The association was founded in 1973 from a general industry need to define uniform safety and performance standards for the furniture industry. BIFMA’s mission is to manage and develop furniture standards that embody safety, ergonomics, health, sustainability, and performance. The organization further provides market data, thought leadership, and industry outreach celebrating the significant influence furnishings have on people’s daily lives.

“First and foremost, our role is to maintain the industry standards that define safety and promote performance for the furniture industry. These standards provide customers and designers who specify furniture the ability to make confident procurement decisions in the furniture that they select,” explains President and Chief Executive Officer, Deirdre Jimenez.

BIFMA further understands that the relationship between interior design and furniture design is collaborative and celebrates the design and innovation that its members contribute to the evolution of the built environment.

Not only is the association a resource for the industry itself, but BIFMA is also highly valuable to the stakeholder community who depend on the furniture industry. The association’s outreach provides both customers and designers with the resources to distinguish and identify furniture products that conform to industry standards. BIFMA also offers its LEVEL certification program to clearly identify furniture products that have achieved rigorous environmental, social, and health and wellness criteria.

“While interior design creates the aesthetic and circulation of a space, furniture activates the space. By nature of its function and tactile connection to people who use the space, furniture plays a significant role in the human experience,” says Jimenez.

BIFMA is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to develop the furniture industry standards. BIFMA Director of Safety and Performance, Anthony Serge, explains the lengthy protocol involved in developing these standards. “We are accredited and audited to follow ANSI Process. This begins by convening a broad representation of stakeholders to provide input. This may include educators, government, manufacturers, suppliers, consultants, test labs, et cetera,” he says.

Once the criteria are defined and the content has been written, the standard proceeds through a debate and voting process that ultimately results in consensus. The effort to maintain the standards is in large part credited to the numerous member volunteer committees. BIFMA collaborates with a multitude of industry groups and government agencies utilizing its committee structure. Nineteen active volunteer member committees work on various standards and topics that continue to be of interest to the industry.

The ANSI/BIFMA standards are voluntary and not mandated by the government. However, they are internationally recognized by government, public, and private organizations who require new furniture purchases to conform to the published standards.

BIFMA manages 20 standards and guidelines for lounge seating, desks, tables, panels, work surfaces, and storage units. In addition to product standards, there are non-product standards and guidelines for ergonomics, emissions, sustainability, textiles, and color measurement.

Furniture products change as society changes and our environments evolve. For that reason, ANSI requires that each standard is reviewed every five years, to determine whether it should be reaffirmed or revised.

The same drivers that cause existing standards to be revised can also give rise to new standards. BIFMA currently has four new standards in development. Two of these standards are being created to acknowledge the increased popularity they gained during the pandemic. The exterior commercial furniture standard supports the expanding use of outdoor areas, capitalizing on open air circulation, and a standard for personal privacy pods supports the desire for spatial separation indoors.

Also heightened by the pandemic, BIFMA is elevating two existing guidelines into standards. The furniture surface cleaning standard addresses the focus placed on cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting surfaces without destroying materials. The purpose of this standard is to protect products as new chemicals and cleaning protocols are being introduced into every type of environment, not just healthcare. Ergonomics, while around for decades, is benefiting from ESG conversations supporting employee wellness. The ergonomics guideline became more essential as people transitioned to different working areas, including their own homes.

Already widely known in North America, BIFMA’s standards also compare favorably to other international furniture standards. BIFMA is active in the International Standards Organization (ISO) and holds the North American voting seat for all furniture categories. BIFMA is actively engaged with ISO to work toward globally harmonized standards in the future.

One standard that is moving in this direction is the ANSI/BIFMA e3 furniture sustainability standard. Europe’s standard, managed by FEMB, references it and the two groups are collaborating on their respective revisions. BIFMA’s LEVEL certification program is based on the ANSI/BIFMA e3 furniture sustainability standard and aims to provide a free and transparent method to evaluate the environmental and societal impacts of manufactured furniture products. The e3 standard examines furniture through the lens of sustainability, and the LEVEL certification program evaluates products in achieving the criteria established in the standard.

“We align with independent certification bodies who review products and visit the manufacturers’ locations to certify products against a series of credits. Products can achieve LEVEL 1, 2, or 3, certification based on the number of requirements they meet. Once a product is certified it is entered into the LEVEL registry, which is publicly available,” says Director of Health and Sustainability Steve Kooy.

The BIFMA LEVEL registry lists and filters certified products and allows buyers to simplify their search for sustainable furniture. With over 4,500 products in the registry, LEVEL is the most widely adopted certification program for furniture in North America and is gaining interest in other countries. BIFMA has helped to raise the bar in sustainability for the furniture industry and is now a recognized label in the Amazon Climate Pledge Friendly program where LEVEL certified products listed on Amazon will now display the LEVEL mark.

BIFMA Compliant is another public resource. It is a registry of furniture products tested to conform to the ANSI/BIFMA safety and performance standards. BIFMA Compliant was introduced in March 2021 to serve as a resource for buyers and specifiers who want to quickly identify products that comply with industry standards. Prior to Compliant, designers and customers struggled to distinguish products that had been tested for safety and performance. There wasn’t a means to enforce or verify that the standards had been met for a product. To address this market need, BIFMA created the Compliant program, and it has massively simplified the sourcing process and brought transparency to the market.

“The Compliant Registry is free and publicly available. Products can be filtered by standard, category, or brand,” explains Serge. “As a requirement, products that are listed on the registry must have been tested in an ISO 17025 accredited test lab.”

The industry-wide Compliant registry has exceeded BIFMA’s expectations, and it now has over sixty brands participating, with more working to get their listing approved in the registry. Approaching 2,500 product listings—which can include full product lines—the registry now features hundreds of thousands of available products. Like LEVEL, BIFMA Compliant is available to all furniture manufacturers who want to participate. These programs are not limited to BIFMA members.

The mission to educate furniture buyers and specifiers is led by an initiative of the organization called BIFMA Learning. An increasing number of influencers are involved in the furniture procurement process including real estate professionals, facility managers, and interior designers. BIFMA aims to raise awareness with this group of stakeholders and extend that outreach to educators and their students who are entering these fields.

Many professionals have certification or licensure requirements for continuing education. “It’s a win-win because we have interest in educating the market, and industry stakeholders in the market have a need for CEUs. We have four CEUs currently, and we have two more that are in development,” says Jennifer Wammack, Director of Outreach and Learning. Through an initiative called BIFMA Faculty, the organization trains member volunteers to deliver accredited CEUs.

Since January of this year, another educational offering by BIFMA is the Monthly Learning Series. It is free for anyone looking to learn more about furniture. The content alternates between accredited CEUs and industry topics of interest.

In addition, a new focus for BIFMA is attracting the next generation of talent into the industry. The industry is full of professionals with twenty to thirty years of experience who are beginning to retire. To minimize disruption, the association wants to support the industry by helping college graduates understand the careers available and equip them with knowledge about the standards that drive the industry.

