Sharing our Personal Experiences in China, Indonesia & The Philippines

It was 1978 and I was a Sales Manager selling children`s books, games & puzzles. I left that company & became a distributor for them.

I teamed up with people who had warehousing & trucking. I did all of the selling. The warehouse was located in N.Y. The owners rented out a portion of their warehouse to a family from the Philippines. 6 Months later, I was in the Philippines and then onto China. We visited all of the different factories. Each factory specialized in making different types of wicker furniture. The people could not have been any nicer or more welcoming.

Aside from some different traditions, these folks are the same as us. Trying to make a living so that they can provide good health, food, safety and education for their families. The Philippines is called “ The Land of Hospitality” for a good reason.

Have you ever noticed the amount of Filipinos in our country that that are nurses. They provide loving care to the sick & the elderly. We could say similarly nice things about the people of China & Indonesia. We have been through Europe as well.

If you want to disagree with any of the governments that is fine, but we find the people all over the world while different are very much the same. We had our friends from Indonesia here. They as well as all of the others loved America. They all look up to what America is & what it stands for.

Now onto the furniture making. You may know how everyone uses the natural raw materials of their own countries to make a wide variety of products. We do the same thing here with food & now lots with technology.

Lots of the people overseas have learned to become furniture makers.

Around the year 2000, when a lot of wicker went from being made from natural materials to synthetic materials, China became a major producer of metal framed outdoor wicker. For population control, China invoked a law of each family only being allowed to have one child. These ‘only child`s’ are very well educated, meaning the population of blue collar workers like furniture makers and weavers is aging. Because of this, lots of this industry are slowly moving on to Vietnam. Indonesia is in our opinion where the best natural rattan in the world grows.

They also are very rich in quality woods to make furniture from. Results—there are lots of skilled furniture makers there.

They use wicker, wood and now also synthetic wicker. We insist & pay for our partner factories to buy quality materials to make our furniture from. Because we demand quality materials, the workers see that and automatically put their pride & effort into making the furniture.

Start making your furniture from steel that rusts & lower quality synthetic wicker and the workers know. Same thing with natural wicker products. Use thin poles instead of big, strong ones and the workers know. Good workers don’t want to make subpar products. They will leave and go on to work elsewhere. When you give them the best and demand the best, they’re life and work purpose is much more fulfilled. Don’t we feel the same way?

We have “eyes” overseas that inspect all of then production, finishing and packaging. We receive lots of pictures showing us the furniture at different intervals of production. We are always learning, but after over 40 years of doing this we know what we are looking at. We design a lot of the furniture that we offer.

As we speak we have new midsize seating and 3 new natural rattan dining sets in production. We will introduce them towards the end of this year for next year.

Our point is, regardless of where someone is located, their nationalities, religious beliefs, we have a fondess for anyone who starts work on time, can put in a solid days work, and does so with pride and quality. We are for everything being done legally domestically and abroad, and we have our hearts open and hats off to quality people from all over the world and their diverse cultures and viewpoints. We greatly respect those who make the effort.

We hope you enjoyed reading this as we enjoyed sharing our experiences with you.