Strattner Brothers
“When we took over this venture we skipped a lot of intermediary steps.”
Peter Strattner
The economic lessons the Strattner Brothers learned when they took over Turner & Cook in 1977 would make a messy and confusing case study in a business textbook. It had to be lived.
Paul and Peter were furniture crafters with a shop in Riverton Connecticut when cramped quarters forced them to look for facilities elsewhere. The Whip Shop seemed ideal. “We were dedicated to producing what we considered a high-quality line of furniture,” said Peter, explaining they were never really prepared to go into mass production when they took over the factory. Soon after they assumed ownership they realized they'd found themselves caught between economic reality and the Southfield community’s hopes that jobs could be maintained.
“Peter was a kind of dreamer, full of ideas that were exciting but difficult to execute,” said David Parson, a talented and experienced furniture craftsman who was the Strattners’ first employee. “Peter often talked about having a studio like Émile Gallé (the famed French art nouveau furniture maker), Paul was the one who really ran the operation. He was much more grounded and realistic about everything
“They hired me before there was anything really going on,” David continued, “so the first job I had was, trying to help streamline the Turner & Cook mallet business. The remaining Turner and Cook employees had done things a certain way for years and years. There was a lot of resistance to making any kind of changes.” David finally succeeded in getting the production modernized. The leather mallets were a solid income producer so this business continued until the brothers sold.
The Strattners’ initial idea was to continue manufacturing the few remaining Turner and Cook products, both to keep local jobs and to generate some profit as they developed their furniture line. It was not to be. At that time of the sale, Turner & Cook had still employed about 10 people. It thrived for a time under the brothers' ownership. But sales continued to decline. Rawhide quality was deteriorating due to the hormone feeding by stock farmers. Fiberglass was replacing rawhide and whips, and nylon superseding rawhide. This forced the brothers to completely rethink their business. Not many months later, they scaled way back, keeping the leather mallet business going, but selling off the other Turner & Cook lines, and began making furniture on a much-reduced scale. This too eventually did not work out.
The thing that ended it all was a big job for the nearby Butternut Ski Resort. “The owner, Channing Murdock, had just built a new lodge and really wanted to support Peter and Paul so he gave us the contract for 120 tables and 900 chairs,” said David. “We'd make a prototype, and he'd come up to the Whip Shop with his ski boots on and kick it around, then drop it out of a second-story window. That kind, of thing. (David. laughs.) So we ended up making all this furniture. And everything is still there as far as I know. This is like 45 years ago.”
They were clearly in over their heads. At the end of it, the demands of fulfilling the Butternut contract and not having time to line up new work put them out of business. To the Strattners’ credit, they did not declare bankruptcy. Instead, they continued working and were able to generate enough money to pay off all their creditors.“It was all a crazy learning experience,” said Paul, “but we caught it in time” Still, it was the end and they needed to sell the factory.
Timing came to the rescue in the form of Kathleen and Dek Tillett, Peter Strattner’s closest friends. The Tillets, who owned a successful hand-screened fabric business to the design trade were forced to move out of their facility in Housatonic. They needed space for their 100’ long screening tables. Their options were few and the Whip Shop was perfect. The Tillets’ Green River River Works Fabrics took over the facility in 1983.
In the aftermath, the Strattner brothers looked upon their business venture positively, admitting that many times they were somewhat overwhelmed by being responsible for so many workers. “There were many hidden expenses which surfaced when we got bigger,” said Paul. “As someone pointed out to us, a normal business goes from basement to barn to shop to factory. When we took over this venture we skipped a lot of intermediary steps.”
Carrying on the Turner & Cook Tradition.
The brothers had fallen in love with the rambling old frame factory building and its history. Even as business declined, they enthusiastically gave tours explaining how the whip cores and other leather products were made. Because they continued those businesses when they first took over the property, they are a link to a tradition begun in 1792 by Issac Turner.