ROBERT SPILMAN JR

Rob Spilman Jr.:
You just had to have faith that you were making the right decision for the company, even though it was tearing down everything that you had grown up with and loved.

Jon Pertchik:
Today on The Market Makers, what it takes to lead a 122-year-old American company through the moment everything you built is being dismantled around you. This is a story about faith over certainty and the kind of leadership that chooses survival over nostalgia. Bassett Furniture's journey isn't about chasing trends, it's about making impossible decisions in real time and trusting that culture can carry you through what strategy alone cannot. Rob Spilman Jr. didn't inherit an easy legacy. He inherited responsibility to a family, to a workforce, and ultimately to an industry in upheaval. As CEO, chairman, and president of Bassett Furniture, he led the company through globalization, the collapse of domestic manufacturing, and a total reinvention of how furniture is made, sold, and experienced. From company towns and factory floors, to retail stores, designers, and e-commerce, Rob's story is about stewardship and what it means to tear down what you love so something can endure. Rob carries that legacy forward, a great part of Americana, a great American company, and ultimately a great public company leader.
Well, I've got Rob Spilman Jr. Here with me, CEO, chairman, and president all three of Bassett Furniture. We're honored to have you here, sir. Really excited to connect with you. So first of all, welcome and thank you for being here.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Well, thank you, Jon. Good to be here. Good to be at The Market.

Jon Pertchik:
Boy, there's so many places to begin. First of all, the company's history. It's one of the, I feel like the founding fathers of this industry. So maybe share a word on the origin story of the company.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Sure. So my great-grandfather, JD Bassett, was a tobacco farmer. And one day a man showed up at his farm and was looking to build a railroad through that area of Virginia. And the purpose was to bring coal. The railroad stopped in Roanoke, Virginia at that time. And they wanted to bring coal down to this area to Winston-Salem, actually to fire the boilers at the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Complex over there in Winston-Salem. So they spoke and my great-grandfather said, "Well, why don't you just put the railroad through my farm? I'll let you have the land to do that." And his intent was to develop the area. And so the guy said, "Well, boy, that'd be great." And then subsequently, the man called JD Bassett back and said, "Hey, we're going to need a lot of railroad ties for the railroad. You ought to open a sawmill." And so that was the genesis of Bassett Furniture.
Once that was a finite proposition, of course, once they filled those orders. And so he began to sell the indigenous hardwoods, the oak, cherry, et cetera, to the seat of the furniture industry in America at that time was Grand Rapids, Michigan and Jamestown, New York. So he started selling the lumber up there. And one time he was in Michigan, he took his wife on the trip up there and they went to the customers and everything and they were coming back and he said, "What'd you think of all that?" And she said, "We ought to go in the furniture business. We have the raw material, we've got the labor and we won't have the transportation cost. So why don't we build the furniture?" So it was actually my great-grandmother's idea. So he got his brother and his brother-in-law and they formed Bassett Furniture in 1902.
And we've got some of the original invoices for a nightstand for 50 cents or a dollar and a quarter for a dresser. It's amazing actually. But that was the beginning of Bassett Furniture.

Jon Pertchik:
One thing I had read a little bit about too, I think it was during the Depression maybe, because cash was not really there. Bonuses were paid, I think, in ham.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
That's right. Well, people needed to eat. We had the company store there and they still had the script that your wages could be paid in script and you could buy from the company store. And so Bassett was the quintessential company town.

Jon Pertchik:
I imagine from the beginning, most of the town probably worked for the company.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Well, that's right. I can't tell you what percentage, but a very high percentage. And the company built the schools and the infrastructure around Bassett.

Jon Pertchik:
Wow. And as a young person, was your time spent around the family business during these years? Tell me about what that was like as a kid.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
I grew up in a little neighborhood there in town and the conversation at the dinner table and church or you name it was about furniture and Bassett furniture. So I think the time it really made an impression on me about how big a deal this was to us was I was in the fourth grade and my grandfather died and they shut all the schools down for his funeral. And so I went, "Wow, this is a pretty big deal." But yeah, it was very much part of our lives.

