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What Does It Take To Profit? A Chair?

Updated forecast for 2010 by BIFMA heralds renewed optimism for the sector. Office furniture production and consumption are expected to improve by 2.8 percent and 3.9 percent respectively next year. After back-to-back declines in real GDP of more than six percent, the period of economic free-fall seems to be over, at least for GDP, BIFMA said.

The economy has seen its worse but as the office furniture industry usually reacts slower to macro conditions, American manufacturers must still grit their teeth through another quarter, and longer for export business. Major players such as HNI, Steelcase, Herman Miller and Knoll expect things to look up within a matter of months (reports on pg 10-12).

Among them, Knoll’s plans for growth, not just bare survival, seems most ambitious with aims to double its current market share in office seating from about five percent to 10 percent within two years. This confidence is fuelled by the new Generation Chair which won the Best of NeoCon (BON) Gold award 2009 for task seating. (Top winners at the BON awards are featured in pages 13-15.)

Is a new-generation chair all it takes? It could be, if a chair is not all it is.

Especially true in the office sector, products need to ergonomic, durable, aesthetic, functional and environmentally friendly. The making of a good chair (or any office furnishing) involves a whole generation of engineers, researchers and developers, which is encapsulated in one word – design.

Professor Dr Peter Zec, the initiator of the Red Dot Design Award, puts it aptly: “Despite the poor current economic situation, more companies than ever before have taken part in this year's Red Dot Award: Product Design. This proves that these companies value and exploit the economic potential of good design for their place on the global market”. These “exploiters” of good design are featured in pages 18-21.

Nicole Liang
Asistant Editor