Sourced from Dubois County Free Press
Furniture manufacturing professionals from across the country will attend a special all-day conference in Jasper Thursday.
About 100 representatives will attend the aptly named Day of Wood event hosted at Vincennes University Jasper Campus. Featuring speakers from Purdue University, national furniture trade organizations and industry specialists, the event will cover topics like the overall state of the furniture market, new Universal Laboratory standards, upcoming environmental regulations as well as new manufacturing standards.
According to Greg Painter, the director of sustainability at Jasper Group, he, Joseph LaGrow with Universal Laboratories and Purdue University professor Dan Cassens began to discuss the idea of the event earlier this year.
“We started looking at how we can help the wood industry out in general,” he explained.
The three reached out to other industry partners and created a list of topics to cover for the first of what may become an annual event in the county. Dubois Strong, the Jasper Chamber of Commerce and several other organizations and companies came forward to sponsor the event (listed in the attached file).
“These are important topics for the industry,” Painter said who pointed out the industry was still struggling in the current economic climate.
He explained the topics being covered at the event in addition to the common interest in bolstering the wood manufacturing industry has brought these national manufactures to Dubois County despite some of them being competitors in similar furniture markets.
Joining representatives from local wood manufacturing companies are representatives from Herman Miller, Lifetime Products, Sauder Manufacturing, Steelcase, Birco Manufacturing and Haworth.