Aug. 5, 2021

One of the biggest names in the furniture industry was in Sioux Falls this week – as much to support a longtime friend as to make a business stop.

Ron Wanek, founder and chairman of Ashley Furniture, the nation’s largest home furniture manufacturer and retailer, was in town to help mark the groundbreaking for a major expansion of Furniture Mart USA.

The project involves a 300,000-square-foot addition to the corporate headquarters campus at 140 E. Hinks Lane in north Sioux Falls that will double it in size, adding an Ashley HomeStore and Furniture Mart location along with more warehouse space and making it one of the largest buildings in Sioux Falls.

But this wasn’t about holding a shovel, doing a photo op or even saying a few words – which Wanek did somewhat impromptu at the end of the event.

It was just as much about supporting his longtime friend, Furniture Mart founder and chairman Bill Hinks.

“Our companies are very similar. They’re entrepreneurial. We both started from nothing and built companies into larger companies,” Wanek said in an interview following the event.

“It’s just a lot of fun doing business with Bill. Not only do we have a good business relationship, but over the years we’ve developed a good friendship.”

Their parallel storylines read like a reminder that self-made success is still alive and well in America.

Wanek grew up on a dairy farm in Minnesota where the family struggled to get by as sharecroppers, and he spent most of his childhood with no electricity and running water. His grandfather and great-uncle built furniture as a hobby.

Ron Wanek and business partner Chuck Vogel

Hinks grew up in a family that owned a grocery store beneath their home and worked seven days a week. He drove an Old Home Bakery truck before getting into mobile home sales. Back then – in the 1970s – the homes came fully furnished. A side business selling the furniture became the first step in his retail career.

“Ron and I both got started very early,” Hinks said, recalling Wanek “was in a little wood plant making end tables” when the two met.

They bonded over Wisconsin, where Wanek had founded his business and Hinks went to college, and their common upbringings, and “I just liked him from the beginning,” Hinks said.

“He had nothing, and I had nothing, so we had that in common. We were both struggling. Working with him, I felt I was dealing with an honest guy who was going to make a great living and keep doing better and better, which he did.”

Wanek, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $5.7 billion, now leads a company with more than 30,000 employees worldwide and $6.5 billion in annual revenue.

Hinks now leads the nation’s 35th largest furniture retailer, with nearly 60 stores in a six-state region.

“He’s a very sincere businessperson,” Wanek said. “You know that he works to give his customers the best value. What’s value? Design, quality, price, delivery, and he’s always continually looking to improve. He loves to continue to grow, and our company loves that too.”

Both men shared in the success and struggle of the past year, as record sales were set against unprecedented supply chain challenges.

“The year for Ashley, a year and three months, has probably been one of the most challenging in business,” Wanek said. “The whole supply chain went down, and then (business) came up very fast, like nothing we’d ever seen. One of the biggest problems today is the supply chain and producing for the demand that is there.”

Thanks to Wanek’s foresight, Ashley launched a transportation division back in the 1970s, which has gone on to become the largest private freight carrier among all manufacturing companies and the largest importer of furniture in North America, according to Furniture Today.

He also has made a career out of staying one step ahead of the competition, Hinks said. For instance, Wanek recognized the need to manufacture internationally back in the 1970s and then moved from China to Vietnam to retain his competitiveness, Hinks said.

“That’s why they’re ahead of everyone,” he said. “A lot of the stores would be under if they hadn’t made an agreement to buy, and Ashley has helped by getting furniture to them so they have something to sell. There are all kinds of furniture stores out there holding tickets eight to 10 months or a year old because they can’t get furniture from the factories, or they’re not able to supply it.”

Ashley also made a considerable investment in domestic manufacturing – Hinks toured a factory in Wisconsin just last month – and the emphasis is on automation and advanced equipment, Wanek said.

“We’re an advanced manufacturer,” he said, adding it’s a culture born out of his history of making mass-production cabinets for televisions and stereos.

“We would have to engineer and retool to be able to compete with some of the biggest high-volume companies in the world,” he said. “That’s where our culture developed, and Ashley still does that. We do a lot of our own equipment building and automation and a lot of innovative things in our industry, and we’ll continue to.”

As the furniture industry has all but left the U.S. for manufacturing, “we’ve surged,” Wanek continued.

“Ashley is a survivor,” he said. “Right now, we’re making huge investments, a billion and a half back into our business. We have to do it to compete in e-commerce. We have to have more distribution centers and regional manufacturing and (combat) the shortage of employees, so we’re adjusting to all those.”

The furniture business is one that still benefits from in-person shopping, he added, but needs an e-commerce infrastructure.

“You want to see it, you want to feel it, you want to sit in it,” he said. “So what we call brick-and-mortar in the furniture industry probably has a good future.”

The Furniture Mart expansion is scheduled to be done early next year.

“I was just thrilled that he could make the trip here,” Hinks said. “We just pick their brain every chance we get because we know how well they’re doing with all the very good people they get, and that’s just great for us to grow.”