'Perfect storm' of pandemic, supply chain disruptions dooms Winnipeg's DeFehr Furniture

The owner of DeFehr Furniture is putting the final nails in the coffin of his once-thriving Winnipeg business.

A pillar of the city's furniture sector for more than 75 years, DeFehr Furniture will close its production facility this August, leaving 224 employees without a job.

Owner Andrew DeFehr said the pandemic wiped out his business and supply chain issues made parts hard to come by.

"It's kind of that perfect storm, where you have just too many things close together that led up to this happening," DeFehr said in an interview Thursday inside his company's boardroom. 

The day before, he broke the news of the business's demise to his employees. 

"It's not easy as an owner having to tell 200-some people that the business is shutting down," he said.

The company plans to offer support programs for those workers and will honour all existing obligations to its suppliers and customers, according to a company statement.

DeFehr Furniture was in the casegoods business, which refers to furniture built with interior compartments for storage, such as cabinets, bookshelves and dressers. 

Over the years, the business occasionally struggled with slim profit margins, but they started seeing success when they started serving the hospitality industry a decade ago.

That work evaporated once the pandemic hit. While business started to rebound, they were hit by supply chain disruptions. There were shortages of the raw materials they required, and the competition for those products was fierce.

In the last month, DeFehr shut down its plant for four days because it did not have handles.

"At some point, you just say, I don't know if I have enough gas in the tank to try one more time," he said.

"It's been an emotional kind of roller-coaster ride for the last, probably, six months to 12 months."

DeFehr Furniture was once a division of Palliser Furniture, until it was split off 18 years ago into a separate entity focused on casegoods.