HICKORY, North Carolina — Forty-two years ago, Leo Kahn moved from Louisville, KY to Hickory to work as Kincaid Furniture’s vice president of upholstery sales and marketing. 

Abrams moved from Louisville to Hickory March 30, following his grandfather’s path, to become vice president of residential upholstery sales for Bernhardt Furniture. He came from Wynwood Furniture, a casegoods company owned by Flexsteel Industries. He said that his dual knowledge of casegoods and upholstery should serve him well in his role at Bernhardt.

“So I’m doing the exact same thing 42 years later; to go work for a company as vice president of sales. In a lot of ways, my career has mirrored my grandfather’s. He spent half his career in retail and half his career in manufacturing. So far, I’ve spent half my career in retail and half of it in manufacturing,” said Abrams, 47. He said he had talked to Bernhardt about a job several times before he took the position in March. Marc Abrams

 “[Bernhardt Residential] is really two different companies. You have the casegoods side and the upholstery side. Steve Pilgrim, who is the casegoods VP of sales, who is my counterpart, has a very strong background in upholstery; and I am the upholstery VP of sales, and I have a very strong background in casegoods. I think they’ve got two people in sales positions who bring a little different perspective into the company.”

As for where he thinks he can take Bernhardt going forward, Abrams said he is in the learning and strategizing phase of the position right now.

“Right now I’m spending a lot of time trying to learn where we are, how we got here, what our strategic advantages are, what our customers want from us. So I’m trying to do a lot more listening right now and trying to figure out what those moves are that we need to make,” he said.

“I didn’t really come in with any predisposed notion of where I wanted to take the company or what to do with the company or what moves to make when it comes to the sales and marketing side.”

Abrams said he is not directly involved with selling fabric, but rather to find out what potential buyers around the country are looking for.

“I’m not going to be the decision maker. My job is to go out and see what’s going on in the country and what they’re looking for and filter that back to our merchandising people,” he said.

With Wynwood, Abrams was part of the first program to bring setup upholstery direct from China to U.S. retailers approximately seven years ago.

“[There were] a lot of learning curves,” Abrams said.

“Some of the main issues were logistics and how to flow, but we also had some production issues in that we were dealing with Chinese foam, which was highly unreliable. You’d go over and [have upholstery] sit in the frame, and it would sit great. And in the 30 days it took to ship over for your market sample, the foam would cure and sit like a park bench. There were all sorts of frustrating things that went along with it.”

“While we ultimately failed in our endeavor, it was a good learning experience,” he said.

Based on his past experiences, Abrams spoke about the U.S.’s future role in the upholstery industry.

“When it comes to the fabrics, as far as mills go, I don’t know if it’s turning back [to the U.S.], but it seems like the Asians have ceded at least the marketing side of
it to the American companies.
So while maybe [American companies are] not actually manufacturing the fabrics in the U.S., certainly they’re in charge of the marketing arms of it.”     F&FI