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Village Squire, 1979-04, Page 20The machine, 12 tons of steel and power, and the U-bend that makes Fabian furniture unique in construction. product. But the unskilled workers must be supervised by people who know, their business and those people are lacking, he says. The other hinderance to proper utilage of the equipment is the building itself, he says. "We can produce a lot of furniture with less people but to do it the right way -this isn't the right place for it. It should be on a conveyor system. You see once a bend comes out of the press we can assemble a case, continuous assembly day and night, 15 minutes later. That gives us time to prepare the first bend, trim it, sand it and so on. But in a place like this (cut up by various partitions, beams'end walls) there's too much handling." So instead of continuous assembly, they work in batches of 50 or 75 sets at a time, then go back and work from the beginning again. The company owns a five -acre plot of industrial land in Clinton and still hopes to someday build a properly designed plant but that takes money and they're happy right now to work with the low overhead offered by the old plant. But while there may be controversy over whether or not the invention is being used properly and whose fault it is, there can be no controversy about the product turned out in the Fabian factory. There is nothing cheap about the construction of this furniture. While growing shoddiness has turned up in many manufactured products in all fields today the products in this plant may be even better built than in the days of the real craftsmen of a century ago. They have used technology to make real improvements in furniture. One look at a drawer in one of 18 Village Squire, April 1979 their bedroom dressers or diningroom hutches is enough to convince even a novice of the improvement. The drawer has only three pieces: the drawer front, the bottom and the U -bent system that makes up the sides and back. There is little opportunity for joins to dry out or work apart. The U-bend has been utilized in cabinets too. Veneered wood is bent to form the side and back corners of cabinets. Instead of masonite on the backs, backs are made of wood veneer here and even are finished, though not to the extend of the fronts. Joints that can't be done with the U-bend process are carefully done the old-fashioned way. There is no plastic used anywhere. One of the cost-cutting processes in recent years has been cut use of plastics in detail work on cabinets. Once this work was all done by hand then as costs increased it virtually disappeared but it returned when it was found that the decorations could be molded in plastic and finished to look like wood. One of the victories J.H. Fabian claims for the plant is the informing of the public about the use of plastics. The Fabians have promoted fairly heavily the fact that they use all wood and others use plastic. As a result, he claims, the public is now .asking what is plastic and what is real wood in furniture showrooms and the plastic is not selling well. Decorative work is done on the Fabian furniture but is still done by hand. With the strength of the bends used and the extra wood that goes into furniture at the plant. sets weigh about twice as much as those of usual manufacturers except the heavy pine sets, J.H. Fabian says. Framework in ordinary sets is much lighter and, he claims it has already loosened up by the time it is delivered to the buyers home. More and more of the marketing of the furniture from the plant is being done through a retail outlet at the plant. At one time after the plant was set up there were over 100 stores handling the product. Today the company has pulled back its dealership to just a few dealers who have dealt with Mr. Fabian Sr. for many years. J.H. Fabian claims that part of the reason is that dealers used to sell their furniture quickly but instead of paying their bills to Fabian. would use the money to pay bills to bigger manufacturers who they couldn't afford not to pay. Now, he says, they deal only with people they can trust to pay promptly. He also claims that many dealers don't want to show the things that make Fabian furniture superior because it would show up the pieces from other manufacturers. Whatever the reason a large proportion of the furniture sold now goes through the little store that has been built at the front of the plant. So far it isn't fancy but Mr. Fabian Jr. says that he, hopes to finish it off soon. He claims that it is the only real direct factory outlet in the business. Some plants do sell to the public but its usually returned merchandise from dealers that they sell. he says. In the showroom one can see examples of the various styles produced in the plant. There are two or three designs of bedroom furniture and with variations in the styles of dressers. chests, mirror frames and bedside tables, the combinations are many. There are also diningroom sets and desks. A bedroom set with a standard size bed, double dresser but no nightables can retail out of the outlet for $450-500 dollars, he says and the top of the line would be $900-$1000. The top of the line units would retail for $1800 to $2000 from a major retailer, he says, and that wouldn't be U-bend furniture either. Mr. Fabian Sr. is still involved in the business, although most of the work is carried on by his son. The Austrian native who is now in his seventies and came to Canada in the late 1920's, still designs machinery and comes into work at the plant on nice days. The fierce independence is still strong in he and his son as they take on the giants of the furniture industry with their attempt to retail their own product. Whatever the reason for the failure of the U-bend process to cause a real revolution in the furniture at least people in W. -stern Ontario have the opportunity to compare an alternative to the furniture being turned off most North American assembly lines.