I enjoy the fact that we work with so many different manufacturers. I was looking for a special table for a client yesterday and felt that it really didn’t exist due to the “defying physics” thing. It needed to be traditional, unique, cool, 60” round with a pedestal, but then extend to feed King Arthur and all his knights when they come to visit. That’s where the physics came into play. How do you support a table from one pedestal when it extends to seat twelve? Fortunately my mind has not completely faded and I remembered a company that makes dining tables in England and supposedly is the supplier for Harrods. Sure enough, they make a beautiful table that is going to be perfect for our client. The top is planked in spectacularly grained cherry and hand lathed to give it just enough texture that you’d swear you found it in some ancient vine covered estate in the English countryside. 
They don’t skimp on the support structure underneath, so the table won’t droop like a willow tree when extended.
Most of the time I think of my manufacturers as large corporations full of office cubes and assembly lines. Truth is, some of the great product comes from family owned companies that pass down their knowledge from generation to generation. Yesterday I was calling on one of those small suppliers to check on the availability of a piece only to find that they had forwarded their calls to their home phone…which was answered by the baby sitter. She wasn’t much help with our question, which will have to wait until Monday, but I got a good laugh from the situation.