on September 21, 2015 at 5:25 AM, updated They negatively impact the entire category by confusing and frustrating customers -- Brian Walker ZEELAND, MI -- Herman Miller's Aeron chair is one of several of the company's iconic designs sitting in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and other museums around the world. The Zeeland furniture-maker has a history of taking legal action against companies that copy those high-end designs and sell their knockoffs for less. Herman Miller is now going after a businesses it says confuses and misleads consumers in a different way. It is taking a New York firm, Madison Seating, to court for giving the impression that its refurbished Herman Miller furniture is new. For CEO Brian Walker, Madison Seating's actions fall into the same category as selling counterfeit products. Both hurt the brand's value. Walker derided them as misleading business practices that are the "scourge of the industry" in a statement announcing the company's legal action against Madison Seating last month.
"They negatively impact the entire category by confusing and frustrating customers and consumers, and damaging the brands and reputations of companies like Herman Miller and others that are committed to creating and selling authentic, innovative, high-quality products that last for generations," Walker said. Herman Miller filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois court in August against Madison Seating for unauthorized use of its trademarks, improper marketing and sales of its products, including its best-selling Aeron chair. The suit noted Madison Seating's promotional material promised customers "... the chance to own the chair everyone has been raving about at a fraction of the cost." That price is $599 compared to $1,003, the ad said. Herman Miller contends Cohen is violating a consent agreement with terms that explicitly prohibit Cohen from engaging in Madison Seating's current activities and imposes specific penalties for violating the judgment.
before the companies' own websites. Neither Madison Seating nor Cohen responded to MLive's requests for a comment. But Cohen did talk about his previous legal battle with Herman Miller. "We started to make a dent in this business and now these huge companies are coming after us," Cohen told The Grand Rapids Press in 2006. Cohen said his company was launched in a small New York warehouse not long after his father received 10 Aeron chairs from someone who owed him money, as a way of paying off the debt. and a business model was born. In that 2006 interview, Cohen said his company tried to work with manufacturers and listed all its products as "open box" returns, even though he says only about 10 percent fit the description. He added he believed his company was singled out from others that also sold the chairs at deep discounts because his customers included Microsoft. Cohen said he spent more than $500,000 defending himself in the Herman Miller case.
Two years after Cohen signed an agreement with Herman Miller, the furniture-maker agreed to a $750,000 settlement to end an antitrust lawsuit brought by New York State, and joined by Michigan and Illinois. That settlement said that retailers were legally allowed to advertise lower prices for Aeron chairs and other furniture, but noted that Herman Miller also had the legal right to stop doing business with the retailers. At the time, Herman Miller insisted that it could still require retailers not to advertise below a certain price but acknowledged it could no longer forge formal agreements to do so. The agreement also only applied to advertisements, allowing retailers the flexibility to cut their profits to sell the chairs for less. "They are really protective about how much their products can be sold for," said Rob Kirkbride, who writes about the industry for Monday Morning Quarterback, a Chicago-based trade publication. He remembers reporting on Herman Miller's fury over Costco buying its Aeron chairs from a distributor and then selling them $200 below "best price" in 2002, when he was a Grand Rapids Press reporter.
"Herman Miller became unglued," said Kirkbride. "They were not happy about it." One of the benefits of buying new is that the purchases comes with a 12-year warranty, says Thor Sorensen, whose family owns Design Quest. The modern and contemporary furniture store, at 4081 28th St. SE, is one of Herman Miller's longtime authorized retailers. Kentwood Office Furniture sells refurbished Aeron chairs with the blessing of Herman Miller, and frequently is called in to buy back products customers want to trade in when they are ready to buy new. The relationship works because Kentwood follows the manufacturer's rules, which cuts down on the firm competing with Herman Miller dealers, said Art Hasse, president of Kentwood Office Furniture and a former Herman Miller executive. "Because we have demonstrated that we will do what we say and pay what we say we will pay, Herman Miller trusts us to treat them and their customers with integrity," Hasse said. "Unfortunately, that has not been true for many other buyers of used office furniture on a national level."
RELATED: Herman Miller sues Canadian company for selling iconic Eames 'knock-off' furnitureStock up and get it cheap Over the last few months I’ve been highly amused to see Costco portrayed as a shining beacon of progressive wages, their current minimum at $13 touted as a model of fairness and empathy. It’s not my fault I got so terribly sick for such a long time, but I did, it simply smashed my career, so I am left picking through the dreadful flotsam of the San Francisco metropolitan labor market with very little on my resume to back me up. It took an email to the east coast to pull a veteran string to get a Costco Christmas job, but it happened. Costco is a smart, highly driven company very aware of their customer base (the bargain hunter) and fanatically attuned to the market segments they target—a company will not succeed in the fiercely competitive grocery retail market if they don’t. More than any company I have ever seen Costco also fiercely loathes theft, both internal and external.
To this day, in an entire lifespan as an American consumer, Costco is the only company I’ve ever encountered that will carefully check your receipt and purchases upon leaving to prevent theft. There are fifty tricks available in stealing from the checkout (usually from a crooked cashier) and Costco hates it so much they’ll make you wait in line to make sure you’re not a thief. Equally as much as they loathe theft like any grocery retail outlet Costco highly prizes good customer service, happy workers in good clothes and grooming whom consistently delivery that Costco cheerful smile are to be highly sought after and hopefully retained. By offering $3 above minimum wage Costco earns a reputation as a company that pays (a joke, but a frantically desperate labor force sees $3 above minimum as Nirvana), meaning they can attract the best possible people in the pool willing or forced to do it (many like it). It has a massive positive impact on internal theft and customer service.
That’s why Costco is at $13, it’s a calculated move by a smart company that doesn’t want to constantly sift out surly stealing workers. If Costco cared about a living wage they’d be at least $15 with a 40 hour week, but no Costco worker ever gets more than 25 hours a week, not at the store I was at. Costco workers are of course represented by the Teamsters, but comically everyone is totally aware the Teamsters have zero leverage, this labor market is chock full of desperate workers who would scab in a second, and this work force could never must the moxie to strike anyway. Somehow the Teamsters nibble at a benefits package and a minimum 25 hour week, but they have no ability to effect wage growth at all. I have never experienced a company so fanatically attuned to following the rules, a classic marker for authoritarians. It didn’t matter in the least how small, large or mundane the rule was, break it and they were fiercely all over it, an email from a supervisor calling it out considered a career-threatening disaster.
Costco hates theft and they have a no-grazing policy for workers, sneak a bite, get caught and you’re gone. Just in the few months I was there 2 workers with multiple years of experience were fired on the spot with no warning for sneaking a drink from the soda fountain. I got stuck in the food court, a woefully lame label for a frenetically busy kitchen that churned out cheap pizza and hotdogs, hordes of hungry Americans always waiting for that bargain fat fix, baby. An incredibly poor kitchen design and a lousy manager, god what a recipe for the crushing nightmare it was. Relentlessly hammered for speed, pizza workers were always flinging ingredients on the floor, and because they hammered other workers for speed with dough they splashed olive oil everywhere. The result was the most filthy, disgusting, dangerous kitchen floor I’ve ever worked with, others and I were always bruised from falls, I’m amazed I didn’t see teeth lost. It was very noisy with these awful radios always squawking, so the only way to communicate to me from the front was to yell and shout.