Epic Proportions: It began with a metal folding chair

By Amelia Compton Wolff 

Humble, utilitarian, found ubiquitously in church basements and banquet halls, the metal folding chair seems a far cry from the modern furniture designs for which KI has become known. But for the contract furniture company, the metal folding chair exemplifies 82 years of adaptation, evolution and innovation.

“KI founder Al Krueger was making folding chairs, our foundational piece, and that’s how KI got started. It’s what KI was built on,” says CEO Brian Krenke as he sits in a glass-walled conference room at the company’s Green Bay headquarters. As he speaks, one of those exact metal folding chairs — KI’s flagship product — is visible behind him, displayed proudly on a literal pedestal for all to see when they walk through the doors. 

The folding chair offered a seating solution that was stackable, durable and affordable. During WWII, chairs were manufactured using scrap metal from local steel companies — available material dictated what could be produced. 

KI may have started with a metal folding chair, but it certainly didn’t stop there. From adapting to war-era shortages to redesigning Meta’s post-pandemic workplace, KI has been at the forefront of furniture innovation since its 1941 founding as Krueger Metal Products, Inc. in Aurora, Illinois. 

Today KI is a $740 million company that holds the No. 1 market share in education furniture, with strong footing in government, workplace and health care markets thanks to its ever-expanding product lines which include everything from sound-absorbing office panels to mobile screens.

“For any company it’s about growth,” says Krenke, who joined the company in 1991 and took over as CEO in 2018 from longtime company leader Dick Resch. “The biggest change I’ve seen at KI in my 32 years has been the expansion of our product portfolio. Who knows where it’s going to go in the future.”

Growth potential

To Krenke’s point, Al Krueger himself probably couldn’t have imagined the vast array of products his company would eventually offer when he founded Krueger Metal Products. Who could predict the ways in which recessions, supply chain disruptions and a pandemic would affect industries worldwide?

But KI has a long history of adapting to — and leading — industry changes, and this nimble approach has contributed to its success. The company headquarters moved to Green Bay in 1945, and by the 1950s it was manufacturing about 500 chairs a day with sales of nearly $500,000. 

Resch, who joined the company in 1964, guided the company into the contract furniture market where today it ranks as the fifth-largest manufacturer in the industry. In 1988, the company combined its commercial and contract furniture divisions and officially became Krueger International.

“It was a $6 million company when Dick took it over, and he grew it into $600 million before he left,” Krenke says. 

The 1990s proved to be an era of acquisition and growth for the company, which acquired AGI, Spacesaver, ADD Specialized Seating, Period Furniture and established four manufacturing facilities during this decade.

KI now employs 1,800 people (nearly 900 of which are in Green Bay) and operates five manufacturing facilities in the United States and Canada. Three of these are in Wisconsin — Green Bay, Bonduel and Manitowoc. The others are located in High Point, North Carolina and Pembroke, Ontario, Canada. 

From health care market management and marketing to integrating mergers and acquisitions, Krenke has touched many departments within KI over his 32-year tenure. Tom Abrahamson, vice president of manufacturing operations, says Krenke’s experience and engineering education enable him to see things from a well-rounded perspective. 

“It makes him just naturally curious. He’s always wanting to learn different pieces of the business that we’re working on,” Abrahamson says. “He also has the unique ability to ask the hard questions to get us all to think a little bit differently.”

Krenke says his first five years as CEO have indeed been tumultuous from an external perspective — with supply chain issues, COVID-19 and surging inflation with which to contend — but one of the most satisfying changes has taken place within the walls of KI: its transition to full employee ownership through its employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) in 2018.

Vice President of Human Resources Beth Relich says the ESOP has been one of Krenke’s biggest areas of influence.

“That’s how we transitioned from Dick as the majority owner of the company to today, through the 100% ESOP. Brian’s leadership philosophy is very much about his team,” she says. “He’s about sharing and collaborating and coming to the best solution because the right people were involved in making it.”

Abrahamson calls the creation of the ESOP “a game changer” for KI. 

