It was pretty simple. At first, we were a seating company only, and my dad said that his goal was to create a chair that the average person could afford. At the time, products were being sold for north of $200 — which in the ’60s, was a price few people could afford for an office chair. Instead,  you’d probably just be sitting on a stacking chair or kitchen chair. He launched an office chair for, I believe, $68. He said, “For $68, people could sit, and tilt, and feel like an executive.” He wanted to create a company where respect for people was of the utmost importance. That could have been my father drawing upon his previous existence before he founded the company. He really respected people, and treated them the way he wanted to be treated.

It’s about improving operations all the way through — quality,  efficiency, customer service — but not changing the culture.

Because of the anniversary, I spent some time going through the archives — looking at old marketing brochures, or watching videos on VHS from some of our early company parties. In that footage, my father spoke about values that are still very relevant today. Now, certainly, we’re a much larger company on an international scale, but the things it takes to satisfy a customer are not that different. It’s about creating quality products, being on time, and overall just being people of your word — executing what you say you’re going to execute. It’s nice to see that we still have a connection to those original values.

Our roots are as a seating company, but then we expanded into desks and systems, and our early tagline became “the total office.” That actually used to be our website — globaltotaloffice.com. Now, we’re Global Furniture Group, because we’re involved in healthcare and educational furniture, too. In the ’80s and ’90s, we were also very strong in the retail market, but then there was a shift towards manufacturing that product offshore. We had to make a decision, and we pivoted towards the mid-market contract channel. That was a defining moment for us, because it really put us into the design community.

The 2001 opening of our global headquarters in Toronto, designed by Moriyama Teshima, was another big moment. It was a major statement from a design standpoint, and  rather than just a showroom, it became a hub for all our activity. When we first had international customers come to Toronto, it really opened their eyes to the scale of the company.

We actually did our first healthcare job in 1985, and it was sort of by accident. It was part of a philanthropic venture, because we were corporate donors to a nursing home and assisted living facility in Toronto. Based on my father’s personal relationship with them, they asked him if Global could make a product to assist in their facility. He was never a guy to say no, so Global Healthcare was born — although we didn’t do a lot after that until our more formal launch in the 2000s.

We were fortunate that we were ahead of the curve because of some key employees who had previous experience in that market and anticipated its expansion. Now when you go to trade shows, you see that almost everybody’s in healthcare, but back then, they weren’t — and it has become such an important part of our business.

The biggest lesson we’ve learned is to listen to your clients. We work very closely with the hospital groups. When we formally launched our healthcare brand, we partnered with a large Canadian healthcare conglomerate and had multiple meetings with their nursing staff and their admin people to see what worked well in their facility from their current suppliers and what they really wanted to see addressed. We know what we don’t know, and we’re all ears when it comes to listening. We have launched so many products by learning from the people who will be using a product day to day, and it’s really defined our success.

Whenever a large hospital group or nursing home makes a decision, I always make a point of visiting them and telling them, “If you see something that you like, but it’s not 100 per cent of the way there, we’re vertically integrated, so we can change it in a way that suits your needs.” That’s been a defining feature of Global that’s given us a real competitive advantage.

Again, we were a bit ahead of the curve back then. I credit my father and one of our business partners at the time for having the foresight to open a recycling facility back in the early ’90s. Not only was it good for the environment, but it saved us money — rather than using virgin materials, we could use recycled materials to create the innards of seats and backs for chairs, and the insulation for panels. It really gave us a place to put our waste — not everything, obviously, but woods and plastics. And we’ve made that operation more efficient.

We’re constantly looking at ways to divert things from the landfill. We had a program for many years where we would take fabric offcuts and sell or donate them to other industries to use for fashion items like purses or tote bags. And wherever we can — wherever it doesn’t change the integrity of the components from a strength and durability or aesthetic standpoint — we use recycled materials. We have a team here that constantly looks at areas of waste where we can recycle, so I don’t think it’s ever fully complete. It’s an ongoing process — and we’re lucky that we were in the game early, so we’re just enhancing our capabilities.

Of course, an injection molding facility takes a lot of energy, but newer equipment also expels less — which draws less on the grid, and saves us in terms of dollars spent.

During the ’80s and ’90s — which was before my time in the industry — cubicles dominated. You had 72-inch high panels and you couldn’t really see people, so collaboration was basically non-existent. Then there was a massive shift where things became completely open. You went from total privacy to basically no privacy — instead of cubicles, you might have had benches. Maybe there were some dividers between individuals, but maybe not. That open-office era really dominated until COVID. Certainly, the workplace was much more collaborative, but the pendulum had swung 180 degrees and I think that openness and the lack of privacy may have created some difficulties, too.

Today, from my perspective, it’s not one or the other — it’s a blend of both. And we’re utilizing that solution in our own space: We recently took one of our biggest floor plates — 20,000 square feet — in our global headquarters. It has people working in sales, marketing and programming, so they all have different needs — as in any office — and it’s become a mix of open-concept, collaborative spaces, some touchdown spaces and some privacy spaces. We’ve incorporated that floor into our showroom area to show prospective clients that, hey, we’re practicing what we preach, and it’s really working.

Everyone’s had to entice people to come back to the office, so you do want to make it fun, but ultimately it’s still a place of work. I think that collaborative areas where you can have a meeting, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be around a boardroom table — it could be around casual sofas — are environments that people really like, and they serve them well, too.

It’s not a regular show for us, because we’re opening a new showroom in Fulton Market, so the real focus is on the space. We are launching some extensions of products — an expanded version of our modular Office Spaces line, that supports the balance of collaborative and private spaces I was just discussing — and we’ll also have a celebration of the past 60 years. But really, we’re focused on opening a fresh environment to showcase designs outside the Merchandise Mart, where we’d been for a long time. It’s quite a departure, but it’s exciting. The new space has a lot of natural light, and good visibility from the street. Plus, we’re very close to a lot of our competitors, because we understand that people have choice when they’re looking for product, and it’s much easier for them to come next door and see how we compare to one of our competitors rather than having to go across town. And we’re very happy to have the new showroom coincide with our anniversary.

There have been a lot of family-run businesses in this particular industry. There are some left that have done a great job — they are great competitors and we respect them very much. But there are fewer and fewer of them — we’ve seen companies go through acquisitions, or go public, or be taken over by private equity. It’s a unique thing to have a company that has been passed down from one generation to the next, because there’s continuity there. It has allowed us to invest in the future and improve the company, while staying true to the values that got us through the first 60 years. We’re very fortunate to be in this position, and I don’t take it lightly. It’s a challenge every day, but we appreciate being in this market, and having the support that we do from our customers, from the design community, and most importantly, from our employees.