Video: Guntown Based Furniture Maker Announces Major Expansion

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GUNTOWN, MISS. (WCBI) – A Northeast Mississippi furniture company announces a major expansion, bringing with it 500 jobs.

Joey Tarrant doesn’t hesitate when asked the main reason for HM Richards success.

“Our employees mean a lot, we’re family, and let me tell you, they come in everyday, they work hard,” Tarrant said.

Those employees took a quick break to watch Tarrant, Governor Phil Bryant and other economic and elected leaders break ground Monday on the company’s ninth expansion in 18 years.

The 280,000  square foot expansion will eventually add up to six upholstery lines and 500 more team members over several years.

“The last two to three years we’ve seen a tremendous increase , we were out of capacity, quite frankly, we were running 13 upholstery lines right now and we had no place to expand,” Tarrant said.

Roughly half of the furniture made by nearly 1000 HM Richards employees winds up in “Rooms to Go” stores across the southeast.

The CEO of “Rooms to Go” says the expansion can’t come too soon.

“I was telling the guys at HM, If we could build more we could sell more,” said Jeff Seaman, CEO of Rooms to Go.

Governor Phil Bryant believes the expansion is a testimony to a top notch workforce and a business friendly climate statewide.

“We’re not only competing with the rest of the United States we’re competing with China, Vietnam and we won this expansion, there were several other states across the southeast where this expansion could have easily gone and they chose Mississippi,” said Bryant.

Construction is set to start next month in this field on that expansion. A year from now, HM Richards employees will be working out of the new facility, shipping the company’s products throughout the United States and Canada.

HM Richards employees produce about 8,500 pieces of furniture weekly at the Guntown plant.