By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Like other manufacturers, BioFit took a hit last March.
Industrial customers closed down, so shipments to them fell off.
“But we didn’t fall nearly as badly as some of the other furniture manufacturers,” said company President Ed Metzger.
Company benefited from its balanced portfolio of customers that includes laboratories, hospitals, and defense contractors.
The rural Bowling Green company even has had to work overtime to fulfill rush orders for companies that produce COVID test kits.
Abbott Laboratories has announced it will be hiring an additional 2,000 people, and those employees need chairs to sit in. BioFit fulfilled an initial order for 300 units.
Still, Metzger said, the company’s business for the year is down about 14 percent – orders for tables and chairs for school cafeterias tanked.
“Oh man, that just went really dead,” Metzger said. “Because they just didn’t know what was going on. Are we going back or not? That’s a big hurt. The seating is the side that’s really holding us up right now. … A lot of high technology like defense electronics especially the stuff we make for clean rooms and static sensitive areas , that stuff has held up well.”
The company just had one of its best Septembers ever.
“We’re very excited we’re having a good year despite the challenges,” said Ed Plocek, the national sales director. He’s looking for that rebound to give the company momentum heading in 2021, when BioFit will mark its 75th anniversary. The goal for 2021 is $20 million in sales.
And though he’s only been with the company four months, he not surprised by the company’s resilience. “There’s such a great foundation of science and technology behind the seating that it leverages out the shortcomings on the K-12 side. It’s a nice balance to be known to be a name brand. That’s what impressed me in my short time here. Defense contractors, pharma labs come to us knowing how we separate ourselves from other competitors in the market.”
Metzger, who joined the company in 1979, said in March “when this first hit, we had a lot of employees who were fearful to come into work because the thing was spreading and there was so much unknown.”
However, he noted, the company’s business declined at about the same rate as the decline in available workers.
Other employees, he said, realized products needed to continue to be shipped, “To keep the company afloat, they came in to work.”
BioFit implemented new policies to address workers’ concerns, and those has to updated as the guidance from the state changed, Metzger said.
Workers wear masks when they move around the shop, but can lower them at their work station.
“Our policy was we didn’t want anyone to come in who was afraid to come in, so we allowed them to stay at home,” he said. That applied to factory floor workers, who represent about half the company’s workforce of 75.
Front office employees were allowed to work from home if that was feasible.
More workers felt comfortable returning to work just as business began to pick up, Metzger said.
With rush orders coming in during September from hospitals and labs, the company found it needed temp workers. But none were available. Instead BioFit workers pulled overtime and Saturday shifts.
“People had to put in extra effort, and they did,” Metzger said. “We have good employees here.”
BioFit’s newer Movement line of seating played a large role in “keeping us afloat,” Metzger said.
It is becoming a standard product for defense contractors because it has the best ergonomic design and the best static control of any they’ve tested in the industry, he said.
“They can’t have static going into the (computer) chip or it’ll destroy it, and on the defense side that’s awfully critical,” Metzger said.
Plocek said it’s a matter of pride that companies that are crucial to the national defense turn to BioFit products.
“When you think of the intricacies of a defense contractor who’s responsible for protecting our country and keeping us safe, many of them are sitting on a BioFit seat because they know how important that is for the end result.”
