Three generations. A North Carolina inheritance. A house we are making our own.
Drawn from our family papers.
Our family story
Before it was our work, it was our world.
Furniture has been our family’s work for three generations. It began with Clyde Hendricks, whose business encompassed Hendricks Furniture and sofa manufacturing through Chalet Incorporated. His son Larry carried that work forward through The Country Shop in Hickory and, later, Boyles. For Larry’s son Alex, the showrooms were a place to grow up—and where his own working life began.
Today, we are Alex and Lee Hendricks. Together, we have built a furniture house that draws on those generations of experience, with our own point of view. Here in North Carolina, we make American upholstery in close collaboration with interior designers, considering each piece through its proportions, comfort and smallest details.
Three generations of knowing how.
Our family story
The years that made us.
A shop, a showroom, a workroom. Each chapter has brought us closer to the furniture we make today.
Hendricks Furniture.
Our family’s life in furniture began with Clyde Hendricks. Through Hendricks Furniture and its sofa-manufacturing division, Chalet Incorporated, the first generation brought together the showroom and the workroom.
Making upholstery was part of our story from the beginning. That knowledge would pass from one generation to the next, shaping the furniture house we lead today.
An established shop. A new chapter.
The Country Shop was an established business when Larry arrived. Margaret Walton had begun it roughly twenty-five years earlier. In 1975, Clyde’s son, Larry, came to Hickory, purchased the shop and began a chapter of his own.
Larry remodeled the little English-style shop and introduced his approach with a personal invitation to visit. He signed it in his own name. The relationship with the customer was personal from the beginning.
In time, Clyde’s Hendricks Furniture and Larry’s Country Shop came together as Hendricks Furniture Group. The two businesses became part of one family enterprise.
Larry’s welcome and invitation · Our family papers
Hancock & Moore.
A life in furniture, beyond the showroom.
In 1981, Larry’s work brought him into fine upholstery as one of the original part-owners of Hancock & Moore. His experience extended across both sides of the business: the furniture offered in the showroom, and the work behind its making.
The early years
The showroom was part of growing up.
Larry’s son, Alex, grew up in the family showrooms and worked in them as a boy. Long before furniture became his profession, it was part of his everyday life: the people, the pieces and the conversations that kept the business moving.
That early familiarity became a working life. Alex would come to know furniture through retail, delivery and manufacturing, adding his own experience to the generations before him.
Alex, beside a Conover Chair truck.Among the fabric samples.
One shop became a wider world.
Larry acquired Boyles in 1988, bringing our family into a North Carolina furniture business founded in 1949 by Elwood Boyles and his son Buddy. A name with its own history became part of ours.
The Boyles years opened our world to more showrooms and more customers. At Hickory Furniture Mart, the name became part of a place devoted to furniture—a setting our family would come to know well.
Boyles at Hickory Furniture Mart · From an archived illustration
A familiar name. A larger chapter in our family’s life.
A home, imagined room by room.
In 1995, our new Boyles store in High Point brought together 82,000 square feet of furniture galleries. Each setting gave a piece its surroundings: a room in which to imagine it, and a way to see how it might live.
Larry led Boyles as president. The High Point opening was part of a growing network of stores, bringing the family’s furniture business to a wider audience.
Photograph: John Page / News & Record.
The scale changed. The name remained personal.
By the end of 2005, our retail business had grown to 32 stores, remaining entirely family-owned. Hendricks Furniture Group brought together Boyles and Norris stores, alongside retail locations representing Thomasville and Drexel Heritage.
Estimated furniture, bedding and accessory sales reached $275 million that year. Behind that figure were the places and people that made the business work: our headquarters, the distribution center, the showroom teams and the delivery company.
Estimated 2005 sales
$275 million
Stores at year’s end
32
Boyles at Hickory Furniture MartThe Boyles distribution center
Along the way
The journey mattered, too.
Our relationship with a piece of furniture did not end at the showroom door. Classic Moving & Storage was our delivery company—the part of our retail business that carried furniture on to its next setting.
Alex served as its president. His career was taking him beyond the showroom floor and into the operations that connected the wider business. Retail and delivery became two sides of his understanding of furniture.
Alex’s path also led into fine casegoods manufacturing, building a business around another side of furniture. His experience now reached across the showroom, delivery and manufacturing.
Those different chapters form part of what we bring to Hendricks today: a working knowledge of furniture, and an appreciation for the many decisions behind a finished piece.
A.B. Fitzgerald · From our family archive
A house takes shape.
By 2020, our work in Hickory centered on upholstery for interior designers and select retail partners, with customization by the inch. The piece itself was now at the center of the conversation.
Its proportion. Its comfort. The way a fabric meets a frame. Here in North Carolina, we could bring those decisions close to the skills of the workroom.
In our workroom today · North Carolina
Today
Our name on the work.
We founded Hendricks Fine Furniture together as husband and wife. Our family’s history is part of its foundation. The responsibility for what carries the name today is ours.
We begin with our own frames and work with designers to make eligible pieces personal: in their dimensions, comfort, materials and finishing details. Every request is considered with our workroom. Every conversation brings us back to the furniture.
Good furniture takes work. Three generations of knowing how.
