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May 2006

Sizing Up 2006 Furniture Trends Continued

Encouraging Customization

One gripe that facility managers have with furniture manufacturers is the lack of willingness to customize systems when it comes to wire management.

Systems manufacturers have spent time and money creating perfect palettes and finishes, but there are a few IT issues that facility managers would like to see addressed in future designs. “There are never enough ports for wires in systems,” observes Ford’s Fusco. “We also would want to see more access ports on desks but have them concealed so they look professional. So, when IT comes to relocate someone, they won’t have difficulty accessing the track where the wires run.”

The same problem plagued Henke of Pennsylvania. “We had a hard time finding a company that would work with us to customize our cubicles,” he says. “All the manufacturers we approached were not keen on the idea of creating customized cubicles with an open bottom panel so we wouldn’t have to tear out the panels to fix wires. Most manufacturers said ‘that’s not in our line.’” Henke finally went with a local vendor that was happy to work with them on customized cubicles.

Horton of Kimball Office says that her company’s casegoods series, Priority, will address this common complaint. “The demand for easy access to technology is a must have,” she says. “Priority features a range of integrated technology solutions that make setting up, adding, and moving computers and other digital devices quick and convenient.” These include hinged access doors on approach side desk pedestals, and undersurface storage components with pullout shelves for peripherals.

Technology is a pesky reality for facility managers. “For example, since monitor arms are attached to worksurfaces, they are considered part of technology, and also facilities,” says Baker of Merric Enterprises. “Now for the first time ever, the IT and facilities departments are partnering to determine furniture purchases.”

The Seating Pendulum

Of all the product categories, seating seems to be holding at status quo. “Few of our staff complains about their seating,” says Henke at the Senate of Pennsylvania. “There’s such a good selection of chairs on the market, it’s never a problem.”

But other facility professionals want to see more high quality, low priced options. “The best chair we ever had was the Steelcase Leap chair. It took us two months to find those chairs, but we had to leave them behind when we recently moved offices. Now we have larger, less attractive chairs,” says Zelonis of Aavid Thermalloy. “It’s hard to find good ergonomic, affordable, attractive chairs like Leap.”

Seating solutions may be on the way, starting at NeoCon. Herman Miller will bring to market a new executive product by Geiger called Foray, for example. But the jury is out to see if there will be a product to top Herman Miller’s 2005 introduction, the Cella chair.

Trending Towards Residential

“End users demand much more comfort from seating than they did five or 10 years ago,” says Leonard Backer, vice president of marketing and product development for the Brown Jordan International Contract Division, which now owns seating manufacturer Loewenstein, Inc. “Now, workers even want more of a residential media room feeling to their conference rooms.”

That trend is affecting the way Loewenstein engineers its new products. Backer, who is based in Pompano Beach, FL, says the company is investigating the resiliency of its seating foam and is looking to use 1.8 pounds of foam for additional back and seating support. “That causes a different resiliency for a more residential feel, and that’s important for call centers, for example, that have 24/7 seating needs.”

To answer the demand for commercial interiors with a residential feel, Loewenstein will introduce at least 10 new collections at NeoCon that have exposed wood. “Whether it’s senior living, institutional, or corporate, the trend is toward a warmer environment,” he says.

An Influx of Imports

Backer has two words of advice about seating procurement, however. “Buyer beware,” he says. “More facilities professionals are keyed into the LEED and GreenGuard messages, but, at the same time there is more product coming in from Asia that has not been certified. There are beautiful things from Asia by American designers, and the buyer needs to understand that although beauty comes with a great price point, there is another price to pay.”

Boomerang’s Deforest sees that imports are starting to win some projects. “Though smaller importers look good and have attractive price points, the reality is that over the long run, managing inventory is a huge inconvenience when it takes eight weeks to get a part in order to reconfigure.”

Dennis Meyer from Denver, CO-based Planetofficefurniture.com, a division of Office Liquidators, says facility managers can save as much as 20% to 30% on price by buying no name imports, and that many of those companies will be showing at NeoCon. “We’ve seen chairs, desks, tables, but really there aren’t any finished goods in files or larger items like cubicles,” says Meyer. “Over 50% of the residential furniture market is imported, and now, about 15% of the office furniture market is imported; that number will rise.”

As does Deforest, Meyer says he’d have confidence buying finished imports from established companies, such as HON, Kimball Office, National, OFS, and Haworth since they know the business and strive to keep quality control and inventory needs in check.

Though HON has sourced components over in Asia for a while (and now offers its Basyx line of imported finished goods for small companies), it has made the decision to purchase its own plant in China to maintain quality control. “Everyone worries, but the threat of smaller imports is that they are new competitors,” says HON’s Mead. “The advice I’d give to facility managers would not be to look only at the design and competitive price point, but to look for an established partner with overall support that has the right price points and the right sourcing capabilities.”

As far as wood seating goes, Backer explains that Loewenstein has gone to great lengths to control off-gassing by using water based wood glues and UV cured finishes, but buyers need to be concerned about what kinds of glues and finishes are within a product from overseas.

However, Richard Driscoll of Grand Rapids, MI-based BIFMA International warns, “We will begin to see numerous claims of ‘green’ furniture, but we will all need a bit of caution before purchasing. End users need to ask the right questions to get the right product.” He says this is especially true when it comes to Asian imports, where there is most likely use of petroleum based adhesives rather than water or soy based adhesives used on furniture.

LEED And Green

But, will the influx of Asian imports of contract furniture affect companies trying for LEED certification?

BIFMA’s Furniture Emissions Standard Subcommittee completed a draft of a Standard and Test Method for measuring emissions from office furniture (which will continue to be reviewed and approved by ANSI)—a tool that may help in ferreting out poorly made, non-sustainable imports that could damage the chances for an organization trying to achieve its LEED-CI certification. “We are about 90% finished with the process,” according to BIFMA’s Driscoll. One of the reasons BIFMA initiated this process was to provide an acceptable alternative within the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED-CI Credit 4.5 for low emitting product.

Since there are no LEED approved products, and Washington, DC-based USGBC certifies spaces under a LEED rating system that identifies products that have specific attributes, this could remain a gray area until the new 3.0 version is out in a couple of years, according to Taryn Holowka, communications manager for USGBC. LEED-CI (commercial interiors) is the arm of LEED that was released in 2004 that affects furniture procurements.

“We don’t require that products be made in the U.S., but LEED does favor products that are locally produced,” says Holowka. “We offer points to projects for specifying materials that have been manufactured within a 500 mile radius of the building site. I anticipate the next version of LEED will take into account life cycle analysis, and that will tackle the imports issue. Life cycle analysis will look to incorporate the life cycle of all building products, including origin, manufacturing process, life span of the product, and even what happens to the product after it has been used.”

Slowly, but surely, strides in furniture introductions are being made in the industry. Although most product introductions won’t cause any fireworks to go off at NeoCon 2006, the sparks that these products cause could brighten a facility manager’s day.

Zelinsky-Syarto is the author of the forthcoming book, Complete Lighting Design. She has also written several other books, including The Inspired Workspace and New Workplaces for New Workstyles.

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