Cover Story  VOL 8 NO1

The Massey Chronicles

My first trip to High Point in 1985 brought me into the New Moon futon showroom, somewhere in the National building. At this point in time I had never heard of Ron Massey, the designer of the futon frame I was looking for. I'd been selling the Brouwer futon Bed in Providence for a year or two but I'd heard that the new T.H.I.S. futon frame was definitely a step in a new direction. The futon frame was made in Canada by a company called National Woodcraft, a large furniture producer in Montréal, but still no mention of its designer, Ron Massey. Massey had been working towards this creation (called the Shibumi 2 at the time) for some fifteen years. The fact of the matter is when he started doing business in the furniture category, in the fall of 1969, he had no idea he would end up doing futon furniture. Massey, the classic designer/entrepreneur, had actually begun his relationship with Ted Goldman of National Woodcraft in 1969 through a mutual associate, Mr. Benton Lewis, National's fabric supplier. The history that follows is obviously from Ron Massey's perspective and is detailed enough to give the reader a clear understanding of his major contribution to the birth of this growing futon industry. - Editor.

1969: "Do anything you want" it was bean bag chair

"Benton offered me a job while I was managing a clothing store he frequently shopped in," said Massey, "He had offered me an open ended opportunity to start a business for him. 'Do anything you want' he said, 'I don't care if you want to make hot dogs.'" Massey began to look around for a business opportunity. In a large furniture store, downtown, he saw a product that would become a furniture icon of the seventies, the bean bag chair. "I decided that this would be the business I would start, a bean bag company. I ran the numbers quickly and discovered that the German made futon chair selling for $250.00 at Valliquette's would cost me about $13.00 total for all the materials and production," Massey said. He then showed the bean bag chair idea to Lewis who took it to Goldman. Goldman said that the bean bag chair idea was great and called the Sears Canada buyer and told him (the buyer) to fly to Montréal, "right now." They all met with the buyer, who loved the bean bag chair, and decided on a manufacturer. The bean bag chair was made and then shown at the Winter Toronto Show where, unfortunately, it sat in a corner and got very little notice. A few weeks later Sears contacted Massey and said they would be willing to put the bean bag chair into the catalog but none of the others was willing to come up with the money to back the project and it died. In the Spring of 1971 Massey decided to take a job with Chrysler.

"My time at Chrysler as a parts picker gave me the push I needed to think about moving back into my own business," he said. He also learned a lot about nuts and bolts, two products that became a major part of many of his early furniture designs. It was at this time that Massey showed his second idea to Goldman, a KD sling back chair. "I brought the chair to Ted, hoping that this time we would get somewhere. We showed the chair at the Montréal show where it sold extremely well," he said. But as they were moving out of the space Goldman told Massey that he would not be able to make the chair. "He told me his production manager had advised him against it," Massey said.