Word: berkey
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Last week one of the oldest and most famed furniture companies in the U. S. came completely to life again after five years of coma. In central Michigan, at the dejected heart of the old line furniture industry, the idle Grand Rapids plants of Berkey & Gay had served many a Depression-worn manufacturer as a symbol of paralysis. Last week Berkey & Gay was counting orders received at its first spring furniture show since 1931 while thousands of Grand Rapids citizens, filing through its show rooms, glowed with prospects of new jobs, new business, new publicity...
Nucleus of the company was formed in 1853 by the two brothers Berkey, Julius and William, one of whom had taken an afternoon off from logging in the Grand River to hew himself a table. Twenty years later the company was incorporated with $500,000 capital, and the great period of Grand Rapids furniture began. The Eastern market was opened to Grand Rapids when a suite (a "suit" not a "sweet," in the furniture business) by Berkey won a gold medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. After that, through the American Victorian, Eastlake, Mission and the Golden...
...important buys during 1929 was Berkey & Gay, a Grand Rapids company making high class general furniture. The concern was one of the oldest in Grand Rapids and its $9,000,000-a-year sales volume made it one of the biggest. It was not operating at a profit because the furniture business then, as now, was confused and upset. Zalmon Gilbert Simmons, president of Simmons Co., planned not only to make his company potent in furniture but to bring stability and prosperity to the entire industry. In great advertisements in the Grand Rapids press he stated: "It is my desire...
Unfortunately, Mr. Simmons never had his desire satisfied. In the furniture field his company trod on many ancient toes, no stability came. Berkey & Gay refused to make money. Recently the lights had to be shut off during the daytime as well as at night. And when last week Simmons Co. reported its July sales (down 17.3% from last year) an important footnote was appended. Since Berkey & Gay no longer operates, Simmons Co. has written its entire investment off the books. The exact price of this investment has not been revealed, but in 1928 Berkey...
California Pos. Stanford Berkey LER Campbell Barnes LTR. Ludke Clark LGR Douglas Latham (C) C De Groot Cranmer RGL Faville McMillan RTL Carter Muller REL Mertz Erb Q Schlaudeman Toomey LHR Doughty Nichols RHL Wilcox Nisbet F Patrick...