At the BIFMA Breakfast, as the Annual Membership Meeting is affectionately known, there was a rather larger than usual changing of the guard.
As is customary BIFMA Board president, Dan Tuohy of Tuohy Furniture called the meeting to order and recognized the current all-volunteer members of board. He thanked outgoing board members Brett Ackerman of Indiana Furniture, Mike Mekjian of Exemplis, Mark Rhoades of Highmark Seating and Soren Stig-Nielsen of Linak for their involvement and service.
After briefly reviewing BIFMA activities during his tenure Mr. Tuohy announced that his term was concluded and he introduced incoming president of the board, Sylvain Garneau of Groupe Lacasse. Mr. Garneau then accepted the mantle of the presidency, welcoming to the board Rebecca Boenigk of Neutral Posture, Chas Hepler of Via Seating of Julio Hirshfeld Mereles, PM Steele SA de CV; and John May of Group Dekko. Except for a moment’s recognition at the BIFMA Breakfast, about the only reward for this time-demanding job is the camaraderie engendered by serving with the other members and getting to know them. Mr Garneau proudly pointed out that he is the first president of the board from Canada.
I must be getting old – well I guess that’s obvious – but it seems as if every time there’s a new president of BIFMA he or she announces the first thing they plan to do is “reassess [BIMA’s] mission based on input from the broader membership.” I don’t know if there is general dissatisfaction with the current mission or what, but I remember similar reassessments under the leadership of Stan Askrens, Chuck Saylor and Lynn Utter just off the top of my head. As an outsider the mission seems pretty solid and pretty well understood.
To report on the activities of BIFMA over the last year under its current mission, Mr. Garneau introduced Tom Reardon, Executive Director of BIFMA.
BIFMA is recognized as the primary source of data about the size and performance of the industry. Its statistical reports are the go-to numbers by which people inside and outside the industry compare the performance of the office furniture industry with other industries and with the economy as a whole. Each month companies report the value of new orders and shipments to BIFMA, reporting such by zip code of the “ship to,” including both dollars and units by product type. While maintaining the anonymity of the reporting companies, BIFMA aggregates the numbers to the industry level.
Historically, the biggest companies have been the most active and reliable in reporting their numbers to BIFMA. At the breakfast in 2014 Mr. Reardon announced an initiative to increase participation by all members in this important activity.
In his update on that initiative at the 2015 annual meeting, Mr. Reardon announced that Designer Pages president, Chris Taylor, would lead the project and Mr. Taylor presented details of the revised statistical program to be completed by January 2016. Some of the changes include revising the product categories, trying to get better data on vertical markets and geographical areas, and improving analysis of the data. However the big change announce was that the program would be moving from a “carrot” to encourage participation in order to make the stats better for everyone, to a “stick,” wherein companies that don’t contribute their numbers won’t have access to the resulting stats.
January 2016 came and went, but the program appears to be about ready for the first release of data, “later this month.” And the stick appears to be firmly in place, with the “pay to play” rules holding firm.
The other big initiative of the last several years is getting the level sustainability standard more widely known an accepted. Mr. Reardon reported on some notable recent wins in that regard before asking John Czarnecki, Editor in Chief of Contract magazine to introduce the featured speaker, Contract magazine’s 2016 Designer of the Year, Todd Heiser of Gensler, Chicago.
Mr. Heiser presented an overview of Live, Work Play in 2025, Gensler’s latest research publication. In the introduction to the report Gensler’s co-CEOs Andy Cohen and Diane Hoskins state,” Design shapes the future of human experience to create a better world. This credo is the basis of our Design Forecast. For 2016, we asked our global teams to consider how people will live, work, and play in the cities of 2025. Their insights will give our clients an insider view of the issues design will confront in the next decade.” The report itself is interesting on many levels, not least of which is how Gensler’s forecast reflects trends we are seeing in play in the present such as the changes to work and life enabled by advances in technology and the forces driving urbanization. Mr. Heiser’s presentation made for one of the best BIFMA featured-speaker events of recent memory.
As usual, Gensler has unselfishly made the report available to all and whether you were at the breakfast and caught Mr. Heiser’s presentation or not, I encourage you to read it, here: Live, Work, Play in 2025; and share it with your colleagues
This year Byron Morton, VP of Leasing at Merchandise Mart Properties, had plenty to be proud of. He reviewed the improvements to the Mart itself and to NeoCon in particular. They improvements were very obvious to those of who were at liberty to explore – that doesn’t include most of the BIFMA members in attendance since they are pretty much tied to their own showrooms on Monday and Tuesday when the crowds are the crowdiest. Mr. Morton gave credit to the NeoCon Advisory Council that included several BIFMA members, but the truth is it was Vornado that came through with the planning and the big bucks to make it happen and for that we should all be thankful. I’m not included in the “48 years of NeoCon” piece in this issue, but I’ve attended 39 and in my opinion this was the best of them all in terms of what MMPI can do to make the show a success.
Sylvain Garneau closed by announcing that the 2017 360º BIFMA Leadership Conference will be held January 23 – 25 in St. Petersburg, FL. I’ll be there!
