My predecessor at officeinsight, Brad Powell, started a tradition of visiting Davisin May each year in the run-up to NeoCon. Perhaps it’s the great Carolina Barbecue at Kepley’s – served with plenty of stories from its 86 year-old owner, Bob Burleson. Especially the one about how he’s been serving barbecue to my host, Danny Davis, since Danny was a little boy.
Any way you slice or chop the barbecue, High Point, NC is a small town with a big history in the furniture industry, and being there with Danny Davis is the kind of treat that makes you want to return year after year.
Another key to the tradition is the belief that a trip to Davis before NeoCon will undoubtedly be a preview of one or more future Best of NeoCon Gold winners. So for whatever set of motives, I recently paid a visit and I was not disappointed.
As its byline aptly states, “Design is a Choice”, and the team at Davis continues to choose design. Product design in particular, but also design as it relates to everything else associated with the company, from the immaculate fleet of Davis trucks to the campus of neatly renovated, restored and identically painted factories and warehouses.
Davis Furniture Company has been growing fast. While the office furniture industry as a whole has been marking time since the “Great Recession,” Davis has been delivering 12% to 15% growth year-on-year since 2010. To accommodate all that growth the Davis campus in High Point has expanded to eight buildings – to be nine next Friday – from five buildings on my first visit four years ago.
Design isn’t the only important choice Davis consciously makes; so is sustainability. An often overlooked, but critical element of a sustainable future is the renovation and restoration of existing buildings. Rather than simply putting up a big tilt-up factory/warehouse to accommodate its growth, Danny Davis has become the go-to real estate customer in his neighborhood, buying pretty much every building that comes on the market in the near proximity of the campus. He then meticulously renovates and adds-on as required for the role the building will play in the manufacturing, warehousing and shipping process.
That same step-by-step mentality can be said to apply to bringing together this year’s new product portfolio. Prolific German designers Markus Jehs and Jürgen Laub (Jehs + Laub) have brought successful products to market in the rarified atmosphere of the world’s best-known “Design” manufacturers, Herman Miller, Knoll and Wilkhahn, to name just a few, as well as Davis. They designed the very successful Ginkgo Lounge that Davis launched in 2011, and this year they’ve collaborated on six new riffs on the Ginkgo DNA. But they didn’t stop there – they’ve also collaborated on a familial extension of the Sachet Chair that Davis launched at last year’s NeoCon. And while they were at it they threw in four more entirely new and different products as well.
So while at Davis I previewed 11 new products, ten of which arose from the creative minds of Jehs + Laub in close collaboration with Danny Davis, Rob Easton, VP of Design and Development, Brian Davis, Product Development Engineer, and the Davis development team.
To bring a product to market from an idea or concept requires a lot of hard work on many fronts including listening closely to feedback from the market.
Davis has assembled a talented team that’s hitting on all cylinders in that regard. Jeffrey Rosner, VP of Marketing and Sales, Ashley Williams, Director of Customer Relations, and Ericka Saurit, Creative Manager, all play important roles.
Over the years the company strategy has evolved from mostly shopping the European market for products to bring to the U.S., to initiating designs with talented designers, doing the development engineering and in some cases licensing those products back to partner companies in Europe.
On my visit we wasted no time in getting to the presentation and discussion of the latest batch of new products. So before I start the Jehs + Laub show I thought it would make sense to talk about the one product designed by someone else.
Dante Bonucelli is a highly respected Argentine/Italian architect and founder of Avenue Architects, an architecture and design studio in Milan, Italy. He has product designs on the market for many of Italy’s most prestigious companies, e.g. Molteni’s Dada, and Unifor, Fontana Arte, Alias, etc. and he is the Art Director for Lamm. His past work for Davis is the Tix line of solid wood conference tables and storage elements.
Mr. Bonucelli’s new design this year is the X2 Table. This is also a solid wood table, but with wonderfully designed steel castings that simplify and strengthen the joining of the wood parts. The wood itself has an inspiring story, using only trees selected and harvested through a highly sustainable program. Specialists determine when a tree is at the end of its lifecycle and only then is it approved to be harvested and used in manufacturing X2. All harvested trees are replaced with two seedlings and the entire tree is used in a purposeful manner. The X2 Table is very versatile and should be a hit for the smaller conference rooms of the current trend.