Jon Pertchik:
JD Bassett, Rob's great-grandfather lived to 98. He ran the company for 54 years and Rob remembers him, the dark Victorian house, fishing from a wheelchair days before he died. Four generations. That kind of continuity is rare in American business. And in 1930, just 28 years in, JD made a decision that would shape everything that came after. When did the company go public?

Rob Spilman Jr.:
They became profitable very quickly and became quite a successful enterprise almost immediately. And there were shares in the company that ... The family was pretty big and they distributed the shares. I'm not exactly sure, but I don't know whether he was getting pressure or he just saw the future or whatever. But in 1930, they went public. So 28 years after the inception and largely to be able to provide liquidity for family members who maybe weren't in the business, wanted to cash out whatever they wanted to do. So that seemed very innocent and logical at the time. Of course, being public today carries many burdens that he never envisioned back in 1930. I'm not sure I wish he had done that.

Jon Pertchik:
That's shadow still being cast. Maybe the less fun part of the shadow.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
That's right.

Jon Pertchik:
Wow. Really, really amazing. This could be a discovery episode. Just learning more about your family and the early history.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
I've got one, if I may, which is actually quite important in the history of the company. And that is World War II. And of course, the furniture industry largely shut down during World War II, as you can imagine, because there weren't a lot of consumers thinking about furnishing their homes. So my grandfather got the idea to approach General Motors and General Motors was building a lot of personnel carriers, troop trucks. And you've seen these in the movies where all the infantry guys are riding in the trucks and the bed of the truck in the rear. So they sat on the benches and their feet were on a wooden bed. And so he went up there and said, "We'd like to make the beds for the rear of the truck." And so he got the contract.
And so we ran all through World War II, which really served us well post World War II because we didn't have to start all over again. So that's a famous story around the company. And we've been looking for one of those trucks for years and we found one this December and we bought it from a guy over in Wilmington, North Carolina. And so we've got the ... It's in pretty good shape too.

Jon Pertchik:
The Great Depression, World War II, 9/11, the Great Recession, COVID, post COVID, tariffs. Bassett has seen it all. And when you've survived 122 years of everything the world can throw at you, you learn something. Culture outlasts strategy, culture outlasts everything.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
I'm very proud of the culture of the company. And we're widespread now. We've got almost a hundred stores and we're all over the place, including in Asia. But the culture ... I think Peter Drucker said culture kicks strategy's ass. And so I think that's true with us.

Jon Pertchik:
How do you maintain the culture? What do you prioritize? How do you lead? I've read you're a bit of a hands-on leader. Maybe share some perspective on how you maintain culture.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
We change, but we don't change fast. Financial stewardship, the balance sheet, all of that's very important to us. So we keep the company strong. We emphasize that and we try to return capital to the shareholders, a part of that because a lot of our employees are shareholders. And then I think we have good communication in the company and people know what's going on. We have a lot of transparency, as transparent as we can be for a public company. And virtually anybody in the company can come see me and frequently does. And I think our management team abides by that. And I just really feel like we don't have a pyramid. We really are a level playing field of teammates. I didn't invent that. I mean, that's been around for a long time. I just try not to screw that up and keep it going. And you feel that way when you walk in the door.

Jon Pertchik:
Right. That's amazing. And one of the things I tell our team here and throughout the various companies have been involved with them, and I don't like the term because it's so overused, but this idea of servant leadership is ... Again, the term is so overused, it's lost meaning. But the way I think about it, in a normal hierarchy, the C-suite is at the top of the pyramid on the ivory tower. And I think of it, you'd turn that upside down like an ice cream cone, and I'm at the bottom. And my job is certainly to chart the course, set the strategic direction and then after that, make sure we have the right teammates in place, give them support and get out of the way. And that's just similar. It's slightly different, but similar.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
I think you're right. If you walk that walk, it works.

