Where Tradition Meets Quality

Zuni, New Mexico · By David Seibert

Zuni Furniture Enterprises has a slightly different take on the bottom line than a typical business. For this company, while economic concerns are important, cultural principles also guide the work. Zuni Furniture Enterprises, located at Zuni Pueblo in northwest New Mexico, has been a contributing part of the local economy since the early 1990s. Employees at the company craft locally harvested wood into fine, hand-carved furniture. The wood comes from tree thinning projects in the area. This tree thinning reduces fuel buildup in the forests that can otherwise contribute to catastrophic forest fires.

Production and output aren’t the only priority at Zuni Furniture. Instead, says manager Sterling Tipton, local artists hand-paint culturally significant designs on the custom furniture in traditional colors schemes approved by the tribal council. Pale pine chairs, chests, and cabinets glow with brightly painted, eye-catching designs that resonate in Zuni culture. Each piece is signed and numbered by the artists. The personal investment and detail in every carefully crafted piece are reflected in the organization’s motto: “Where Tradition Meets Quality.”

The company strives to be smart with its resources. Wood scraps end up in the new BioMax 15 heating unit. The BioMax is an experimental “bio-powered” machine that transforms dry wood chips and other organic waste material into useful heat and electricity. This not only reduces overall waste for Zuni Furniture Enterprises, but provides the company with low-cost energy. The BioMax, on loan for testing from Colorado-based Community Power Corporation, can raise temperatures in the production building twenty degrees in about two hours. This considerably shortens drying times, especially in the winter when longer drying times can slow production to 40 percent capacity.

Perhaps the most important part of the Zuni Furniture Enterprises success story is the merging of cultural and economic concerns into a viable business. When Sterling Tipton, a native of Zuni, came to the job a few years ago, he brought with him ideas gleaned from years of international consulting work. Past approaches, grants, and local interest had been crucial to the enterprise in the past, but, as Sterling puts it, “one thing they couldn’t buy was business experience.”

Sterling is quick to note that Zuni Furniture Enterprises had been a locally run, functioning furniture producer before he arrived. But a pattern of government grants, too much emphasis on niche markets and tourist items, and a lack of personal investment hampered efforts at development and independence. “This is not a program,” Sterling notes. “It’s a business.” Typical grant-funded programs can be useful, but the performance of the business and the individual employees sometimes suffer, as do quality and sustainability. As many observers have noted, programs andgrants end eventually. The cycle of applying, receiving grants, and always looking to the next funding source creates a climate of instability and continuous dependence. Sterling would have none of it. He made immediate changes – and saw immediate results.

Some of those changes were details – albeit important details. “You got to protect your employees,” Sterling notes, as he points to the fans that pull paint fumes out of the work area. A new paint room and extensive ventilation systems are only two of the simple but vital measures that at once improve both workplace quality and productivity.

“Much of the problem in linking the business and cultural worlds arises from misunderstandings of local cultural ways,” Sterling explains, “but this does not need to be the case.” He plans to continue this work for the long term and has inspired others to believe in his philosophy. The company already has outlets in Tennessee, Seattle, and Albuquerque, and it plans to enter the market at Santa Fe – but not with tourist items. Products for tourists are typically seasonal, small-scale, and appeal to a market that is too often “here and gone.” Like grants that can build dependency rather than self-sufficiency, the tourist market can simply “teach people to jump through hoops,”says Sterling.

Sterling strives for a process and products that combine economic success and cultural traditions and values. While the cultural dimensions of this business remain foremost in his mind at all times, his approach is to design and operate “the best furniture company – period.” At the same time, he wants people to acknowledge that the operation is “native owned,” and that these domains need not remain separated, either in the minds of Zunis or outsiders. As Sterling says with a smile, “It’s about economic development right here – and I’m gonna be here for a while.”

___________________

This is one of many stories from the Four Corners region that were printed in A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country, edited by Peter Friederici and Rose Houk. This book was a project of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University and Renewing the Countryside, with assistance from the Museum of Northern Arizona. A New Plateau can be purchased at the Renewing the Countryside online bookstore or the Northern Arizona University bookstore, or request it at your local bookstore.