“We have identified, and our members have affirmed the need to attract and retain new talent, and increasingly more diverse talent, so we are really taking that charge on their behalf to supplement some of what they’re doing individually,” says Wammack. “One of the ways that we reach these audiences is through our CEUs (continuing education units).”

One of the newest committees is the Young Professionals group which reaches out to students interested in the industry to share the many potential career paths and how BIFMA members can provide these opportunities.

In addition to the vast resources BIFMA offers to the industry stakeholder community and general public, there are some exclusive services BIFMA provides to its members, perhaps the most popular being the events. The organization hosts the 360° Leadership Conference in January of every year, curated around current industry topics. Other major events include the annual business meeting and breakfast in June as part of NeoCon, the North American Furniture Trade show, and a Summit in the fall where all the 20+ volunteer committees made up of well over 100 members come together to share annual progress and future work plans.

The furniture industry is relatively small in comparison to other manufacturing industries, so economic drivers can have a larger impact. Since BIFMA membership makes up a significant percentage of the industry, BIFMA manages a statistics program specifically for members. This includes an industry outlook, benchmarking analysis, and regular economic forecasts.

Deirdre Jimenez provides her perspective on how the industry will fare: “Being an architect and interior designer, as I reflect on the history of architecture, the desire to improve the safety, comfort, and the aesthetics of our environments has not diminished. Furniture has played a key role in that history and will continue to evolve. BIFMA members built the industry and will lead the industry into the future.”

The post Strengthening the Commercial Furniture Industry – Advocating for Innovation, Sustainability, & Education<p class="company">BIFMA</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

In the mid-1950s, Gigi’s son Dario took over and applied his knowledge of design to take the business in a new direction inspired by mid-century modernism. “It was very successful,” Delmestri says. “It was the right time for that type of furniture. Modern furniture in the sixties and seventies, especially from Europe, was very popular, and he was exporting ninety percent of his business.”

But the company struggled with labor relations and regulations despite this success because its location “was not really a business-friendly climate.” In response, the family moved from Italy to North Carolina, where IOA Healthcare Furniture is based today.

Dario’s son Fabio earned an industrial design degree from Pratt Institute in New York, which he used to steer the company in a new direction. “During that time—the late eighties—there was a bit of a downturn in the economy, and so he started looking for industries or niches that may not be as affected by the markets,” Delmestri says. “He found healthcare furniture, and we started with a simple healthcare collection: a rocker, a recliner, and some lounge furniture.”

“It quickly grew to the point where, today, ninety-eight percent of all of the business that IOA does is healthcare furniture. We continue to grow through the years. We have about two hundred full-time employees and sales of about $60 million, and we’re the largest privately-owned company in our industry.”

So what is the secret to four generations of success? Just as Dario did with his son Fabio, “My dad gives me a long leash and allows me to experiment and fail and learn on my own, and I think that’s a big part of our success,” Delmestri says. “We trust in one another, and we allow each generation to learn on their own, and frankly, if you look at each different generation and what they did, they’ve each taken the company in their own direction. I think that’s been a big part of the success. My grandfather was maybe more design-oriented than his father, and my father was more mechanically inclined than his father. So each generation gets to play to their strengths.”

While four generations of Delmestris have run this company, “we owe a lot of our success to the tremendous talent of our employees,” he says. “IOA would not be what it is today without them. Adam Gregory, Creative Director, has been a transformative force who has elevated IOA’s designs. He has brought to life many of the designs done in collaboration with our partners such as HKS and CAMA, Inc., amongst others. If there is one thing I am most proud of, it would be bringing people like Adam on and making sure they have the infrastructure around them to succeed.”

This rich talent pool has helped IOA become a creative leader. “We are known as being an innovator in the industry,” Delmestri says. “We’ve had a lot of firsts, and we’re actually one of the few in our industry that manufactures under FDA compliance, [which has] allowed us to continue to push the envelope and create recliners like our exam recliner.” This unique chair rises to the same height as an exam table, has arms that fold down, and can be customized to include stirrups and a paper roll.

“That’s become one of our biggest sellers and makes up about twenty percent of our business,” Delmestri says. “It’s a good example of the way that we innovate, and we do so because we are constantly customizing our products for our clients. And while that’s not always the cheapest way of doing things, it really pays off because many of those custom [designs] then go on to be best sellers later on.”

The company’s metalwork heritage is another differentiator. “Our experience in metal manufacturing sets us apart from our competitors,” Delmestri says. “That allows us to create many of our own mechanisms. We design them and manufacture them… We have twenty-seven different mechanisms to choose from.”

IOA has four exciting new collections that will launch in October at this year’s Healthcare Design Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Internationally renowned Cannon Design has partnered with IOA to create a behavioral health collection ideal for waiting rooms and lounge areas. The focus on this area of healthcare makes a lot of sense. “Behavioral health is the fastest growing segment, especially when it comes to construction,” Delmestri says. “There are more behavior health facilities being built than any other types.”

In another cooperative effort, IOA worked with well-known design firm HKS to create a waiting room collection that draws on the principles of multiple sectors. The head of each HKS department—from transportation and higher education to corporate and hospitality—“brought in their own department-specific needs,” Delmestri says. “We tried to design something that would work in all of those environments.”

While the vast majority of IOA’s furniture goes into the healthcare sector, the company has experienced an increase seen in other sectors, “especially as our design has evolved and become more sophisticated.” In addition, IOA’s collections have gained popularity since COVID hit because the cleaning process in all public spaces has become “more rigorous and the chemicals harsher, as they should be,” Delmestri says. “Our products are designed to withstand that.”

Another new IOA product is an addition to the company’s Cama collection, designed in collaboration with Rosalyn Cama, President of the boutique design firm CAMA. “She is really very well known in the industry,” Delmestri says. Lastly, IOA is launching a sleeper sofa collection that was designed completely in-house. The team is capitalizing on its bestselling area of expertise with this product line. “Seventy percent of our business comes from patient room furniture: recliners and sleepers,” Delmestri says.

IOA has a handful of new initiatives in addition to these new, upcoming collections. Launching in October, IOA for Life is a push to include a QR label in all the company’s furniture, giving customers a full suite of product information at their fingertips. “When you scan the QR label, up pops all the information about that order—an exploded view of the chair where you can see all the different parts,” Delmestri explains. “Often times they don’t know who built the chair [because] we sell through a third party—office furniture dealers. They don’t know who the dealer is. They don’t know what the part number is. Sometimes they have a hard time describing it. So now when they scan the QR label, up pops all that information, and then they can make an informed call and say, ‘We need a new arm cap that is part number 4,021 and the color is 31 gray.’ It takes out the guesswork.”

Another innovation is IOA’s new fall prevention technology. In partnership with the University of Michigan, the company has developed a recliner with a footrest that can withstand up to three hundred pounds. The special footrest will now be available on 90 percent of the company’s recliners to improve safety. “The number two cause of daytime patient falls is getting in and out of a recliner,” says Delmestri.

