Pride Sasser Home Furnishings: Challenging the Expected - Again

HIGH POINT, NC -- Formally launched just 12 months ago, Pride Sasser Home Furnishings, a designer and manufacturer of unique, high-end accents, accessories and furniture, has endured sluggish economies and soft home furnishings sales to emerge as a qualified leader in a competitive segment of the industry.

As such, the firm enters the April 2003 International Home Furnishings Market with a menu of 1,200 meticulously crafted items (including the 400 April introductions), 600 employees in facilities in the Philippines and other regions of Asia and in North Carolina, 450 customers including flagship retailers, leading Designer Showrooms and a partnership with premier furniture crafter E. J. Victor.

Pride Sasser Home Furnishings show its unique slate of polished furniture and ingenuous accents, lighting, and accessories in E.J. Victor's High Point showroom located at 116 S. Lindsay St.

Founded in 2002 by Pride Sasser, the company capitalizes on his design talent and off-shore manufacturing expertise gleaned during 14 years of creating furniture and accessories for hallmark companies, including Henredon, Maitland-Smith and LaBarge. Industry veteran Brian Robinson joined the company shortly thereafter to serve as President.

The imported accessory market is crowded and PSHF's strategy is designed from the floor up to provide customers with superior and unique products backed by a simple and streamlined service process. It is a combination that yields extraordinary value.

"One of the things that makes us different is that we offer a lifestyle story as opposed to a product-category story," Robinson said. "We create lifestyle statements through an eclectic mix of products that cuts across both style and category using materials collected from around the globe."

Robinson said that while PSHF draws upon manufacturing resources from around the world, Sasser, an accomplished designer in his own right, is personally involved in all aspects of product design and development. "And most of our products are produced in plants we own or those in which we have a financial interest," Robinson said.

"My company combines an eclectic use of fine natural materials with classic forms, creating soft, textural feeling which subdues and enhances today's living spaces with uncomplicated luxury," Sasser said. "In contrast to our hectic daily lives, our use of fine leathers, various precious metals, fine veneers and local environmentally renewable materials compose a simple yet sophisticated serenity for the living spaces of today."

PSHF relies on a partnership with E.J. Victor for logistical and sales support. E.J. Victor's sales and marketing teams present product, take and process orders, manage billings and oversee domestic shipments. A warehouse adjoining one of E.J. Victor's factories is used to inventory PSHF product.

"This organizational structure -- PSHF serving as the manufacturer and E.J. Victor serving as a distributor -- has eliminated costly middlemen," Robinson said. "That gives is great control over our resources. It eliminates agents. It reduces overhead. In the end, it provides better pricing."

"When you buy Pride Sasser Home Furnishings," he said, "you are buying direct from the factory. And that creates savings."

Edward W. Phifer, III, Joseph B. Manderson and John Victor Jokinen founded E.J. Victor in 1990 in Morganton, NC. Together, the founders created a corporate culture that maintains an unwavering commitment to preserving time-honored, local construction methods used to create exquisite furniture for the home.