EJ Victor - New CEO places priority on culture, processes, and strategy

The furniture manufacturing business is hard.

A high-end furniture company offers hundreds of sofa and chair styled choices. Consumers expect to put any one of a thousand different fabrics on it, accessorize it with any of several hundred trim and decorative elements, select from dozens of wood finishes, choose from 10 or so cushion types, have it built by hand flawlessly, and delivered on time.

That’s just upholstery. Case goods – beds, chests, tables, dining chairs, accent hallway items –  also can be customized with many laborious made-to-order options. 

Layer onto the old-school, hand-crafted, centuries-old industry the challenges of today’s rapid technological advances, supply chain complications, and relentless consumer expectations and it’s understandable why there has been upheaval in the industry during the past 25 years. 

One of the largest, oldest, and continually operating furniture manufacturers in Burke County is EJ Victor, based in Morganton.

Founded in 1990 by three respected industry executives, John Victor Jokinen, Joe B. Manderson, and Edward Phifer III, EJ Victor continues as a locally-owned, high-end furniture company dedicated to superior craftsmanship, excellent customer service, and a culture of respect and support for employees. 

The privately-owned company employs about 170 people with an average tenure of 20 to 25 years, and makes 90% of its furniture domestically. It does not disclose its annual sales totals.

In June, Richard Oliver, 61, a seasoned C-Suite executive with a track record of successfully transforming good companies into better ones, was hired by EJ Victor’s board of directors as the firm’s CEO, replacing David Bennett, who resigned earlier in the year. 

Earlier this week Oliver shared his strategy to build upon EJ Victor’s name recognition, great product design, and loyal customer base.

Oliver brings decades of process, operational, and technology expertise to EJ Victor. His focus centers on people, culture, performance, and product.

“My 90-day plan is to stabilize the business, stabilize our leadership and create the right-sized business,” he said.  

“I'm from Western North Carolina, grew up south of Hickory … in a little community called Mountain View,” he said. After graduating from Lenoir-Rhyne University in 1988 with a degree in business administration and management, he started his career as a consultant for Deloitte, a global network providing leading audit and tax and legal consulting, financial, and risk advisory services to 90% of the Fortune 500.

Oliver worked for several years at Alcatel, an innovative telecommunications company that later merged with Nokia. After several years he was recruited by the consumer textile company, Thorlo, a manufacturer of its patented advanced performance athletic socks.

“I started in 1992 in their finance area and was promoted into operations in 1995,” he said. “I became the president of the company in 1998.”

After 25 years with Thorlo, Oliver was approached by a colleague who had a Taylorsville-based company making furniture and wood components for the furniture industry. 

“He said (he needed) a financial person that can help grow this set of companies to the next level,” Oliver said. “They had at that time a wood component manufacturing company, Precision Materials. I went to work with him in 2017 in the role of Chief Financial Officer.”

At Precision, Oliver built an infrastructure enabling the company to scale. “And we implemented an ERP system, NetSuite, a mid-market cloud-based computer system that connects all company operations and processes real-time shared databases.

“The one thing I like about working with an ERP system is you've got something that's systemically built, it's integrated,” he said. “It really helps the communication and the alignment of the organization regardless of the function that somebody works in.”

EJ Victor is installing a similar ERP system and expects to take it live in the next couple of months, he said.

“The first two or three years (with Precision) was most of the foundation building,” he said. Soon the company was realizing increases of 25% annually.

“It was more of incremental growth and control growth … because we wanted to make sure we had the foundation, we had the systems in place that when we started driving demand, it didn't just overwhelm the business and the processes,” he said.  

After about five years, Oliver felt that the business was in good hands and he was ready for additional challenges. While training a successor, he started a consulting firm in September 2022. 

One of his first customers was EJ Victor. 

“They were looking for a fractional CFO,” Oliver said. “I've worked as a President. I've worked as a Chief Financial Officer. I've been a Chief Operating Officer. So this whole idea about a fractional, you know, C-Suite role actually pretty much appealed to me.”

“I started with them in September (2022), primarily working on the financial side of things, helping them both with the implementation of their ERP and looking at some things that they were doing from a process and financial stewardship standpoint.”

The EJ Victor Board hired him as a full-time CEO in June 2023. 

“I had come to love Western North Carolina,” he said. “I've lived here pretty much all my life. I've left twice and both times, I couldn't wait to get back when I came here.”

Oliver said he was especially taken with the corporate culture created by Jokinen, Manderson, and Phifer, founders of EJ Victor. A good company with a great culture can do mighty things, he said. 

“When I came on board I (said) I see what industry you're in. I see where your identity is. I know where the history of the company is, but sometimes that can be a blinder for an organization,” he said. “You know, where you've been can sometimes keep you from seeing where other opportunities may be for you. … (Examine) alternative sources of business and revenue that would help us continue to grow the company. We want to keep it simple. We don't want to go out there and do anything very big or very risky.” 

One of his early actions was to listen to EJ Victor managers about current methods and goals. “What's your aspirations? What's your vision for the organization?” he said he asked the team.  “Because if you don't have vision, you don't have some aspiration where you think you might want to go, it's really hard to figure out where the gaps are because you're just basically incrementalizing your business from where it is and that's not a very sustainable approach.”

“You know, I see this as a small community,” he said. “I see that we have value systems here, we have ways that we engage with one another, the way that we treat one another. And this has always been something that's important to me. 

“I recognized the work that the founders had done relative to the product and the family values within the organization,” Oliver said. “And a lot of the people that they had acquired were competent people. And they had something that you can't give somebody and that is heart.

“There's a lot of people in this organization with a lot of heart, a lot of drive, a lot of desire, a lot of selflessness and those are all things that I'm very attracted to. And when I started, when we made that shift into 2023, I became very enamored with the culture here, with the people here and with the opportunity that they actually have in the industry.”

“I'm big on transparency internally,” Oliver said. “I don't hold back information. I want everybody to be fully informed because otherwise I think you won't (capture) mind and heart share of all the people that are working within the organization and this organization's got people that are ready to step up, but they need context and they need information to be able to make good decisions.”

Oliver currently lives in Statesville with his wife, Sandra. They have a son, Ben, who is a consultant with Charlotte-based  KPMG consulting firm.

Allen VanNoppen is publisher of The Paper. He may be reached at 828-445-8595 or via email allen@thepaper.media.

Note: This story previously incorrectly stated its employment roster. The Morganton-based furniture manufacturer employs 170 workers, and this has been updated. We apologize for the error.