“They could be weak and they can’t operate the lever or they might just not know how that chair operates and so they try to slide out of the chair without putting the footrest down. With any other recliner that would mean that the chair would either tip forward or that the footrest would collapse back into itself.” But now, patients can put their full weight on the very end of that footrest. “That’s been a huge game changer.”

In another recent initiative, IOA teamed up with North Carolina State University to develop a next-generation fabric able to withstand harsh disinfectants. “We have these chairs that the inside lasts forever, but the fabrics [were] failing because of cleaners just eating them up,” Delmestri says. University researchers came up with a material that is abrasion and puncture-proof in addition to withstanding strong chemicals. “It’s something that holds up really well to the eight different families of hospital cleaners that are being used today,” Delmestri says.

With so many new collections and initiatives underway and a century of experience to build upon, the team certainly has reason to feel optimistic. “We’ve continued to see 30, 40, 50 percent growth year after year,” Delmestri says. “I’m going on my tenth year with the company but I plan on being like my grandfather who’s eighty-eight and still comes into the office every day. I feel really confident about the future of the company.”

The post An Old Company with New Ideas<p class="company">IOA Healthcare Furniture</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

At the time, Dauphin himself was a traveling businessman who invested in what would become his family business. His first major order came in 1971: 25,000 chairs for the government of North Rhine-Westphalia. The scale of the order gave him the ability to begin growing his company, investing in new products, and bolstering its offerings of ergonomic chairs, leading to an international expansion that continues.

Today, Dauphin offers seating products in four distinct categories: office seating, tables, lounge furniture, and fixed seating. In doing so, it has become one of the world’s foremost companies of high-quality, sustainable seating solutions, which are available in several locations around the world.

Dauphin Americas President Matthew Negron underlines that the market differentiator of the company lies in its full name, Dauphin HumanDesign Group. The core values of the company are based on designs made for humans, and this aligns with the company’s actions. “Human needs and requirements consistently change, but so has Dauphin,” he explains, and following these changing needs has made the company a top choice in the market for over fifty years.

The idea of human design is specifically focused on Dauphin products supporting people, enhancing places, and embracing the culture of any company using the products. It remains important for the company to meet these expectations, and work is constantly being done to realize this value in all its innovations in office furniture.

As well as the decades of work that Dauphin has done to stay at the top of its field, even more work is being put into keeping the company and its practices ecologically responsible. The company is committed to sustainability in its materials, processes, manufacturing practices, and programs for its clients. Its actions toward environmental sustainability are directed by a mission statement that means it will provide visually appealing, affordable, well-engineered, and sustainable furniture by reducing the use of fresh raw materials, energy usage, and greenhouse gases.

In adopting these practices, Dauphin looks to educate employees and customers alike on the impact of choices like these and how working together on all fronts can accomplish these goals. Negron describes how, in 2003, the company set up an environmental management system in accordance with DIN EN ISO 14001—the European / international environmental management standard—which has been maintained and updated over the past two decades.

Furthermore, all of Dauphin’s products use recycled materials and have an associated Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), a report that communicates the potential environmental and health impacts of a specific product and ensures full transparency of materials used.

It also features a take-back program, which allows a client to ship a product back to the company so that it can properly recycle the product or repair and donate it to a local community organization. There is no length to which the company will not go to ensure it contributes to a better world for tomorrow.

Social responsibility is another important facet of the company’s identity, as it commits time, money, and attention to many worthwhile causes. Negron notes that Dauphin and its team members donate both time and money to events such as Common Thread For The Cure—a breast cancer charity focusing on patient wellbeing and financial aid, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and community food banks. The company’s Safe Reefs initiative donates two percent of its Reefs Collaborative lounge net sales to organizations working toward protecting coral reefs around the world. As well, “We have created Dauphin EcoLab, an initiative that supports sustainable efforts in our industry. We invite our community to bring discarded glass bottles to our Boonton location so that our creative production team can repurpose them, transforming them into beautiful collectibles. In exchange for their bottle contributions, we are gifting one unique Dauphin collectible piece for them to keep. Our planet is our home, and we are taking strides toward building a more sustainable future; as first steps, we are producing branded goods and promotional materials that are eco-friendly, repurposed, recycled, and/or fair trade certified. Some of our promotional materials include fair-trade certified bracelets, totes, and handbags handcrafted by our production team using repurposed upholstery.” For more on the company’s programs on sustainability and social responsibility, visit Insights (dauphin.com).

Dauphin also hosts local schools and universities at its facilities in Boonton. This year, the company introduced ‘Community Impact Days,’ which permits each employee to take two days off per year, with full pay, to volunteer their time to an organization or event of their choice. This initiative is allowing employees to give back to their local communities and donate time to a cause aligned with their values and passions without sacrificing a day’s pay.

The Community Impact Days initiative is one example of how the company takes care of its employees, generating respect. Dauphin is committed to developing and maintaining an inclusive and diverse workplace, striving to do right by its workers through its strictly upheld policies.

Through the summer of 2022, the company experimented with an idea that has taken hold in a few countries around the world: the four-day work week. From May 30—Memorial Day—to September 5, 2022—Labor Day—each employee will be working four, ten-hour days per week with three days left over as the new weekend, as opposed to the typical arrangement of five, eight-hour days and a two-day weekend.

An internal survey on the four-day work week distributed in July saw 78 percent of respondents declare their work-life balance to be improved by working on this new schedule. The experiment is still ongoing as of press time, but initial reports and expectations are positive.

Negron notes that, in the summer, most employees take flexible schedules, and the company has embraced a hybrid work environment, providing employees with the ability to put their families first. Work-life balance is important to keeping employees happy, which in turn feeds into a much more stable and high-quality workflow.

As has been the case worldwide, the coronavirus pandemic negatively affected the contract furniture market. Universities, and corporate offices—two big clients for companies like Dauphin—decreased annual purchasing in 2020 to offset costs incurred due to the conditions of the pandemic. As businesses came out of the lockdown measures, the company then had to contend with a potential recession, which has spooked many clients into a holding pattern on potential purchasing.

However, Negron is confident that the industry will rebound. Many of its corporate and university clients are in the planning stages of reconfiguring office spaces or are building new locations altogether, which has the company feeling optimistic. High-quality furniture is still needed by varied industries, and Dauphin is happy to provide it as more and more people head back to work.

Dauphin is currently investing time and resources into upgrading its technology to create a more seamless experience for clients working with it. “Technology is moving faster than it has ever moved before,” he explains, “and we want to ensure we stay up-to-date to meet and exceed the needs of the client.”

The technology integrations include a product configurator, an enterprise resource planning system to manage day-to-day operations, solutions for quick and accurate price quotes, automated order processing, and more. The company will also continue developing new products while creating and adapting to different market spaces.

