Moving furniture: Bruce Cochrane resurrected his family business because he believes manufacturing will come back from China.

• Author: Hodges, Vikki Broughton
• Position: FEATURE

Bruce Cochrane sits in his father's former office, surrounded by photos documenting his family's history. His great-great-grandfather turned wood into church pews. His great-grandfather opened a factory in Lincolnton that made fireplace mantels before focusing on oak and pine dining-room sets. By the late 1930s, it employed 50. When his father, Theo, became president around 1960, he introduced pieces crafted from cherry and the popular Threshers collection. In 1982, when the new factory opened, Cochrane Furniture Co.'s workforce topped 1,000. "It is not just about making fine furniture," his dad would say. "It is about the good people that make the fine furniture."

The family sold the business in 1996 to West Lafayette, Ind.-based Chromcraft Revington Inc., which over the next decade cut back the Lincolnton workforce as it moved jobs to China, joining droves of furniture makers chasing cheap labor. Between 2001 and 2005, the U.S. industry lost 230 plants and 55,800 jobs, according to The Furniture Wars: How America Lost a Fifty Billion Dollar Industry by Michael K. Dugan, a business professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory and former president of High Point-based Henredon Furniture Industries Inc. Lincolnton became a victim of that exodus. Twelve years after it bought Cochrane Furniture--the same year Theo Cochrane died Chromcraft Revington laid off the remaining workforce, shuttered the plant and sold off the machinery.

Bruce Cochrane, the company's president when it was sold, became a consultant, helping manufacturers source products in China and Vietnam. "It was almost like a drug. Everybody wanted to be a part of it. It was a crazy time in the furniture business. We lost a $50 billion industry in a short period of time." But by December 2010, he saw the landscape start to reverse. As China's economy expanded, the demand for workers increased. So did wages, from 30-to-50 cents an hour to almost $3.60 an hour. Months-long delivery times and rising shipping rates chipped away at shrinking margins. The focus on cheap labor overlooked the cost of inventory, quality and service. These changes have led companies to question the benefits of offshoring and explore what's called "reshoring." The Boston Consulting Group projects seven industries, including furniture, will start bringing jobs back from China by 2015. U.S. companies are looking at ways to replace 20% of their overseas manufacturing workforce between 2012 and 2014, according to The...