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Emperia was founded in 1989 by Ben Stephens, Susie Severson, Greg Hughes, Karl Hurowitz and Dan Schlicting.
In 1989, a transition was occurring in the picture frame industry. The quality American manufacturers were disappearing and there became a large gap between the bread and butter molding manufactures in the USA and the high quality molding manufacturers of Europe. The Italians, Germans, and Spanish were designing and producing moldings which could not be duplicated in the USA. The styles (profiles) and finishes (gilded or film) were far superior to anything produced in USA. The dollar was very strong at that time, which in turn made these European moldings even more desirable.
As of this writing, times have changed considerably with regards to the value of the dollar and also the competition between the Asian factories and the European factories.
For the above reasons, Emperia made the decision to import exclusively from Italy, Germany, Ireland and Spain. We have not waived from this philosophy and will continue along the same path in the foreseeable future. It has taken many years to develop valued relationships with our suppliers and we continue to honor these associations.
Emperia is a small distributor and only stocks between 200 feet and 3000 feet of an item. Occasionally we are at the mercy of our supplier’s economy of scale and cannot continue to stock marginal items. However, we have felt for perhaps the last 15 to 20 years that our industry was changing from the basic bread and butter items into more of a fashion industry. Therefore we find it prudent to constantly change our molding line in keeping with the direction of our industry.
Since 1989 our competition has increased 8 fold, however we believe that our assortment of moldings distinguishes us from our competitors. It is rare to find something in our line that our competitors might also carry.```````````
We hope you share our philosophy.