“Dauphin is more than just a manufacturer,” says Negron, and “Growing into new markets will add a new twist and perspective to our operations.” According to him, Dauphin Americas is excited to continue providing its clients in the western world and across the globe with a quality customer experience for years to come.

The post Committed to Sustainable Practices in the Seating Solutions Market<p class="company">Dauphin Americas</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

As the star brand of the recently consolidated GMi Companies, Ghent products are popular in the office decor market. It stands to reason that world-leading organizations such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NASA, Honda, Boeing, Kroger, and a veritable avalanche of other household names trust this fabricator for all their ancillary office equipment and visual display needs. Ghent provides consistent value, innovation, and fast delivery. Some of its products even offer fifty-year performance assurances, and their claim to fame is offering no hidden fees for things like markers, erasers, accessory holders, crating, custom colors, and more.

While the internet is awash with pronunciations of the company name, Scott Bowers, vice president of product, assures me that the correct way to say its name is with a soft G, as in gentleman. Linguistic features clarified, Ghent continues to lead the market. It also knows how to adapt.

Based in Lebanon, Ohio, Ghent joined forces with its sister companies, Waddell and VividBoard, to bring premium office shelving, glass boards, whiteboards, room and floor dividers, acoustic solutions, and more to the market rapidly. Here, there is no such thing as waiting several weeks to dispatch orders. Due to the extensive capabilities of its proudly American fabrication outfits, goods arrive at their destination within an impressive ten-day lead time of the date of purchase. The service comes with what the company assures are the best warranties in the industry.

Ghent “goes to market through dealers who we partner with,” says Ashley Blevins, Director of Sales. These partners sell “our products into the workplace, K-12 education, higher education, and healthcare. Recently, we have seen our products moving into outdoor and hospitality.”

Ghent products enable office teams across the United States to communicate and share information in practical yet environmentally safer and healthier ways, and much of the company’s success comes from its consistency and reliability. Clients feel safe with its teams, knowing that it does what it says. It may sound strange at first but the dangers of ingredients prevalent in cheap knock-off whiteboards and other products will, no doubt, alarm anyone conscious of what their bodies are exposed to.

It is, therefore, reassuring to know that Ghent’s safety promise extends to its products. Regular inspections by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stand testimony to the fact. “We are a family business, and we work in a small town,” Bowers says, adding that product safety is vital. Stains for wood products and paints on glass are water-based. The company is “not putting chemicals into the environment because we also live here.”

In addition to heeding EPA regulations, the company adheres to some of the California Air Resources Board carbon rules which forbid the use of formaldehyde and other carcinogens, he comments. All these measures drive the promise to keep workers and customers safe. “If they are not mentally and physically healthy, shame on us. That is not the key to long-term success. We are very diligent when buying materials,” he says.

After materials arrive at its facilities, the company runs tests to establish content and confirm safety. It is also a member of BIFMA, formerly the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association. Its compliance with this furniture watchdog and its safety and quality regulations through rigorous testing and careful material applications is an enormous undertaking.

“It is nice to have an organization that sets the standards, and we are a part of that,” Bowers says. “We truly want to be here for the long term.” He then mentions an upcoming meeting on potentially removing plastics from office furniture. Plastics can contain chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormonal systems. These endocrine disruptors can result in developmental disorders, birth defects, or cancerous tumors.

These added measures contribute to the value of Ghent product warranties. They also highlight its commitment to meaningful environmental sustainability efforts and technologies. Its aim becomes clear, as Blevins underlines the importance of supplying customers who are looking for environmentally safe, emissions-free products with goods that deliver on safety and longevity.

The name Ghent hails from the community in Northeast Ohio, where it first started trading “out of the back of Good Housekeeping magazine.” The family-owned outfit went into business in 1976 as Ghent Enterprises, eventually making whiteboards, tack boards, and chalkboards that featured mainly in schools, colleges, universities, and other places of education.

Ghent’s heritage rests upon the virtues of family values and friendship, and so, it soon started expanding the size of its staff after opening its doors in the late seventies. The company purchased Waddell, a firm tracing its roots back to the 1800s, in 1986. When the nature of education started changing across the United States in the nineties, GMi Companies turned towards other markets, vastly diversifying its client base by focusing on companies that insisted on premium products.

The company’s owners had no sooner seen the firm through the dawn of the millennium when it purchased VividBoard. The new subsidiary brought a deep knowledge of custom graphics that catapulted its traditional offering into an entirely new sphere.

Around 2010, GMi Companies started exploring the world of contract furniture, where it promptly discovered a niche for custom products. The three sister companies made their mark on the American market as independent brands. Recently, however, its leadership team positioned the formerly individual businesses as divisions under the single umbrella of the new Ghent brand, streamlining the overall operation.

The move was in response to its customers, who had repeatedly requested a significantly simplified purchasing process. “It makes change a lot easier when you are listening to your customers,” says Bowers.

As VividBoard provided most of its custom graphics to the healthcare industry, the company has renamed this division Ghent Healthcare. “It is a big move,” Blevins admits. Each brand had been run as its own business, so quite a bit of work is being done internally to meld them but the result will be smoother for customers and the company wants to give them “the best of what they want. It truly simplifies the buying and quoting process for our customers when they can get all of these products under one simple brand,” she adds.

Another feature offering ease of use is the company’s recently introduced Product Builder configuration tool on its website, and this demanded a sizeable chunk of resources. “We look at technology as multi-faceted. This tool allows our customers to go and render their exact product with the exact color, fabric, and custom solutions, get a real-time quote, a real-time freight quote,” says Blevins.

The pandemic has not been an issue for Ghent. “It has been one of the brightest moments in our history,” Bowers says, adding that the team responded to the public need. “They really embraced that.”

Ghent staff pooled their ingenuity and tackled the problem. They started innovating and launched seventeen new product ranges, a considerable achievement during such uncertain times. The new ranges revolved around personal protection and included shields and screens. Despite most staff working remotely, they fabricated the most impressive volumes of goods in the company’s history. Their initiative and gumption during trying times resulted in no layoffs, an even larger staff count, plus the highest sales figures on record. The management team could not be prouder of this fact or its people.

Following this notable shift in production, the company increased its facility footprint by 40 percent. This move improved its overall production operations and secured supplies. Ghent also doubled its engineering staff in a bid to further improve systems and innovation. It also implements the latest technological possibilities, optimizing its workflow and output. The result has inspired vision and motivated its people.

“We want to be part of shaping the future and where our industry goes,” Bowers says. As Ghent heads into the future, leadership, passion, and exploration continue to lead.

The post Getting the Message Across: Ghent Brings Communication Home<p class="company">Ghent</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

To learn about Symbiote, its 40-year history, and the new direction it’s taking, we met with the founder’s son, Barrett Randolph, who three years ago took over the reins as President; Amber Wendling, National Sales Director; and Nick Suttorp, Creative Services Manager, at company headquarters in Zeeland near Lake Michigan.

