Depression-era Fiesta dishes keeps maker afloat

NEWELL, W.Va. Born of the Great Depression, it was a glossy, color-saturated line of cups, bowls and plates meant to affordably brighten lives and dinner tables. Seven decades later, Fiesta dinnerware is still designed to send a subtle message of optimism, but it's no longer quite so cheap.

Yet Fiesta's enduring popularity and strong sales even as consumers cut back are helping to keep struggling Homer Laughlin China Co. afloat. It's the last major dinnerware producer that makes its products in the U.S., as competitors have shut down or moved offshore.

"We're fighting for our lives right now," says President Joe Wells III, who represents the fourth generation of his family to run the Newell factory that has employed thousands of families in and around West Virginia's Northern Panhandle.

This year, Ohio-based Libbey Inc. shut down the last U.S. factory producing Syracuse China, ending 137 years of history and 275 jobs in Salina, N.Y. Now, that china is made in China. Only a handful of U.S. dinnerware producers remain, all smaller than Homer Laughlin and most surviving by capitalizing on a niche.

Family-owned Pickard China in Antioch, Ill., for example, concentrates on custom work for such clients as the federal government. It has produced china for U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, as well as the Bush White House, Air Force One and Camp David.

Privately held Homer Laughlin -- founded in 1871 across the Ohio River in East Liverpool, Ohio, but in Newell since 1905 -- won't share financial data. Standard & Poor's estimates it does about $50 million a year in sales.

But Wells admits that the commercial side of the business supplying such restaurant chains as Olive Garden and Red Lobster has slowed more than usual this summer. Those sales typically account for about 60 percent of the bottom line.

"Our customers at this point in time are not ordering. They're making do with whatever they have," Wells says. "But there's going to come a time when . . . our customers are making a little bit more money, they're seeing their customers come back, and they're going to want to order more dishes, change the décor of their restaurants."

Fiesta, he says, is helping the company get by until that time arrives. Ask why sales are up slightly, and Wells recounts the line's Depression-era beginnings and colorful palette.

"It was done with the intent of giving people who were having a real miserable time something that wasn't expensive, that could brighten up their table, make their lives a little cheerier," he says.

-- The Associated Press