This 73-year-old office furniture company is betting on gates, cars and office returns

F.Biachi ranco had never gone so fast in his life. Grabbing the passenger seat of a luxury Ferrari sports car, the Bologna-born executive team was stunned when the professional driver moved the vehicle around curves at 200 miles per hour. It was the spring of 2015, and Biachi, who recently came to Ferrari as a client, was one of the lucky few to visit Ferrari’s private Fiorano Tour, about 80 miles north of Florence.

“Creating a brand is a decades-long job,” he said of the Italian opulent automaker.

As CEO of 73-year-old Haworth office furniture company, he should know. With his slow hair and heavy Italian accent, Biachi, 57, was caught by one of the wealthiest families in Michigan to do just that – building an established brand. And thanks to its recent build, Biachi now counts the storied Ferrari as one of its clients.

Michigan-based private, billion-family company Holland became famous in the late 1970s after creating the state-of-the-art cubicle. But for the past six years, Biachi has been quietly multiplying, creating used furniture and interiors in the interior and exterior of the office.

This is a movement that is paid for through the pandemic. As offices closed around the world and the office furniture industry declined, Haworth stayed away by making products for residential customers, as well as car and yacht companies, universities, hotels and restaurants, among others. Now, Biachi is helping Haworth’s long-term clients – such as Capital One, Shell and Marriott – safely return to work with future office solutions.

Across the industry, orders went down about 30% in most of 2020, said Steven Ramsey, senior equity analyst at Thompson Research Group. But Biachi says Haworth’s sales fell just 15%, with revenue reaching nearly $ 1.9 billion. The office furniture famously known as Haworth still accounts for the majority (65%) of sales.

“I think we have grown into a better, more thoughtful, more sensitive company – just softer – because we have acquired these different aspects of environmental design,” Biachi says. “You choose the environment and we have developed knowledge and results. Sometimes that environment is inside a car, sometimes that environment is a gateway inside, sometimes that environment is an office, sometimes that environment is a lobby of a hotel. ”

Haworth ‘s story began in 1948, when GW Haworth decided to start a timber shop business. As a public schoolteacher, he was low on money, and unable to get a bank loan, his parents lent him $ 10,000 from their life savings. After doubling in tie racks and shoe displays, he landed on office furniture, working under the name Modern Partitions.

The industry, however, did not see widespread success until 1976 when, from being a newcomer to the Army, Haworth’s son, Richard, took over the company (now called Haworth) with the idea would give rock to office furniture business. Building on the cubicle concept introduced a few years earlier by competitor Herman Miller, he invented a version with electrical wiring inside the panels. This allowed companies to build their own cubes by simply carving panels together and without hiring electricians to renovate workplaces. The year it was released, Haworth’s sales grew more than 40%.

“Just like that comes out in the 1976 schedule, the PC is coming out of IBM and Apple and they need even more power, so the timing is perfect,” says Matthew Haworth , 52, who owns the company with a family and is the chairman. “We grew just like an herb. ”

Shortly afterwards, the company went global, eventually acquiring more than 30 businesses in Europe and North America and expanding its sales network in Asia.

Biachi joined the company in 1992. After his merger and boutique purchase company sold Italian furniture sales company to Haworth, he was asked to stay on and lead Haworth’s European expansion. A decade later, he was named vice president of finance and moved to Michigan, and in 2005, he became the second non-family member to lead the company as CEO.

It has met its share of cultural challenges. Case in point: He inadvertently became the subject of a hate post after his first interview with American architecture and design publication Iris Metropolis, in which macaroni and cheese were said not to be “civic food.”

All of that was quickly forgiven when Biachi laid out its master plan for the company. In a world where office chair users can order in seconds on Amazon, Biachi knew he needed to find a way to stand out. Gone are the days when Steelcase, with $ 3.7 billion in revenue last year, and Herman Miller, with $ 2.5 billion in revenue from May 2020, were the only competitors at Haworth.

So he diversified, applying Haworth’s classic office furniture to another, more luxurious interior. Acquiring 2014 from Italian furniture maker Poltrona Frau for $ 270 million allowed Haworth to produce a Ferrari car interior and Ferretti yacht furniture, as well as control of Italian furniture manufacturers Cassina and Cappellini. Two years later, he acquired Janus et Cie, a Los Angeles luxury furniture maker. Today, 30% of Haworth’s sales are in lifestyle design.

Biachi was also in charge of software startup development. Bluescape, the virtual collaboration platform owned by Haworth launched in 2013, was called long before employers relied on video conferencing software. Its forecast is pay-per-view: Consumers have gone up 1,400% since the outbreak began, and the software now makes up 5% of Haworth’s business. It is just one of the solutions it has been slowing down with the expectation that work will return after a pandemic.

Late last year, Biachi announced the creation of a Pergola, a large mobile office space that can be set up indoors and outdoors, enclosed or open for privacy and security. Although the product was developing before the outbreak began, Biachi cites it as a perfect solution for returning to work.

Haworth has also promoted a mix of plastic and glass separation screens, which can enclose desks and workstations and are made from easily disinfected materials, as well as “BuzziSpace” screens. ”Who can demonstrate leadership to manage office traffic patterns and assist in social speed. .

But won’t this be completely inappropriate once the majority of the population is vaccinated and ready to return to the workplace? Analyst Ramsey doesn’t think so. “I think companies want to be careful and spend reasonably to help their employees feel safe,” he said. “These more open forms have been a major shift in offices over the last five years.”

The office furniture industry always benefits from the emergence of new workplace trends, as employers spend to maintain. “The signal is a question of when a request comes back and how quickly it comes back,” Ramsey says. “But I think it’s a question of when, not if.”

Biachi agrees. “People are social creatures,” he says. “I hope the office will always be there.”