Randolph explains that while a student at the University of Michigan, his father had “crossed paths with Robert Propst, the main researcher for Herman Miller, the leading work-space furniture designer in the U.S.” Working together at Ann Arbor Hospital, Propst and Randolph’s father developed the first health care furniture line for Herman Miller, “which was how he got into the furniture world, and health care specifically.”

From there, his father “helped develop a product for Herman Miller called Action Office, with a portion of it to be used in a factory setting, but then that company decided it was not a worthwhile product to continue, and so at that point, in 1982, he left and created his own business, which he named Symbiote.”

Connecting people to their work
The name Symbiote is particularly well-suited, as it references the classical Greek word, “symbiosis”, meaning “a living together”, and the modern scientific term, defined as “an interaction between two organisms living in close physical association, usually to the advantage of both” by the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

But as Randolph says, his father extended the definition “to include the connection between the work itself and the people doing it. Symbiote’s laboratory furniture was developed with the idea that the work environment should enhance the work being performed, so furniture and tools need to be designed to support the purpose of the work and allow workers to make optimal use of their time and skills.”

The logical corollary to this is that if it is easier or more comfortable to use furniture designed specifically for laboratory use, such as the microscope table Symbiote designs that tilts to the correct angle so scientists or technicians don’t have to work hunched, the result will be better. And by extension, we’ll all benefit from better science and improved technology.

Symbiote’s heavy-duty, height-adjustable table is an excellent case in point.

“It evolved years ago out of a request from Boeing,” Randolph says. “Boeing had a whole group doing the wire harnessing assembly and they wanted to lay it out the length of the entire plane. But some workers were tall, and some short, so they needed a table that could adjust to the height of the workers. We created a worktable that could be raised and lowered for an entire group or could be raised individually in sections.”

Bringing it in-house
For its first 39 years, Symbiote was an engineering and design company that used third-party manufacturers to fabricate the products according to their specifications. When Barrett Randolph became President three years ago, he says, “I thought we needed to do a better job of making our own products and stop acting as a middleman in our own business. So we’ve added a lot of manufacturing equipment to support that.”

To create a state-of-the-art manufacturing space, over $600,000 was invested to reorganize and expand the original space by 4,670 square feet to accommodate the equipment—laser cutters for steel tubing and sheet steel; a bending press, welding equipment and routers. This led to seven new manufacturing jobs.

All of Symbiote’s furniture is designed and manufactured to meet the exacting standards of the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association. The company, certified as carbon neutral, follows a lean manufacturing model and maintains only a small inventory of some high-demand items.

Symbiote does do custom work but also maintains a line of standard products, many on casters for ease of movement, with finishes that meet the needs of laboratories. For example, anti-microbial stainless steel is used for labs where sterile conditions are imperative, while an epoxy resin finish meets the bill in laboratories using burners or gas due to its strong heat-resistant properties.

Using standard pieces along with customized pieces, Suttorp will look at the customer’s space, considering their needs and wants, and lay it out, creating three-dimensional spaces with drawings, elevations and renderings.

“Much of the planning is done virtually,” he says, “because often it begins before a facility is even built. We have meetings with the end users, dealers, and architects, and work through the specifications and requirements, using the products that fit best to achieve what the end users want,” he explains.

“Within our five primary markets there could be hundreds of types of labs with different needs—some high-tech labs need a lot of power and data, while others need exhaust systems because they’re working with liquids and gasses. Biotech is a huge catch-all for many different purposes and could include anything from pharmaceuticals to DNA sequencing, with vastly different needs.”

With Symbiote, customers aren’t buying pieces of furniture, they’re buying solutions.

Customization is just one reason why laboratories are more than happy to partner with Symbiote. “It’s also our heavy-duty capability,” says Randolph. “We use 14-gauge steel tubing with 1,000 lb. capacity on both sides of the workstations. Our heavy-duty, height-adjustable tables are rated at 750 lbs., but I have put 2000 lbs. on them. If a customer is looking for an ergonomic solution for their employees to work on big pieces of equipment, they can put it on one of our tables and employees of different heights can set it at the right height for them and have an ergonomic solution,” he says.

“Another reason is that everything we offer can be put on casters, so if a lab has to re-design a space for a special project or if needs change over time, the configuration can be easily accommodated, without having to call in a facility team to move the workstations.”

And whether the designers and fabricators at Symbiote are working on a three-story lab with multiple uses as they did in Montreal or a high school science wing expansion that is training scientists for the future, the team at Symbiote takes the same level of care, creating ergonomic solutions so professionals and students alike can do their best work.

Symbiote solutions
Proprietary and confidentiality concerns surrounding research and product development mean that some companies do not wish to have their inner workings made public, but the team at Symbiote was able to share several case studies of organizations that did agree, to give readers a better understanding of just what a crucial role the right equipment can play.

When Amway, a billion-dollar U.S. company, renovated its research and development labs that produce supplements under the Nutrilite brand in Ada, MI, it used Symbiote’s electric and manual height-adjustable mobile workstations and fume hoods.

The overall design, based on the concept of a bicycle wheel with an outer rim, spokes and a central hub, meant that the multitude of different tests performed on raw, organically grown ingredients could be carried out efficiently to reduce the time required to test both them and the finished products. The renovation was completed in 2014 and eight years later, the space continues to function optimally.

The Phoenix Children’s Hospital employs 100 scientists and technicians who work around the clock, carrying out critical testing in the areas of microbiology, hematology, tissue processing and anatomical pathology. Before 2017 and reconstruction, critical testing was carried out in 10 different labs with workspaces not efficiently configured.

Symbiote was able to bring the ten labs together in one core clinical space and meet the defined needs of the hospital for ease of cleaning, infection control, and increased power and data at each station.

To meet a request for a cheerful aesthetic, standard all-white cabinetry was customized with splashes of color. Because of the efficiency of the new layout and furnishings, testing time was cut by hours, meaning that critical treatment, dependent on accurate testing and diagnosis, could begin that much sooner.

More labs, more solutions
The list goes on and on of laboratories which have benefited from Symbiote’s solutions. They range from Facebook’s Hardware Lab, in Menlo Park, CA, to Collins Aerospace location in Cedar Rapids, IA, where 100 workstations focus on avionics and missions systems research. There’s Vanderbilt University Student Surgery Lab in Nashville, TN, and the Central Hospital University of Montreal (CHUM) in Quebec, where diagnostic, research, and teaching labs span three floors of one of the largest hospitals in North America.

Wendling, who joined Symbiote recently, having worked for Herman Miller, is excited about the opportunities for the betterment of society that Symbiote’s designs and products afford, particularly in the medical field.

“Speaking as a mother, the improvement of testing services at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital warms my heart,” she says as she reflects on the power of the right work environment to effect positive outcomes. It’s for reasons like this that she’s excited to meet with dealers and sales reps and supply them with information about specialized laboratory furniture and how it differs from commercial office furniture. A lot of dealers just won’t touch a lab space because they don’t feel comfortable in that area, she says, but Symbiote’s products make it easy for them.

