Chair sales mean expansion at Grandville company

By Keith Essenburg
The Grand Rapids Press
GRANDVILLE — When the economy sputters, office products do not sell as well.


However, chairs are another matter.
Such basic purchases are helping H&L Advantage Inc. increase business.
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The plastic-injection molding firm makes chair parts for Steelcase Inc.’s Leap, Criterion, Drive and Rally chairs. It also counts as customers Herman Miller Inc., Segue and Knoll.
The firm, at 3500 Busch Drive SW, plans to nearly double operations in the next few months, said Steve Beurkens, H&L Advantage sales manager.
The company, owned by Brad Alkema and Larry Hobbie, got a 50 percent tax abatement from Grandville for a $2.2 million investment including a 30,000-square-foot building addition and purchase of larger injection-molding equipment.
“After 9/11, people didn’t want to buy total office systems,” Beurkens said. “But they did buy chairs.”
The new equipment will allow workers to produce parts for an entire office chair, including seats, backs and arm rests.
Additional products H&L Advantage plans to market include large plastic panels and overhead doors, Beurkens said.
“There’s a big need for some of that larger, 500-, 700-ton molding capacity,” he said.
The company got its start in 1965 in a 15,000-square-foot facility on Roger B. Chaffee Blvd. SE. It moved to its present location in Grandville in 2000.
Since then, the company has grown from 35 to 55 employees, and Beurkens anticipates the latest expansion will create 10 to 20 jobs.
City Assessor Jim Uyl said without a tax abatement, the company’s building addition and new equipment would generate about $57,000 in tax revenues.
The abatement will save the company about $25,000 in taxes initally, but that figure will drop — along with the company’s overall tax liability — as the new equipment depreciates, he said.