Four Hands Expands Rapidly Growing Furniture Import Business Is Moving Its Austin Headquarters and Doubling Its Square Footage

Furniture World Magazine

Four Hands finalized a deal this month to take a 70,000-square-foot warehouse and office at 2090 Woodward St. in South Austin. The deal will extricate Four Hands from its existing, 30,000-square-foot warehouse at 921 Reinli Street in North Central Austin and give it room to grow. Under a refinish designed by Austin's award winning Susman Tisdale Gayle Architects Inc., Four Hands' new home will provide 8,000 square feet of offices, a 15,000-square-foot showroom, warehouse storage and a large staging area. About 20,000 square feet of the warehouse will have racks extending to the 30-foot-high ceiling. Brett Hatton, president and CEO of Four Hands, says the showroom will incorporate design elements adapted from Four Hands' showrooms in Dallas and North Carolina. The showroom will feature distressed, stained concrete floors and high black-painted ceilings with suspended track lighting to best present Four Hands products. "This gives us an opportunity to really create an environment here in Austin where we can bring our wholesale customers in and show them our ideal showroom setup," Hatton says. The new free-standing building will offer the company a greater opportunity to stand out. The close proximity to Ben White Boulevard also gives Four Hands an opportunity to install a sign visible from that busy roadway. Founded in 1996, Four Hands continues to attract national attention with its business success. The company has earned accolades by Inc Magazine, as one of America's entrepreneurial growth leaders on the Inc 500 list for several consecutive years, and one of the "Top 100 Fastest Growing Inner City Companies." In addition they have been recognized annually as one of the "Fifty Fastest Growing Companies in Austin," by the Austin Business Journal since 2000. The company reported sales of $4.25 million in 1999, $7 million in 2000, $8.2 million in 2001 and $11.7 million in 2002. In addition to its Austin headquarters, Four Hands has showrooms in Atlanta, Dallas and High Point, N.C. The company employs 35 people in Austin.