Within the contract furnishings community, we have many great leaders. One of them – Tom Reardon, Executive Director of BIFMA (Business + Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association) – recently announced his forthcoming retirement. Reardon has served as Executive Director of BIFMA for the past 22 years, and it is difficult to imagine someone other than him in the role. We spoke to Reardon about his career, his work at BIFMA, and how he’s seen the industry change throughout his tenure.
Long before his BIFMA days, Reardon spent his first years out of college working for an automotive supplier near Detroit, where he grew up.
“A good friend of mine there went to work at Haworth, and pretty soon after, he called me saying, ‘You should come check out this furniture industry – it’s pretty great over here.’”
Off to Haworth he went, in 1985.
“I loved it. I loved the product, I loved the company, I loved the industry.”
He worked at Haworth almost five years, then moved to Shaw-Walker, a move that was unfortunately timed, as Westinghouse Furniture Systems shortly thereafter acquired Knoll, Reff, and Shaw-Walker, all to be rolled into one to become the Knoll Group. Laid off as of a result of that acquisition in 1990, Reardon began networking and searching for his next position in a tough economic time.
“It was a bit of a flat spot, and a recession for this industry, as contract furniture was used to very steady growth at that time. Steven Channer, the then executive director or BIFMA, hired me to manage BIFMA’s statistical marketing and data program. We were a small organization then, as we are now, so I wore many hats and helped out with the leadership conference and many other areas.”
Mr. Channer retired, and Russ Coyner followed as his successor. Tom continued his work at BIFMA, and eventually became Executive Director of BIFMA himself in early 1998.
We asked Mr. Reardon to look back at his time at BIFMA, and some of the most remarkable changes he’s seen in our industry over the years. He and his team, along with the always-rotating BIFMA board, have shepherded the contract furnishings world through considerable evolutions in markets, design identity and diversification on all levels.
“BIFMA companies have become much more diversified from a product standpoint. Twenty years ago, an office furniture company was very easy to identify,” said Mr. Reardon. “Now, companies likely have products for education environments and healthcare environments, for example. A lot of that diversification was the result of the recession in 2008; before the recession, companies could have all their eggs in the same basket and succeed. We took note of shifts such as the increase in higher education market growth, because young people were staying in school longer to wait out the recession.”
A new level of fluidity and movement amongst contract companies burst open and hasn’t slowed during his time as Executive Director of BIFMA.
“Acquisitions are now a huge part of how our industry operates. The products and their identities may live on, but the company that produces it is often being rebranded.”
“Before BIFMA was founded, there were several large influential customers – Boeing, GSA, IBM, for example – that were writing their own performance specifications and dictating a lot of what was being developed at that time. Contract furniture companies were being pulled in a lot of different directions.”
“We needed to be the entity that defines and maintains the definitive industry standards. It’s one of our core competencies, and we’ve made great progress in health and safety standards, doing great work with education about and regulation of VOCs, Sick Building Syndrome, and formaldehyde. But, we’ve also been able to define how we measure sustainability in our industry, and I’m very proud of that.”
The past few years have also been a time when BIFMA has worked to take a more active role in helping its members connect more closely with their clients.
“We began to have requests from BIFMA companies needing help connecting and communicating with their dealer networks and the A&D community,” said Mr. Reardon. “In the past 6-7 years, we’ve moved more into a role of building relationships and networks with interior designers, and their industry organizations, ASID and IIDA. It makes sense for us to do this because those people also want to be connected to BIFMA companies.”
In addition to his role in bringing a couple of new NeoCon special features to fruition in the show’s 2020 edition, Tom will continue to assist with the new BIFMA Compliant program.
Set to officially launch in October 2020, “BIFMA Compliant” is a branded conformance program – the commercial furniture industry’s definitive registry of standards-conforming products. The program will reach beyond traditional office furnishings to address the rise of furniture for amenity spaces as well as the crossover from residential into contract.
“The A&D community is telling us that they understand what we’re trying to do and that they want guidance,” Reardon noted. “We’re viewed as a kind of impartial authority that can help them identify the right products.”
BIFMA Compliant is only the latest in a long line of valuable tools the BIFMA team has been able to develop to provide designers an easier path toward specifying furniture that complies with the appropriate safety and performance standards. Reardon’s leadership in these endeavors is a benefit many in the industry readily acknowledge.
The respect and gratitude this industry has for Reardon is mutual.
“I’ve been extremely fortunate in that when I took over working with a group of colleagues and moving from peer to boss, it was seamless,” he said. “I don’t manage like I’m ordering people around; I am a consensus builder. I think good decisions are reached when you consider many different viewpoints. The team I had when I took over was solid as a rock. We’ve had very little turnover in all those years. The comeradery and the team spirit here are phenomenal. And there’s not a lot of rungs here – we all work very closely together, like each other and get along well, and that has meant a lot to me over the years.”
“And, working with the BIFMA board – which has gone through a lot of turnover and changing of presidents – has been phenomenal. The professionalism, the mutual respect, the ethics, and the collegiality they have with each other, is remarkable. These people are competitors, but they also genuinely like each other. It’s been so valuable and so rewarding.”
As the BIFMA team searches for a new Executive Director to fill Reardon’s spot, Tom will continue in his role until sometime after NeoCon 2020. He intends to work in a part-time capacity after that, using his experience in a more curated manner. We are grateful to have him for as long as he’d like.
If you know Tom, you know that he is an avid outdoor sport enthusiast, partaking in mountain biking, snow skiing, water skiing, wind surfing and whitewater kayaking.
“I’d like more time to do all of these things while I still can.”
While we are certainly happy to congratulate and thank Mr. Reardon for his impactful leadership and his many contributions to our industry, we are sad to see a great leader hang up his hat. Cheers to all the skiing, biking, kayaking and surfing a guy could ask for!