Second- and third-generation family members — Jesse Capel, left, Mary Clara Capel, Len Capel, Richard Capel, Ron Capel, Cameron Capel and Arron Capel — examine product inside Capel Rugs’ sample room in its Troy, N.C., headquarters.TROY, N.C. — In 1917, A. Leon Capel converted the plow line company he founded two years prior to produce braided rugs.
One hundred years later, the company founded by the then-17-year-old entrepreneur is taking aim at its second century in business.
Capel Rugs will celebrate its 100th anniversary throughout 2017 with birthday parties held at each market in Atlanta, Las Vegas and High Point. The Troy, N.C.-based manufacturer is also reimagining and reintroducing two of its legacy collections to mark the occasion.
“We turn 100 the whole year in 2017, and we’ll have six birthday parties along with our 2017 big catalog. As part of it, we’re doing a cookbook, and we mailed out 125 printed tea towels that are asking customers to participate in the recipe contest and get into the cookbook,” said Mary Clara Capel, director of administration, and a third-generation member of the family business.
“To get the list, we went through customers who have been buying with us since 2000. There are a whole lot of them who have been buying a lot longer than that.”
In anticipation of the 100th anniversary, Capel dug into the vault and launched its New Homestead in 2016, a take on the Old Homestead rug that was inducted into the Floor Covering Hall of Fame in 1978. The company is bringing back its classic Yorktowne rug as part of the celebration.
Looking past the plow
The original iterations of those rugs reach into the company’s DNA, which got its start when Leon Capel saw the days of mule-pulled plows coming to an end.
“He had gone to Atlanta and saw a picture in the paper of a tractor,” said Len Capel, Leon’s son and a retired company executive. “He said the tractor is going to replace the mule and the plow line business, so in 1917, he took those plow line ropes and dyed them different colors and had a seamstress sew them together. That’s how he started the braided rug business.”
Traditionally, braided rugs were often made from leftover materials from other textile-making processes. The material is still top quality, but it couldn’t be used because of its positioning in the spool of thread, for example. That willingness to make product from those leftovers served Capel well during World War II.
“When you weave a fabric from a loom, you can’t weave every last inch of it. The mills take what’s left, strip the yarn from the beam and rewrap the beam. The yarn they strip off is just as good as the other yarn they start with,” explained Jesse Capel, a retired company executive and another of Leon Capel’s sons.
“Marshall Field Department Store in Chicago was buying braided rugs from Capel in the 1930s, and then the shortage came and they couldn’t get them. Our father called people at Fieldcrest, which owned Marshall Field, and asked about getting the cotton from their carding machines that he could spin into yarn and sew into rugs for Marshall Field. They agreed,” Len recalled.
“It gave Capel a source of raw material and gave Marshall Field a source for rugs,” added Jesse.
“That was recycling. We were green in 1942,” said Mary Clara.
Years later, Capel would turn to another well-known name in the industry for a boost in business.
“We were lucky enough, in 1965, to hire a man named Norman Rice. He was Mr. Rug in the retail business in this country. Every buyer knew Norman Rice, and he helped Capel broaden its distribution to all the major buyers,” Jesse said. “He had a wife named Elizabeth Whitney, a designer. She undertook a redesign of several of our styles of rugs, principally the yarn braids. They were fabulously successful, and we are still using some of her color palettes because they were so good.”
Passing the century mark
Len notes that in the years that Capel has been in business, it’s seen its share of sea changes and weathered them all, which he says positions the company well for the next 100 years.
“It’s a rarity for a small, family corporation to exist for 100 years. I think the third generation is carrying it on, and hopefully they can stretch it out for another 100 years through their children,” he said. “It’s not an easy task; there are a lot of crooks in the road, and there’s a changing climate in retail that has to be recognized. Where are sales coming from today and where will they come from tomorrow?
“In our day, in the 1980s, there were 39,000 floor covering stores; there were 27,000 furniture stores. Those have now dwindled to a smaller number, and a few larger ones have taken over the furniture store business.”
Len, Jesse and Arron Capel have since passed the business onto the hands of their children, Mary Clara, Ron, Richard and Cameron. But even now, they’re always available to lend an ear or a hand. As Jesse points out, when it’s time to find a solution or to seek a little insight, chances are the answer is as close as the next family get-together.
“Capel is still a family company, and we’re as likely to solve a problem at the dinner table at night as we are around the conference table during the day,” he said.
