Hey! Good morning, everyone! Welcome to Marathon Mondays with Mal.
Here we are in the design suite. Say hello to Brenda back there,
she's working away. It's a good morning here in Coburg at the World Headquarters
of Marathon Coach, and we're gonna do something this morning that we haven't done
in quite a while. We're gonna head on into the upholstery department.
I was in Polson, Montana, at the RV park up there over the last week, and so a big
thank you to everyone up at the Polson RV Resort, big thank you for being such a
good host to Marathon Coach and having us up there, and showing off the latest from
Marathon: 1305, a beautiful coach. And here we are. We talk a lot about "fit and finish"
when it comes to a Marathon Coach and it starts and stops with our
upholstery team. Arguably the best upholstery team in the United States.
When's the last time you heard about custom upholstery? It usually
happens with classic cars.... Look, right, let's look at this first.
Look at the fit and finish of this. Let's move right over here.
Take a look at that cockpit seat, is there anything better than that?
John Farley and the entire staff in this department do some amazing custom work.
All of the new coaches have this embroidered logo in here, that beautiful
fit and finish is so important to a Marathon and we've seen before the
meticulous drive to get it right. And that's one thing that sets this
department aside. And if you look at what Bruce is doing over here, there are so
many details that go into building a coach. It's not just the leather...
the leather seating and the couch and the dinette. There's so much that the
upholstery team does to make that coach look beautiful. Let's head on over here.
I want to show you something cool.
Take a look at this. This reveal back, I'm a big fan. Dave, you know what coach
this is going into? [Dave] Yeah, 1307. [Mal] 1307 sofa. For the salon. I love this fabric and
look at the fit and finish of that. It's covered right now because it's going to
be installed in 1307, but isn't that beautiful?
This morning I was talking with John about what they're working on in here
and there's a couple of things over here. Let's head on over this way.
Hope everyone had a good weekend. I was up... like I said, I was up at Polson,
had such a great time. Look at the... look at the beautiful leather. You can get really
close in on... here: this is the cockpit seating for 1311. There's another thing:
this is 1306 chairs.
We don't just buy these chairs done like this. This department takes takes the shell,
or the skeleton, of a chair, they put an additional cushion in it, padding,
and then they upholster it to look like that. And I'll show you what that looks like
right now. So you've all seen this before. This is pretty much what I like
to call the skeleton of the chair, and then they take the pieces and they put
it together, and they end up with something like this, which is
the two recliners that are going to go in 1306. But like I said: it's more than
just upholstery on couches and chairs. Take a look at the walls here:
leather-wrapped. This is cockpit walls.
Isn't that beautiful? Takes a lot of work to get that right, and the seam has to be
all on line here.
And one thing Al Christianson and I were talking about right before we went
live this morning, is this department does not settle. And that's important,
that's important to building a coach the correct way. They do not settle for
"oh, it's okay" or "oh, that's... if it's wrong, it's wrong. There is... it's a
black and white issue. It's either right, or it's wrong. And so, if they get it wrong
they'll redo it. If it's not done up to standard -- Marathon standard --
they'll redo it. And that shows, in every coach we build. I love it. There's different pieces
that are headed out there. This is dinette pieces. I love this fabric.
Look at that. That's pretty.
Head on over this way.
And from this angle you can see everything from pillows being made
some of our curtains, our Roman curtains are made over here, too.
Take a look at the work that's being done there.
[John] Good morning, Mal. [Mal] Good morning, John. John, you've been with Marathon just over
20 years now, right? [John] 22. [Mal] 22! Okay. [John] I've been in the upholstery industry for over 47 years.
[Mal] 47 years? [John] 47 years. [Mal] 47 years in the upholstery industry.
You know, and Alan Christianson and I were just talking about this, John. This is a...
you don't go to school... do you go to school to learn this? Can you?
[John] They used to have a school at Lane Community but that was quite a few years ago. [Mal] Sure.
[John] Right now, the upholstery industry is kind of a dying industry. [Mal] Yes.
[John] They're almost desperate for upholsterers in outside sectors.
So I started in 1972, at a custom shop where they made custom furniture from
the ground up, when we'd make sofa frames, chair frames and pipe springs
... channeling, and that's where I learned it all. [Mal] No kidding.
