The Whalen Furniture / APA / Golden Oak Story

Golden Oak – a dba of Whalen Furniture Mfg. Inc. – was founded in 1990. Whalen Furniture started as a supplier for the Wholesale Club stores (initially Costco). This volume grew rapidly and Golden Oak began successfully designing and producing large quantities of furniture for Price Club and Sam’s Club.

Our experience with “mass merchants” was an ideal start to managing the issues that only larger more mature furniture manufacturing companies learn with time – such as stiff demands for packaging, labeling, on-time shipping, etc. As Golden Oak moved into the conventional Furniture markets, we developed a marketing approach that was somewhat opposite to what a typical new company’s approach might be. Golden Oak started with the larger distributors and dealers, as opposed to smaller dealers and then on up. These were dealers that could take larger quantities of products.

By 1997, Golden Oak operated 2 factories in Mexico (one in Tijuana and one in Tecate), a plant in Phoenix, and a veneer plant in Los Angeles.

Golden Oak was one of the early manufacturers of Home Office & Home Entertainment furniture to move production to China. Golden Oak’s approach to Importing is quite different from the “norm,” as well. Rather than rely on import agents to source factories and product, GO takes a hands-on approach in sourcing factories and developing products utilizing the experience learned from owning and operating our own Mexico plants.

The demand for Golden Oak Import furniture has experienced explosive growth. Golden Oak now maintains offices in China with an Operations Manager (who now lives in China) and a large staff of personnel, including QC inspectors and administrative staff. Our Tecate factory has been enlarged and improved to provide additional efficiencies by consolidating the Tijuana manufacturing and Los Angeles veneer facilities.

With our experience and expertise in design, manufacturing, import/export and customer support and service, Golden Oak is prepared to continue to raise the bar and provide successful relationships with our customers at every level.

In 2008, Whalen Furniture acquired the APA marketing brands of Encore! Home Entertainment & Entrée Casual Dining.

APA, founded by Al Schwerin & Paul Coscarelli began as a small casual dining supplier and has broadened the product line by adding home entertainment and home theater seating over the years. The mission is to provide high value, innovative designs, quality products, and exceptional customer service. This has been accomplished through integrity with all our customers, suppliers and especially our employees.

Al and Paul, both with over 30+ years of furniture experience, learned about the needs of the customer from their careers in furniture retail and furniture manufacturing. The knowledge gained on the retail side has assisted in understanding the needs of the furniture retailer tremendously.

The strength of APA’s brands comes from the diversity of its owners and the hands on approach to managing the company. “The more we listen to our dealers, the better the company is at fulfilling their needs” Together, the two partners have established APA Marketing as an innovative leader in the casual dining and home entertainment segment of the industry.

In 2003, industry veteran, Rich Serlin, joined APA Marketing as VP of Sales and Marketing. Rich’s background in home entertainment catapulted the company’s, young entertainment product line into a forerunner in the industry, driven on consumer electronics appeal. With two dominant product lines driving the growth of the company, APA Marketing branded the lines, Entrée Casual Dining and Encore! Home Entertainment. "So much effort has been invested to establish industry leadership in design and functional innovation, our products warrant brand recognition." Each brand name reflects the uniqueness of its product line.