One strategy for a U.S.-based small manufacturer might include flying to China, venturing into its sprawling industrial regions, making a deal and then waiting for shipments to arrive on huge container ships.
Not so for Mike Dreeben and Ray Doeksen. They say they designed their USA-OK Chair, which they hope is the start of a furniture line and a successful company, so that it could be made in one of the many small metal fabrication shops around Chicago.
More Top Picks Best Horse Riding Helmets For Adults
“The vendor was actually the start,” said Dreeben, recalling a visit to discuss another project at Midwest Metal Forming, in Chicago’s Peterson Park neighborhood. “We looked at their processes and strengths, and we approached our design process (for their chair) to take advantage of those strengths.”
The result: a chair made from seven pieces of metal — four identical legs, a bracket, a seat and a seat back. The manufacturer bends rather than stamps the metal, avoiding high costs associated with creating stamping patterns, Doeksen said.
The only other parts are the screws that hold the pieces together, plus small plastic “feet,” which the manufacturer makes on a 3D printer, Doeksen said.
Doeksen said the key to the design is that it can be made quickly and easily, mostly using bending machines and laser cutters. And it is shipped unassembled.
“We can send it to you in a deep-dish pizza box,” he said.
The company boasts that its chair is strong, lightweight, comfortable, easy to assemble — and made in the U.S. A steel version will retail for $340 and an aluminum version for $449.
Dreeben and Doeksen put the project Kickstarter, and by midday Thursday, they raised $8,230 of their $9,999 goal with eight days to go. A successful campaign would give them the money they need for a first production run of about 50 chairs.
“At the end of the day, we’re proud that we made a damn good chair,” Doeksen said. “Making a chair is not easy.”
Designers by trade, Dreeben, 42, and Doeksen, 47, have known each other since 1985 when they met at a summer camp.
Doeksen graduated in 1990 with a degree in industrial design from Michigan State University and said he then served in the U.S. Army including in Iraq. He went to work as a designer for Dreeben’s furniture design company, Michael W. Dreeben Inc., in 2007, and the two founded USA-OK Industries in January.
Dreeben earned a master of fine arts in sculpture from the University of Chicago and then, in 1998, received a Fulbright scholarship to study traditional woodworking in India. Out of that grew AKMD, an Indian-inspired furniture collection he created and sells with a partner based in Jaipur, India.
Dreeben said those products take their inspiration from traditional Indian culture.
For his project with Doeksen, the idea of designing a modern American chair and making it overseas because of the cheaper labor was never part of the plan. They said social responsibility inspired them — in part — to have their chair manufactured close to home.
When working with an overseas manufacturer, Dreeben said, “you still, under the best of circumstances, run up against communications problems. Just being able to drive a half an hour and talk to the maker is very helpful.”
The chairs come in a variety of colors, painted with a durable powder coat, Doeksen said. He said their structure gives slightly under the weight of a person, adding to the comfort.
Dreeben and Doeksen said they’re already working on expanding their line around the same design principals of the USA-OK Chair.
“Just by itself, it’s a pretty cool thing,” Doeksen said. “We started out saying: ‘Let’s make something in the U.S. that could be part of the (company’s) Room and Board line.’ We think we’ve done that.”