User:Vchimpanzee/Lexington Furniture Industries

Lexington Furniture Industries Inc. is a furniture designer and manufacturer headquartered in Thomasville, North Carolina which does business as Lexington Home Brands. Its products include bedroom, dining room, living room, upholstery, home office, and indoor and outdoor furnishings. Showrooms are located in High Point, North Carolina and Las Vegas. Started in 1901 in Lexington, North Carolina, the company was called Dixie Furniture until 1987.

History
Dixie Furniture Plant 1 in Lexington, North Carolina started operations in 1901 and was expanded several times until it became a one million square foot facility on 31 acres, taking up nine city blocks. 516 people worked there when the decision was made to close the plant in 2003 due to its age, the company's practice of importing, and the difficulty of adapting a building that had many additions. Operations were consolidated at that time in 750,000-square-foot Plant 2. After layoffs resulting from the closing of Plant 1, Lexington had almost 1500 employees, down from 3200 three years earlier. The company also had an upholstery plant in Hildebran, North Carolina.

Masco agreed to sell its Home Furnishings Group, which included Lexington, in November 1995 for $1.1 billion. The company acquired the brands over a nine-year period. The buyer was a company formed by Morgan Stanley Capital Partners. On December 19, 2017, the former Plant 1 experienced the first of two fires that destroyed 160,000 square feet of the building. The city owned the building and had planned to redevelop the area, but the future of the building was uncertain.