By Emily Williams-Robertshaw
The newly branded Premo Factory is putting Birmingham on the map for creative manufacturing.
When Elegant Earth President Chadwick Stogner was looking for a home for the company’s garden-inspired furniture manufacturing operations, he saw potential in a warehouse in Norwood at 1700 Vanderbilt Road that had seen better days.
Over time, the factory has grown to house four synergistic manufacturing and wholesale brands: Elegant Earth, The Arbor, Alabama Sawyer and InTown Wholesale Nursery.
After purchasing the property, Stogner became acquainted with a local historian, the late J.D. Weeks of Gardendale, who filled him in on the history of the building.
The more-than-100-year-old building originally was constructed to house Preston Motors Corp., which made the Premocar.
The history led Stogner to name his new facility the Premo Factory, speaking to the quality of each brand while paying homage to the building’s past and legacy of manufacturing.
Weeks had amassed a large collection of old postcards and ephemera about businesses and buildings in the Birmingham area, which inspired his work as a historian. He authored a number of books, including “Premocar: Made in Birmingham.”
The Premocar, built from 1919 to 1923, featured a carriage that was crafted by hand using kiln-dried wood.
President Warren G. Harding was chauffeured in a Premocar during a 1921 visit to Birmingham.
“It was a well-funded operation at the time, and it was a big deal to have a car manufacturing plant in Birmingham,” Stogner said.
Stogner has used historical advertising and graphic design materials from the original Preston Motors as inspiration for Premo’s branding.
To Stogner, the Norwood neighborhood seemed a little forgotten when he bought the building in 2013.
“There’s so much great architecture and history in this area,” he said.
The 185,000-square-foot factory was in poor condition and was slated for demolition.
“It would have been a waste to see it torn down,” Stogner said.
While other industrial manufacturers saw the building as a “white elephant,” he added, he felt the facility’s historical charm and the vast space lent itself perfectly to his creative manufacturing operation.
The sawtooth roof design allows a lot of natural light to enter the facility, but it also “harkens back to the days of American manufacturing at its zenith.”
The factory’s design naturally evolved into a shared space.
Operations Coming Together
“When we first moved in, the building had been carved up,” Stogner said. “There were maybe 10 or 12 different people working out here and they just used chain-link fencing to divide the areas.”
Elegant Earth’s manufacturing operation originally took over the entire facility, but by 2019 they realized they had too much unused space. Several out-buildings were being used for dead storage.
In light of this, Stogner decided to sell The Arbor building in Lakeview, which the company had owned since 1997, and relocate the business to the factory.
It was an emotional decision, he said, as The Arbor’s Lakeview location had been a Birmingham institution since 1976, selling garden products made by Elegant Earth and other similar manufacturers to both the trade and the general public.
As Stogner began clearing out the unused spaces at the factory for The Arbor’s move, it became apparent that there would be more space than even an expanded Arbor could occupy.
The idea of creating a multi-tenant destination space for designers, architects and landscapers began to materialize.
Stogner immediately thought about his friends who ran InTown Wholesale Nursery in Atlanta.
“I had introduced them to a couple of our customers and they were shipping to Birmingham on a regular basis,” he said. “They have a unique business model that was missing in the local market.”
After one visit, InTown jumped on the opportunity to establish a Birmingham location. Premo Factory features a large outdoor area for plants.
According to Stogner, an industrial yard once full of trash and scrap metal is now, “a lush oasis of annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs.”
It compliments Elegant Earth’s acres of garden containers made inside the factory and arranged in the yard.
Alabama Sawyer, a nationally recognized local producer of furniture made from urban timber saw Premo Factory as a place to bring its entire operation under one roof.
The company had a wood shop in Avondale’s MAKEbhm and a milling operation at Grey’s Tree Service in Bessemer.
In addition, Alabama Sawyer had been renting storage space in an outbuilding on Premo Factory’s property.
Premo Factory is now comprised of multiple working production facilities pouring concrete, milling logs and loading and watering truckloads of plants. Therefore, customers are encouraged to make appointments and wear appropriate clothing for their visit.
“It’s an industrial setting and we’re not trying to make it into any sort of high-end retail space, but it’s also an inspiring place with a sense of discovery,” Stogner said. “Here, people can have a peek into the creative manufacturing process.”
Not only are the brands at Premo manufacturing and sourcing domestically, they are manufacturing world class products out of materials with heft and integrity, according to Stogner.
Stogner is not quick to brag, but his company as well as Alabama Sawyer ship their creations all over the country, he said, “and increasingly so as international supply chains are stressed and there is a ‘return to quality’ among consumers who value the craftsmanship and the honesty of the materials they offer.
“We are getting people from all over the region and beyond coming here,” he said.
A few weeks ago, Stogner had a customer from Panama who flew to Birmingham to see the operation before going to a market in Atlanta.
“It’s such a unique resource for Birmingham to have, nearly everyone that comes here says that they’ve never experienced anything quite like it,” Stogner said.