“That was probably one of the fundamental changes in our organization,” he says. “Being a 100% ESOP really, in my opinion, produces a heightened level of engagement for all employees because you’re basically working on your retirement plan every day. I see that as a huge benefit.”

With Krenke at the helm, KI earned record revenue in 2022. The company grew from its previous record sales year of $620 million in 2019 to its new record of $740 million last year.

Eric DeKorne, vice president of development for the Greater Green Bay Chamber, says the Green Bay area has one of the highest concentrations of manufacturing companies in the entire country and, as one of the city’s largest private employers, KI is a leader in the industry’s local impact. 

“They are a cornerstone business. KI as an organization is very employee driven and community driven,” DeKorne says. “Their continued growth and expansion are tremendous from an economic development perspective. They sell worldwide and are still headquartered here in Green Bay, so they are able to bring a lot of those dollars back and invest into the community.”

Krenke plans to explore mergers and acquisitions, whether in market or adjacent markets, over the next two to three years to further grow the company. 

“Our industry only grows anywhere from 3% to 5% a year. It’s not like the tech industry and some industries that grow at a phenomenal rate,” he says. “My goal is to start moving forward with mergers and acquisitions sooner rather than later in order to grow the company faster than 2% or 3%.”

From K-12 classrooms to Fortune 500 companies, KI’s Advanced Research Team observes user behavior to understand how people use an environment as part of the company’s new product development process.

Photograph Courtesy of KI

Head of the class

KI’s name recognition in Northeast Wisconsin is strong. But despite this, Abrahamson says most people don’t realize that KI is a leader in the education market. 

“You can kind of get pigeonholed as an office furniture manufacturer, but in reality it’s a small portion of what we do. We own the education market, and I don’t think a lot of people know that in Green Bay we produce so much educational product,” he says. “But if you went to school and sat at a desk or chair or cafeteria table, there’s a good chance it came out of Green Bay, Wisconsin.” 

Krenke attributes much of the company’s recent growth to its education market business spurred by government spending on K-12 institutions nationwide. 

“Every election year since 2016 has had significant bond and referendum dollars pass in K-12 because our schools across the country are in pretty tough shape,” he says. “I would say until 2027, at least, you’re going to see a large investment in K-12 on either new schools or revitalization of schools, which is great for kids, schools and parents.”

It’s also great for KI, with its two education markets — K-12 and college and universities — making up 62% of overall business. Student seating and desking alone make up a quarter of product produced. The Green Bay and Bonduel plants, where most education products are manufactured, each add more than 100 seasonal jobs during the summer to meet demand. 

But as much as the company specializes in furniture, Krenke will tell you the company’s true specialty is understanding people. There’s a tremendous amount of psychology and science that goes into the product development process, and it starts with observation of an environment and how people interact with it. 

“Just because we have the No. 1 market share in education doesn’t mean that we can just design a product and put it out to market with the KI brand,” Krenke says. “We’ve got to continue doing the type of research that will lead us to a story behind why we’re designing and developing products.”

Infinity From KI is a flexible process in which the client and KI design team exchange ideas, understand objectives and tweak designs to create completely custom products.

Photograph Courtesy of KI

This is where KI’s Advanced Research Team (ART) comes in. They observe user behavior to truly understand how people use a product as part of KI’s new product development process. 

“It’s like cultural anthropology, watching people and what they are doing,” Tim Hornberger, KI’s vice president of design and development, told Woodward Radio’s Hayley Tenpas in a January episode of the “Made in Wisconsin” podcast. “There are some things you can observe people need that they would never tell you if you asked. If you watch how they use the product and how they interact, you can uncover lower-level insights.”

This is exactly what happened when ART turned its attention to the education sector, specifically to young learners in kindergarten through third grade. 

“To be quite honest, we didn’t feel we had a good understanding of how kids in that K-3 range were learning,” Krenke says. “What we found is that they’re learning as much on the floor — working on the floor with their peers and their teachers — as they are sitting in a traditional classroom chair at a table.”

