REVIEW: Factory Man

How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local — and Helped Save an American Town

Nonfiction by Beth Macy

The Bassett Furniture Company, once the world’s largest wood furniture manufacturer, was run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations. The first waves of Asian competition hit in the early 1980s, and the Bassett Company followed the trends in sending jobs overseas. Production was subsidized by the Chinese government to help sell furniture for less than it took to make it, and when prices went up in China, work would be sent to countries like Bangladesh so they didn’t have to pay higher wages. Workers were paid next-to-nothing and experienced deplorable working and living conditions.

A family dispute and disagreement over corporate practices led third generation factory man John Bassett III, known as JB III, to leave family ties behind and take over his wife’s family business, the Vaughn Bassett Furniture Company. Hoping to create an alternative American business model, JB III used legal maneuvers and factory efficiencies, resulting in the employment of more than 700 Virginians and the generation of sales profits in the millions.

Beth Macy, a journalist for the Roanoke Times, brings to life John Bassett III’s deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry as cutthroat as it is colorful.

– Connie Darling, Edgar Allan Poe Branch Library, Sullivan’s Island, S.C.

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