By Nathan Peck | MiBiz
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GREENVILLE — Gardner Klaasen and David Valdiserri like to say that they started their own furniture company to take all their knowledge from a combined 45 years in the industry and put it to good use.

Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.

The upside is creative control and reduced overhead. The downside is the countless sleepless nights as the duo develops sales channels and streamlines production and has made an unlikely move to bring production onshore from China.

“There’s no sister company investing the cash — we make the decisions,” Klaasen told MiBiz. “If we make the wrong move right now in a company like ours, in an industry like ours, it is lights out.”

In 2003, designers Klaasen and Valdiserri founded zero1, a manufacturer of chairs for the office and hospitality environments, and have gone small in an industry dominated by giants. They wager that by starting small, with extremely low overhead (they frequently joke about their “world headquarters” inside an inauspicious trailer in Clarion Technology’s manufacturing facility), they can bring a better product to market, at a better price, by producing their line of chairs in Michigan. A furniture manufacturer doing business in China is hardly news. A furniture manufacturer moving production back to Michigan strikes one as going against the grain.

“One thing we know we can say is no one can make our chairs more efficiently and at a better price,” Valdiserri said, standing amid a handful of sample chairs being readied to ship to customers. “We have virtually no overhead.”

The first products from zero1, the Flip 1 and Flip 2 seats, allow the back to flip down, saving space and gaining attention from the education and hospitality industries. The products are made in Greenville and shipped in only two parts that snap together — an appealing detail when a hotel is looking for a hundred or more chairs. The Flip line is targeted at the middle of the office chair market. Two product lines in development, the CPS and Ko chairs, aim at the upper end of the price spectrum.

“To play in the industry, you need three areas: low, mid and high,” Klaasen said. “You need a full product range so you are not seen as a one-trick pony.”

For zero1, the decision to move production onshore and into Greenville came after a series of decisions about the costs and benefits of doing business overseas. Sure, workers in overseas plants make much less than American workers, but there is considerable overhead when one takes into consideration the time and expense in traveling to coordinate with Chinese facilities, not to mention hidden costs in doing business there. Their shared experience working for the biggest names in the industry have led them to find ways to cut the fat from the design and product development process.

“We are not only responsible for ourselves at this point, we have employees — we want to grow, and want them to grow with us. We want all our employees to be happy coming to work. That is part of the reason why we’re independent,” Valdiserri said.

Staying in the black is key and new product development is funded through sales.

“What can we afford, what does our cash flow allow?” Klaasen explained. “We have to establish a track record of sales. We are making the transition from seating designers and product development to manufacturers.”

In the incumbent leaders in the industry, new product development frequently is among the victims of cost-cutting measures. Being small allows zero1 to remain nimble. Valdiserri explained that if sales dip, they can quickly bring new designs to market.

“We’ve worked for these people and know how much time and money gets spent on developing a product is absurd,” Valdiserri said. “We make all the design decisions, take the sketch, bring it to a physical prototype, and take it back to digital. There is very little difference between prototype and the finished product. There are designers who only design, who don’t know the injection molding.”

What they had in design experience, they realized from the beginning that they lacked experience in injection molding. Klaasen and Valdiserri originally looked in Manistee for a site to build or buy a building to house a production facility, but eventually decided to lease space in injection molder Clarion Technologies Inc.’s manufacturing center in Greenville.

Finding the right partner was key, and Clarion Technologies provided the designers with plastic injection molding experience, while zero1 has helped develop finishes for the molder’s growing coffin business. For Clarion, a former supplier to Electrolux’s shuttered Greenville plant, zero1 is a customer and partner with growth potential.

“What Clarion brings is technology, expertise and manufacturing capability, and room to grow,” Klaasen said. “They came from it, not as a capital position, but it was an IP and a partnership position. Momentum begets momentum. We have to be absolutely positive you will succeed. Clarion has been around for a while, but they’re taking a risk with us.”

As the contract furniture industry went through the paroxysms of 2009, the duo sees opportunity for innovation in both the designs and processes involved. Launching a manufacturing enterprise in the midst of a 30-percent decline in the industry puts them in a position to capitalize on the market recovery.

“The tools we have available to us today, companies didn’t have 10 years ago. It opens up opportunities to us to rethink the process. Our logistical tools are set up online for $50 month. We can do so much more with less,” Klaasen said. “Things are quite good for us. We are in a good place to work on our infrastructure, for our sales force to gear up so that we are ready right out of the gate as the industry returns.”