By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

ZEELAND — Back in November 2010, the future didn’t look bright for the Greystone brand of public seating products.

It looked like the manufacturer of high-end seating wouldn’t survive an economic downturn that was taking its toll on the market. The previous ownership put the company on the market and brought in a local turnaround firm to wind down the high-end manufacturer.

An initial group of local investors, including Gaylord Stanton and Don van der Zwaag, had made an initial offer on the business, but they walked away from the deal after not being able to find favorable terms from a local bank, said van der Zwaag, senior consultant at ROCG Americas LLC. Even as existing furniture companies from West Michigan and beyond made attractive bids on the company, van der Zwaag didn’t want to give up.

“Don believed in the product and took the initiative to call Larry Kooiker, a previous vendor for Greystone,” Stanton told MiBiz. “Don put the team together. He just kept being persistent.”

Stanton had a history with the seating line, which was originally developed by Ford’s Visteon division. In 1999, he led a team of engineers in the development of a seating line for the movie theater industry and later directed the sale of the seating division in 2002 to Greystone International after Visteon decided to go back to its core competencies in the automotive business. A veteran of public seating companies, Stanton went on to work with Greystone for four years.

“I got into this business 28 years ago, but I didn’t realize it would be so hard to leave it,” said Stanton, a teacher by training. “I just acquired a degree of expertise and made contacts that told me to stay in the industry.”

What set Greystone products apart from those at other firms in the public seating industry was that they were designed by automotive designers and engineers on an automotive platform.

“Auditorium seating companies started in the 60s and they still use 60s materials,” he said. “Then, they used plastic to cheapen the product, but we use steel. It’s overkill, potentially, but the architecture is sound. Visteon engineers didn’t seek approval from others in the industry. They just made what we’d like in auditorium seating.”

With the addition of Kooiker, owner of Agritek Industries, van der Zwaag also brought to the table Bill Maddox, a partner with Kooiker in DiffusionTek LLC, as well as a West Michigan family investment company, and the new group of investors made another bid, this time successfully.

“We were not the high bid, but we represented a belief in West Michigan. That was important to us,” Stanton said, noting at least one of the other suitors would have moved the company out of state. “Our goal is to stay in West Michigan.”

Greystone Public Seating LLC formed in December 2010 and bought the assets from the former owners, including a 50,000-square-foot facility in Zeeland visible from U.S. 196. The company employs about 20 people, including about 10 in production. The vast majority of their suppliers are located in West Michigan, and all content in Greystone product lines comes from the United States.

Joe Yonkman, VP of operations, said the core team working at Greystone today has a diversified background in the office furniture and automotive industry, and they’ve brought a renewed focus on lean manufacturing, safety and quality systems. The company’s small size also allows it to be flexible enough to get projects accomplished quickly without much bureaucracy.

“From the standpoint of operations, we push on-time delivery and product quality and efficiencies that result in cost savings. We work with the supply base to get better, faster and less expensive, but we never compromise on the quality of our products,” Yonkman told MiBiz. “What the owners see is a strong product with a lot of potential in the market.”

Greystone had a strong image in the marketplace for quality seating products, but the wind-down of the company put uncertainty in buyers’ minds. Yonkman and Stanton said the goal now is to regain some of that lost momentum, but they realize the process can take time.

“We want to re-establish that we are a real player,” he said. “Larry comes in with his blinders off, and he’s renewed and reinvigorated us. He’s a breath of fresh air for the product line. … For a high end product like this to survive, it needs ownership from a metal fabricator or foam company.”

Because Kooiker was a supplier, he was familiar with the products, but he’s still enough of an outsider to be able to find ways to change a process to improve the final product, Stanton said. The company also works closely with key supplier Grand Rapids Foam Technologies Inc.

“When I looked at this, I thought about what I could do to improve the economy of the region, the state and the United States. And I thought, ‘I can manufacture and sell American products completely assembled by Americans.’ That just makes you feel good, like driving a high mileage car versus a gas guzzler,” Stanton said. “If everyone does something good toward the environment and the state and buys American products, I think we’ve done our jobs … to do something to help turn the economy around. It all snowballs. It all makes sense.”