Herman Miller

Background Herman Miller started its operation back in 1905. They started manufacturing traditional style bedroom suites. Early in its history, the company name was Star Furniture Company. Dirk Jan De Pree entered the company as a clerk and by 1919 he became the president. De Pree’s father in law, Herman Miller, purchased the majority of shares of the company and renamed it Herman Miller Furniture Company. The company’s culture originated from the story of Mr. De Pree’s visit to one of his workers who died unexpectedly. “This led Mr. De Pree to wonder whether the millwright was a person who wrote poetry or poet who was also a millwright”. This experience made Mr. De Pree dedicated to treat “all workers as individuals with special…

A’Kendria Burns Strategy Formulation Alternative Choice/ Alternatives There's no denying that Herman Miller makes some of the best office furniture available. From work desks to conference tables to chairs, for more than 75 years, this company has been producing furniture that stands the test of time. The Herman Miller price point, however, often fails to stand the test of many businesses' wallets. Big brands like these are often price prohibitive, leaving small, midsize, and more frugal…

Case 22 Teaching Note Herman Miller Inc.: The Reinvention and Renewal of an Iconic Manufacturer of Office Furniture Overview Furniture manufacturer, Herman Miller Inc.’s, penchant for reinvention and renewal since its inception in the 1920s had resulted in accolades not usually bestowed on firms in mature industries. HMI made Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” and “The 100 Best Companies to Work For” lists and also FastCompany’s “Most Innovative Companies” list in 2008 and 2010. The…

Several improvements can be implemented to increase business diversity, enhance marketing, and increase vertical integration. With white-labeling, instead of using the Herman Miller name, HM would sign a non-compete and disclosure agreement with each company it deals with and then would manufacture furniture based on each companies designs and requirements. The furniture and related designs would then be sold under the respective company’s brands, therefore introducing HM to consumer markets…

Whether Moby-Dick is a whale or a fish is a trifling matter—what is significant about it is that it is a great “white” whale. The color white is usually connected to innocence and purity; however, in “Moby-Dick”, the quintessentially white sperm whale defies the qualities attached to its color as Ahab sees it as the archetypal evil. In a novel overwhelmingly about whaling, Melville frequently explores colors and their meanings and use them to paint a picture of characters and sceneries in the…

This essay will explore the narrative perspective of Herman Melville’s’ ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ and Peter Carrey’s’ ‘American Dreams’ and how narration can affect the way in which a story is read. Both of these authors use the narrator to tell the story in a different manner, all with different perspectives. McCall states “narrators are unreliable by definition. Fiction told in the first person is inherently deceptive” (1989, p.106) and this biased point of view obviously affects the readers…

What makes you ‘you’? Perhaps the answer to the question varies from group to group; Perhaps, we are a collection of our physical, mental, and spiritual components, all unique and different. The Birthmark is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1843. The audience is introduced to a brilliant scientist, Aylmer, whose life revolved around his experiments and quest for scientific perfection. While controversial, Aylmer abandons his laboratory to marry Georgiana, a beautiful woman that…

The Scarlet Letter: Prompt 2 Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson were among a group of authors known as the Romantics that valued feeling over reason, imagination over science, and nature over civilization. These ideals are commonly displayed in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Like any writers of the same time period, Hawthorne and Emerson may have never completely accepted each other's beliefs, however the characters that Hawthorne creates agree with Emerson’s advice, “[d]o not go where…

behind his eerie tales. Piercing through the veil of darkness, guilt, and sin, peculiar similarities begin to provide answers to the cornerstone of Hawthorne’s writing. Stories such as Young Goodman Brown and The Minister’s Black Veil connect the dots comprised of darkness, guilt, and sin. Delving deep into the maze of Hawthorne’s writing, what will be the real message intended for audiences. Critics ranging from past to current have been fixated by the darkness and supernatural aspects…

and hopefully better able to face the challenges of the adventure. A critical attribute that the mentor often gives is confidence. Clemenza shows great confidence that Michael can perform the job and reassures him that all will go well. Although Clemenza plays the mentor in this earlier part of the film, Vito is the one giving Michael advice later on, after recovering from his assassination attempt. After the hero receives the supernatural aid, he is ready to continue on his journey. Stage 4,…