GIRARD – Soft Touch Furniture expanded its services and offerings to Mahoning Valley residents in 2022.
“Even though we’ve become known as a leading manufacturer of custom restaurant and hospitality furniture, we’ve always kept the upholstery repair and service end of our business intact,” says Megan Vickers, daughter of company founders Bob and Terrie Chudakoff.
“It just wasn’t as prolific,” she says of upholstery. “But we changed that over the past year and a half.”
In late 2021, the company opened a 3,000-square-foot design center and stocked it last year. “We’ve got more than 10,000 yards of fabric and leather, in every style and color imaginable,” Vickers says.
“Anyone in the area who is looking for fabric – homeowners, do-it-yourselfers, craftspeople, hobbyists and even professional upholstery shops – will find exactly what they are looking for, and quite a few things they may not have considered,” she says.
On the commercial side, the company purchased several CNC machines to make manufacturing easier and more streamlined for its nearly 30 employees.
The latest addition is a CNC fabric cutter that makes cutting fabric faster and more precise.
The outlook for Soft Touch Furniture in 2023 is bright. “The company’s machines are humming, the purple Soft Touch delivery trucks are on the road daily, and if the trend continues,” Vickers says, “the company hopes to employ a few more local people.”
Soft Touch is a sponsor of Panerathon, which raises funds for breast cancer treatment, and also donates to food banks. Several local youth sports teams are annual recipients of Soft Touch’s generosity.
Soft Touch Furniture, 1560 S. State St., was founded in 1974 as an upholstery repair company. As the business grew, it began producing high-quality, custom-built furniture for the hospitality and food service/restaurant industries.