Gold Standard

Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams started their furniture company from scratch in 1989 with blueprints for a couple of dining-room sets -- and a strategic blueprint for how they could appeal to customers whose needs were not being met by the furniture establishment. "We were trying to attract the kind of customer who buys clothes at Banana Republic and J. Crew," says Gold, 49. "When customers left those stores and went to buy furniture, we wanted to be the brand that they turned to."

Eleven years later, that blueprint has become a fast-growing company that is a force in the furniture world -- and has left an imprint on American lifestyles. With revenues of $65 million, the Mitchell Gold Co., based in Taylorsville, North Carolina, may be the biggest trendsetter among manufacturers in American interiors today. It supplies more upholstered goods to Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware -- the flagship retailers of baby-boomer design sensibilities -- than any other manufacturer. Stay at one of the much-celebrated W hotels, and chances are you'll see the company's wares in the lobby or in your room. Starbucks recently outfitted one of its concept stores with Mitchell Gold furniture. And the company's chairs and sofas are all over some of the highest-rated shows on television, including Ally McBeal and Friends.

In short, the Mitchell Gold Co. has become a force for change in an industry that seems hopelessly out-of-date. The furniture business is notorious for offering customers a dizzying array of mediocre choices -- and then expecting them to wait months for their selections to arrive. No wonder the industry attracted so much attention from venture capitalists and dotcom entrepreneurs who vowed to use the Internet to do for buying sofas what Amazon.com did for buying books and Dell did for buying personal computers.

Gold and Williams didn't bet on the power of the Net (fortunately, in retrospect) to make their mark. Instead, they bet on the power of good design. They helped spur the revival of the slipcovered sofa, which is now a huge business for the Mitchell Gold Co. and a huge product category for the entire furniture industry. Gold and Williams are also largely responsible for the return of the leather club chair -- now a staple at Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware stores across the country.

But well-crafted design principles don't apply just to the company's products. Gold and Williams have found ways to redesign the entire furniture game. They created a series of policies and programs to make sure that customers wouldn't wait months for their orders. They chose to work with fast-growing retailers who were rethinking how to sell furnishings, and they steered clear of most traditional home stores. They shook up the industry with provocative ad campaigns and unique ways of putting their sales staff to work.

Finally, they had faith in their customers. "I was watching a couple get married on the Today show recently," Gold recalls. "The viewers had picked out everything for them, from their honeymoon destination to their clothes. It was great to see how the taste level of the general public has improved -- well beyond the taste levels of traditional furniture retailers. The reason why Pottery Barn is succeeding is because it's putting out good taste at a reasonable price." The same can be said of the Mitchell Gold Co. itself.

Elements of (Relaxed) Style

The Mitchell Gold Co. was built on a philosophy that its founders have dubbed "relaxed design." By targeting customers who wear clothes from Banana Republic or J. Crew, Gold and Williams recognized from the outset that in their business, style is substance. "Part of what they're selling is fashion," says Rob Pitt, 50, a furniture product manager at Crate and Barrel. Sure enough, most of the Mitchell Gold line is marked by the same clean lines, tasteful colors, and subtle patterns that show up in the clothes that its target customers wear.

But Gold and Williams are about more than product styles. They are about lifestyles. "In this business, you have to be thinking about what people's living habits are now and what their aspirations are for how they want to live their lives in the future," Gold says. In the 1980s, Williams, now 39, worked as an art director for a magazine, as well as in advertising, while Gold worked for a big furniture company. The pair, who were partners in life before they were partners in business, sensed that American lifestyles were changing -- and that furniture manufacturers and retailers were not.

"At the time, there was a big shift toward people wanting to be more comfortable and relaxed," Gold explains. "But no one was taking that attitude and applying it to home furnishings. So people ended up with two kinds of furniture in their homes. There was the living-room kind, which was formal and dressy. And there was the family-room kind, which was scratchy and not very attractive."