Now for the parade of Ginkgo extensions and entirely new products designed by Jehs + Laub:
The complex curvature of the shell and rakish angle of the seat characterize the Ginkgo Lounge and provide the wrap-around comfort it’s known for. As I stated above, this year Jehs + Laub have riffed on that essential Ginkgo DNA to produce a very full family of Ginkgo Seating. With a four-star cast aluminum base or a rod steel base, the Ginkgo Lounge and Foot Rest were clearly designed for the contract market. This year’s addition of wood bases to the set crosses it over into that resimercial feel the market is increasingly demanding.
Extending Gingko’s sculpted, curvilinear aesthetic to a more upright conference chair produced the Ginkgo Conference series available in both mid-back and high back versions. To achieve this transition Jehs + Laub proposed a molded plywood shell that has the advantage of providing an exposed veneer exterior offering the warmer aesthetic many clients are seeking. The molded foam interior maintains the sculptural feel while giving the user support in all the right spots – a very comfortable conference chair.
The Ginkgo Lounge Low Back chair has been a big seller. Building on its success, Davis is now releasing an extension built on this “in-between” design. They are calling this family extension the “Ginkgo Ply Lounge” it extends the new shell with its exposed veneer aesthetic to the lounge chair offering and includes the current Ginkgo Lounge Low Back chair, (now dubbed the Ginkgo Ply Lounge Low Back).
Carrying the Gingko aesthetic into the more utilitarian functions Jehs + Laub proposed a plastic version and a wire version. Ginkgo Plasticis a low-density stacking chair and a fresh reiteration of the classic Ginkgo chair. With the same iconic shape, Ginkgo Plastic takes the family into new niches with a lower price point, a fresh material and a range of seven new plastic colors with an option of matching powder coat bases. It will also be available in a fully upholstered version or with an upholstered seat pad.
Ginkgo Wire is a wonderful piece of precision wire shaping, cutting and welding. With precise radial curves it mimics the unique shape of the Ginkgo shell from an entirely different direction. It is also a low-density stacker but this one will be offered for both indoor and outdoor applications – with the outdoor pieces powder coated over a primer for improved durability. The indoor version can be upholstered in a variety of ways, extending its range of applications from meetings and dining to use as a guest chair. It will also be offered at the barstool height.
Intended as a companion piece to the Gingko Wire Chair, the Ginkgo Wire Table is actually a versatile table series with powder coated rod steel bases designed to accommodate occasional height, dining height and bar height.
Whew! That’s a lot of Ginkgo; but now for something entirely different. Muse is a soft round piece of sculpture that you can sit in. Small in scale, it’s perfect for smaller reception or lounge areas. In order to minimize waste in the upholstery process, Jehs + Laub designed four separate molded foam pieces to achieve comfort with snug, clean, tailored lines and sophisticated details.
Tango gets it name from the way the seat and lower back join with the upper back in a tango-like embrace. It is a bent plywood chair in oak or walnut veneer with options to paint or upholster it. It will be offered in three base options: four-legged wood, four-legged powder coated steel, and a wire sled base.
Introduced last year as a low-back and mid-back conference chair, Sachet was also designed by Jehs and Laub. This year’s extension is a high back version. With an innovative seat suspension system and flexible back construction, Sachet provides long-lasting comfort and durability. With its soft forms and finely tailored upholstery details the new Sachet High Back nicely fills out the family.
Each year since the launch of Davis Elements, the company has added to the Elements Collection; this year is no different. The Poise Occasional Tablesbuild upon the success of last year’s Poise laptop table. A wide range of top shapes, sizes and materials, from wood veneer to soft-touch Fenix solid laminate. The simple, elegant base is fabricated from stainless steel that can be polished or powder coated. With a variety of heights Poise is perfect for nesting in a group.
Helio is a new occasional table line with a miraculously ingenious method of attaching the simple steel legs to the impossibly thin top. It too is perfect for grouping and nesting tables of differing heights and shapes.
As always, the hospitality was great, seeing the growth of the campus and meeting with the prolific Davis Team was a treat, and now I can’t wait to see what Bob Bazemore has dreamed up for the 3rdfloor Davis showroom! See you there.