Howard Miller closing Ridgeway plant

Thursday, October 11, 2007

By GINNY WRAY - Bulletin Staff Writer

Ridgeway Furniture Co. will close its Ridgeway plant in the coming months and eliminate 70 local jobs.

Mark Siciliano, director of marketing for Howard Miller, the Zeeland, Mich.-based parent company of Ridgeway Furniture and Ridgeway Clocks, said the plant will close “within the next few months,” and its production will be moved to Zeeland.

Seventy jobs will be affected, he said, but he did not know whether any employees will be offered transfers, whether Trade Act assistance would be sought for displaced workers or whether the cuts would affect management and hourly employees. He also could not be more specific on the timetable for the closing.

The change is being made, he said, because “production in Zeeland can generate economies of scale ... and manufacture all categories more efficiently.”

Howard Miller’s three categories are clocks, curios and wine cabinets, Siciliano said.

The company employs more than 300 people in Zeeland. The production of Ridgeway Clocks was moved there after Howard Miller bought Ridgeway in November 2004, and the Henry County plant continued to make curio (collector) and wine cabinets.

“From a manufacturing point of view, this allows us to stay focused and strengthen some product lines,” Siciliano said of the consolidation of production in Michigan.

The move was not due to a downturn in business, he said. Business has been “challenging, but we’re still focused on doing the best we can,” he said.

Siciliano added that last week’s furniture market in High Point, N.C., was “OK. Traffic was reasonable; business was good as well.”

The plant closing will mean the end of an 81-year relationship between Ridgeway and the company that bore its name.

Ridgeway Furniture’s roots go back to the former Gravely Furniture Co. Inc., which opened in 1926. It produced clocks and occasional furniture, such as end tables and lamp tables. Later, it concentrated on clocks and curios.

In April 2005, Henry County agreed to provide $50,000 from the Virginia Tobacco Commission to help pay to move equipment from a closed Howard Miller plant in Mobile, Ala., to Ridgeway so the curio line could be expanded here.

At that time, Howard Miller agreed to make capital investments totaling $6 million at the Ridgeway plant and employ 134 people there within 30 months of receiving the grant. The investments included plans to construct a warehouse near the existing plant.

However, Henry County Administrator Benny Summerlin said Wednesday the company never asked for that money.

He was not aware that the plant would be closing. Due to the age of the facility, he said finding a new owner would be a “challenge.”