When COVID-19 began emptying out America's offices, Ron Wiener thought his office furniture company, iMovR, was in deep trouble. The company, which makes standing desks, treadmill desks and other trendy furniture, saw its pipeline of bulk orders"vaporize." It couldn't even reach many of its customers because they had abandoned their desks.
Wiener is a veteran of the tech world who speaks Silicon Valleyese — you know, casually dropping buzzwords like"the cloud" and"IoT" . When we talked, he, naturally, spoke about disrupting his bigger competitors. Wiener, who is based in Seattle, calls them"the Grand Rapids mafia," mainly because they're the muscle in the industry and are based in Grand Rapids, Mich., aka"Furniture City.
Wiener says the big furniture companies have dragged their heels on all this. The way he told it, we got a picture that some members of the Grand Rapids mafia may be destined to become another chapter in the classic tale of the"," a theory articulated by the recently deceased Harvard University economist Clayton Christensen about why dominant firms so often fail to innovate in the face of a changing market. Think Kodak and digital photography or the music record labels and streaming.
planetmoney I bought a Herman Miller chair with my stimulus check from the 2008 crash, and it was the best purchase I have ever made. You simply do not know how comfortable a chair should be unless you’ve sat in a Herman Miller. The chair is still excellent and still under warranty.
planetmoney Wow. Thanks npr for making us aware of the obvious once again