Jon Pertchik:
And it's also neat. You mentioned you feel the obligation to your teammates through them being shareholders. And it's really a neat phenomenon when your teammates are owners of the company. It creates bonds that are different. It causes you to think. Always keep your feet on the ground and not lose sight of that.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Well, when we say what are we going to do, we really mean what are we going to do?

Jon Pertchik:
What are some of the things that come to mind when you think about your dad and how we might have influenced who you are, both in business and as a person?

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Well, they put me to work at a very early age. We lived across ... We had a little nine hole golf course in Bassett, Virginia, and I'm walking up the hill to our house literally, and they're outside having a cocktail or whatever they were doing around six or seven in the evening. And I was young, I was 12, and I said, "Dad, I played 45 holes today." And he said, "You're going to work tomorrow." And so he called up the local grocery store who we knew the lady, Ms. Akers, and said, "I want Rob to come to work for you tomorrow and I'll pay him if you don't want to pay him." And so next thing I knew, I was sacking groceries the next day and I lamented bringing up playing 45 holes. I should have kept my mouth shut.

Jon Pertchik:
I would've thought Michael Jordan could do that, play 36 holes and then go play basketball.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
But anyway, then my first job with Bassett was down in ... We had a dimension mill down in Arkansas. And so when I was 14 years old, I was shipped down to Arkansas in the summertime and I spent six weeks down there in the dimension mill. So that was my first job with Bassett. Work hard was, I would say, number one. I guess just the way I saw dad treat people and be forthright. It's always something that I think I learned from him.

Jon Pertchik:
Rob left Virginia for Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt led him to Texas. Texas gave him six years at Finger Furniture, learning retail from the warehouse up, meeting his wife, building a life far away from Bassett, Virginia. But as 30 approached, something shifted. Maybe it was the pull of home or the pull of legacy or maybe the question he'd been avoiding.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
I felt like I'd accomplished what I wanted to accomplish down there. And once you get toward 30, you start thinking more seriously. The familial ties and just the ties of working for Bassett started to be part of my thinking, but I didn't want to ask my dad for a job. From what I later found, he wasn't going to ask me either.

Jon Pertchik:
Oh boy.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
And so there was an intermediary, this guy named Alan Bowler, who was a great guy. And he was the merchant for our upholstery operation. So he called me one day down there and he said, "What in the hell are you two guys doing?" He said, "Y'all are the most stubborn people." And he said, "You need to come back here. Come on, let's go." And I said, "Well, I don't want to ask dad for a job." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what, I'll hire you and we'll tell him later."

Jon Pertchik:
So there really was an intermediary, truly. So the stubbornness that he probably passed along to you, the common trait you had is what kept you separate.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
So anyway, so I said, "Okay." So I went up to Hickory, North Carolina, looked around and found an apartment and I went up there in January of 1984 and they told dad the next day, and he acted like he was really upset, but he was really happy. And it all worked out great, obviously.

Jon Pertchik:
Obviously it did.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
But that's really the true story. That's how it happened.

Jon Pertchik:
It's worth pausing on the role Bassett has played in the industry itself long before leadership titles or modern challenges. Bassett has been in High Point, North Carolina since the beginning of market. The IHFC, dirt floors, horse-drawn carriages pulling furniture in and out. Imagine from High Point today, the modern High Point to the very beginning, Bassett was part of it. Bassett was there. Bassett at one time even owned a part of the actual market. This is one of the great American manufacturing stories, and for this family, the market wasn't a backdrop. It was central. To understand the decisions and pressures that came later, you have to start at the beginning. The early days of the market, the original buildings, and what it meant to be there from the start.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
The building we're in open in 1921. We were an original tenant. And I know we have pictures upstairs in the showroom of the sales force at the Chicago market in the 1931. So yes, we were here for many years. Honestly, I don't remember the 20s and all that. My first memory of really of the high point market was 1967, so I would've been 11. And that's when we opened the 167,000 square foot showroom on Business 85 out there. And those were different days. We were rolling in those days. We were the biggest manufacturers in the country and we needed a lot of space. And we brought up so much product, it was unbelievable. But things changed. I remember when I was at Fingers and would come to the market and shop and we would go to Lenore and we'd go to the Broyhill headquarters and see their showroom. We'd go to Bernhardt and see their showroom. So everybody had their own showrooms at their factory. So that's before High Point became the magnet.

