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Apr. 27, 2010--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kimball Hospitality, a brand unit of Kimball International, Inc. (NASDAQ: KBALB - News), has been recertified to the requirements of Chain-of-Custody by the independent Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The Chain-of-Custody (COC) certification provides a guarantee about the acquisition and use of raw wood materials in the production of FSC-certified products. Kimball Hospitality is a global contract manufacturer that specializes in proprietary and custom designed furnishings for the hotel, casino, and resort industries.
FSC Chain-of-Custody certification is an assurance that wood-based materials used in Kimball Hospitality products come from forests that meet stringent environmental, social and economic standards. It is the path taken by raw materials from the forest to the consumer, including all successive stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing and distribution.
Kimball Hospitality first achieved FSC Chain-of-Custody certification in 2007, allowing the Company to sell furniture made to FSC-compliant standards by its registered subcontractors. The new and updated scope of Kimball’s FSC certification further enables the Company to purchase and store FSC materials, such as lumber, veneer, and panels, and to manufacture and store FSC furniture at the Kimball Hospitality production facility in the USA. By this recertification, Kimball Hospitality has achieved FSC’s COC certification for its Jasper, Indiana operation, and has also achieved certification for off-shore factory and logistics partners, providing a guarantee to global customers who prefer FSC-certified products.
FSC Chain-of-Custody certification is recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED® Rating System for environmentally focused design. From a customer perspective, the FSC label represents a promise made; COC standards are the mechanism FSC uses to ensure that promise is delivered.
Tony James, Director of Global Business Services, Kimball Hospitality, stated: “We are very aware that around the world there is a growing interest by those who specify and purchase furniture in a means to determine if wood products are being produced from responsibly managed forests. Chain-of-Custody certification is just as important to many customers’ decision-making process as our working relationship and the strength of our capabilities.”
Purchasing from reputable suppliers and sources is a basic concern of Kimball Hospitality. The Company’s procurement team exercises caution and judgment in obtaining the high-quality and precious wood resources needed to make Kimball furniture products. Kimball Hospitality already uses a high percentage of recycled content in its products. The COC certification provides an additional option for requesting products made from FSC-certified wood. Kimball Hospitality offers the option of FSC-certified wood on all of its guestroom furnishings.
“Our Chain-of-Custody certification is proving to be invaluable to us as a supplier”, says Paul Wahl, Director, Marketing/Quoting, Kimball Hospitality. “It not only enables us to support our customers’ LEED certification strategies, but also differentiates us from our competitors.”
Kimball Hospitality works cooperatively with its customers, suppliers and off-shore production and logistics partners to find “green” solutions while encouraging the adoption of sustainable choices.
“We understand that we must not only contribute to sustainability by developing and manufacturing products with excellent environmental performance, but that we must also work to enable our customers to further minimize their own environmental impacts,” explained Wahl.
The Furniture Stewardship Council (FSC) is an independent, not-for-profit, non-government organization whose mission is to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world’s forests. A chain-of-custody (COC) certification provides a guarantee that FSC-labeled products have come from sources which practice responsible, long-term, sustainably-managed forestry.
Kimball’s reputation for quality, service and performance in the hospitality market is well known among designers and developers of up-scale properties worldwide. Kimball Hospitality strategically focuses on providing products via three market sectors: custom, program and catalog.
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North American Design features Kimball Hospitality
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Feb. 16, 2010--(North American Design) As the hospitality furniture brand of Kimball International, Kimball Hospitality has the backing of a diverse parent corporation with a global reach in furniture production and a reputation for quality dating back 60 years.
Its unique position enables the Jasper, Ind.-based company to provide customized hospitality furniture solutions to the world’s most prominent hotel chains, but with the personalized touch many of its competitors are unable to offer. This is what sets Kimball Hospitality apart, according to Vice President of Sales Bob Bomholt and Director of Marketing Paul Wahl.
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Kimball Hospitality was established in 1985 when Kimball International, a preeminent manufacturer of furniture and electronic assemblies serving customers around the world, added hospitality furniture to its product suite. The company was founded in 1950 as the Jasper Corp., which specialized in TV console cabinets. In 1959, it acquired piano manufacturer W.W. Kimball Co. and eventually transitioned from building pianos and TV cabinetry to providing a variety of products from its two business segments: electronic manufacturing and furniture. Looking to expand its business and capitalize on its core competency of furniture engineering and woodworking, the company entered the hotel furniture business in the 1980s with the inception of Kimball Hospitality.
Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, Kimball Hospitality has earned a leading position, due in part to the technical sophistication of its parent company’s global infrastructure network, Bomholt explains. “In the last six years, Kimball Hospitality has been on the forefront of our industry because we have developed the people and put the processes and tools in place to be able to leverage the direct-labor country model,” he says. “We are able to bring to our clients a better value for their dollar because of globalization, and yet our own Kimball employees are there every step of the way operating a very robust engineering, project management and quality management system that separates us from our competition.”
Industry Progressions
Kimball Hospitality categorizes its business into three segments. First, the company offers customized development and mass production for a one-time-only project, such as designing and producing the furniture for a themed casino in Las Vegas. Second, Kimball Hospitality will work with various hotel flagships to develop and mass-produce furniture for a specific brand, such as Marriott’s Springhill Suites, that are replicated for sites around the world. Third, the company designs, develops and manufactures its own collections of hospitality furniture, which are all showcased in a Web-based electronic site that can display all the various hotel furniture products, including fabrics and finishes.
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“We try to be as diverse as we can to show our capabilities and are open to any designs or modification influences that customers today are looking for,” Wahl explains. “Our tagline is ‘distinctive furniture solutions.’ We try to approach things as to how we can meet our customers’ needs. We are able to offer unlimited combinations of mixed materials, whether it’s stone, glass, acrylics, lighting or wood, by using our offshore production partners. In many ways, it’s all about what’s new, best or next in furniture design. Hotels and casinos, for instance, are continually trying to bring out the newest and hottest designs.”
