A New Upholstery Association Wants to Unite and Rebuild the U.S. Industry
The American upholstery industry recently issued itself a call to action: Now is the time to unite and rebuild, or else… Part SOS, part call to arms, a new generation sought to preserve an industry that was left to perish when vocational upholstery programs closed their doors decades ago.
Enter the National Upholstery Association (NUA). Founded by eight professional women upholsterers from seven states, it launched in July 2019 with a mission of “working together to support and advance the field of professional upholstery.” The timing may be critical. Currently, seasoned upholsterers are in short supply. Shops can’t afford the time and resources necessary to provide intensive training. And newcomers can feel unwelcome as they are forced to fend for themselves with online tutorials and weekend workshops. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the furniture and auto upholstery industries employ 32,500 people, not including the self-employed. Small shops dominate the landscape, with high concentrations in California, Texas, and the Southeast.
I spoke with two different generations of upholsterers about their opinions of the newly launched NUA.
“With the schools disappearing, it’s about self-preservation,” said Dale Simon, an industry veteran and graduate of the Minneapolis Technical Institute’s upholstery program, who has over 30 years in the trade. “There’s value in connecting with others to keep up the quality of education, the professionalism.” The doors closed on the last formal upholstery training program in his state in 2000. Meanwhile, people now buy new furniture every five years so reupholstery has become a luxury, he tells me, as a pneumatic staple gun rings in the background. Simon’s greatest hope is that the NUA can perpetuate the prestige of the trade and promote it as an honorable thing to do: “It’s an intrinsic thing.”
For people trying to break into the trade, online communities proliferate but opportunities offline remain scarce.
I caught Kayla Fletcher, 33, by phone as she traveled home on BART. Fletcher is an upholstery student in San Francisco with a day job in Human Resources. She has spent her Saturday mornings for the last two years at the Evans Campus of the City College of San Francisco, working upstairs in their upholstery workshop. Historically, achieving the elite status of journeyman could take up to 6,000 hours, a daunting task for today’s students, who have to piece that path together on their own. Fletcher discovered NUA on social media where she frequently interacts with other female upholsterers. What excites her most about the new group is the prospect of finding a mentor or an apprenticeship. “I am not ready to jump out on my own, but I would like to upholster for a shop one day,” Fletcher said.
Rebuilding infrastructure and helping forge pathways to employment will be some of the NUA’s biggest challenges, but they also represent huge opportunities. Upholstery advocates believe a career in upholstery fits surprisingly well in a modern context: young people seek to align their careers with their values, legislative support against disposables is growing, and maker spaces and technology platforms are increasingly bridging skills gaps online and off.
This ancient trade could be on the verge of a comeback.
