Hickory Springs tour reveals bedding gems in three states
David Perry, Executive editor -- Furniture Today, 11/24/2008 12:00:00 AM
A supplier journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single spring plant, like the one here in Micaville, N.C.
I was in mountain country, where the air is cool and the vistas are breathtaking. This would be a wonderful place for a vacation, but I was working. My mission: Visit all three of the innerspring plants operated by Hickory Springs, a supplier to the bedding and furniture industries. (For more details, see my story in the Bedding Yearbook distributed with this week's issue.)
Dwayne Welch, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Hickory Springs, arranged the tour and accompanied me. This was Spring Making 101, a session that, in just 36 hours, would cover 1,200 miles and take me to three plants in three states.
Micaville is a picturesque town known for its gem mines. But the gem on this trip was the innerspring plant tucked high in the hills, which Hickory Springs has called home for almost 40 years. We walked though the factory, filled with machines that hum and whir and bend wire into precise shapes. I saw the R&D lab, where new innerspring designs spring forth, in a manner of speaking.
In a conference room, I asked a Hickory Springs exec a key question: Where is the nearest Starbucks? “It's an hour away,” he replied. I knew then that I was way out of my comfort zone.
At the Hickory Regional Airport, we boarded the Hickory Springs jet for the flight to Sheboygan, Wis., home of Spiller Spring, the second jewel in the Hickory Springs crown.
Two hours later we were in Green Bay Packers territory, a quilt of rich farmland on the shore of Lake Michigan. It is also the land of bratwurst and sausages, and home for a company called Kohler. Yes, the shower in my hotel room was exquisite.
So was the Spiller Spring factory, one of the cleanest and best-organized bedding plants I've ever visited. Stuart Spiller, who oversees the factory, runs a great shop.
It was a quick jump over Lake Michigan to Holland, Mich., where we landed at the Tulip City Airport. Yes, Holland is famous for tulips. In our industry, it's also known as the home of Holland Wire Products, the spring-maker purchased by Hickory Springs in 1988.
This plant does more custom work, which has always been a hallmark of the Holland innerspring line, than other spring plants. We watched workers fashion springs from a coiler and place them in storage bins. Then other workers plucked them from the bins, like chefs looking for just the right ingredient, as they followed unique recipes for innerspring units.
Spring Making 101 was an eye-opening exercise, one I recommend to my friends in the industry.
Contact David Perry at dperry@reedbusiness.com
