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Premo Factory is located in a more-than-100-year-old building that was originally constructed to house Preston Motors Corp., which made the Premocar. It is now home to Elegant Earth, The Arbor, Alabama Sawyer and InTown Wholesale Nursery. Above, from left, Leigh Spencer, co-founder of Alabama Sawyer; Elegant Earth President Chadwick Stogner, Premo Factory owner; and Jared Sarubbi, Intown Wholesale Nursery.
Trading Places
Newly Branded Premo Factory Brings Together Birmingham Trades with National Footprint
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
“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.”
Tree’s Fall Y’all
By Emily Williams-RoBERtshaW
For Leigh Spencer, co-founder of Alabama Sawyer, the history behind Premo Factory’s building and its recent renewal presents a perfect metaphor.
The factory, built in 1920, was set to be demolished but Chad Stogner and his team at Elegant Earth saw its potential and recycled the old building to create a modern factory that focuses on the trades.
That aligns with what lies at the heart of Alabama Sawyer, a company that obtains fallen trees from Birmingham’s urban forest and uses them to create environmentally sustainable products.
Spencer and co-founder Cliff Spencer have spent much of the pandemic settling into the company’s new home at Premo Factory in Norwood.
“In between the scrap yards and the palette factories, it’s a little slice of heaven,” Leigh Spencer said.
Before the move, Alabama Sawyer had been operating in multiple locations, based in a space at the Avondale co-working operation MAKEbhm. They were also milling their wood at a facility in Bessemer.
For several years, the Spencers had been renting wood storage space at Premo Factory.
“I grew attached to the property and just kept envisioning our shop and milling operation all in one place,” Spencer said.
They will have some pieces in The Arbor, which has relocated to Premo, and will be selling urban wood out of their wood barn, but it’s about the trade.
“Our space is a factory, not a showroom,” Spencer said. “I can show people samples they can take home and we can visit the work in progress. They can see the process in real time.”
Alabama Sawyer cuts the wood into slabs and lumber, which is stacked and left to dry for at least six months before it’s finished off in a kiln.
Attracted by the Trees
From page 16
Leigh Spencer, a California native, was working as a graphic designer.
“Since graphic design is intrinsic to business, that prepared me for the
creativity and structure needed to build a business,” she said.
Originally from Birmingham, Cliff Spencer relocated to Los Angeles to work in the film industry, where he gained experience in professional woodworking shops working with experienced woodworkers.
The couple established their first wood shop in California, where they sourced wood through a partnership with the City of Burbank, diverting urban trees from landfills and instead using them to make furniture and other products.
In 2016, they made the move to Birmingham drawn, in part, by Alabama’s large urban forest.
The company’s official tagline,
“Trees Fall Y’all,” says it all.
“Urban trees are hidden gems within the confines of the city, which could easily be missed,” Spencer said. They are also more challenging to work with.
What gives urban wood a unique character also makes it a risk and undesirable to large mills who are looking for consistency.
Urban trees are also a product of their surroundings and can grow around many things, Spencer said. The wood can contain objects like wires and bullets. Alabama Sawyer once found part of a transformer embedded in a tree.
An estimated 75% of the wood that Alabama Sawyer mills and uti-
lizes in the products they create comes from the Birmingham area.
“We have 6,000 square feet of storage full of lumber we have gotten from tree services,” she said. “The rest is from regional wood sources. Occasionally, we buy something from my home state of California, for old times’ sake.”
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From page 16
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.
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From page 16
Alabama Sawyer obtains their trees from local municipalities, businesses and homeowners through local tree services.
The company’s technicians then cut the wood into slabs and lumber, which is stacked and left to dry for at least six months before it’s finished off in a kiln.
That dry lumber then makes its way to the wood shop, where it becomes a piece of furniture, countertop or even a home accessory.
“The wood tells a story,” Leigh Spencer said. “We try to work and design in a way that doesn’t take away from that. … By the time the project is done, the process generally does reveal something interesting – a story, a lesson, a new idea, hopefully a feeling of satisfaction.”
Alabama Sawyer works with interior designers, architects, builders and suppliers throughout the nation, creating products and contributing to builds with materials created in Birmingham.
“An important purchase like a piece of furniture deserves careful consideration of all the resources involved, from raw materials to transportation to the labor,” Spencer. said.
The company also has the opportunity to work directly with homeowners through their Tree Concierge service.
If someone has a tree that is suitable for milling, they can reach out to Alabama Sawyer to give it a new life.
“We can only accomplish that through the tree services,” Spencer said. “The tree service is crucial, since they have the equipment and resources to take a tree down and transport it to us.”
Tree Concierge is at its best when the homeowner wants Alabama Sawyer to utilize the wood to create a piece of furniture or as building materials in their home.
“Those end up being some of the nicest pieces,” Spencer said. “Often, the tree is taken down when the homeowner is building an addition or a new house and the wood can go right back in the build out.”
Alabama Sawyer’s work and products have garnered national acclaim. They’ve earned recognition from Goop, Martha Stewart, Dwell magazine and The Wall Street Journal.
After a pandemic lull in the second quarter of 2020, business has been booming locally and nationally.
Just before the pandemic, Alabama Sawyer worked on the redesign of Birmingham’s Hot and Hot, as well as the Equal Justice Initiative construction in Montgomery.
One of the company’s current projects is with the Jones Valley Teaching Farm’s new Center for Food Education. Projected to be completed later this year, the facility will be the location of field trips and educational programs for local students, community gardens and culinary programs.
“Next year, we’ll be working on the ALDOT 59/20 City Walk with Brasfield and Gorrie, which is exciting,” Spencer said.
“We are building out a finishing booth in the immediate future,” she added. “We are also developing more training to fill our need for more skilled labor.”
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