By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Ed Metzger has spent 42 years making workers more comfortable on the job. Now he’s looking for a more comfortable pace for himself in retirement.
As president of Biofit, located on Ohio 64 north of Bowling Green, Metzger has worked to find remedies for aching lab workers bent over microscopes and auto workers on assembly lines.
With his retirement, Jim Connell, the company’s CFO for the past six years, will become president.
Metzger admits it will be difficult leaving the work behind that he has loved for more than four decades. But he knows he is leaving Biofit in good hands – possibly better than his, he said, since Connell is a “true business guy” with a finance background. Whereas, Metzger was a sales and marketing guy who later learned the business side.
“I think Jim’s going to do a really good job leading us into the future,” Metzger said, catching the fact that he is still saying “us” when referring to Biofit.
“He’s going to be investing in things that are going to have a payback,” Metzger said of Connell.
[RELATED: BioFit’s stellar reputation helped it weather pandemic downturn]
Metzger’s original career path was music. He was a student teacher at Anthony Wayne School District’s choral department, when he first became aware of Biofit.
“I drove past here every day,” he said.
He left teaching and started on the shop floor, operating presses, working on assembly and cutting upholstery. Next, he moved into purchasing, then sales and customer service. From there he became vice president of sales and marketing, then was asked by the company if he would go back to school to get a master’s in business administration.
In 2007, Metzger became president of the company that started out 75 years ago making mechanical chairs that offered newfangled options like lumbar support in the back and waterfall edges on the seat.
Most of the chairs were designed for “blue collar seating” of people working in factories.
“We still address the ergonomic needs of those people,” Metzger said.
But the company has grown to help employees in more diverse workplaces, like medical device production and high tech laboratories. The key, Metzger said, is meeting with customers at their worksites to identify exactly what they need.
“We meet with people using the products and ask questions,” he said. “We watch people and how they work.”
Then the designers study how to prevent back pain in lab workers bending over microscopes, or create chairs without silicone for companies building microchips.
Over the past five years, Biofit has sold its chairs, tables, carts and foot rests in 45 different countries, Connell said.
Not bad for a relatively small company with 78 employees in rural Bowling Green.
“We are actually a global company, shipping all over the world,” Connell said.
Hanes uses Biofit chairs for its workers sewing underwear in Thailand. Other companies use Biofit chairs for employees making hip joints or electronic devices implanted to dispense pain medications.
“That’s the fun thing – getting into their factories and seeing what they do,” Metzger said.
Some countries were slow to warm up to the value of making employees comfortable. For example, companies in India initially resisted efforts to provide ergonomic chairs and tables for workers.
“They said, ‘We don’t want people to be too comfortable,’” Metzger said.
But Metzger was able to convince them that comfortable workers pay more attention to their jobs.
“It is an educational process,” he said.
So now Biofit supplies products for some high-tech plants in India that produce pharmaceuticals or work on space research.
In Singapore, chairs built here are used in companies producing medical devices such as artificial heart valves. And in Central America and the Caribbean, the chairs are used in plants producing intel devices, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Biofit products can also be found in plants in Ireland, England, France, Italy, Oman and Israel.
And oddly, Biofit chairs have made appearances in 20 some movies, Connell said. Metzger said he will be watching a show, then spot a Biofit chair – quite often used in forensic scenes.
“Hey, that’s our chair,” Metzger said, with a grin.
Metzger’s wife, Sandra, the company’s customer service manager, has been the go-to person for movie productions needing specific chairs. She is also retiring after 34 years with Biofit.
The ergonomic chair and table business is quite competitive, Connell and Metzger said. Recently, Biofit has benefited from the pendulum swing toward quality rather than the lowest prices.
“We’re not the cheapest on the market,” Connell said. But the most popular Biofit chair has 13 different ergonomic features plus comes with a 13-year warranty.
“They are magic,” Metzger said, with the same grin.
Companies that previously went with the cheapest chairs are now putting longevity over sticker price, Connell said.
“They are fed up with buying stuff from China that falls apart,” Connell said.
That mindset recently won Biofit a big sale to a Whirlpool plant.
“They want a quality product that will hold up,” Metzger said. “They don’t want to be in the chair repair business.”
Biofit has also been able to prove its strength during COVID, when other ergonomic furniture businesses were crippled as supply chain issues delayed production. Biofit’s purchasing and engineering teams were creative and experimented with alternative parts till they found items that would work just as well as the items they could no longer get.
So while other companies’ delivery times stretched out to 12 weeks or more, Biofit was still getting chairs to customers in three weeks.
It also helped that Biofit already had experience creating projects that could be cleaned properly.
“We were clean before clean was cool,” Connell said.
Biofit has survived challenges before that shuttered other companies. The plant previously went through a “lean process” to eliminate waste, Metzger said. That process resulted in several positions being cut on the production floor and in supervision. The decision was not popular in the union shop, he said.
But when the recession hit, Biofit weathered it well.
“If we were still doing the things we did back then, we wouldn’t have survived,” Metzger said.
Since then, Biofit has managed to retain employees, with the average longevity of workers on the factory floor being 22 years, and the average for office workers being 17 years.
“When people come, they stay,” Connell said, crediting Metzger with creating a workplace culture where people feel they belong.
“Ed is definitely one of the most optimistic people I know,” Connell said. “He definitely brings laughter into the workplace – which not everyone can do.”
Metzger refers to himself as “goofy,” but Connell said it’s more than that.
“There is a family feel here. You know everybody who works here,” plus the names of their children and siblings, Connell said. “They come and like working here, and they stay.”
But Metzger knows, at 67, that it’s time for him to go. He’s ready to stop getting up at 4:30 a.m. so he can check on customers in Asia, and ready to give up on days that stretch into the night.
“It’s time to let someone take it from here,” he said.
Connell is committed to carrying on the success at Biofit.
“I want to make sure this business continues to thrive,” he said. “I want to be here for awhile.”
Connell said he wants to see Biofit continue the right growth.
“I want to make sure we stay focused in how we want to grow.”
One of his goals is to modernize the factory floor, updating equipment and installing “cobots” – robots that work with humans.
“It’s going to take time,” Connell said.
Meanwhile, Metzger plans to work on his music, travel, work with underserved youth, volunteer at his church (First United Methodist), spend more time with his eight (and ninth on the way) grandchildren, and continue to serve on the Wood Lane board.
“It’s time to give back,” he said.
