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Company History
Enduring Passions...
Adventuresome spirit and a pioneering enthusiasm were just a few of the inspirational forces that brought Emissary into existence in 1980.
The driving concept was to literally act as the emissary between the product resources and the market. Today Emissary Home and Garden embodies the same passion with a refreshing direction and continues to bring the best variety of high quality decorative accessories for today’s market.
Emissary was established in 1980 to import decorative brass items from Thailand. The brass was sold primarily as gift items. Carved wood items from Thailand were added in 1983. The carved wood moved Emissary from the gift industry to decorative accessory industry. Emissary quickly became the largest importer of carved wood with extensive variety.
During this time period Emissary had a business relationship
with The Coca-Cola Trading Company. In 1989 Emissary imported a variety of items from China for a show at the Coca-Cola complex in Atlanta. Some of the ceramic items were then introduced in the High Point Fair. The ceramic planters proved to be especially popular and that began Emissary’s garden division.
Customers wanted stands for the planters so we bought some welding and bending machinery and sent employees to training classes in metal working. We learned that making pedestals, tables and etageres was not very different from making plant stands so we added all of these to our line.
An exploratory trip was made to Vietnam in 1991. After the trade embargo was lifted in 1994 we began importing ceramics from Vietnam. We had the first container from Vietnam to enter the port of Savannah since 1975.
A major customer approached us about doing a more extensive selection of color for our smaller ceramics. This resulted in Emissary Classics which was 42 styles each available in 11 different glazes. We built on this to have a large collection of table top ceramics.
Soon we realized that customers were buying our ceramics to make into lamps. Once again we bought some equipment, trained some employees, and started making lamps.
In 2000 we set up an additional metal factory in Vietnam and now do metal both in Atlanta and in Vietnam.
Emissary has always designed products but since 2001 our philosophy changed to designing more of the products ourselves to differentiate Emissary from its competition.
Download a PDF of Emissary's history
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