These Oak wood beach
These Oak wood beach chairs are designed and handcrafted with strength, safety, beauty and longevity in mind at H&T Chair Company, located in Vero Beach, Fla. The solid Oak wood frames are finished with marine spar varnish. H&T Chair Company Anywhere Chair: & A Winning Combination BY CLARE ADRIAN Vero Beach, Fla.– Very useful as outdoor furniture, H&T Chair Company chairs don’t stop at the beach. They really work anywhere. Hence, the name Anywhere Chair, as applied to the beach-related products manufactured in, of all places, the mountainous region of Boone, N.C., shipped to location, or sold from the home office, which is located here. Established in 1967 to serve the industrial market, the company expanded in the 1980s into the consumer market. Now the products include boat chairs, camp stools and tables, accessory items, and tall director’s chairs, also suitable for indoors. Much of the repeat business over the years is due to the versatility of the product, its quality, longevity, strength, attractiveness, and durability. White Oak and occasionally Red, is perfectly suited to the wear and tear Anywhere Chairs are subjected to. “They’re not throw away items, and the slow growth of Oak trees at a high altitude produces a dense, durable wood,” said company president Rick Todd. A portion of the wood volume purchased per year, which amounts to between 150,000 and 200,000 board feet, is devoted to a support system of repairing chair parts, whether in-house or shipped to business owners after instructing them on how to do the repairs themselves. Servicing both the concession and home market might include a change of canvas color when rugged wear requires recovering the frame as requested by a client for his frequent fishing trips. Walking along a vast open shoreline, the chairs that inevitably catch the eye are those with a back strap, silk screened with a company name or event, as promotional props. “It’s a great advertising angle,” said Todd, who is involved in the day-to-day operations with his six employees, from filling orders to sewing the canvas covers. “It’s a good investment for the concession market, which is 80 percent of our business, making money for them long after the purchase.” Todd shuffles through a wide assortment of custom work orders destined as ad incentives, varying from promotions for the islands off the Florida coast to NASCAR to picking up the slack for a major cigarette company when forced to quit traditional media advertising. One of H&T’s suppliers of canvas and thread retained the product to use for display booths internationally. And a set of 65 chairs went out for audience comfort while viewing movies on a screen set up at the beach. On a personal note, chairs have been ordered to suit movie stars and on another occasion, a New York-based artist requested white canvas chairs to paint on. Please turn to page 44 22 Hardwoods...The All-Purpose Material
The 8,800-square-foot H&T Chair facility is now devoted solely to production. Rick Todd, president of H&T Chair, operates the swing arm cutoff saw to cut beach chair arm stock. Varnished H&T Chair frames in inventory will receive covers as customer orders are received for them. The H&T Chair shop machinery from the gang rip saw in the foreground to the SCMI Surfacer single side planer and the Stetson-Ross XL mould matcher are ready to run stock. H&T beach chairs are lined up to serve guests of Sandestin Resort in Destin, Fla. JANUARY/2011 23
