Buck starts here: Spruce Pine's Bailey family expands beyond its trademark stoves.

• Author: Price, Courtney
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Claudia Bailey Honeycutt practically grew up in the Buck Stove plant in Spruce Pine, where her father began manufacturing wood-burning stoves in 1976, the year she was born. "You know, I just really cut my teeth on it," says Honeycutt, the company's sales and marketing director. "Dad would bring us out here on Saturday mornings, and he'd put us up on the forklift, ride us back to the vending machine and get us a Sunkist and a Honey Bun."

Robert Bailey, CEO of New Buck Corp., had been running an appliance-repair business in Spruce Pine since 1971 with a partner, Alvin Barrier, when Carroll Buckner asked them to sell his new brand of stoves. Bailey and Barrier became the first dealers of Buck Stove, then based in Asheville, when the energy crisis of the 1970s prompted people to seek cheaper ways to heat their homes. The duo soon abandoned appliances altogether, taking over the stove manufacturing. "We were just young and crazy and eager," says Bailey, who bought out his partner in 1984 and then Buckner in 2008.

Buck Stove now sells more than 10,000 stoves and 3,000 fire pits annually, produced in Spruce Pine and distributed in every state. Stoves, some of weighing as much as 600 pounds, are priced at $1,000 to $2,700, while fire pits range from $100 to $900. The company declines to disclose financial results. Many of the 145 employees have been around for decades. Honeycutt's youngest brother runs the laser cutting machine in the plant. "For me to say we're a family business, I would have to include the workers too," she says. "We have quite a few people who are at that 30-year mark." But the company has made a lot of changes in 30 years, and while the stoves are sturdy, the housing market hasn't been. To counteract reduced demand for wood-burners, Buck Stove has added stoves fueled by natural gas and, three years ago, partnered with St. Croix Stoves, produced by Waco, Neb.-based Even Temp Inc., to make pellet stoves. The de cline in sales has forced Bailey to start thinking about the future and pushed them to diversify, Honeycutt says. They've also won metal-fabrication contracts with companies including St. Louis-based Panera...