For much of the pandemic, Century Furniture’s case goods plant in Hickory, North Carolina, has been running at full capacity thanks to the surge in business not uncommon in the furniture industry.

But the increase in business — in the double digits over the past couple of years — has been a challenge nonetheless.

In early March when Home News Now visited its 725,000-square-foot facility in Hickory, the demand had resulted in backlogs as high as 18 weeks for its custom Details program. This has since lowered to about 10-12 weeks, which is still higher than a more typical 4-6 weeks pre-pandemic. “Four to six weeks was more the norm for any custom made case goods,” said Chad Phillips, director of case goods at Century. “That goes back 10 years of that being the case. It has just slowly increased.”

Phillips said a slowdown could rear its head in the summer months, which could naturally further lower lead times in the process. But so far it hasn’t been noticeable enough to create any major concern.

In fact, he noted, if orders stopped in their tracks for a period of time, there would still be enough business to carry the company for several months if not longer based on the rate of sale of late.

“We really haven’t seen any real signs of slowing down,” he said, noting that there haven’t been any drop in orders in recent weeks. “We might have a slow week where we think something might be happening, and then it fires back up the next week with record numbers. I don’t think it’s going to last forever…that’s just a feeling. But I think with our backlog we are in a healthy position for sure.”

“You hire 20 and then you lose 20. It’s been that kind of equation the last year and a half,” Phillips said. “It’s just hard to maintain the number of people, and as people leave you tend to get a few more back. But it’s just that bounce, we are not able to get more people than are leaving – it’s just like that in our area.”

Part of the challenge in recruiting has been to get past a negative mindset people may have about working in a factory.

“There are a lot of opportunities out there, and people may not look at that,” Phillips said of working in a furniture plant. “They may not understand it, but you can make a lot of money and make a very good living in upholstery and furniture…People think ‘that’s a factory job, and I don’t want that.’ But you can really do well, and we always try to promote that in the community.”

He said that while the company has been able to hire people with experience in wood finishing, it is harder to find workers with hands-on woodworking experience.“A lot of that skilled labor has aged out of the work force or has chosen to retire,” Phillips said.

He said that having modern equipment is helping to create interest among younger workers as they are more familiar with and comfortable with computers and automation.

“They don’t look at it as the same job maybe that their father did or their grandfather did that involved sawing or sanding wood,” he said.

While Phillips said the challenges of recruiting and retaining workers will likely remain for the foreseeable future, he noted that the company is committed to maintaining a position of strength – in quality and design – over the long term.

“I think having the background that Century has and the history that Century has and having been through the good days, the bad days and everything in between, has shown the market and our customers that we are here to stay,” Phillips said. “The resilience is there. We have been through some really tough times and have always come through it.”