By GENE STOWE,Tribune Correspondent<\/p>\n
Want to see the furniture made by Nextech Corp. in Elkhart? Rent the movie \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wall Street,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all our furniture,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Nextech President David Gruber, whose grandfather, E.G. Gruber, started the business in 1957 to build countertops for RVs. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re making high-end technical furniture for stockbrokers commodity traders.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
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\nThe elite market isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all Hollywood hype, says Gruber, whose father, Jerry, is semi-retired but still active in the business.<\/p>\n
The 9\/11 terrorist attack destroyed Nextech furniture in the World Trade Center, and Gruber was able to reach a client\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother by going through the Brooklyn directory to find out he had escaped.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had furniture on 9\/11 in the loading dock at the World Trade Center ready to go up,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says, adding that the furniture was insured but three of a subcontractor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s installers died.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We put a lot of furniture in the World Trade Center. We had clients that were in the trade center. We couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get a hold of anybody out there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The attack, in addition to leaving the financial market in disarray for a year, escalated a trend to decentralization of that industry, Gruber says.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The move to regionalize started 10 years ago, 15 years ago,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That just accelerated it. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As the market has changed, you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get as many large trading floors any more.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Organizations now may be headquartered in New York, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have one or two dozen branch offices in other cities \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an accessible market for a smaller manufacturer.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 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,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gruber says.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The billion-dollar companies can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t compete at my level. My market is driven by customization of standard platforms.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Quick turnaround, usually eight-week delivery, and high quality keep the company competitive.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It needs to fit their computer equipment, data communications equipment,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The quality needs to be above average. They will jump up and down on the desks. They will beat them with their phones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We pretty much do everything in-house, design-build,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gruber says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We work with architects and designers worldwide,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d including in-house designers for large banks.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We did the New York Stock Exchange in 1980,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We did all the cabinets. We do some work for the government,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d including top-secret jobs for Washington area offices like those that show up in spy movies.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are times we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know where they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
For more information on Nextech Corporation call (800) 387-7568 or see the Web site at www.nextechcorp.net.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By GENE STOWE,Tribune Correspondent Want to see the furniture made by Nextech Corp. in Elkhart? Rent the movie \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wall Street,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all our furniture,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Nextech President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-indonesia-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}