By GENE STOWE,Tribune Correspondent

Want to see the furniture made by Nextech Corp. in Elkhart? Rent the movie “Wall Street,” shot in an office that the company had furnished for Merrill Lynch. Filmmakers used the space for a month before Merrill Lynch took it over in the 1980s.

“That’s all our furniture,” says Nextech President David Gruber, whose grandfather, E.G. Gruber, started the business in 1957 to build countertops for RVs. “Now we’re making high-end technical furniture for stockbrokers commodity traders.”


The elite market isn’t all Hollywood hype, says Gruber, whose father, Jerry, is semi-retired but still active in the business.

The 9/11 terrorist attack destroyed Nextech furniture in the World Trade Center, and Gruber was able to reach a client’s mother by going through the Brooklyn directory to find out he had escaped.

“We had furniture on 9/11 in the loading dock at the World Trade Center ready to go up,” he says, adding that the furniture was insured but three of a subcontractor’s installers died.

“We put a lot of furniture in the World Trade Center. We had clients that were in the trade center. We couldn’t get a hold of anybody out there.”

The attack, in addition to leaving the financial market in disarray for a year, escalated a trend to decentralization of that industry, Gruber says.

“The move to regionalize started 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” he says. “That just accelerated it. “As the market has changed, you don’t get as many large trading floors any more.”

Organizations now may be headquartered in New York, but they’ll have one or two dozen branch offices in other cities – an accessible market for a smaller manufacturer.

“I’m able to get 10 desks in Cleveland or 20 in Chattanooga or 10 or 15 in a suburb of Chicago rather than 200 or 300 in downtown Chicago,” Gruber says.

“The billion-dollar companies can’t compete at my level. My market is driven by customization of standard platforms.”

Quick turnaround, usually eight-week delivery, and high quality keep the company competitive.

“It needs to fit their computer equipment, data communications equipment,” he says. “The quality needs to be above average. They will jump up and down on the desks. They will beat them with their phones.”

A series of acquisitions had made the company part of a larger organization at one point, but Gruber, his father and his brother bought it back in 1990. Running the business, he says, is guided by his Christian faith.

“We pretty much do everything in-house, design-build,” Gruber says. “We work with architects and designers worldwide,” including in-house designers for large banks.

The company has 20 workers in Elkhart. It does some work for local manufacturers but mostly markets in independent showrooms in major cities such as New York, London, Chicago and Los Angeles.

“We did the New York Stock Exchange in 1980,” he says. “We did all the cabinets. We do some work for the government,” including top-secret jobs for Washington area offices like those that show up in spy movies.

“There are times we don’t know where they’re going.”

For more information on Nextech Corporation call (800) 387-7568 or see the Web site at www.nextechcorp.net.