Southern Aluminum of Magnolia has a place for everyone at the table.
SA manufactures tables, including heavy-duty picnic tables and lightweight tables that don’t require tablecloths even in settings like conference rooms and banquet halls.
“We’re proud to say that we are USA-made quality furniture,” said Chief Brand Officer Andrew Moffett. “And the linenless — I call it linenless event furniture — really spans the gamut of typical meeting tables that you might see in a hotel meeting space, in training centers, things of that nature.”
The company dates to 1978, when founder Charles Taylor began making aluminum picnic tables.
The first featured product, a table called the Southern Piknik, was followed by other innovative furniture, all made in a 73,000-SF facility that employs 134, plus six more in other states. SA declined to disclose its annual revenue.
In 2018, Taylor’s son Mark sold the company for an undisclosed price to a private investment group led by J.H. Whitney & Co. of New Canaan, Connecticut. Mark Taylor remains a director, and longtime CFO Allison Schultz became president and CEO.
Southern Aluminum caters to several markets and has customers all over the country and in some parts of Canada and Latin America.
The company’s largest markets are hospitality, government, education and health care, but its products are also appropriate for any organization that needs tables — senior living centers, religious organizations, etc.
“They can pick and choose what they want, and that’s why we’ve got a pretty broad spectrum of products for customers to buy from. That’s what allows us to have these diversified markets,” Moffett said.
The Southern Aluminum brand prides itself on staying true to its roots in southern Arkansas. Nearly everything from the talent to the material is sourced at a local level and the products are produced through a combination of craftsmanship and automation.
That story is one thing that attracts customers, said Moffett, who was introduced to SA when he was an event planning executive with Marriott International.
When the pandemic shuttered hotels in 2020, Moffett took a job with the company that impressed him as a vendor.
“We talk to a lot of customers that don’t really believe that our product is coming out of a town of 11,000 people,” he said, “and I was one of those as a customer. And I came here for the first time in 2016 to visit the facility. And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I mean, this is amazing.
“The fact that we are not sourcing or having things made overseas is very impressive and I contrast that with the other businesses that we compete against,” Moffett said.
The company tries to be environmentally friendly. SA’s main source material, aluminum, is highly resourced and recyclable. Schultz, who was CFO until the sale, ensures that all equipment is up to date, using less power, saving electricity and water usage. They also implement sustainability within the offices, reusing and recycling various materials.
Southern Aluminum plans to continue innovating. “We are really exploring everything outdoors,” Moffett said. To accommodate consumer demand to sit outside, SA plans to release a new line of picnic tables this fall.
“What does that aluminum become outside of a typical meeting table? That’s what we really want — to get inventive with our designs and our ideas and deliver something … to people where they say, ‘Well, I can’t believe I lived without this for so many years.’”
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