Getting Symbiote’s name out there, and the hard work and dedication of the team, whom Wendling calls “a fantastic group of people”, will continue their beneficial impacts on the output of labs across the country.

The post The Science of Productivity<p class="company">Symbiote</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Focusing on four contract market sectors—education, corporate, government, and a specialty in healthcare—Spec brings a distinctive customer-oriented approach with designs that allow customers to choose from a wide range of options and price ranges to fit a variety of specialized needs.

With installations found across North America, Spec is backed by an industry-leading guarantee and a commitment to first-rate customer service.

“What we do well for the customer is give them as many options as possible and then align on that in our build-to-order strategy,” says Stefan Robertson, Director of Operations. “We don’t have a lot of stock of completed product; we have components that we’ve purchased or parts that will arrive once we have an order with the customer.”

This strategy allows numerous choices in the customization of table height, finishes, frames, types of fabric, and colors. With a metal shop, wood shop and paint line in-house, the company also does all its own finishings, controlling the process from start to end.

“If we have an order for 100 chairs in silver, and they want another 100 chairs in bright blue, that doesn’t come from two separate factories or get sent somewhere else for paint. We’re able to do that here,” says Robertson, “and the same with upholstery. We sew all our own covers here, so we’re able to take what the customer wants and configure that to the order.”

Not only is it part of Spec’s values to source from North American companies, but also support local businesses and groups in the area, which provides the company with manufacturing benefits as well.

“We’re not waiting on container loads to get dropped off from a ship being held up for any number of months,” says Chris Benjamin, Director, Product Development and Engineering. “That speaks to our flexibility and helps support businesses like ours in the industry.”

This also has some very practical benefits in terms of doing smaller pack sizes, which lends itself to customization and the ability to help customers find what they’re looking for.

“It also gives us more flexibility in the manufacturing process as far as lead time of parts, the ability to do smaller-volume customs, and the ability to turn orders around quickly,” says Benjamin.

All of which came in handy during the past two years and the supply chain upheaval due to the pandemic.

“Looking at the impact on business as far as lead times go, we’re certainly able to keep that under control,” says Robertson. “When other companies were experiencing offshore disruptions importing in containers from places outside the country, we didn’t feel that, and we still don’t.”

Being able to be build-to-order using locally sourced North American-made parts creates a more controlled supply chain, Robertson adds. While Spec does have some subcontracted products like screws and glides, the vast majority are produced in North America.

When it comes to Spec’s range of products, its niche area is rooted in the behavioural health sector, arising from an opportunity in an undefined sector 15 years ago when the customer didn’t necessarily know what it wanted, and Spec didn’t necessarily know what to provide.

“It was very much order-by-order and opportunity-by-opportunity treated as custom situations,” says Robertson. “We would take standard product and modify it to the customer expectation.”

Each facility and expectation was very different depending on whether it was U.S. or Canadian, the type of hospital or care center, and the kind of care being provided to the end-user. As the years have progressed, however, both the markets and the opportunities have become more defined and consolidated into behavioural health.

“It’s still being defined, but there’s more of an understanding that there are differences for each offering and each kind of end-user,” says Robertson. “Spec is very much committed to and partnered with those different opportunities.”

Spec’s Hardi line of chairs, for instance, is made from rotationally molded polyethylene, is easy to clean, and is virtually indestructible.

“It’s very much devoted toward a certain outcome,” he adds. “That’s something. If you look back 15 years ago, we had nothing even close to that.” This development still allows some customization of color and weight and evolved from the need to satisfy a specific end-user experience.

“That’s why we’ve had such success in that niche because we can customize our product so easily,” says Kelly Keess, Director, Sales and Marketing. “We manufacture in Canada, and pretty much all of our core components come from North America, and that allows us to be much more flexible and offer more variations.”

This also means no bulk pieces coming from overseas in huge shipments; instead, Spec can customize and order just a few pieces at a time.

“In behavioural health what we’ve learned is every hospital is different, and within these, every area of the hospital is different depending on their level of supervision, and the propensity for violence or self-harm,” says Keess. “All these things are taken into consideration and because of that, you can’t just offer a product off the shelf that would meet all needs.”

Switching parts of products out to make them safe in specific spaces is vital. This includes creating custom fully-enclosed upholstery for facilities concerned about concealment, or offering specialized chair glides to accommodate different types of flooring. “Being able to do all these little tweaks and variations has made us successful in that market niche.”

Making these adjustments involves group work within the company, combined with feedback across the behavioural health spectrums. Researching new standards provides insight and ideas, but for every opportunity Spec has received that way, another comes from collaborative work with end-users and dealers for specific facility requirements.

“We’ve responded very directly to people’s custom requests and have said we would be happy to try out what they were looking for as a sample, then send it to them for feedback based on what we think would work well, saying, ‘if you’re looking to do something like this, well, here’s what we think we can do,’” says Benjamin.

Samples, tests, and feedback from end-users and different medical teams have led to products that have become standard, and it’s led to excellent learnings in the health space, he adds, all of which help the behavioural health sector receive much-needed focus.

“There’s lots of other research going into this market as well, forcing it to continue to change, so it’s exciting,” says Keess. “We know the physical environment has a big effect on the healing process, and the space around you can affect how calm or how safe you feel. Those are big factors in healing.”

Along with caring for the health sector, the company is committed to environmental care as well, continuously minimizing negative environmental effects by putting in place an environmental management system that complies with ISO 14001. Spec also has its BIFMA (Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association) Level certification, which sponsors the development and maintenance of furniture safety, performance, and sustainability standards that impact people’s lives.

“We are a long-time partner,” says Benjamin. “BIFMA’s been a part of the Spec process from the start. It’s provided a framework for a lot of the values we have and the things we want to do and see, and it’s provided it in a coordinated way that prioritizes some of those things.”

Most of the work done early on focused on who Spec was as a manufacturer, its processes, and materials used, and helped make it more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

“Today we’re looking at the broader picture of sustainability,” Benjamin says. “As we come into our recertification of the 2019 standard, we’ll be taking a good look at a more holistic picture of sustainability and how our company goes after it. How can we further benefit from this and in doing so benefit our customers, our employees, and our communities as well.”

This means not only using more sustainable materials, watching for standards such as low VOC stains, and using high-content recycled materials for seats and plastic components, but also looking deeper into community engagement, sustainable supply chain partnerships, and the holistic development of employees.

Sustainability doesn’t fly in the face of good business or doing well as a company, he adds, and it’s beneficial to the business and community over the long run. This also means designing products in a more meaningful and sustainable way.

“As we look to this year and the years coming, we’re saying, ‘what are we doing and how does it line up with BIFMA, line up with customer expectations, line up with our lead time, and what we are trying to do with the organization as a whole?’” says Robertson. “Waste elimination is good business; they’re not separate from each other.”

