As some may recall, I spent a considerable number of years working at Steelcase dealerships and installers. Former Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett, had a formula for “success”: move a lot of production to Mexico, degrade quality, and escalate prices. In the early 2000s, I heard installers and project managers howling about how shoddy Steelcase product became during the Hackett years.
Meanwhile, Hon, in Muscatine Iowa, was producing furniture as good, or better, than Steelcase, at a much more reasonable price. I was talking with one of the service techs at work one day. He was constantly replacing the pneumatics in Steelcase chairs, and I was constantly sending the warranty claim forms back to Steelcase. I asked him if he ever replaced a Hon pneumatic. Nope, never. There was plenty of Hon furniture out there, it just didn’t need constant repair, like the more expensive Steelcase stuff did.
Ripped from this morning’s headlines
Hon parent HNI is taking over Steelcase. Used to be the big dogs in office furniture were Steelcase, Haworth (in Holland, MI) and Herman Miller (in Zeeland, MI) Appears the luminaries running Steelcase have succeeded the same way the geniuses at the pump seal company succeeded, in so weakening the company that it became meat to be eaten by another company.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250803292459/en/HNI-Corporation-to-Acquire-Steelcase-Inc.
Steve…13 years working in cubeland
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How would a customer learn about the relative quality of furniture manufacturers?
Wendy
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Steelcase/Haworth/Herman Miller furniture is generally sold at the corporate level. Corporate inertia says a company will keep buying what it has been buying, if, for no other reason, than compatibility, especially in panel systems. The last two places I worked did asset management for AT&T, several entire aisles of the warehouse had racks full of the phone company’s furniture. I scored a free file cabinet at work one day. A truckload of AT&T furniture had come in. Randy was going to toss this one perfectly good, four drawer, file, into scrap steel, because it was a Hon, and AT&T only paid us to store Steelcase. I grabbed on to that Hon file, put it on a hand truck, and hauled it right out to my Civic hatchback…where it fit perfectly fine. I still use that file today.
You don’t see civilians buying Steelcase new, because of the price. Companies like AT&T and Ford get a big discount, but a civilian would pay full boat. List price on something like a Steelcase Criterion chair was over $1000, 15 years ago.
Here’s Steelcase stock, since the IPO in the late 90s. Quite a picture of dead money.
Steve
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Herman Miller is in Zeeland, MI, only a few miles down the highway from Steelcase, in Grand Rapids.
Remember the Herman Miller CEO telling the employees to stop sniveling about their short pay, and work like dogs, to make the company’s numbers, so the CEO makes her bonus? I interviewed at Herman Miller, in the 90s. Except it wasn’t an interview, it was a cattle call. Wow did the people at that company think they were hot stuff.
Another “JC” in full glory.
Steve
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