Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National Business Furniture


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:39, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

National Business Furniture

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Non-notable company, some local coverage but no depth of coverage. As a result, fails WP:GNG and WP:CORP. Joseph2302 (talk) 23:41, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete Clearly not notable. A7 would have taken care of it.  DGG ( talk ) 09:32, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as perhaps simply none of this suggests better notability. SwisterTwister   talk  18:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions.  SwisterTwister   talk  18:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Wisconsin-related deletion discussions.  SwisterTwister   talk  18:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions.  SwisterTwister   talk  18:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete Fails WP:ORG and WP:SIGCOV .Clearly Promotional.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 23:06, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Keep per the significant coverage in reliable sources.  The article's introduction: "For many years, the green light on a traffic signal inside National Business Furniture's downtown offices has meant its best suppliers are visiting. Now the privately owned mail-order furniture distributor has given the green light to something entirely different: selling the Milwaukee company. George and Julie Mosher started National Business Furniture in 1972 with a $50,000 bank loan. Through internal growth and acquisitions, they've turned it into a company with 120 employees projecting $130 million of sales and about $10 million in profits this year. In July, they hired Gruppo Levy, a New York investment banking firm that specializes in advising and selling catalog-related businesses." The article further notes: "National Business Furniture sells desks, chairs, file cabinets and other office equipment, along with some home furniture through its catalog and over the Internet. It has become what Mosher says is the biggest business-to-business mail-order furniture company in the country by developing ways to measure the company's vendors, hiring the right people, and figuring out how to best satisfy its 450,000 customers." This 958-word article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin, provides substantial coverage of the subject.  The article's introduction: "Ten years ago, a banker took a chance on George and Julie Mosher. The bet turned out well. Now, the Moshers are trying to keep that risk-taking tradition alive. The banker was Roger G. Dirksen. He met the Moshers at a birthday party in Whitefish Bay in 1975. The party was for Moshers' 5-year-old daughter Karen. Dirksen's daughter was a guest.  At the time, George Mosher, who holds an MBA from Harvard University, was the leader, and one-third owner of the Business and Institutional Furniture Co. in Milwaukee. His partnership in the company had cost him $8,000." The article further notes: "Since then, with little recourse to additional borrowing from the Associated Commerce Bank, of which Dirksen is now president, Mosher has built National Business Furniture, the company he and his wife started, to $14 million a year in sales. The company has offices in Atlanta and Los Angeles as well as Milwaukee. It employes about 25 people who sell business furniture by means of a catalog and the telephone. It has been so successful, indeed, that the Moshers have been able to buy two other furniture companies - the Alfax Manufacturing Co., New York City, for $300,000 and the Office Furniture Center, Waltham, Mass., for $700,000."  The article notes: "During the past 30 years, Milwaukee-based National Business Furniture has sold furniture exclusively to midsize businesses, schools, and churches. Now the $110 million cataloger is reaching out to consumers as well, via its Furniture Online Website. National Business Furniture mails three business-to-business titles: the eponymous flagship catalog; Alfax Furniture, which sells to schools and universities; and church furniture title Dallas Midwest. Each catalog has an accompanying URL. The company acquired the Furniture Online URL in June 2001 when it bought OfficeFurniture.com and has spent two years tinkering with the business. Furniture Online carries about 4,000 SKUs, including entertainment centers, bedroom furniture, and futons. Finding products for the consumer segment wasn’t a problem, says founder/president/CEO George Mosher. Because of the company’s volume, National Business Furniture already had relationships with about 150 furniture manufacturers. The cataloger approached some of its key vendors at trade shows about buying consumer furniture from them."   The article notes: "National Business Furniture, with annual sales approaching $150 million, is a longtime industry player. The company was founded in 1975 by George and Julie Mosher, who sold it in 2006 to TAKKT AG, a German corporation. It has 150 employees, including 85 in Milwaukee. Most of those local employees are at the company's headquarters and call center, at the City Center at 735 building, 735 N. Water St."</li> <li> The article notes: "National Business Furniture, a supplier of office furniture to companies and consumers, relies on sales through a procurement network to grow sales among an increasing number of corporate buyers. National Business Furniture, a Milwaukee-based direct marketer of office furniture with annual sales of more than $100 million, is a big believer in using a commercial network to grow its business-to-business e-commerce operation, says Brady Seiberlich, manager of information technology, electronic procurement and development. With connectivity through Ariba Inc., a unit of SAP AG that links corporate buyers and sellers using standardized Internet technology, National Business Furniture, or NBF, is able to directly connect with a growing list of 20 large customers, Seiberlich says." From https://www.internetretailer.com/about/: "Internet Retailer Magazine was launched in March 1999 by Faulkner & Gray, a unit of Thomson Reuters. It was purchased in 2000 by F&G CEO Jack Love and some members of his management team, who left Thomson to form Vertical Web Media."</li> </ol>There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow National Business Furniture to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2016 (UTC) </li></ul>
 * National Business Furniture received significant coverage in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin, in 1985, 2005, and 2014. It received significant coverage in the magazine Multichannel Merchant. It has also received significant coverage in Internet Retailer, a magazine created by Thomson Reuters's Faulkner & Gray division, which in 2000 sold it to the F&G's management team. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, National Business Furniture in 2005 had 400,000 customers. In 2014, it had $150 million in sales and is a "longtime industry player". Cunard (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete as lacking significant independent coverage, plus concerns of promotional activity. Cunard: the pieces you point out above are churnalism, not independent coverage. Guy (Help!) 11:30, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. Hello, Cunard.  It seems you had a productive January 1st, finding sources for quite a few business-related article.  But I'm not seeing what the cites here are adding to the discussion.  A company in Milwaukee gets some write-ups in a Milwaukee newspaper -- that hardly seems noteworthy (and, by the way, one of those articles is about the founder, not the company itself).  As for the trade-press cites, it's all 'inside baseball' stuff.  We are told that a catalog distributor is expanding its on-line presence -- that's true of virtually every reseller today.  We also learn that the company opened some distribution centers and is looking into a new procurement strategy.  None of this is encyclopedic.
 * It might be relevant to note that this article was largely the work of a single-purpose account -- TerryAHull, who appears to be the commercial writer whose web page is here.
 * Two more points. First, this company is owned by K+K America, which doesn't have an article.  The parent of the parent does have an article, but on the German wikipedia, not the English one (that article is here).  To get an English-language article, you need to go to the parent of the parent of the parent, which is Franz Haniel & Cie..  This, too, is the work of a single-purpose account, not only for the English article but the original German-language article, as well.  And there's no point in redirecting the instant article to the Haniel article, because the instant company isn't mentioned there.
 * Second, as to the notion that the subject is a "longtime industry player", the subject company is only about 40 years old. I grew up in a neighborhood that had grocery stores that were longer-lived than that.
 * I expect that you and I will simply disagree about the notability of this company. I'm still interested in hearing what you think of these comments.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 22:30, 6 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.