Singleton and Related Genealogy Pages
A history of many families.
- Bef 2023| Name | Raymie Virgene “Ray” SEGARS [2, 3, 4, 5, 6] | |
| Suffix | Jr. | |
| Gender | Male | |
| HIST | Is his name Ray or Raymie? jkh This must be Ray Segars according to source. Nu-Idea still a family operation School supply business has weathered many changes since starting in 1921 Mike Sawyer, Cary Coker and Kent Mims discuss the changes that have taken place in school furniture since Nu-Idea came into existence. Nu-Idea has been in business since 1921. JIM HILLEY / THE SUMTER ITEM Posted: Sunday, September 28, 2014 6:00 am BY JIM HILLEY JIM@THEITEM.COM NU-IDEA SCHOOL SUPPLIES WHERE: 230 E. Liberty St., P.O. Box 1248, Sumter, S.C. 29150 PHONE: (803) 773-7389 ONLINE: http://nu-idea.com Though the school furniture business is constantly changing and the faces and names have changed, Nu-Idea School Supply Co. is committed to remaining a local, family owned company, said Kent Mims, corporate vice president and stockholder. The company was started in 1921 by Roy Tucker and began manufacturing student desks and residential furniture, said company president Cary Coker, but after the Great Depression, the owners realized that by being a distributor instead of a manufacturer, the company could sell a wider product line to more costumers. "We evolved into what we are now, and that is a distributor and dealer, and that really opened the door to end users," said vice president for sales Mike Sawyer. "Instead of getting pigeonholed into one type of student desk, it allowed us to have a lot of different product lines and to offer our customers a wider variety." According to Coker, Robert Bells, who was married to one of Tucker's four daughters, ran the company for about 40 years. "In the late '80s, Bells retired, and he brought in some people, including Bill Stuckey, Ray Segars and Steve Bond," Coker said. "They were owners of the company at that point." "It was still in the family. It was the same family that originally started the business," Mims said. SHIFTING FOCUS Coker said Bond had a vision that customers needed more service, so he shifted from being only a product-oriented company to providing resources including delivery and installation. He said the company built its current facility to allow it to keep more inventory available for quick delivery. "We have been in this building since the early 1950s," Sawyer said. Coker said through the years the company added space and increased storage capacity to the point that they have 60,000 square feet. Stuckey departed the company in 1996, Coker said, and at that point, Bond became acting president. Bond and Segars were involved with the company until 2013. "I started with the company in 1996, shortly after graduating college," Coker said. "Bond hired me at the mention of my father-in-law (Mims). I was unemployed and looking for a job, and the two happened to talk. We employ a lot of temporary labor during the summer, and they had a need, and I had some strong arms and a strong back. I started in the warehouse." Coker said he came in as an owner in 2005. "In 2009 or 2010, we began putting together a plan for me to eventually take over and run the company, which would also require bringing in a new investment group," Coker said. "Cary was moving up in the company, and Bond had formulated a plan to transfer the ownership of the company," Mims said. "They brought me in to see if I had any interest in investing in the company. Coker and I put together a plan and made an agreement with Segar and Bond, the two principal owners at the time, to buy them out, and we were doing that." By then, Coker was already a vice president, Mims said. Bond, who had guided the company for many years, was diagnosed with cancer and died on Aug. 15, 2013. "He was a great friend and a mentor to all of us," Coker said. The plans for a transition had to be accelerated. INDUSTRY CHANGES "It was always important to the previous family and to us that it wasn't an outside group that came in," Coker said. "We kept it really as a family owned business even though we have changed families so to speak." Later, they acquired Segars' portion of the ownership. Meanwhile, changes in the industry and the marketplace for school furniture were accelerating, Coker said. To help the company cope with the changes he turned to a familiar face - Sawyer. "I actually started here in 1984 under Nettles and then went and worked for a national company," Sawyer said. "I came back in last year and was fortunate enough to buy a little bit of the company. We were able to see some different things we were seeing in different parts of the country that hadn't hit South Carolina yet." "The way they teach now, it's more of a collaboration-type teaching versus what we were used to," he said. "Student furniture has probably changed more in the last five years than the