Through this research, Imaginasium Blocks were born. These brightly-colored foam blocks come in three shapes — reminiscent of the letters I, L and V — and can be arranged into endless configurations to create private nooks or graded seating, divide spaces or just build a fort. Complementary Imaginasium Blips are floor pads that offer additional seating. Everything is lightweight, easy for young students to maneuver and supportive of diverse learning and teaching styles. 

Through its Ruckus Research Program, KI wanted to determine what impact furniture alone has on a learning environment. Nine K-12 institutions from across the country were selected for the program, which surveyed participants about the effectiveness of their spaces both before and after KI swapped in a new furniture kit. This included KI’s Ruckus Collection, MyPlace Lounge and Instruct and Connection Zone Screens.

After a semester of use, success measurements increased between 30% and 60%. Participants responded that the furniture allowed for increased student mobility, which led to greater engagement, more efficient technology use and increased participation and learning retention. 

Students were easily able to arrange their tables and chairs into learning pods of two or three students, which had some surprising results. 

“As soon as we got the new furniture, I noticed that a number of students I would have thought would sit next to each other again formed different collaborative groups,” reported Corinne Ginder, a participating teacher at Buffalo Grove High School in Illinois. “It was neat to see how they reformed their social groups just due to the furniture.”

From K-12 classrooms to Fortune 500 companies, KI’s Advanced Research Team observes user behavior to understand how people use an environment as part of the company’s new product development process.

Photograph Courtesy of KI

Building what works

KI’s work in the office furniture market was no doubt affected by COVID. Contrary to early predictions, the pandemic has not killed the office — but it has changed it. Hybrid work schedules, increased use of video conferencing and incentivizing employees to return to the office have all led to the need for dynamic workspaces that support a variety of work styles. 

Abrahamson says that five to seven years ago the open-concept office was king, but preferences have shifted post-pandemic. 

“One thing that we’re seeing is the need for bringing some type of personal space back into workstations. But instead of having a cubicle like in the old days, we’re doing a lot of work with screens right now,” he says. 

One example of this is “The Cube,” a custom solution developed for Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. These custom cubes were designed through KI’s Infinity process, a collaborative design system that connects clients with a team of engineers and industrial designers to create products for a specific environment — in Meta’s case, one that needed to increase privacy and decrease distractions. 

The solution was to develop mobile, noise-blocking panels that can be used with existing workstations. KI has been installing 5,000 workstations at Meta’s North America locations for the last year and a half with hopes to soon move into phase two of the project. 

“Meta has been a longtime customer and is very, very fun to work with. We enjoy working with them because they are always looking for something unique,” Krenke says. “They challenge our industrial designers and they challenge KI, and through that I think it makes us a better company.”

Another new product is KI’s WiggleRoom, a customizable single-user pod that offers acoustic and visual privacy in open spaces. (Remember phone booths? It looks like that.) WiggleRoom Super Structure is a customizable multi-user space that enables users to meet, collaborate or work privately. Both products feature sound-absorbing panels and magnetically sealed doors, making them perfect reprieves for video and phone calls. 

Abrahamson says the company also offers products made of fabric or compressed composite material that create a desktop cubby as well as “cocooning” screens that can be wrapped around a workstation.

“That allows a person to have a flexible space that’s still personal, but it’s not in the cubicle — it’s kind of like a hybrid model between cubicles and the open benching concept,” he says.

Rick Chernick, CEO of Camera Corner Connecting Point in Green Bay, has been working with KI for more than 30 years and has witnessed the company’s evolution in both leadership and product development. 

“The world is changing every day and Brian’s got new ideas; they are constantly reinventing how KI goes to market and what products they are going to sell,” Chernick says. “No business can be successful on what they did yesterday. Change has to come and you want to be leading that change, and Brian is that kind of guy.”

From K-12 classrooms to Fortune 500 companies, KI’s Advanced Research Team observes user behavior to understand how people use an environment as part of the company’s new product development process.

Photograph Courtesy of KI

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