The Evolution of...
Jul 06, 2026
Our Story · Est. 1985
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
"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?"
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.
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.
Community & Corporate Responsibility
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.
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.