Jon Pertchik:
Consolidated a bit. Yeah.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
And so ultimately, of course, that happened. And once that was well underway, we felt left out there on the 85. So I called here and we wanted to get in the commerce building, which was impossible. So in between that period, in the mid '80s ... Between the '67 when we moved out there in the early 2000s, a group from here in High Point called my dad and said, "Hey, we would like for Bassett to consider taking a big piece of the equity in the building here because they're outside influences that are moving into the town with ownership of the showrooms. And we're afraid that the ownership may leave town and it may not be good for our community for the long haul." So dad said, "Okay. Well, let me think about it." So he thought about it and he agreed to do it. And so they basically, as I understand, they were going to sell them everything. They wanted to sell everything but the Terry piece, which was 22%. Randall Terry owned the High Point Enterprise and I guess his dad was an original investor in 1921.
But anyway, ultimately I think dad got a little nervous about it. And so he was actually chairman of Jefferson-Pilot Life Insurance at the time, and he convinced them to lighten his load. And so we ended up with 47%, Terry had the 22, and then Jefferson-Pilot had the rest. So we were 47% owners of all this, or not all of it, but what we had.

Jon Pertchik:
HFC, basically.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Right. Right. So when we wanted to move over here, Bruce Miller, who was running the building back in those days, said, "Well, we'll just build you another floor." And so I said, "Great." So that's how the 12th floor came to be and they built that for us. And then they got Kincaid to come in there and a couple other guys to make it all work. But yeah. And we're still up there right now.

Jon Pertchik:
That's right. And one of the things I think I had read, I think under your leadership, the accumulated interest of that 46, 47%, I think the basis was like two and a half million and you ended up selling it for 275 million. Do I have that right?

Rob Spilman Jr.:
That's right.

Jon Pertchik:
I don't know how many years that was over. That's not a bad investment.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
No. That was a good investment. There was a hundred million dollars of debt on the business.

Jon Pertchik:
Still a great investment.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
So they retired that and then-

Jon Pertchik:
It was only a 50 times instead of 100 times.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
The shareholders split the proceeds.

Jon Pertchik:
Right. Well, that's amazing. So tell me, shifting just in the last few minutes that we have, under your stewardship as the CEO and president and then more 2016, I think chairman as well, maybe share just some of the ... Because again, I think our listeners are interested in how you became who you are and how you've achieved the success you have. What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced and thoughts on how you overcame them, how you dealt with them, maybe principles behind how you approach challenging circumstances?

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Well, I guess from my personal perspective, we've talked about the past for the however long we've been talking here, but from '97 on is more, let's say, I don't know if interesting is the right word, but more personal for me since I became president in '97, CEO in 2000. And that was, of course, at the dawn of the great Asian tsunami where the American furniture business, as we knew it ceased to exist over a two decade period and moved to Asia, at least on the wood side, which was 70% of our business in those days. Today it's 30% of our business. So dealing with that and having the ... Well, you just had to have faith that you were making the right decision for the company, even though it was tearing down everything that you had grown up with and loved. And that was very difficult.
And I basically did that personally and a lot with my cousin, Jeff Bassett and I went and closed all these wood factories and stood up in front of all the people time after time after time, because we had almost 10,000 people making furniture then, and we have about 1,200 today. And so it was extremely, extremely difficult, but we had to just have the faith that we were doing what was right for the future, although in all honesty, we really didn't know.

