Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

This has been a rough one guys.  It hasn't been Richardson Seating's worst year, but it has been one of its most challenging years so far and we have had some pretty bad years.  Over 45 years we have seen our share of loss and hardship.  We shut down in March for a month and a half while we rearranged our factory, ordered PPE, and cleaned.  We have 75,000 square feet and about 35 production employees and we spread everyone out throughout the entire space.

We implemented mandatory masks and safety glasses whenever you are in the factory.  When the weather is nice, everyone eats outside and when the weather isn't so good, we all eat at our station as to not congregate.  We have added multiple sanitation stations and we provide each person a new medical style mask when they come in the door.

Even though we only have 40 employees right now, we have found it safest to do staggered start times.  This allows us to get everyone to their station without congregating as we take temperatures.

We will be continuing these processes until further notice.  We have closed off our factory to visitors, customers, and vendors.  At this time, we feel it is best to limit our outside exposure and keep our employees safe.

One of the big accomplishments of Richardson Seating this year was creating a brand new website which you are using right now.  Once we saw that business was going to be tough for a while we built a new website that is transaction enabled.  We have been offering a few of our most popular styles in a few colors on our website.  We are only getting a few sales a week but we believe it is good experience to learn about how ecommerce works.

This has been a very big year for ecommerce marketing.  We started our first official Richardson Seating blog and we have been adding articles pretty regularly.  I am pretty sure we have about 100 by now.  We try to write about issues we think will be relevant to restaurants like how to start a ghost kitchen.  How to start a delivery business.  How to choose the best POS.  Our goal is to one day become a place industry people go for content.

Our best articles to date have been about the promotional products industry.  Somehow, the articles about PPAI and ASI seem to do the best.  I am a member of both organizations and have a lot to say.  We credit both of them with our success in the industry.  Selling custom logo bar stools is surprising different than selling our restaurant furniture.

The buyers are different.  The buying process is different and even the competition is different.  For a lot of our restaurant furniture we don't have much competition.  We have all of the tooling and dies for a whole bunch of cool retro styles that have been part of our line for decades.  All of our styles can be broken down and copied but at the price it would take to copy, it is usually better to just buy it from us.  We try to keep our prices reasonable so that people can afford our furniture.

We have some very expensive products but we also have some products with relatively cheap prices.  We never have cheap quality but we have some cheap bar stools.  Our round seat bar stools with chrome frames with and without backs are inexpensive.  Our American made bar stools used to be a lot more expensive than products coming in from overseas but with the 25% tarrif and the falling dollar, Richardson Seating has become much more compeitive to the rest of the world market.

Many of our styles can be purchased at similar prices to bar stools made overseas.  When you buy from us you get an American commercial warranty and you get the security knowing that your furniture was built by a company founded 45 years ago by the current owner's grandpa.  The current owners have been in charge for 8 years and the company has worked hard to increase product quality and provide better service.

When you work with Richardson Seating, you get the benefits of working with an old world furniture manufacturer for your bar stool.  It isn't just a promotional product to us.  It is a piece of furniture and we make sure that every piece of furniture that leaves Richardson Seating is worthy of the Richardson Furniture name.

Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.