Charles Sligh was 12 when his dad was killed in the civil war. Since his older brother was also serving in the military, it fell to Charles to go to work to help support his mother and sisters. The year, 1862. The place, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

You could hear the whistle of the train and smell the sawdust in the air as furniture companies were springing up on every corner in Grand Rapids. Newly arrived immigrants, settlers from the eastern seaboard and young Grand Rapids men were ready to work hard to make their success in the new burgeoning industry. Charles Sligh ended up working for Berkey & Gay, the leading furniture manufacturer of its day, first on the shop floor and ultimately as a road salesman traveling to all parts of the United States.

Back then furniture factories were very specialized. One plant might make desks for offices. Another, under different ownership, might specialize in bookcases. Still another made filing cabinets. Retailers and consumers were left to their own devices for gathering together the furniture needed in an office.

Charles Sligh figured he had a revolutionary idea. In 1880 he founded Sligh Furniture Company, the first to offer from one plant, in coordinated styles and finishes, all the furniture pieces needed for the bedroom. And that innovation did indeed transform the way the industry approached bedroom furniture.

Grand Rapids furniture burst onto the national scene at the centennial furniture exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. By 1900, 40% of everyone employed in the four county area around Grand Rapids was working in the furniture industry. For 50 years, until the mid 1920s, Grand Rapids was the center of residential wood furniture manufacturing in the U.S.

The winds of change were already blowing in the early 1900s. Trees were logged without replanting. Abundant raw materials and lower labor rates in the south inevitably attracted wood furniture manufacturing. A furniture recession that began in 1926 immediately followed by the great depression wiped out most of the residential wood furniture manufacturers in Grand Rapids.

By 1933 then company president Chuck Sligh Jr and his partner Bill Lowry were hanging on for dear life. The problem, exacerbated by the depression, was that it took gobs of working capital to cut all the headboards and footboards and dressers and night stands and then finally ship them as a complete group to retailers (and get paid). Bill came up with the idea of offering desks so the company could immediately ship upon completion of the cutting. That was the break-through idea that helped the company regain profitability for the rest of the depression.

Chuck Sligh Jr. believed in bringing products to the dealers. In 1933 he carried a Sligh desk up five flights of stairs to successfully sell a buyer at a department store in Dayton Ohio. In 1935 he had a carrier made for the back of his car to which he mounted a Sligh desk, selling 2,500 desks in just one trip to dealers around Lake Michigan. In 1937 Chuck had a special Sligh showroom trailer built that he used to show Sligh product to dealers throughout the burgeoning west.

In the 1950s Bob Sligh and Charlie Sligh were becoming company leaders. Responding to changing consumer tastes, they introduced modern styles in company products and graphics.

In 1968 Bob Sligh became president and Sligh acquired the Trend Clock company. In the 1980s the Trend name was dropped in favor of simply Sligh.

In the 1980s Sligh expanded its business furniture line with innovative solutions for hiding the plethora of cords associated with electronic equipment. The Sligh Corridor group combined classic 18th century form with 21st century function and won the first place gold award at NEOCON, the annual business office furniture market.

In 1990 Rob Sligh became the fourth generation president. During the 1990s Sligh became the high end leader in home office furniture, inventing patented computer cabinets, modular home office furniture and seating. By 2000, home office furniture represented about 40% of company sales.

Beginning in 2000, Sligh searched for some time for a closely associated furniture niche that Sligh could profitably enter to accelerate growth. Following a television industry recession in the late 1990s, new digital television technologies ignited category growth in the 2000s.

With typical thoroughness, Sligh's design, development, engineering and sample making people spent a couple years in full-blown research mode for home entertainment. Research included becoming immersed in consumer electronics, understanding the shapes and functions and dimensions and how consumers want to use technology. They created research partnerships with consumer electronics retailers, attended consumer electronics shows, talked with consumers and dealers and editors and leveraged their great industrial design, furniture design, model making and engineering teams’ ability to develop superior function and style. In 2002, Sligh entered the home entertainment furniture market with a full collection of television consoles and home entertainment cabinets with patented designs, including the Sligh StrongArm.