Amish Furniture Factory sells living room, dining room and bedroom furniture made by the Amish communities of Indiana and Ohio, all made and sourced in the USA and built to last.
The image that many people have of the Amish community is of a rural people who are not integrated into the everyday life of most Americans. We see the Amish as a people who do not use modern technology or many of the products that the rest of the world enjoys.
But when it comes to the furniture business, the Amish are in a much larger trade.
If you’ve ever shopped for high-end, top-quality furniture, you’ve likely seen the beautiful wooden furniture produced in the woodworking shops of the many Old Order Amish churches throughout the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. While some communities have showrooms of finely crafted wooden furniture, these are not many, and buying from rural retailers can often be a time-consuming and logistically frustrating experience.
it is Amish Furniture Factory Fits into the equation: This is a website that sells thousands of expertly handcrafted pieces for bedrooms, dining rooms, and living rooms.
The important thing about Amish furniture is that you can be sure it is made in America.
Toby Dimmitt is co-owner of Amish Furniture Factory Business and Brokerage, which was founded in 2008 and now features over 7,000 pieces of fine wooden furniture on its e-commerce website.
Dimmitt and his partner Donald Schmidt came up with the idea to sell Amish furniture after Schmidt visited Fairfield, Iowa, and began talking to furniture makers in the local Amish community. With the help of the Iowa Amish community, Dimmitt and Schmidt began networking with other Amish settlements in Indiana and Ohio.
“The project started in northern Indiana, where there is a large community of Amish workshops and builders,” Dimmitt says, “They are all independent and over time they have developed a network. It was my job to collect all this data, along with photos of the furniture, and put it on the website.”
Amish Furniture Factory offers such a wide selection of unique Amish furniture that Dimmit and Schmit closed their Iowa showroom and now do all of their retail business online, as print catalogs would be too large and cumbersome for consumers to browse.
“We currently have about 40 builders and work throughout the Amish community in northern Indiana and Ohio,” Dimmitt said, “and we plan to expand into Pennsylvania in the next few years.”
“It’s really interesting to learn about the Amish people, their way of working and their culture. They all live in the countryside on fairly large tracts of land. The Amish have very limited access to technology. It depends on the local bishop to decide what is appropriate for their actual community.”
“Almost all of the businesses don’t have access to the internet, so we saw an opportunity to represent them online and sell a variety of builders’ products to help them grow their retail sales.”
Each piece is available in several variations, and the website directs customers to choose the wood type and color stain.
“We offer furniture made from just about every type of domestic wood,” Dimmitt says. “The most popular wood type is maple, especially brown maple. And, of course, oak is a big seller. Red oak is probably the most popular and is well known as a very durable hardwood. We also carry straight-grained white oak, which is cut differently and is more expensive.”
Other popular woods include cherry, hickory, walnut, and several other types of wood that are rarely purchased.
Each region of Amish Country sources its wood from slightly different areas, but it’s all domestic, sustainably harvested wood, and most of it comes from New England and parts of the Midwest.
“Most of the mills that we get our hardwood from are Amish-owned as well,” Dimmitt says, “It’s all renewable, so they plant new trees every year and cut down all the old ones.”
Completing the Amish-run furniture supply chain are the truck drivers who deliver the furniture you purchase to your doorstep.
“They have their own trucking business and the furniture is wrapped in blankets and shipped out,” Dimmitt said. “The drivers that specialize in this blanket-wrapped delivery service are from the Amish community. They’re ex-Amish, they’re people that decided to leave their Amish group or their church. They left the Amish group so now they can drive, but they know everyone in the community and all the builders, and now they can start hauling furniture all over the country.”
Single pieces or sets of Amish furniture tend to be more expensive than those sold at big-box retail chains: Small dining tables can cost between $1,500 and $2,000, while larger tables with chairs are usually in the $5,000 to $6,000 range.
“They’re expensive, but they last a lifetime,” Dimmitt says. “They’re also handy because they can be passed on or potentially recycled. If you have the same piece 30 or 40 years from now and it’s damaged and doesn’t look as good, you can just bring it back to our workshop or contact us again and we can polish it up, refinish it and restore it to like-new condition.”
“The great thing about this furniture is that it doesn’t have to be thrown away. Because this work has been going on for so long and all the skills have been passed down through the generations, this heirloom piece is destined to be passed down too.”
“Everyone else is moving towards a future of cheap, quick-fix imported or Chinese-made furniture that can be thrown away if it breaks or gets damaged. Buy Amish furniture and you’ll likely never have to replace it.”
