This furniture maker pushes values-added.

• Author: Gautschi, Eric
• Position: PEOPLE - Mitchell Gold

Taylorsville-based The Mitchell Gold Co. isn't your ordinary furniture maker. While many companies in the industry have slashed employment, this one added about 100 jobs and increased revenue 15% in 2004 and will wrap up a 240,000-square-foot expansion in early 2005. Employee perks include child day care, a gym and an on-site chef.

And Mitchell Gold, chairman and CEO of the $100 million company, isn't your ordinary furniture executive. When he envisions a living room, he doesn't see just a family with a mom, a dad and kids. He also sees those with one parent. Or with two moms or two dads.

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Gold, 52, is not only gay but he is a director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest homosexual advocacy group. Bob Williams, the company's co-founder and president of design, is his partner. Their company, with about 700 employees, is the largest employer in Alexander County.

Gold, who was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, says his relationship with the community lacks the contentiousness one might expect in a county of about 33,000 where Republicans outnumber Democrats 2-to-1. "We talk about equal rights for everybody," he says. "We're not about the extreme."

His company ran print ads and billboards in Boston and New York during the presidential conventions advocating equal rights regardless of sexual orientation and urging people to register to vote. The New York ads included an open letter to President Bush, urging him to visit Taylorsville to see "real family values" of openness and acceptance.

The company's upscale sofas, ottomans, recliners and other pieces are sold in stores such as Restoration Hardware. They've also appeared on the sets of TV series Friends and Sex and the City.

A Trenton, N.J., native, Gold earned a...