As for other challenges, COVID did affect the company, but also generated some achievements, says Keess.

“We set ourselves up for success, facing that challenge, because we prioritized the North American supply chain. It gave us a bit more variability. We have great relationships with the suppliers because they’re local and we’re local. Helping support local manufacturing and building community unity did help us face that challenge.”

Going forward, it’s more about thriving than surviving, Robertson adds.

“How are we going to move forward and bring our partners and customers along with us,” he asks. “It’s that mindset change a little bit, but at the same time, it’s just doing it in a way, that if you do it right, will separate us from our competitors even more.”

This includes connecting digitally with customers in more meaningful ways.

“We’ve moved forward in a lot of ways, but there’s still room for improvement and the customers are changing their expectations as to how they want to interact with us even more so.”

From an operational standpoint, Spec continues to look at reducing lead times, driving its material selection toward recycled and renewable content, and considering automation of both the order-entry process and the manufacturing processes.

Focusing on how to make things easier for the customer is key, but that doesn’t mean replacing employees with robots, says Benjamin. “We want automation and technology to make our customers’ experiences better, but we believe we can do that in a way which benefits our employees and partners, making their experience better as well.”

Spec will also continue to put its customers first, emphasizing its approach of listening to the customer and focusing on what they want, rather than telling them what they need.

“We’re open-minded with what our customers are looking for,” says Keess. “We don’t shy away from an unusual custom product, because we learn a lot about the way that company is working, or that healthcare facility is operating. We learn a lot about what challenges our customers are facing just by listening to them.”

Understanding the market needs and design changes customers are looking for also allows Spec to meet those needs much more openly and easily.

“Our openness to that feedback from our customers on our products does set us apart,” Keess adds. “It helps us become a solution provider and then it also helps us learn while we’re doing it. It makes it fun.”

The post Reimagining Healthcare Furniture through Design and Engineering<p class="company">Spec Furniture</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

“Loren couldn’t help his son, Steve, at the time,” President Brandon Rayburn says. “So he did the next best thing and started helping men from a local rehab facility called No Longer Bound. He started hiring them and helping them in their journey of getting back on their feet. Eventually, Steve came back around, and he got sober, and he started working for his dad again.”

The program has been a great success. Steve Rozeboom—who is now the owner of the company—is only one of many whose lives have been transformed. Rayburn joined the company and worked his way up to president after completing No Longer Bound ten years ago.

“I was trying to figure out what I was going to do,” he recalls. “Who was going to hire me? I’d basically burned my life down. I have a wife and three children, and they were very young at the time when I admitted that I needed to get help. After going through this program, I was a changed man. I was ready to get back to work, but I didn’t have any opportunities, and how was I going to explain a year-long gap of employment?”

The team stepped in to help. “Someone came to the facility and offered me a job at Special-T. They said, ‘We don’t know you, but we help people like you. Show up to this address, and we’ll see about hiring you.’ I didn’t know what I was saying yes to. I just needed a job, and someone was willing to offer me a job. I didn’t realize that this was literally the opportunity of a lifetime for me.”

“I didn’t set out to lead this company,” Rayburn remembers. “I set out to get my family back and to get a job and make up for the lost time. I got dignity restored, and I got people that believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and that’s what happens here every day when we get a chance to grow and invest in men and women.” The vast majority of these people use Special-T as a launch pad to another career. “I would say 95 percent of them go on, and this is just a stepping stone,” Rayburn says.

The commitment to hiring recovering addicts has been a boon to the company as well as to the employees. “We’ve grown year-over-year, sometimes to the tune of 40 percent,” Rayburn says. “We’ve had some extensive growth.”

The team has leveraged this growth to continue helping recovering addicts. “It’s allowed us to invest in ourselves.”

To date, Special-T’s workplace recovery program has helped around one hundred men and women. The company has not promoted the program until recently; however, at the urging of the people whose lives have been transformed by it, this is changing.

“It’s always just been an internal mission that we’ve done here,” Rayburn says. “We never really told anyone about it. But many of the recovery guys have urged the owners to really start talking about it more because it really is a differentiator and that ‘X-factor’ as to why people enjoy doing business with us. It really drives our company culture here, and the people here are amazing. They’re willing to run through a wall for this place—not just the recovery guys, but the people who see change in the recovery guys and see the value in working for a place that really focuses on helping people.”

The team believes that the need to support recovering addicts is greater than ever, particularly after the stress, fear, and isolation that COVID brought. “There’s an underlying epidemic that’s attached to the pandemic, this out-of-control addiction that has been fueled,” Rayburn says. “It’s almost as if it’s gasoline on the fire of addiction. We’ve seen all of the leading indicators rising.”

To increase its outreach capabilities, the team has increased its involvement with long-term recovery programs. “I recently accepted a position on the board of directors for the rehab facility No Longer Bound that I went through,” Rayburn says. “So we can now work with them on a closer level in order to create vocational training programs to have a seamless transition between a long-term recovery program and a workplace.”

“We do a lot of this organically anyway, but we’re putting together a framework so that, hopefully, it can be replicated because Special-T can only help so many people, but there’re so many people that need help. So we are really trying to be the tip of the spear when it comes to developing some programs that can be utilized at the state level and beyond, hopefully on a national level, to help drive recovery and next steps, allowing people to reintegrate into our community and to not only do well but become leaders.”

Of course, the business has to deliver superior service and products to keep growing successfully and keep providing jobs to people in recovery. One service that stands out is Special-T’s quick-ship program. “At Special-T, our standard lead times are fifteen days, but we offer a five-day program and a one-day program,” Rayburn says. “If you pick a certain size and color top that we stock here in our warehouse, and if you get your order in by two o’clock, we can get it out to you the next day. In order to support that, we need a robust supply chain and great connection and communication with our vendors.”

The team recently opened a factory in Bulgaria with the sole focus of servicing Special-T’s orders. The move came after Steve Rozeboom saw the need for a more reliable supply chain. “We were very dependent on Ukraine and China,” Rayburn explains. “Because our factory [in Bulgaria] is committed a hundred percent to the needs of Special-T, we are able to really dictate workflow and allow them to support all of our stocking needs in order to support a one-day program. We have had an uninterrupted supply chain. We can fulfill an order for a table in any size, any shape, any color.”

The Bulgarian factory was already servicing the bulk of Special-T’s orders before the recent invasion of Ukraine, where the other factory the team works with is located. Even so, the situation “created a challenge for us,” Rayburn says. “But our inventory didn’t hinge upon it. We have redundancy built into our stocking programs. We have a lot of safety measures in place.”

The team’s immediate reaction to the invasion was to support their partners. “The day that it happened, I FaceTimed the owner in Ukraine and said, ‘We are 100 percent committed to supporting you in anything that you can do. So the day that you’re able to produce and get a container out to us, we’re ready to take it. Keep them coming as much as you can. Until then we’re here to support you in any way that you need us to,’” shares Rayburn.

