Steelcase

Furniture company

Steelcase Inc. is an international manufacturer of furniture, casegoods, seating, and storage and partitioning systems for offices, hospitals, classrooms, and residential interiors. It is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States.

Originally known as The Metal Office Furniture Company, Steelcase was founded by Peter Martin Wege in 1912. Prior to starting the company, Wege had filed approximately 25 patents related to the sheet metal and fireproofing industries. The Metal Office Furniture Company's first products included fireproof metal safes and four drawer metal filing cabinets. In 1914, the company received its first product patent for "The Victor", a fireproof steel wastebasket. The Victor gained popularity due to its light weight—achieved through a patented process of bending flat steel at right angles to create boxes—and its ability to prevent fires at a time when smoking was common indoors, particularly in the workplace. In 1915, the company began manufacturing and distributing steel desks after designing and producing 200 for Boston's first skyscraper, the Custom House Tower. The name Steelcase was a result of an advertising campaign to promote metal office furniture over wood and was trademarked in 1921. The company officially changed its name to Steelcase, Inc. in 1954. Steelcase expanded into new markets during the 1970s, including Asia, Europe, and North Africa. That same year, the company delivered the largest single furniture shipment to the then new Sears Tower. The delivery included 43,565 pieces of furniture and furnished 44 floors. In 1996, Steelcase became the majority stakeholder in design firm IDEO and the firm's CEO, David M. Kelley, became Steelcase's vice president of technical discovery and innovation. Steelcase sold its shares back to IDEO's managers starting in 2007. In 1996, Steelcase was found at fault in a patent infringement suit brought against them by Haworth, Inc., another furniture company. Steelcase was ordered to pay $211.5 million in damages and interest, thus ending a 17 year dispute with Haworth. Steelcase became a publicly traded company in 1998 under the symbol SCS.<! In 2000, the company opened Steelcase University, a center for ongoing employee development and learning. Steelcase's wood furniture plant in Caledonia, MI earned LEED certification in 2001, becoming the first plant to receive the certification. In 2002, Steelcase partnered with IBM to create BlueSpace, a "smart office" prototype designed using new office technologies. In 2010, Steelcase and IDEO launched new models for higher education classrooms called LearnLabs. In January 2016 the company recalled 12 models of Steelcase "Rocky" style swivel chairs manufactured between 2005 and 2015, due to fall hazard.

Steelcase released Multiple 15 desks in 1946, which introduced standardized desk sizing and became a universal industry standard. Steelcase innovates the industry with the 1945 Metal Office Furniture Company In 1993, Steelcase launched Turnstone, a line of furniture designed for small businesses and home offices. Nurture was founded in 2006 to create products for the health care industry, including furniture and interiors for waiting rooms, offices, and clinics. The brand became Steelcase Health in 2014. Steelcase merged three of its subsidiaries (Brayton International, Metro Furniture and Vecta) to form Coalesse in 2008. Coalesse products are meant for what the company calls "live/work" spaces, a result of the frequent overlap of home and office in modern working habits.

In 1985, Steelcase purchased the Meyer May House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and restored it, opening it to the public in 1987. The company employs a research group called WorkSpace Futures to study workplace trends. In 2010, Steelcase underwent a three year project to update its Grand Rapids headquarters to promote employee productivity and employee well being, including redesigning a cafeteria into an all purpose work environment that provides food service and space for meetings, socializing, and independent work. Steelcase's sustainability efforts have included reducing packaging, using regional facilities to reduce shipping distance, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption, and a goal to reduce its environmental footprint by 25 percent by 2020. According to the company's WorkFutures group, the company also analyzes its supply chain and materials chemistry to determine product sustainability. As of 2014, the company led its industry in Cradle to Cradle certified products. Steelcase became Carbon Neutral on August 25, 2020, with the plan of becoming Carbon negative (eliminating more carbon than they produce) by 2030. As a company they have a focus on green chemistry and have stopped manufacturing with many chemicals like Polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

As of March 2020, Steelcase has been manufacturing equipment for health care providers and medical facilities in response to COVID 19. Solutions include PPE, masks, face shields, and social screens. Steelcase is also redesigning offices layouts that can adapt to the ongoing Covid regulations. To continue interaction in the workplace, they have installed social screens to divide desks/workspaces and are planning to implement more technology to enhance communication whether the staff is in the office or working from home. Desks will be six feet apart as per the United States CDC guidelines and there will be a focus on sanitization stations.

The company won the Editors' Choice award at the 2014 NeoCon product competition for "Quiet Spaces", a series of workspaces designed for introverts and a collaboration with Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Steelcase was named The World's Most Admired Company by Forbes in 2018, 2019 and 2020. They earned the 2020 Civic Award.