as an order is made with a down payment, the customer is given a production slot. If that customer adds something two weeks later, that addition will be done two weeks later. Everything is produced to a date. Last year, corporate work represented a large part of the business volume, but the company is doing more high-end residential pieces this year.

"Time is our product," says Ouellette. "There are a lot of substitutes for William & Wesley furniture. Competitors may say their product is as good, but they can’t deliver that product on a timely basis. Many believe that if you’ve got high-end quality, people will wait for it. But people who are paying $70,000 for a bed don’t want to wait for it. They want instant gratification. We do a good job of meeting their expectations."

Quality is a given in this high-end market, says Ouellette. "Quality is essential, of course, he says. "You can’t even have a ticket to enter this market without quality. In fact, you can’t play in this arena unless your quality is extraordinary. What separates us from our competition is our additional focus on time. That’s our unique selling position. We’re growing right now. There’s a huge constriction in the industry, and as people go out of business, our business continues to increase. Many are apprehensive about putting thousands of dollars into a showroom to have furniture made from a manufacturer overseas and then having to wait 20 weeks for it, because in the meantime those showrooms can go out of business. Clients come into our showroom, and we can say their order will be ready in four to six weeks. Then they can walk into the production facility and see the furniture being made."

Ouellette and Lawrence say they designed their business model to be repeatable. They believe a William & Wesley would succeed in any place in the country, but the problem would be to convince people that the old ways aren’t the right ways. "Everybody thinks they have to move manufacturing to China, but look at Long Beach and see how many containers of furniture are sitting there because people had to buy whole production runs of furniture," says Ouellette. "That’s not what it’s all about."

‘We broke the mold"

The William & Wesley facility is divided into a showroom, drapery workroom operation, an upholstery production line, furniture production line and a finishing operation. The company also produces antique mirrors and represents some of the finest lines of fabrics in the world. "Our showroom is truly a one-stop shop for interior designers, architects and specifiers," says Lawrence. "Then from this beautiful showroom they walk right into a furniture manufacturing facility. For them to be able to see everything being made is a big confidence builder. When we broke the mold, we weren’t just talking about furniture manufacturing. We created our business to fill the needs of a design or architectural firm. From day one we wanted to save the designer or architect time. The key is not to be focused on what you’re doing, but rather to be focused on the needs of the client. That’s where we’re building our business."

Getting a job completed in four weeks as opposed to 16 weeks means William & Wesley can then take on four times more design jobs a year, another reason the company spends a lot of its resources on helping the designer get the job completed including drapery and upholstery.

"We finish the job"

William & Wesley has established a reputation for its exquisite hand-rubbed finishes. As former retailers, they know dovetailing and technical specifications are important, but with interior designers everything revolves around the design and finish of the product, they say. "The key to furniture manufacturing is finishing," says Lawrence. "Our craftsmanship is extraordinary, but for our finishes we use the latest technology and we are constantly dealing with finish manufacturers to find out what’s on the cutting edge. We’re experimenting with polyesters right now and also conversion lacquers that are high-tech and hard as a rock. We’re continuously trying new things but we can’t try them on an existing piece of furniture, so it takes just as much to do sampling as it does to do a piece of furniture. That’s where our expertise lies – in chemistry, color matching – that’s truly the art in the furniture business. We make our own colors. The idea that you can be an expert in just wood right now is limiting. It’s about mixing – acrylic, metals, glass – there are so many different materials."