Amish furniture is traditionally more expensive than imports, but not so much now. And, of course, nobody can get enough of those elusive drawer slides.īut the price of imported furniture has climbed, too, and steeply. The cost of maple, cherry and other North American staples have whipsawed back and forth, with cherry rising some 25% during the pandemic, and maple as much as 70%. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned)Įven domestic lumber supplies have sometimes been hard to access, and prices have seensawed radically. “The more locally you’re sourced, the better off you were during the last couple of years.” While wood for Amish furniture is domestically produced, international supply chain issues can affect other components needed to complete some pieces. “Most of the wood we use is sourced within 500 miles,” said Kevin Kauffman, owner of Simply Amish, which both manufactures furniture at its own Illinois facility and farms out work to Midwestern workshops. The domestic nature (aside from hardware) of Amish sourcing and building has been a boon for those makers. “I couldn’t comment on what the labor-force situation is in Indiana, but I’m hearing lots of stories from around the country about the need to bring on additional labor,” said AHFA Vice President of Public Relations and Marketing Jackie Hirschhaut. Nevertheless, according to the American Home Furnishings Alliance, or AHFA, there are still 50,000 US workers involved in furniture production. In 2002, less than half of the wood furniture sold in the United States was imported. Many major “domestic” brands have, at the very least, sourced many of their inputs overseas. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned)įor decades, the American furniture manufacturing industry has enmeshed itself ever more deeply into the worldwide supply chain. Simply Amish, a retailer and furniture manufacturer based in Arcola, Illinois, has an Indianapolis retail store at 5612 Castleton Corner Lane. Might a future normal include more domestic production? Hard to tell. “Today, it’s better than it was, but it’s still not back to normal.”
“People would tell us, ‘Well, it’s here in the country, but it’s still sitting at the port for a couple months,’” Schrock said. Until suddenly-about the time COVID threw a spanner in the works-it wasn’t. For years and years, this saved a few pennies and seemed like a smart idea. Though perhaps not quite so many these days as they’d like.įor a very long time, it was cheaper to import drawer slides from God-knows-where, instead of making them domestically. Amish furniture makers go through a lot of them. If you’ve ever assembled an Ikea dresser, you’ve handled them. Some by American companies that took their production overseas.”įor the record, a drawer slide is the long, slender thingy screwed to the sides of dresser and cabinet drawers that allows them to open and close smoothly.
“But as for the rest, I’m not aware that any are made in America. “There’s one company in Michigan that makes one type of slide here,” Schrock said. One of the largest suppliers is based in Germany, and international supply chain issues have complicated their distribution. A shortage of drawer slides has become the biggest headache for Amish furniture makers. The wood mostly comes from domestic sources-sometimes from a forest or mill just down the road.īut metal hardware has been in short supply the last couple of years, and one item in particular has bedeviled Schrock and his associates: drawer slides. In most cases, the small shops that dot Indiana’s northern third are mom-and-pop operations employing a handful to a few dozen craftsmen who create custom, to-order furnishings for retailers around the country. “You might have to wait for some items that are made in America, but the real supply chain problems come from overseas,” said Clayton Schrock, owner of Schrock’s Furniture in Goshen and president of the Northern Indiana Woodcrafters Association.Īt first glance, it seems like Amish furniture makers would be more or less immune to such challenges. Not even Indiana’s small-but-hardy frame of Amish furniture makers has been spared. High fuel costs, backlogs of ships at ports, and labor shortages have conspired to drive the prices for critical manufacturing inputs through the roof-that is, if the supplies can be obtained at all. It’s hard to find a segment of the US economy that’s not hamstrung in some way by the international supply chain gridlock. But orders from Amish furniture makers can be delayed by international supply snarls involving drawer slides and other hardware that come from overseas. Amish-crafted furniture fills the Simply Amish retail store at 5612 Castleton Corner Lane.