In 1994, my wife, Kelly and I purchased Dixie Seating Company from three families who had shared ownership from the beginning in the 1930’s. When I first visited the manu-facturing plant in Statesville, NC, I was struck first and foremost by the unique method on construction. Dixie Seating Company uses a “swelled joint” construction method using the moisture content variation in the chair posts and the stretchers to literally tighten the mortise and tenon joints over time. In addition, the construction includes an inter-locking wood to wood joint inside each leg that causes the stretchers to lock inside each leg like the corners of an old lincoln log set. So simple, but so precise and strong that the quality was immediately apparent to us. The founding families for generations had shipped millions of chairs, rockers and barstools throughout the eastern United States.

That was 16 years ago, lots of things have changed. In 2005, we opened up a new manufacturing plant that provided State of the Art finishing capabilities, improved production capacity and the ability to introduce additional modern manufacturing tech-niques. We have introduced many new styles and made numerous quality improvements like jitter bug sanding every piece prior to finishing, purchasing Kiln dried FAS lumber to include in our product and upgrading finishes. We expanded our offering and entered new markets: schools, restaurants, craft stores and international sales.We have also been recognized as an exclusive member of SHARP a Federal OHSA pro-gram that recognizes our extra commitment to employee safety.

But there are some things that we have not changed. We don’t import our product - none of it - we make it here in North Carolina. We build it with wood from America--woods that you can pronounce the names like ash, hickory and poplar. As I often comment, “ There is something special about making something tangible and visitors to our facility leave with a deep appreciation to the painstaking effort put forth by our employees to produce quality products.” MADE IN USA is critical to our success. It makes us more flexible and more responsive. We also have never gone away from the “swelled joint”, interlocking wood to wood joinery. We would like to think that we have taken a company that started out with a simple purpose: to build a quality product and have continued to use the best of American ingenuity to produce the best round posted chairs, rockers and barstools made in North Carolina.