A Norwegian furniture manufacturer plans to open a plant in western North Carolina.

Gov. Bev Perdue announced this morning that Ekornes ASA will create 58 jobs and invest $1.3 million over the next three years in the Burke County town of Morganton.

Ekornes will receive a $100,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund. The money is contingent on the company meeting hiring and investment goals, and on a matching grant from the local community.

Ekornes ASA is the largest furniture manufacturer in Norway.  It owns such brand names as Ekornes, Stressless and Svane. In the Triangle, the brand is carried by Nowell's Furniture in Cary.  This will be its first factory outside of Norway.
 
The average annual wage for the new jobs will be $30,464 plus benefits. The Burke County average annual wage is $30,784.

The company's decision to locate in North Carolina is a reversal of fortune for the state's skilled furniture workers. For much the '90s and early 2000s, the state's furniture industry shed thousands of jobs as furniture makers closed up shop, unable to compete with cheaper imports.

A subsidiary of furniture and furnishings company Herman Miller Inc. plans to expand in western North Carolina, and add 64 jobs during the next three years.

Geiger International will invest $3.7 million in a facility in Hildebran, about 180 miles west of Raleigh. The company will shift 24 employees from a smaller operation nearby in Hickory.

Geiger, which makes wood cabinets and other products for offices and homes, will receive a grant worth up to $128,000 if it meets its hiring goals, Gov. Bev Perdue's office announced this morning.

Alfred Williams Co., an office furniture dealer that opened its first office on Raleigh’s Fayetteville Street in 1867, is returning to downtown.

The company, which has two facilities in North Raleigh, has purchased a two-story building on Salisbury Street that it plans to renovate and convert into a showroom and new corporate office for its roughly 50 employees.

“I’ve always had a strong interest to go back downtown,” said owner J. Blount Williams, the great-great-nephew of the company’s founder.

“It’s a great place for our employees to work and I think it’s a more dynamic place for our customers to visit and sort of puts us back into the fabric of the community.”
 

Ethan Allen plans to expand production at its furniture factory in western North Carolina and add 90 jobs.

The factory in Old Fort, just east of Asheville, makes dining and bedroom sets and other products.

The new jobs will pay average annual salaries of $26,645, Gov. Bev Perdue's office announced today. That's less than the McDowell County average of $27,768.

State officials promised the company a grant worth up to $270,000 if it meets its hiring goals.

Kinston cabinet maker is planning a $3.75 million expansion that will lead to 334 new jobs over the next three years.

MasterBrand Cabinets, which already employs 200 at a plant in Kinston, will receive a $5.3 million incentive package from local and state agencies.

The company, a subsidiary of Fortune Brands, is based in Jasper, Ind. It makes cabinets for kitchens and bathrooms for new homes and remodeling.

Furniture does not often fascinate me, but this design and video presentation blew me away. Public seating company Arconas has an amazingly designed line called Molecule. Check out the video.

A Mississippi furniture maker plans to open a new plant in Taylorsville and create 128 jobs.

Caye Home Furnishings was lured partly by a $250,000 grant from the state, Gov. Bev Perdue's office announced today.

The company makes living room furniture and other products marketed under the Stratford and Stratolounger brands.

Caye has five manufacturing facilities in Mississippi and Florida, and two in China. In August 2008, it opened one in Star, N.C., which now employs 52 workers.

Rooms-to-Go CEO Jeffrey Seaman is not such a big fan of the federal government's Cash for Clunkers program.

Today, during an interview for an upcoming story, Seaman mentioned that the Clunkers program has been bad for his business.

"I think it just diverted buying power," he said. "I think the fact that it happened with back to school [made it worse]. So X amount of energy is devoted to back-to-school shopping. Then the government had a sale on cars. I think it pushed the furniture purchase to the back burner for a lot of shoppers."

Fortunately, the Clunkers program ends tonight.

However, if Uncle Sam came with an incentive program for furniture purchases, Seaman said that would be a plan he could get behind.

"I think we should do something for each industry," he said.

An office-furniture maker, hard hit by the recession, will close its Louisburg plant by March and lay off 93 employees.

Employees at the HON Co. factory will receive severance packages based on their years of experience, said Gary Carlson, a spokesman with HNI Corp., the publicly traded parent corporation of HON.