If there was one word that nicely sums up last year’s European Decorative Surfaces Conference and Workshop in Stockholm, Sweden, it was ‘feeling’.

When you start talking about value, it's not long before the term ‘value engineering’ comes up. Business-y buzz phrases tend to come and go, but value engineering is a concept that's surely here to stay. Applied to interior and furniture design, it basically means specifying exactly the right material for the job, in terms of both performance and aesthetic impact – nothing more or less durable than the application calls for.

Saginaw, Michigan, hasn’t had an easy time in recent years. Once heavily dependent on the car industry, the loss of well-paying automotive jobs, and its domino effect as related industries failed one after another, have left the region reeling.

“We’re a hybrid; in one sense we’re like a manufacturer; in another sense we’re like a dealer. We sell directly to end-users like a traditional contract furniture dealer, but we’re also like a millwork company on steroids…or the smallest furniture manufacturer in the world.”