WHAT THEY DO
Herman Miller makes office furniture sexy, with products like the iconic Eames lounge chair and ottoman, first produced in 1956, and the ergonomic Aeron chair, designed in 1994. The Zeeland, Michigan, company is currently the third-largest manufacturer of office furniture in the world.

WHERE THEY CAME FROM
The company wasn’t always known for avant-garde designs. The small outfit was producing traditional home furnishings under the name Michigan Star Furniture when D.J. DePree bought the company in 1923, renaming it after his father-in-law, who had loaned him the money to buy the firm. After nearly going bankrupt during the Depression, Herman Miller changed course. In the 1940s the company began collaborating with cutting-edge designers, including Isamu Noguchi and Ray and Charles Eames, to bring modern, innovative furniture to a mass market. The results were some of the most iconic designs of the 20th century, including the plywood-and-leather Eames lounge chair. By the 1960s DePree and his sons, Hugh and Max, noticing that a significant proportion of the American workforce was migrating from factories to offices, started to expand Herman Miller’s office design business by introducing the Action Office—i.e., the world’s first cubicles.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT—AND WRONG
The confluence of the dotcom boom and the introduction of the pricey, ergonomically designed Aeron, which became the era’s must-have workplace accessory, resulted in skyrocketing success for Herman Miller in the 1990s. But the company could not stand on one chair alone. With the ensuing bust of 2001, sales dried up, and Herman Miller plunged deep into the red.

Then-C.E.O. Michael Volkema’s unconventional decisions are credited with saving the company. When others might have slashed R&D budgets and focused on safe, established moneymakers, Volkema recognized that without major shifts in business focus, Herman Miller would go down the tubes for good. So instead, he shed deadweight while funding experimental new products. Attention-getting designs, such as a 99 percent recyclable work chair, and rebounding earnings suggest that the strategy is paying off.

The company also strives to promote social equality by furnishing secretarial work spaces with the same groundbreaking designs and high-quality materials used in executive suites—who knew building L.E.D. light fixtures and systems furniture could become a moral mission? Herman Miller has also been at the forefront of the green-design movement, using energy-efficient manufacturing techniques and incorporating recycled and recyclable materials into its products long before companies such as Wal-Mart and G.E. started positioning themselves as environmentally friendly.

WHAT’S NEXT
Herman Miller’s recent slump shows that the office furniture market is perilously dependent on the financial well-being of corporate America. When the stock market slides, sales of upmarket office furniture drop with it. And then there are the shrinking margins in manufacturing and ever-increasing competition from Chinese imports. To thrive, the company will have to continue to roll with the punches and evolve with changing times. —Liz Gunnison