Lee Buchanan
editor@thefranklinpress.com
Nine months after acquiring the former Shaw Flooring plants in Franklin and Bryson City, Beasley Flooring Products is shifting some production from other plants to the Franklin facility.
Earlier this month, Beasley signed a letter of intent to buy the Mohawk Industries production facility in Melbourne, Arkansas. That plant produces both solid-wood and engineered flooring products.
“We’re going to get the hardwood portion of it and run it here,” said Chris Norton manager of the Beasley facility in Franklin.
In addition, Beasley is shifting production of solid-wood flooring to Franklin from a plant in Macon, Georgia.
“All of the solid business in Macon (Georgia) is coming up here,” Norton said. “They’re going to gut that plant and put in a brand new, state-of-the-art engineering plant. So we’re going to have all the solid business up here.”
Norton and Richard Burch, production manager at the Franklin facility, said the plant is in the process of absorbing the additional production.
“Right now we’re running 250,000 feet a week between here and Bryson City,” Norton said.
The Franklin plant purchases lumber from sawmills around the Southeast to produce solid-wood flooring.
“We ship the bulk of it straight to Bryson City,” Norton said. “They put a finish on it and we sell it pre-finished in a box. It’s distributed out of Bryson City to big-box retailers.”
Current customers include Floor & Décor, Lumber Liquidators and Home Depot. Beasley is about to begin selling to a former customer, Lowe’s Home Improvement.
Shaw also remains a customer for the solid-wood flooring produced in Franklin.
The market for solid-wood flooring has taken a beating in recent years as engineered products have taken market share, especially engineered flooring includes what’s called luxury vinyl tile or LVT.
The market for the solid-wood flooring produced in Franklin and Bryson City has shrunk, but Norton said change has stabilized.
“It’s not as big a piece of the piece of the pie as it once was because of all the different products out there,” Norton said. “It’s big enough to keep us busy.”
The Northeast has emerged as the most important market for solid-wood flooring.
“That’s where we sell the most of it, the higher-end, more traditional markets,” he said. “They’re the ones that really drive our business. But we have small pockets coming up now in Texas and California.”
The Franklin and Bryson City plants employ about 160 combined, working two shifts. With the additional production, that number could climb.
“We’re looking at a adding a few more people, possibly, and run a six-day swing shift schedule,” Norton said. “We’re already doing that on our rip line. We’re really hoping that with the new vendors … we can put another shift on. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Norton and Burch stressed the critical importance of the experienced workforce in Franklin and Bryson City, several with decades on the job.
“That’s one of the reasons Beasley bought us,” Norton said. “It’s about our people. We’ve probably got the best second shift we’ve ever hard. That’s really gonna help drive us.”
Employees on the production lines aren’t the only Beasley employees with lots of experience.
Norton’s been with the company for 38 years, seven months, and Birch has been there 22 years.
The recently named president of Beasley Flooring, Dan Cumbo, visited the Franklin plant last week. Norton and Burch said they liked what they heard from their new boss.
“That’s the good thing about our owner,” Burch said. “He wants us to do the best, so if we need something he’s more than willing to help us on that. We are doing a lot of things around the optimizing of our operations, working to get everything streamlined.”
“We’re looking at bringing in new equipment, new floor machines,” Norton said. “There will be lots of capital improvements, lots of exciting things coming up in 2020.”