Courtesy Lucia Landa Design
Before and after: A settee is redesigned in a denim fabric featuring six colors.
“No one tells you in high school that you should be an upholsterer,” says Rachel Fletcher, a St. Louis native who worked in media marketing before making the switch to upholstery. “They always tell you to be a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer.”
Three years ago Fletcher, who now owns Knox Upholstery in Knoxville, Tennessee, founded The National Upholstery Association to create more awareness about the trade. “We felt like the upholstery world needed something, because there just wasn’t anything there,” she says.
The future success of the upholstery business hinges on attracting the next generation of craftspeople, people like Fletcher, who are passionate and committed to the craft. But some shops in St. Louis and beyond say it’s difficult to find workers who want to make a go of it.
Courtesy Knox Upholstery
Rachel Fletcher, founder of The National Upholstery Association.
Wittich Upholstery's Jim Wittich has been trying to fill a drapery maker position for months, but most of the calls to his three-person shop are from DIY types, people interested in learning about how to reupholster, so they can work on their own pieces at home. “They’re not looking to do it as a business or as a job—God forbid we call it a career,” he says.
According to Wittich, whose grandfather founded the St. Louis shop in 1964, training the right people is key to growing the business, and that takes time. It’s not practical to entrust someone who’s just starting out with a $300 per yard fabric, for instance, he says. “Unfortunately, the people who can do it well are darn near retirement age already,” says Wittich.
Before purchasing Zollinger Furniture Co., an upholstery firm dating back to 1890, Brett Wissel ran St. Louis Restoration for 13 years. “Five years ago, 10 years ago, no customer ever called and said, ‘Oh, I have this wonderful relationship with my upholster, but they’re closing their shop, and I need someone to do this project.’ Now, I get that call a handful of times a week,” he says.
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Courtesy Knox Upholstery
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Courtesy Lucia Landa Design
A chair is modernized with a faux leopard textile.
So, what’s going on? It’s impossible to pinpoint just one cause, but upholsterers with decades of experience point to a few issues.
“There’s a generation that doesn’t want to work with their hands or be mechanical in nature, and it kind of bothers me,” says Peacock Upholstery’s Steve Hasenbeck, an upholsterer for 54 years. The absence of an upholsterers’ union and the wages that are guaranteed with membership in a union is another. Apprenticeship programs are also difficult to find. Hasenbeck remembers a time when his father, from whom he learned the intricacies of the trade, hired veterans through a government program that helped pay for their training. “Nowadays, you almost need to train somebody at a severe loss in business, and that is the problem,” he says.
But it’s not all bleak. As an administrator of a Facebook group with more than 3,000 members, Fletcher sees firsthand the sharing of ideas, tips, and techniques online. This new community of upholstery-minded craftspeople is composed mostly of women, which Fletcher views as the industry’s vanguard. While many of the inquiries that she receives from prospective employees are from people without formal upholstery experience, she says, the fact that they dabble in the trade is a start. “It’s perfect because they’re willing to learn, and they’re not set in their ways,” she says. "We can get them up to snuff for how I like to do things."
Lucía Landa, who runs Lucía Landa Design in Ferguson, specializes in the restoration and modification of Mexican Colonial and Mission Style furniture, which she sells to homeowners and collectors across the country. Similar to Fletcher, Landa is a member of several Facebook groups, which have proven valuable sources for scouting new employees to her shop. One group in particular, “Hispanics in St. Louis,” has been indispensable, she says. Like Fletcher, Landa has had success hiring people who either know how to upholster or don’t know much about it but are committed to learning. A current employee, for instance, worked as an apprentice in his home country and, with some mentoring, turned into one of the shop’s top performers. “I am self-taught, but two of [my employees] have gone to school in their home countries to learn the craft,” says Landa. “They know a lot more than me, but in the details of having something that is high quality, that is the thing that I am always here for.”
Wissel advocates for teaching clients about the benefits of hiring a skilled upholsterer, rather than hiring someone who's doing the work as a side job without training. “Any skilled trade that is a specialty niche tends to go unnoticed when it’s there, and then suddenly it becomes a crisis when it’s not there to serve demand,” he says. “As a client base, if you’re constantly going for the most economic option, you have to realize the message that you’re sending.”
During the height of the pandemic, upholsterers were busier than ever as homeowners looked around their homes and decided to take action, updating a sofa with new fabric or having new cushions sewn for their outdoor furniture. Most local shops kept long wait lists, some extending to 16 weeks or more to complete a job. It’s a good problem to have, but it also puts pressure on shop owners to find workers who see a long-term career in the trade.
“You don’t just slap some fabric on furniture and send it out the door,” Fletcher says of mastering the art of upholstery. “It takes a lot of skill.”
