Area Manufacturers Descend on Chicago’s NeoCon

AS SEEN IN: Grand Rapids Business Journal –
Commercial design industry trade show offers businesses opportunity to display latest products.

For West Michigan’s office furniture manufacturers, this week is about showing off their new products and brand refreshes.

Companies often show off their most anticipated projects and reveal new products from the past year at NeoCon in Chicago. NeoCon starts today, June 12, and ends Wednesday at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.

“NeoCon is always special, it’s like writing a term paper,” said Mark Kinsler, president at Holland’s Trendway Corp. “It builds and builds and you have to get a lot of stuff done in the last few minutes.”

Trendway is set to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, and Kinsler said the company is welcoming a return to moveable walls. NeoCon provides Trendway an opportunity to show customers and wholesalers how the variety of products it has work in a real environment. He said there’s a pendulum swing back to privacy, not while working but for phone calls or smaller collaborative work.

The product segment is growing at a clip between 30 and 40 percent.

“You do your work throughout the day, and there’s multiple environments to do the work, and visual and acoustic privacy is an issue,” he said. “We’re in a unique position because there’s not many players in the product segment.”

– See full article online in the Grand Rapids Furniture Journal –