“They were able to get back up and running again within weeks of shutting down—and this is after the majority of their workers had fled the country. They pulled together in order to work. They wanted to work. They needed to work.”

Looking ahead, the team is eager to get the word out about Special-T’s most defining feature: supporting people in recovery. “We feel like there are not enough people that know what we do—and not just what we do, but the fruit of what we do,” Rayburn says. “If you come to visit us you’ll find a group of people who are fully committed to a cause and enjoy working at a place that has done so much for me personally, as well as for dozens and dozens of men and women. That really does drive us.”

Backed by a team with a true commitment to what the company stands for, Special-T is well placed to keep growing and accomplishing its mission.

The post A Company that Gives Back<p class="company">Special-T</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

ESI’s started with humble origins, when it operated “out of a garage,” in the words of Executive Vice President for Customer Experience Robert Day. “It’s grown tremendously since that beginning,” he says. Growth reached a fever pitch with its 2017 purchase by international business machine giant Fellowes.

General Manager for Contract Interiors Todd Holderness notes that ESI’s growth has remained steady thanks to its rock-solid customer focus, seeing itself as filling a necessary—if often overlooked—office role by providing strong yet simple solutions for both its vendors and end customers.

“We’re easy to do business with. We deliver. We do what we say we’re going to do. We ship fast. We create a lot of profit for dealers,” Holderness remarks. “We’re a very profitable line for a dealer.”

This profitability also comes from ESI’s varied lines of ergonomic products, from keyboard trays—the company’s original bread-and-butter—to power solutions, lighting, height-adjustable desks, arms capable of supporting up to six monitors, and more. The wide range of quality products, Day says, is the result of ESI’s collaboration with ESI’s parent company Fellowes and other manufacturers to build a strong team.

“The team… is a highly sophisticated product development team, and that’s part of the evolution that we’ve experienced,” he says.

But a company is only as strong as its workforce, and where ESI truly shines is its intensely customer-focused strategy, which Day only half-jokingly refers to as an “obsession.” The philosophy is all-encompassing from the ground up. “The customer-obsessive model really starts internally,” Day explains. “We have a three-customer model: each other, our reps, and our dealers.”

If ESI’s staff see each other as customers, he reasons, that mindset will eventually extend outside the company. “If it starts at the top and internally, it’s very easy for the dealer to feel it ultimately.” He says that parent company Fellowes also boasts a strongly customer-focused service model, which made ESI’s integration a largely seamless transition. “We were already on the same page, so we didn’t have to start over there.”

Externally, ESI’s customer focus influences every aspect of its operations, with a focus on making transactions as simple as possible through the company’s alliterative maxim of ‘fast, flexible, and friendly.’ Holderness observes that, unlike vendors that favor acquisitions, ESI has instead expanded to meet multiple sectors. This, he explains, has resulted in ESI’s popularity among its regular clients. “We’ve really carved out our niche as the primary solution for that contract-aligned dealer, because of our capabilities.”

A large inventory stockpile capable of filling virtually any order within forty-eight hours, even in today’s supply chain snags, complements this model. According to Holderness, this inventory has contributed to ESI’s continual growth in the face of economic slowdowns. “We’re up significantly, even over last year, from a growth standpoint,” he says, attributing part of the company’s success to having inventory when its competitors have not.

Additionally, ESI is fortunate that, due to its category focus, its products are normally needed towards the end of construction projects, which gives vendors a sense of security. “They can call us up with comfort and know that we’re going to ship something in two days, and it’s going to be there within a week,” Holderness says. “It’s that peace-of-mind solution that we can provide by having all that inventory on hand.”

Naturally, this model may be upset by the onset of hybrid offices, which are rapidly becoming normalized in a COVID-conscious world. Yet, Day says, inventory is shipping faster than ESI’s ability to ship it. Despite the growing popularity of hybrid environments, he and his colleagues see little impact on ESI’s business strategy. “From what we’re seeing, I don’t see the model has changed that much, other than the hybrid,” he says. “I don’t think the office is going away.”

Indeed, since its founding, ESI has deliberately chosen not to embrace the home office market but stick strictly to the office market via contract dealers. Now, despite more offices becoming open-plan to accommodate social distancing rules, the company’s growth is stronger than ever. “It’s reflected in our numbers. We’re up double digits year to date,” says Holderness.

However, the team remains vigilant. Manager of Project Management Ben Hoffman is a key player in ESI’s product development team and says that the company is incorporating the ongoing change into its strategy. “The way that we look at our products, the way that we look at solutions for our customers and end users is definitely affected by what’s happening, and I think it will continue to happen going forward,” he says.

Hoffman and his team continually incorporate client feedback through a tried and tested human-centric approach; far too often ‘ergonomic’ furniture has turned out to be anything but. To avoid falling into this, ESI solicits ongoing feedback from all its potential users—beginning with its staff and moving externally to vendors and clients. “We’re making sure that we’re hitting on all the different touchpoints because everyone has a different viewpoint on how that affects the product,” Hoffman says.

This feedback has resulted in a series of awards, most recently a coveted Red Dot Design Award in 2022 for its Sena series of monitor arms. “We’re highly honored that we were considered for that,” Hoffman states with pride. He and his team view the Sena arms as the ultimate ‘splice’ design, integrating functionality with the latest in ergonomic research.

ESI has managed to cram an amazing amount of features into the arm. Finger-touch adjustability allows incredible ease of use, allowing users to easily transition from sitting to standing. Dual arm with sliders maximize space, and the entire assembly uses a smaller footprint to provide a much larger range of adjustability. “We were trying to integrate functionality with ergonomic excellence,” Hoffman says.

This common design approach is typical of ESI’s products, he explains, and the company’s latest generation of monitor arms follow the same balanced principle. Continuous incorporation of top-to-bottom, internal and external feedback provides the best experience and end product.

“We find that it is a process. It’s very difficult and sometimes time-consuming to go through this process on the front end,” he says, “but we do find that it pays off dividends as we launch these products and we receive the feedback, which is typically been very positive.”

The Sena product family, as well as many other ESI offerings, will soon be available at the company’s planned Design & Experience Center in Chicago’s upscale Fulton Market. Upon its completion in mid-2023, the new showroom will provide a much larger display space than its current showroom.

Day says that the new showroom will allow ESI, as well as its Fellowes sister companies such as Treadway, to increase branding and integration. “It’ll definitely be a big splash for us at Fulton Market in 2023.”

Despite new products, ESI’s attitude towards its dealers and customers is unchanged after over thirty years. More than anything else, it is about the relationships and wanting all parties involved—employees, dealers and customers—to have the best experience possible Day remarks. This, he is sure, will keep ESI moving forward. “It’s a really good value proposition for our customers, for today and in the future. It’s not going away.”

The post Over 30 Years of Excellence<p class="company">ESI</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.