Jon Pertchik:
Well, that's by definition, that's what faith is.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Yeah. But we did have the balance sheet, and that was something that our forebearers had bequeathed to us, and so we had that going for us. And then the other thing we did ... My dad sent us to China back in the early '90s, and we saw the stuff pouring off out of the factories over there, and it was unbelievable. And so we're going, "Oh my God." And we knew it. We saw the marketplace, but seeing it with your own eyes, it was really sobering. So anyway, when we came back and he said, "What do you think?" And we said, "We're in deep. You know what? This is a major problem." So we said, "Well, what are we going to do?" And I said, "Well, I think we've got to go and open stores." And he said, "You're crazy." He said, "Your customers will drop you." And I said, "They're going to drop us anyway. They're going to go over there and buy all that stuff." And of course, that's what happened. And North Carolina, Virginia lost 300,000 jobs.
So anyway, that was close to 20 years of stuff that went on to reposition all that. And then, like somebody said, you're trying to change the tire on your car when you're going 70 miles an hour because not only we were getting out of all that, we were also opening the retail thing. And so it was a wild, crazy journey, but we've made it through that and we still got plenty of challenges, don't get me wrong, but we don't fear for our lives every single day like we did back then.

Jon Pertchik:
When you look at that specific moment where you returned from China, you're having the conversation with your partner and your dad and you're making the choice to actually open up retail, open up a retail channel, that must have been a scary time, but you didn't really have a choice is what you concluded that it was going to happen anyway, so we've got to go do this.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
No. It was extremely scary. And boy, I wish I could do it a second time because I would do it a lot differently than we did it. But yeah, we did it and it was messy. And not too long after that, we had the great housing crisis of '08, '09, and that really-

Jon Pertchik:
Great recession.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Really put pressure on those guys because we'd never envisioned ... Well, first of all, we never envisioned getting into retail until all that happened, number one. Number two, we didn't want to run our own stores, but the Great Recession really made that happen because a lot of these guys just weren't going to make it. So we basically traded receivables for their business and we took a lot of those businesses over and we brought in people. So today we have roughly 60 corporate stores and 30 some odd licensed stores. But yeah, it was challenging to say the least.

Jon Pertchik:
And maybe looking ahead, is the growth plan to leverage more licensees in the sense of-

Rob Spilman Jr.:
So much has happened and there's also been quite a winnowing out of a lot of the retailers and a lot of it may be generational, the current generation doesn't want to do it or acquisition or whatever it may be. So today, about 63% of our business comes from our stores, but the reason we're down here and have a showroom is not for the stores, it's for everything else, which is still very important to us.

Jon Pertchik:
We're glad to know that.

Rob Spilman Jr.:
Yeah. And the other thing that's happened is, of course, the rise of the interior designer and the whole design community is so different. I was talking to a guy a couple of days ago, he said, he remembers placards on the reception desk that said, "We do not allow interior designers." And now we're practically falling all over each other to serve them champagne or whatever. And so it's really a whole new era and that's exciting and it dovetails with ... Because our stores are predicated upon a design experience and we sell a lot of interior designers out of our stores. We have relationships. So it all in a crazy way, has kind of converged to make sense for us. All of that plus the bolting on the omnichannel element of the e-commerce, which really helps our brand and that's growing for us. So boy, so different than way back when, but we like the way we're positioned for the future and we're excited about it.

Jon Pertchik:
From sawmill to e-commerce. That's your family's company and the company you lead. It's an amazing company and you've really been through and seen everything and here you are. Well, thanks very much for joining us, Rob. Really enjoyed it. Rob Spilman Jr. from Bassett.
What stands out isn't just longevity, it's stewardship, a belief that companies don't exist just to survive markets, but to serve their people, employees, communities, customers, and generations yet to come. Imagine that, a company built to stand. In an industry defined by cycles, disruption and reinvention, Bassett's journey reminds us that culture, conviction, and courage can outlast any single strategy. I'm Jon Pertchik. Thanks for listening. Join us each week as we explore the transformations, shaping how we live, work, and gather.