1987: Futon Designer to futon Distributor

The years from 1985 to 1987 were great, but things were about to change again. In 1987 Massey and National parted ways with lawsuits flying. Massey had designed a new upholstered futon frame called the Aliz. With the lawsuits pending he made contact with a new factory, and also decided to take a more active role as futon distributor not just designer/salesman. "Paula Sonner had become disenchanted with New Moon so I asked her if she wanted to rep my new futon line. She said yes and Dianna and I decided to deliver the first shipment of futon frames ourselves," he said. The trip took them from Montréal to Rochester and on to Buffalo, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Charlottesville, VA and finally High Point. "Driving that grumpy old twenty-four foot U-HAUL truck was a trip we will never forget," he said. This trip brought Massey into his customer's futon stores and confirmed for he and Dianna that they were in the right business, at last. "As soon as we returned I started looking for a factory to make our wooden futon frame, The Chelsea," said Massey. Massey found the perfect factory and production began during the winter of 1988.

1989: futon Distributor to Manufacturer

Several things happened at this point that once again changed Massey's direction. Massy's new futon frame "Le Baiser à Dianna", which along with the other offerings were shipping, in total, at about one thousand futon frames per month, was doing very well. The new futon frame was displayed at the spring FANA Futon Expo in New Orleans. It was then that the new factory owners raised prices twenty-five percent and concurrently the US dollar began to weaken significantly. "The effects of all the lay-offs in the high tech industry of New England, our major market, were taking their toll. The small specialty futon stores were dropping like flies and so were we," he said. Later that year, after a party given by Jean Marclay of Evensong Futon, in Amityville, NY, and after talking to several other customers, Massey concluded that he would have to begin to manufacture futon frames himself. "Based on our talks with Jean and other customers, one thing became obvious; no one was buying futons in quantity any longer. That was okay with us because we wouldn't be able to start a large shop anyway," he said. As Ron and Dianna were heading home to Montréal they drove through a part of Quebec called the Eastern Townships, a region just over the border from Vermont and New Hampshire. They decided to take their remaining nest-egg and make a down payment on a small farm house in the town of Coaticook, Quebec, just over the border from Norton, VT.

1991: New Beginnings UPS able futons

"The first futon frame I made was called the Honeymooner. The whole thing came in one UPS shippable box. Because it was not very high off the ground, as a bed, it didn't do very well. By late June, just as Dianna and I were finishing the second batch of sixty-five futon frames, our shop caught fire. By the time we fixed things up we had already lost most of the good selling season," says Massey. The next batch they made was a remake of an older more conventional "peg futon frame" styled after the Chelsea which was UPS shippable. In December of 1991 Massey linked up with Bob Fireman who had just parted ways with From The Source. Fireman asked Massey to design a totally new futon mechanism that he could patent. The mechanism Massey designed is his most elegant and the one he still uses on the futon frames he and Dianna make today.

"Although we were unable to work together with Bob very long we did have a chance to show off the new futon frame at the FAI Expo in Houston in the Spring of 1992," Massey said. "After the success at the show and by running an ad in Futon Life, which Joe convinced me would work, futon sales grew to a point where we had to move out of our garage workshop into a bigger industrial space in town," he added. Horndove, Ron and Dianna's company showed for the first time, as an independent manufacturer, at the Futon Expo in Orlando in 1994, and again at the Futon Expo, in Minneapolis, in 1995.

1996: Older Yet Wiser

Today the Massey's operate their business at a "comfortable" pace, and despite the ups and downs of the economy, they are grateful that the factory is presently sitting on a solid foundation. "We are in a great position to keep growing and to do so while having more fun than we've ever had," says Massey, who added, "I sincerely thank everyone we've ever dealt with for everything we've learned and everything we've shared."