The Evolution of Craft

A journey through the history of Nerval Corporation — and the story of one man whose belief in his own hands built a company that now spans two continents, and never stopped looking back at the community that raised it.

🍁 Proudly Canadian Since 1985

July 3, 2026 · 6 min read

On the morning of March 17, 1985, a young man unlocked the door of a small home décor shop in Edmonton for the first time. He had no factory. No supply chain. No blueprint for what any of this would become. What Manjit Nerval had was a conviction — that the things people bring into their homes and workplaces should be made with care, and that a person willing to work could build something lasting from almost nothing.

Forty years later, that single storefront has become a company that manufactures on two continents, has delivered more than 130,000 rooms of furniture and fixtures across North America, builds its own buildings, and — in the years when it mattered most — has fed thousands of families in the community it calls home.

This is not just the story of a company. It's the story of a maker, and of an idea that never changed even as everything around it did: that a company is only ever as good as what it gives back.

1985 – 1991

The Retail Beginning

Every empire has a first room. For Nerval, it was a single décor shop on an Edmonton street — and a founder who paid attention to what his customers actually wanted. When one store became two, Manjit didn't just sell more. He started asking a bigger question: what if he could source these pieces himself?

1985
It begins with a single door. On March 17, Manjit Nerval opens his first home décor shop in Edmonton — one man, one storefront, and an instinct for what a room should feel like.

1986

One store becomes two. Demand outpaces the shelves, and a second Edmonton location opens its doors.

1988 – 1991

Rather than wait for suppliers, Manjit goes to the source — importing directly from Korea and Taiwan in 1988, then China in 1991. The first thread of a global supply network is spun.

1993 – 1998

From Importer to Maker

There is a moment in every maker's life when buying and selling is no longer enough — when you look at the thing in your hands and think, I could build this better myself. For Manjit, that moment arrived in a warehouse in Edmonton, and it changed everything.

1993

Nerval buys its first office and warehouse building — a home of its own, and room to grow into something more than a retailer.

1994
The turning point. Nerval begins manufacturing its own lighting in Edmonton — the first time the company makes, rather than merely sells. Importer becomes maker.

1997

Growth demands more space. A larger office and warehouse is purchased to keep pace with a company that no longer fits its old walls.

1998

Nerval begins producing artwork and framed mirrors in-house — proof that the leap into making wasn't a one-time bet, but a new identity.

2000 – 2010

Expansion Across Borders

Confidence, once earned, travels. Having proven he could make things at home, Manjit set out to build on a scale few Canadian entrepreneurs had ever attempted — a factory of his own, half a world away, with his name on the door.

2000
Nerval builds its own manufacturing facility in Zhuhai, China — 100+ workers producing lighting and bed frames. In doing so, Manjit Nerval becomes the first Indo-Canadian to establish his own manufacturing facility in China: a milestone not just for a company, but for a community watching one of its own.

2006

Manjit founds Nerval Construction — because a maker who can build furniture can build the walls around it too. Over the years, it raises many of the company's own projects across Edmonton.

2008

The catalog deepens. Nerval begins manufacturing and importing case goods — headboards, desks, nightstands — the bones of a furnished room.

2010

Nerval begins fabricating window blinds in Edmonton, adding one more thing it can make with its own hands.

"By now, Manjit could have simply kept building. Instead, he asked a different question — not how much more can we make? but who can we help?"

2014 – 2022

The All is One Initiative

This is the chapter the team is proudest of — and it has nothing to do with furniture. Somewhere along the way, success stopped being the point. What mattered was what you did with it. Under the banner of All is One, Nerval turned outward, toward the people its city too often forgot.

2014
On Valentine's Day, the Seva Food Truck rolls out for the first time. Volunteers deliver warm meals to students at low-income schools in Edmonton's inner city — because no child should try to learn on an empty stomach.

2015
The All is One team takes to the streets of downtown Edmonton, serving the homeless community — meeting people not as a company, but as neighbors.

2020
When the pandemic closed the world, Nerval opened its doors wider. The grocery hamper program fed over 300 families every week in Sherwood Park — quietly, week after week, for as long as they were needed.

2022
What began as acts of kindness becomes an institution: All is One opens a permanent food bank — a promise that the help won't stop when the headlines do.

2016 – 2025

A Diverse Company Today

Four decades in, the boy with one storefront runs a company that defies a single label. Manufacturer. Builder. Host. Innovator. The through-line isn't a product category — it's a refusal to stop making things.

2016

Nerval moves into its 120,000 sq ft office, showroom, and warehouse in Sherwood Park, Alberta — the home it occupies today, and a long way from a single shop on an Edmonton street.

2017

The company introduces the NervalWall demountable office partition system — reimagining how a workspace comes together.

2024

Nerval builds and opens its own banquet hall, The Villa by Nerval, in Edmonton — a place for its community to gather and celebrate.

2025
The story keeps expanding. Nerval enters commercial refrigeration with the opening of ICC Energy in Sherwood Park — proof that four decades in, the founder's instinct to build something new hasn't dimmed.

A company is more than what it makes.

You could measure Nerval in square footage and shipping containers. In the 130,000 rooms it has furnished, or the two continents it manufactures on. But Manjit has always measured it differently — by the meals served, the families fed, the neighbors met on their worst days and treated with dignity.

From feeding students who came to school hungry, to serving the homeless downtown, to carrying 300 families a week through a pandemic, to opening a food bank that still stands today — giving back was never a campaign at Nerval. It was the whole point. The company grew so that it could give more.

That is what it means to work with a company that has spent forty years becoming itself. You aren't just buying a product. You're partnering with people who decided, a long time ago, exactly what they wanted to stand for — and never wavered.

Nerval Community — All is One giving back

The story is still being written.

Forty years ago, a young man turned a key in a lock and opened a single shop. He had no way of knowing it would become a company that manufactures on two continents, builds its own buildings, hosts its community, and feeds its neighbors. He only knew he wanted to make things — and to do right by the people around him.

Everything Nerval has become traces back to that morning, and to the values that never changed: work with your hands, stand behind what you make, and never forget where you came from. The numbers — 40 years, 130,000+ rooms, 400+ projects — are just the evidence. The story is the craft, and the care behind it.

When you choose Nerval, you choose four decades of that same conviction — and a company that is only just getting started.

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