Modern furniture design giant Herman Miller, Inc. announced its $1.8 billion acquisition plans of rival Knoll Inc. today.
"This transaction brings together two pioneering icons of design with strong businesses, attractive portfolios and long histories of innovation," commented Andi Owen, President and CEO of Herman Miller as well as the future combined company. "As distributed working models become the new normal for companies, businesses are reimagining the office to foster collaboration, culture and focused work, while supporting a growing remote employee base. At the same time, consumers are making significant investments in their homes. With a broad portfolio, global footprint and advanced digital capabilities, we will be poised to meet our customers everywhere they live and work."
Bloomberg reports that the merger would help the companies "feed into the transformation of home and office as work continues to be split between the two."
The combination is expected to close by the end of the third quarter this year.
11 Comments
This terrifies me and makes me sad. Too many companies are too big already, and the more they merge the less choice we citizen-consumers have and the less power their workers have. Capitalism is not making life better.
Wow furniture I can already not afford as an architect is about to get even more expensive. Yippee!
wake me up when Ikea buys them.
Capitalism is a giant vacuum. It sucks.
the unending spiral of growth and expansion..
Aside from Herman Miller being able to say that they now have a bigger share of the market, I don't see how this combination is going to benefit anybody.
it could use less resources... assuming the merged company will get more efficient
I doubt it. The main resource reduced in these situations is human (layoffs). Production, packaging, and transport processes will not change or relocate enough to have a meaningful environmental impact.
The only time I ever get to use their furniture is in 3D modelling...
I don't knoll if this is a good idea but we will always have Steelcase.....
mixed feelings - waiting to talk to people in both companies before forming any solid opinions. on the surface, seems like there would be some company culture issues to work through, some focus of direction issues to work through (specifically with the european brands they've both acquired over the past few years), and some serious redundancy issues (again, more an issue with the euros - i'd hate to be muuto this morning - do you have a real future considering hm already owns hay and magis and both seem to be stronger brands?).
what doesn't seem to make as much sense is that both already had strong office and home identities. the blurring of the two wasn't hurting either hm or knoll nearly as much as steelcase or haworth (who's trying to play catch up by acquiring the poltrona frou group a while back and appointing urquiola as a kind of design guru.)
the winners on the design side are going to be the euro/asian superstars who already have been working with both - industrial facility, naoto fukasawa, barber osgerby, etc. an even bigger platform to work on, without worrying about designing for a rival! (and, yes, they all have to agree, if you work for HM, you're not working with Knoll and vice versa).
i don't know who gets squeezed yet, in terms of layoffs. probably middle management types first - the sales teams, so long as there's still 2 brands, will probably stay as is.
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