Two cousins, a garage workshop and a porch chair.

La-Z-Boy grew out of a garage in Monroe, Michigan. The International Directory of Company Histories, in a profile published by St. James Press in 2003, says cousins Edward Knabusch and Edwin Shoemaker shared a love of carpentry. In the early 1920s Knabusch worked as a carpenter at the Weis Manufacturing Company and spent his evenings repairing furniture and building novelty and custom pieces in a workshop in the family garage; Shoemaker, whose father expected him to take over the family farm, spent his free time there instead.

In 1925, the directory says, Knabusch left Weis to work for himself, and one early job was a new bandsaw guide, for which he hired Shoemaker. By March 1927 the work had grown enough for the cousins to form a partnership, the Kna-Shoe Manufacturing Company. By the end of that year, with money from friends and family, they had built a factory north of Monroe in the middle of a cornfield beside a cow path; the directory notes that the path soon became M-24, Telegraph Road, a north–south highway through Michigan. English Wikipedia also dates the partnership to 1927.

The partners, according to the directory, preferred to draw their own designs rather than copy other makers. One was the Gossiper, a telephone stand with a built-in seat, which a larger manufacturer soon copied and undersold. Another was a wood-slat porch chair that reclined with the body, whether the sitter was upright or leaning back. English Wikipedia, drawing on the company’s own history, says the cousins mocked it up with orange crates. When Arthur Richardson, a buyer for the Lion Store, suggested upholstering the chair so it could be used indoors all year, they changed course, and called on George Welker to help with the upholstery.

A contest, a trademark and a circus tent.

The chair needed a company and then a name. In 1929, the directory says, the cousins incorporated as the Floral City Furniture Company, dropping the Kna-Shoe name because people mistook the business for a shoe maker, and raised money from friends and family to secure patents. They took the chair to a furniture show in May 1929 and came back with orders.

The name came from the public. According to the directory, the partners held a public contest to name the recliner, which gave them a name and publicity at the same time; the winning entry, La-Z-Boy, was trademarked in November 1930, and the patent for the reclining mechanism was issued in January 1931. English Wikipedia also records the contest. For several years the partners licensed other companies to build the chair, while Floral City made the metal mechanism and kept the right to build and sell the chair in Monroe County.

Showmanship carried the name through the Depression. In 1933, the directory says, the ground floor of the factory became a showroom, and a circus tent was put up outside to display furniture; these “Furniture Shows” drew visitors from Detroit and Toledo. A new showroom followed in 1935. In 1938 Shoemaker completed a new mechanism different enough to need new patents, the licensing arrangements ended in 1939, and in May 1941 the La-Z-Boy Chair Company was incorporated to separate manufacturing from retailing. During the Second World War the company made seats for tanks, torpedo boats, gun turrets and armoured cars, and recliner production in the new building began in 1947.

The 1950s brought a platform rocker in 1951 and, in 1959, a promotion the directory singles out: a loveseat built to look like a car seat, upholstered in mink and fitted with lights, horns, fins and tyres.

Design and documentation.

For a furniture or mattress retailer, the brand is met first at the scale of a building. Showroom signage has to read from a highway or a car park, so the name usually sits in a single bold wordmark on the façade, often lit at night and repeated on pylon signs at the entrance to a retail park. Inside, the identity steps back and the furniture takes over.

Room settings are the retailer’s main design tool. Sofas, beds and tables are grouped into staged living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms, with rugs, lamps and accessories that suggest a way of living rather than a single product. Aisle markers, price-tag holders and department headers carry the brand colours in small doses so they do not compete with the rooms.

Catalogues, printed and digital, extend those room settings onto the page: wide photographs, generous white space, a consistent typeface for headings and a restrained palette for captions. On the road, delivery-truck graphics act as moving billboards, so the wordmark is usually large, high-contrast and readable at a glance from another lane. Together, these touchpoints let a home-furnishings name stay recognisable from the street to the doorstep.

Celebrity voices, galleries and a Monroe home.

Broadcast advertising followed. The International Directory of Company Histories says that from the 1960s La-Z-Boy ran a long campaign with celebrities including Bing Crosby, Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson, Joe Namath and Alex Karras, and above all Jim Backus, the voice of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, who recorded television and radio commercials for the brand through the decade. Alongside the advertising came new products: the Reclina-Rocker, introduced late in 1960, followed by the Reclina-Way wall chair and the Reclina-Rest. In 1961 the company opened a factory beyond Michigan, in Newton, Mississippi, the directory says.

The name also travelled under licence. English Wikipedia says Morgan Furniture of Takapuna, in New Zealand, began making the La-Z-Boy recliner for Australia and New Zealand in 1970. In September 2007 The New Zealand Herald reported that the Morgan business would move to importing the furniture from China and Thailand.

The company grew through acquisition at the turn of the century. In September 1999 the Los Angeles Times, carrying an Associated Press report, said La-Z-Boy, based in Monroe, had agreed to acquire LADD Furniture, the North Carolina maker of brands including American Drew and Lea. English Wikipedia, citing the Greensboro News & Record, says La-Z-Boy announced in July 2001 that the LADD name would cease to exist, with its brands split between La-Z-Boy upholstery and casegoods groups; several former LADD businesses were later sold or closed. Wikipedia adds that from 1969 the company began designing reclining sofas, sleep sofas and modular groups, and that it introduced stationary sofas and occasional chairs in 1983.

Through all of this the company has kept its home town. English Wikipedia gives the headquarters of La-Z-Boy Incorporated as Monroe, Michigan, and shows stores trading as La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries.

For a design guide, La-Z-Boy shows how a product name chosen by the public can become the name of the company and its stores. Compare Ashley, a maker that also put its name on its own stores, and Ethan Allen, a furniture name borrowed from history. For this guide we use navy, a warm tan and porch white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep La-Z-Boy’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.