I learned from, probably third generation upholsterers, some of them from Germany.
[Mal] How many people have you taught? [John] I worked at the upholstery shop
for about 20-some years, and I owned it for about eight years, and I found out
owning a business: not what I wanted to do. [Mal] Yes. [John] It got to be seven days a week
and 12-hour days, right? So I just decided... and Marathon came to me,
offered me a job here, and I decided you know, I'm going to do that.
I had seven employees at the time. And I just decided it wasn't me.
So that's when I started at Marathon, in 1997. [Mal] Wow, 22. That's right, 22 years.
[John] On St. Patrick's Day, so that was Marathon's lucky day.
[Mal] Well, and I know you went to Sheldon.
[John] I went to Sheldon. [Mal] So that's luck of the Irish right there.
For those of you who don't know: Sheldon High School locally here in Eugene,
their mascot is the Irish. [John] Yep, and Marathon hired me on St. Patrick's Day and I live
at the corner of Shannon and Dublin, so you figure that one out. Luck of the Irish.
[Mal] That's exactly right! [John] But basically, the people I'm... right in here
right now, are the people I've been teaching. A lot of them did not have
upholstery experience when they came. Bruce did. He had some experience when he came here.
When Kay started, she didn't have a lot of experience in the furniture industry
but she was... she was a seamstress. [Mal] Absolutely.
[John] And Anna was a seamstress too. It's a team effort up here. You know, the furniture looks good because
it's all sewn up correctly. They do all the sewing, and we just kind of shape it, put it on right,
we have patterns that we go by, that we made up, so yeah, most of these people are
people I've been teaching. [Mal] Well I take these.. I take these Marathons
all over. Like I just mentioned to everybody here on Facebook, that I was up
in Polson, and one of the things I hear is the fit and finish of
our upholstery is second to none. And it's a huge credit to you and this team.
The bedspread that Anna and Kay did in 1305, several people
pointed out just how perfect that line fits around... that bead fits around
the edge of that mattress. It's little details like that that really stand out.
[John] The details. A lot of people don't know this
but we're very picky. Kay knows me, that if I see something wrong, she knows I'm gonna
tear it apart, right? Do it again. She knows I won't let it go.
And she's the same way. [Mal] It's a high standard. [John] Oh, we have very
high standards up here. When you're building a two-million-dollar coach, I think
the customers you can expect to have high standards. [Mal] And they should, that's absolutely right.
[John] They should. So that's what we want to turn out, the best quality we can. [Mal] Fantastic. Thank you, John.
Really appreciate you letting us come in here and I know a lot of people... we haven't
been in here in quite a while, so a lot of people really appreciate being able
to see this in depth in here, because going into an upholstery shop is real rare,
of being able to see it actually done at such a high level.
So thank you, John. Okay, awesome. [John] Thank you. [Mal] Well there it is, everybody. I couldn't have
said it better. The upholstery shop at Marathon. I think you'll... if you've been
in a Marathon, you've seen the videos over all of our Marathon Mondays episodes,
there is nothing better. Before we get out of here, Miki, is there any
any comments or questions that you want to address? [Miki] Just a comment from Jim
that says he loves it when you showcase the craftspeople here. [Mal] That's a good point.
Is that Jim Torrence? [Miki] It is. [Mal] Jim, thank you for saying that. You know, my job exists...
these coaches exist, there are coaches all over the world, not the
United States, there are Marathons all over the world, because of the people
like here in the upholstery department, down on the production floor,
in the cabinet shop, Andy Ibarra's department -- the paint team, 99% of the bus is built
in this building by Oregonians, and as an Oregonian, I have a lot of civic pride
about the product that we build here, and every time I'm out there and I mention
it on video... this weekend when I was in Montana. I love representing the people
at Prevost in Quebec and I love representing the people of Marathon
here in the Eugene/Coburg area, so big thanks to all of you for watching.
Don't forget to be yourself and do good things. That's what I'm trying to do in this world.
I'm headed to LA tomorrow morning with coach 1297 so stay tuned for "why is Mal taking
a coach to LA at the drop of a hat." I'll keep you posted and I'll see you
next Monday on Marathon Mondays. Thanks everybody. Take care.