History
The company was started as a housewares manufacturer in 1932, then bought a bankrupt furniture factory in Beecher Falls, Vermont in 1936. The firm adopted the name "Ethan Allen" for its early-American furniture introduced in 1939. It was named after the Vermont Revolutionary leader.
In 1972 Ethan Allen moved its headquarters from New York City to Danbury, CT. The Ethan Allen International Headquarters Complex includes the Ethan Allen Hotel, corporate headquarters offices, and an interior design center. The firm was sold in 1980 to Interco for $150 million, though Ancell remained an advisor. The company was sold again in 1989 to a management group headed by current Chairman, President, and CEO Farooq Kathwari. In 1993 the company went public to help raise $156.9 million through the sale of common stock.
In 2008, the company announced plans to close a dozen Design Centers. The decision was made to consolidate the Design Centers with others that were currently serving the same market area.
More than seventy percent of its cherry, maple and alder wood pieces are crafted in the United States. Towards the end of 2008 Ethan Allen began selling their products online.
In 2009, the company laid off 238 workers from Beecher Falls, Vermont. 93 workers remained. Later in the year, the plant ceased operation. In 2009, Ethan Allen closed the Eldred, PA manufacturing plant.
Read more about this topic: Ethan Allen (furniture Company)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)