previous 40. "The furniture you see in schools now as opposed to five years ago is all brand new. It is not the old traditional furniture in any of the new buildings. It is now all about collaboration and group learning versus the individual units set up in rows." Sawyer said the company recently set up new furniture in a school in Georgia. "I was walking through the school later after the teachers had got in, and there was not one classroom set up in the traditional rows." One thing that has not changed is the seasonal nature of the school business. "We have 15 full time employees and we added a few recently," Coker said. "During the summer, we bring in a lot of labor and we can get up to close to 60 folks we can employ during summer. Eighty percent of our business is in the summer months when school lets out." He said new school construction is completed during that period in anticipation of the start of the new school year. IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT DESKS Coker said they do more than classrooms. "We did a school over in Lexington this past year and the principal said he wanted the cafeteria to look like a Starbucks," Coker said. "He said he wanted the media center to look like a Barnes & Noble, and he wanted the weight room to look like a Gold's Gym. In the cafeterias now they are doing food courts instead of a straight-line cafeteria." Sawyers said they recently did a project in Lancaster in an existing high school. "They had institutional rows of furniture, and it looked like a prison," he said. "We came in, we put booths, we put logo tables, we did all kind of different stand-up-type tables. At first some of the principals said 'No, we want kids to come in and get out,' but other people said they wanted the kids to come in and socialize." He said the new renovated cafeteria has attracted a 10 percent increase in student use. "That means more money to the school," Sawyer said. "They paid money to get the cafeteria renovated, but it is also bringing in dollars. The kids want to eat there versus come in, sit down and get out." "A local project we did that I was very excited to have a part of is Sumter High School," Coker said. "They totally renovated their cafeteria and put down new floor tile as well as the image of the Gamecock, their mascot. We had logos embossed of the Gamecocks as well as the 'S' for Sumter High School." TECHNOLOGY GUIDES CHANGES Coker said school furniture will continued to see changes. "You are going see new products in the marketplace built around technology," he said. "We've already seen a lot of the shelving in libraries is going away because so much is done on iPads or Chromebooks. We have done libraries that look like a Barnes & Noble, where you have electrical power as well as data ports on the tables." Students are even getting tech savvy in elementary school, Sawyer said. "I was at a school in Columbia and they wanted to pull out all the old wood rectangular tables and wood chairs and put in stuff they can move around and put in soft seating," he said. "I showed them some pictures of some soft seating that has data ports you can plug in. I said, 'You probably won't need that so much at an elementary school,' and they said, 'Oh yeah, our kids will be using Chromebooks here, and they want to be able to come into the library and power up.'" "The technical aspect of what Nu-Idea does and the product lines they represent isn't all the company is," Mims said. "Nu-Idea started in 1921, and it was family owned, and it will continue to be family owned. When Bond and Segar decided they wanted to sell the company, they could have gone out on the market and sold it to a national group. There were offers that they turned down. Their vision of the company was to keep it a family, local business that employs local people that gives locals the opportunity to enjoy entrepreneurship and ownership." [1, 3] | |
| _UID | 08E528DC016F4A26BF0C5C435638E1994370 | |
| Death | Bef 19 Nov 2023 [1] | |
| Person ID | I105349 | Singleton and Related Families |
| Last Modified | 22 Nov 2023 | |
| Father | Ray Virgene SEGARS, Sr. d. Bef 19 Nov 2023 | |
| Mother | Louise SNOW d. Bef 19 Nov 2023 | |
| _UID | 0D5022BCD40641F0AA79D51D68EE0F490913 | |
| _UID | 0D5022BCD40641F0AA79D51D68EE0F490913 | |
| Family ID | F228899 | Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family | Joye TUCKER, b. 1928, Darlington, Darlington County, South Carolina  d. 19 Dec 2015, Tuomey Regional Medical Center, Sumter, Sumter County, South Carolina (Age 87 years) | |||||||||||
| _UID | D81057B1AE28423487E8F68782443B96BF4E | |||||||||||
| _UID | D81057B1AE28423487E8F68782443B96BF4E | |||||||||||
| Children |
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| Family ID | F72913 | Group Sheet | Family Chart | ||||||||||
| Last Modified | 23 Dec 2015 | |||||||||||
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