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As recently as the 1950s, American offices and office furniture were generally drab, stark, and purely functional. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, office design, layout, and furniture began to be influenced by modern ideas of worker productivity and the realization that a link existed between employee performance and the quality of the office environment.

From the late 1970s through the early 1980s, office furniture sales grew by an average of 19 percent annually, according to BIFMA. The boom was fueled by the rapid growth of the white-collar workforce, especially in the computer industry and other information-related fields.

Beginning in the late 1980s, however, the entire office furniture industry felt the impact of white-collar downsizing at many firms. A recession in 1991-92 also hit furniture manufacturers extremely hard. From 1986 until 1992, average annual sales grow. Exports, which had doubled between 1988 and 1989 from $86.7 million to $170.8 million, fell during this period as well.

The recession led to even more layoffs among office workers as one company after another downsized. Office space, which had mushroomed during the boom years of the 1980s when demand was high, sat vacant. As a result, few new offices were built during the late 1980s and early 1990s, which meant less demand for new office furniture.

The economic picture began to brighten a bit in 1993.

Ready-to-assemble (RTA) furniture captured the attention of some industry leaders in the early 1990s. In late 1993, for example, Haworth purchased Globe Business Furniture, an RTA supplier specializing in partially assembled chairs. Globe's sales grew an average of 25 percent between 1981 and 1992, making it an attractive acquisition for a company such as Haworth that was intent on broadening its product line to include lower-priced furniture. Industry experts expected the trend to continue, but they warned producers against moving to RTA as a quick-fix method for regaining market share, in part because RTA required an entirely different cost structure than that used by traditional office furniture manufacturers.

In the mid-1990s office furniture manufacturers became increasingly apprehension about the effect of ongoing environmental legislation on their bottom lines. In their factories, they already incurred increased costs for disposing of hazardous wastes generated by the furniture-finishing process. In the marketplace, they faced mounting concerns about the effect of various pollutants on indoor air quality. Among the most common offenders were formaldehyde (from pressed -wood products), adhesives, and paints and other finishes. To address these problems, some U.S. office furniture manufacturers switched to different kinds of finishes and alternative glues, although some of these substitutes performed poorly.

The Environmental Protection Agency launched two major studies of indoor air quality in the mid-1990s to gain a better understanding of the problem in both public and private buildings. Results were not expected until the end of the ninteties. The EPA was expected to use those findings to develop a set of proposed national guidelines and standards for acceptable levels of indoor air pollutants.

CURRENT CONDITIONS

At the turn of the twenty-first century, analysts expressed guarded optimism about the future prospects and performance of the office furniture manufacturing industry. Falling interest rates helped to offset a declining economy, and low inflation seemed conducive to a sustained period of modest sales gains in the range of 2 to 5 percent. Yet the industry continued to suffer from too many suppliers competing for increasingly few customers. In fact, manufacturers were routinely forced to discount their prices by as much as 50 percent or more on high-volume purchases in order to win lucrative contracts.

Because most manufacturers realized that they could not necessarily compete on product alone, they began coming up with ways to provide more services to their customers. Terms such as "value-added partnering" became part of the industry lingo. This was just one way that the higher-end manufacturers tried to distinguish themselves from their lower-end rivals.

Another change that took place throughout the nineties focused on distribution. Many of the industry leaders, including Steelcase, Haworth, and Herman Miller, switched to dedicated dealers. Others, including HON Industries, moved in the opposite direction and distributed their products through office supply superstores and other discount outlets.

One lucrative market niche in the ninties was ergonomically designed office furniture that offered maximum comfort and flexibility. As people became more aware of computer-related, white-collar occupational hazards such as repetitive strain injury, carpal tunnel syndrome, backache, and other ailments, they demanded furniture that would prevent or lessen the severity of these injuries. Office furniture manufacturers were at the forefront of the drive to design and produce ergonomic office furniture that their customers hoped would increase productivity, curb health care costs, and reduce the threat of lawsuits from employees with work-related disabilities.

Other challenges office furniture manufactures faced at the turn of the twenty-first century included dealing with continued corporate downsizing and developing more products for home use in a market that was increasingly dominated by ready-to-assemble furniture companies such as O'Sullivan Industries, Sauder Woodworking, and Bush Industries. On the labor front, they were also concerned about the need to work more efficiently to cut manufacturing costs.