Aransas Pass – In the Coastal Bend of the Lone Star State, life revolves around the sea. Fishing, fun in the sun, and sampling some gulf coast seafood is what most folks do in this part of the state. But Herb Lancaster spends his time working for the land lovers of Port Aransas and beyond, creating beautiful furniture from all sorts of wood. “I’m not going to put my name on something if it’s not going to last longer than I am,” said Lancaster.
This passion for putting together pieces of furniture that stand the test of time came to Herb over time as kid. “My Swedish grandfather used to always take over our garage when he visited, and so I as little kid, got to watch him making things and was always enamored by that,” said Lancaster.
Lancaster opened his store and workshop in Aransas Pass in the late 2000’s, and whenever the tourists happen to stop by, he knows how to get the guys interested in coming in. “I never intended to have where I manufacture be where I retail,” said Lancaster. “It seems a little unorthodox, but I’ll tell you, it’s so funny when people are leaving Port Aransas because they’re filling up at the gas station next door, the wife sees there’s something interesting there, and while he’s fueling the camper or the boat or whatever, she’ll come over here. And she’s like, ‘Oh, I just love this. It’s wonderful. Anyway, I’m going to go get my husband.’ And so he comes in and he is like, ‘I’m ready to go home,’ or, ‘I’m ready to go have a beer, go fishing.’ He does not want to walk through that door, but when I get him that far and he sees the shop floor, he is like, ‘Oh, wow, look at that. They’re actually building it here.’”
Before Lancaster had his shop in Aransas Pass where he could build his tables, chairs and consoles, he was an extremely successful retail furniture manufacturer, and it all started with Dillard’s Department Stores back in the late 80’s. “They wanted to be more like Nordstrom’s,” said Lancaster. “At that point, we’re like linoleum floors, glass case lines, drop ceilings, ugly stores, and they wanted to be more residential. They asked me to come to Little Rock and asked me if I could build antique reproductions, and things just went crazy. I had like three employees at that point. Within five years, I had a hundred employees.”
When you build furniture for a retailer to use in their stores, there isn’t much room to make a personalized impact, and Lancaster says that it takes a special skillset to create furniture that looks nice, but doesn’t distract from what it holds. “You’re not supposed to remember. You’re supposed to see the products,” said Lancaster. “That’s the skillset, it’s like a museum. You don’t go in to look at the displays. They have to be the highest quality and they have to function as intended and be durable because they’re in a public exposure, but that’s the art form of store fixturing is to see the product but appreciate the interiors. And so that’s what I did for 25 years.”
Lancaster’s future seemed as sturdy as the furniture that he built until everything came crashing down in 2008. His retail jobs were canceled and later outsourced to China. “In 2010, when I finally came out from underneath the crushing blow of having to let everybody go and dissolve my business, I reinvented myself here,” said Lancaster. “They knocked off my furniture in China, and I found this out and I’m still waiting on my world to fall back into place. That’s when I started saying, ‘I’m going to bring back Made in America.’”
Lancaster now leads his team in building pieces that are put together right here in the Lone Star State, and more importantly to him, in America. “I’m adamant about manufacturing in America because we may not need to, but young men and women today without skills are finding themselves in places that I wouldn’t consider productive or good for our future,” said Lancaster. “If even for strategic reasons, the government said, ‘It’s better to put people in jobs, skilled trade jobs, than it is prisons, the military, drug rehab, the streets,’ and that’s kind of the only other place they can go. Either that or play video games all day. I know that Wall Street and the concentration of capital says, ‘No, we want our factories over here,’ but there’s a price to pay and it’s more than the cheap goods and services we get. There’s no reason we can’t be prosperous and make things.”
When you look at the quality woodworking that Lancaster produces in his shop, you might assume that he only hires the most skilled and experienced workers that he possibly can. However, he believes that there’s a trait to look for in employees that’s more important than skill. “It starts with a willingness to work and show up,” said Lancaster. “Because things have changed so much in manufacturing, it’s easier for me to take someone with a good work ethic and a good attitude and then train them the way we do things.”
Business grew for Lancaster over the years but in 2017, he was dealt another blow when Hurricane Harvey hit the region. “Harvey was interesting in my life,” said Lancaster. “The water tower here in Aransas Pass fell on the factory and blew it up. You take a half million gallons of water, 200 feet in the air in a vessel and drop that on the ground, that’s a lot of energy, a lot of energy.”
The aftermath of Harvey made Herb look at furniture building in another perspective, and he vowed to not waste any wood. Today, nearly half of what he uses to build is either reclaimed or recovered from construction projects. “After watching all the massive, beautiful trees that were literally ground up and burned in the Esplanade on the Bypass 35 between Rockport and Aransas Pass, I said ‘That’s just a horrible waste. We can’t let that happen again,’” said Lancaster.
No matter what’s been thrown Lancaster’s way, he’s never sat on the bench. And he’ll continue to crank out his coastal furniture down on the bay, all while bringing back made in America. “There’s all the cliches that you can hear your grandfather say or whatever, and my favorite is adversity builds character, and I’m quite a character,” said Lancaster. “If you make a really good product and you’re honest with your pricing and it functions as intended, the business will come to you.”