Bouncing Back
Douglas Dimes has revived his Windsor chair shop with a new way of doing business.
D.R. Dimes and Co. in Pittsfield, N.H., is a custom Windsor chair shop that was once a large furniture manufacturer under the same name. Douglas (Partridge) Dimes, the shop’s second-generation owner, had to make the difficult decision to close the original company in 2018 to avoid bankruptcy. Instead of accepting defeat, he used his entrepreneurial spirit and Yankee ingenuity to rebound the following year with a new approach.
“Traditionally, we always did our business wholesale. But when I built the new shop, I realized that I’m not going to be efficient enough and I’m not going to have enough margin to do it wholesale. Fortunately, I’m able to market through my website and it’s working out. I make about 500 chairs a year. That’s quite a bit for one guy,” says Dimes.
A Legacy Begins
Dimes’ late father, Douglas (Richard) Dimes, made his first chair in 1964.
“My father started in a basement in Kingston, N.H. He was quite young, maybe 23. Then my parents bought a house in Epping (N.H.), and he started making wooden chairs in the barn. He struggled for many years while doing other work full time,” says Dimes.
The chair making took off in 1976 with the promotion of a writing arm chair for the U.S. Bicentennial.
“He became really well known because of the Bicentennial,” says Dimes. “He was the only chairmaker around making museum-quality Windsor chairs. In those days he sold mostly to stores, antique dealers, that sort of stuff, and then in ’78, he built a house up in Northwood (N.H.) with a shop on the property. He worked for the Smithsonian Institute, Independence Hall, Old Sturbridge Village, and that just continued.”
By the mid ’80s, the shop was producing about 100 chairs a week and had over a dozen employees. It had demand for tables, cupboards and other furniture options, so a cabinet shop was added as a second division.
Joining his Dad
Dimes worked with his father throughout high school, then earned a bachelor’s degree from the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. He joined the family business full time in 1988 at 23 years old.
“I was the marketing director, sales manager, turner, carver and money collector. With a small business, you’ve got to do everything,” he says.
In 1990, the company’s name was changed to D.R. Dimes and Co.
“That was a big year. We became a licensed manufacturer for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. We did that for a year, but we had a little trouble in 1991. We had a five-alarm fire at the Northwood shop on July 9. I was in Bucks County selling furniture, and dad called me up and said to come home and that the shop was gone.
“My father was a very good businessman, excellent entrepreneur, didn’t owe any money, and had excellent insurance, so we made it through and built a new factory on the next lot over in Northwood. It was an 18,000-sq.-ft. building and worked out pretty well because we fixed all the mistakes we’d made with the first building.”
The new shop was also able to accommodate more equipment and as many as 36 employees to produce over 6,000 chairs a year.
By 2006, Dimes was named company president and chief designer, and in 2010, he bought the business and real estate from his father.
The Market Changed
As the new owner, Dimes had challenges ahead. He’d assumed a thriving business, but a vulnerable one that was subject to changing demand.
“We did real well for a while but the market changed. Customers weren’t buying as many Windsor chairs and tables and cupboards, and I was doing custom things for people. We did everything we could do.”
Dimes took on numerous special projects to make up for the lull in the furniture wholesale market. In 2011, he partnered with the Phillips Exeter Academy to become the exclusive maker of Harkness Tables worldwide. In 2015, the shop made 101 Senate Desks for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston. These were monumental projects, but not enough to turn the tide.
“By 2018, I was drawn down on my credit line. I knew that if I just kept going, I’d probably be in bankruptcy by the following year, and I didn’t want to be in bankruptcy. The problem with bankruptcy is the court and bank take control, and you don’t get to decide who gets paid and who doesn’t get paid. In the end, everybody got paid. I liquidated the business. It broke my heart.”
A Fresh Start
In January 2019, Dimes got a wakeup call from a friend.“He asked how I was, and I said, ‘terrible’. He told me to get over it. I said, ‘I can’t’. He said I had to, and he reminded me my son (Alexander, 21 at the time) was watching and I couldn’t just roll over. So, I started figuring out what to do.”
Knowing he would need a lot of capital to start a full-fledge cabinet shop, Dimes decided to focus on Windsor chairs. He purchased some used machines, rented a small space in Stratford, N.H., and began making chairs.
He broke ground on his current shop in 2021, an 1,800-sq.-ft. modern carriage barn with a walk-out basement. The building stands next to his home on a four-acre lot with a view of the Belknap Mountains.
Inside are dozens of Winsdor chair samples representing different styles and material options, and a hydraulic copy lathe that allows Dimes to produce legs and stiles in less than half the time it would take to do by hand.
Dimes orders his materials from several suppliers, including Irion Lumber in Wellsboro, Pa., Highland Hardwoods in Brentwood, N.H. and Keiver-Willard Lumber in Newburyport, Mass. He purchases pre-cut dowels ready for the copy lathe and some steam-bent parts.
A Steady Pace
Dimes has established a national clientele with a high concentration in the Northeast, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic regions. Most of his clients are individual homeowners, although he recently did a project for a Manhattan architect who ordered 42 armchairs and 24 settees for a synagogue in Palm Beach, Fla.
While he says it’s difficult to do it all by himself, and he misses the comradery of the crew he once had, Dimes doesn’t want to be responsible for employees at this stage of his career. He says the new venture is enough on his plate for the time being and wants to take things in stride. His father passed away in 2022 but got to see the business rebound.
“I was so depressed before I couldn’t even think straight. But with a lot of help from friends and having the right attitude, I was making chairs in my shop within ten months of closing my shop, and I hadn’t even planned for that.”
What’s in the shop
• Bignell chucking machine
• Delta radial drill press
• Bosch routers and laminate trimmers
• DeWalt cordless drills
• Dust Technologies 5-hp, two-bag dust collection system • Ecco No. 18 Pump Sander
• Hegner HDB200 lathe
• Hitachi compound miter saw
• Grizzly 19” & 14” band saws, 20” drill press, and 12 x 84” jointer
• JessEm router table
• Makita polisher/grinder
• Maxym Power Arm 24” x 60” CNC
• Powermatic 66 table saw and 20” planer
• Pro Edge Sharpening System by Robert Sorby
• Quincy 5-hp compressor
• Urpe hydraulic copy lathe with custom laser cut templates Whirlwind 212 upcut saw
Learn more at drdimes.com.
This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue.