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“The designs have changed significantly as technology has progressed and the functionality of furniture has changed,” Bomholt adds. “When we started the business 25 years ago, a typical guestroom had a headboard, a desk and couple of nightstands. Today, with the emergence of laptops, iPods and flat-screen TVs, we’ve been doing a lot of integration of electronics into the furniture. Today, headboards have reading lights in them or electrical outlets for guests to plug in their iPods. With our sister divisions in electronics and office furniture, we have the technical knowledge [and] resources at our disposal.”
Continuous Evolution
Kimball Hospitality has continuously evolved to keep up with the changing demands of its client base. The company influences green practices in hotel furniture by using renewable resources to produce its products, which are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. In addition, in spring 2009, it launched a soft goods operation that offers seating options to hotel chains.
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“We’re still early on in the process, but we have been getting great feedback in terms of our capability to make sophisticated lounge chairs, incorporating wood and various mixed materials, along with the upholstered fabric choices, to deliver a quality product on time,” Bomholt states.
Kimball Hospitality intends to serve as a one-stop shop for its hotel customers by envisioning the entire guest space vs. the individual
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pieces that adorn it. The company produces both 2-D and 3-D AutoCAD drawings and renderings of a model room to give clients a better idea of how the end-result will appear. “It’s an evolutionary process,” Bomholt explains. “We work with the client to take an initial idea, further refine it into a concept with how the furniture will look with the rest of the room. We take it to the next step by utilizing our domestic craftsmen to transform it into a physical piece of furniture and then draw upon our global resources to mass-produce the product, ensuring value, quality and timeliness.”
“We want to keep our customers for a long, long time and make it a win-win throughout their transactions with us,” Wahl adds.
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Kimball Hospitality's billionaire resorts featured on Travel Channel
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Jan. 29, 2010--Recently, the Travel Channel, in conjunction with Forbes magazine, aired a show featuring the most luxurious billionaire-owned hotels across the globe. Kimball Hospitality (KH) is happy to report that two of the 11 properties on that broadcast contained KH case goods in their guestrooms: the French Lick Hotel and Casino in French Lick, Indiana, and the Wynn Las Vegas.
According to Forbes, casino magnate Steve Wynns’ Las Vegas namesake--where he lives in a suite--is in a class unto itself. The hotel boasts a five-star restaurant, an art collection worth millions of dollars and a Ferrari-Maserati dealership. Each of the whimsical rooms
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features magnificent windows with a view of Sin City’s famed neon lights.
Also, the medical-device maven William Cook has spent $450 million renovating the Indiana property since buying it in the 1990s, transforming (it) from a wasteland into an award-winning resort. Amenities include a Donald Russ-designed golf course, a dozen eating venues, a spa and a 42,000-square-foot casino.
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Kimball Hospitality product helps ARIA resort alter Vegas skyline
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Jan. 22, 2010--Kimball Hospitality (KH) supplied custom case goods for 4,000 guestrooms, including bed walls, desks, mini-bar units, and shelves to the ARIA.
The ARIA, which opened to great fanfare and media hype last month, is considered the centerpiece of an extraordinary urban resort destination in Las Vegas called CityCenter.
According to an MGM Mirage press release, "The stunning ARIA has dramatically altered the skyline of the world’s most famous boulevard and will forever change the perceptions of the Las Vegas Strip."
“ARIA and CityCenter reflect a combination of innovation, energy and visionary design that we believe will reshape how the world views the destination resort experience and attract visitors from around the globe as a landmark of taste and style,” said Jim Murren, Chairman and CEO of MGM MIRAGE, which developed CityCenter in partnership with Infinity World Development Corp.“CityCenter will become the benchmark by which all new developments will be measured, and it won’t be surpassed in scope and grandeur for decades.”
At 18 million square feet, CityCenter is the largest private sustainable development in the world, having received six LEED® Gold certifications for its buildings.
As mentioned in a Kimball News Online story two years announcing this win, a strong relationship between MGM Purchasing and Director of Sales Leon Wehr and an impressive model of a proposed room that stood above the competition helped land the deal. But just as important in MGM’s decision was KH’s Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Chain of Custody Certification. The FSC is an international organization that unites people to find solutions which promote responsible stewardship of the world’s forests.
Our Chain of Custody certification is proving to be invaluable to us as a supplier. It not only enables us to support our customers' LEED certification strategies, but also differentiates us from our competitors – especially in the Las Vegas market. Chain of Custody certification, as well as winning this order, could not have been achieved without the great teamwork between our U.S. and Asia employees.
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Take the Kimball Hospitality HD Boutique 09 Virtual Tour
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Kimball International Receives 2009 "GREEN GOOD DESIGN" Award
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Jun. 17, 2009-- Kimball International, Inc's flagship corporate showroom located in Jasper, Indiana, has been recognized by The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies together with The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, with a 2009 "GREEN GOOD DESIGN™" Award in the category of Architecture. The award reflects Kimball's continuing commitment to environmental protection and sustainability.
The Kimball Corporate Showroom in Jasper, Indiana (USA) was designed in partnership with TVS Interiors, Inc. of Chicago and Atlanta. The completely renovated 35,500 square foot showroom was designed to present the three Kimball International furniture brands: Kimball Office, National, and Kimball Hospitality.
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Kimball and TVS Interiors implemented several sustainable strategies including recycling 96.5 percent of the project's waste materials, preserving natural resources through use of local, recycled, and rapidly renewable materials, utilizing natural light, reducing water consumption with low-flow plumbing, minimizing or eliminating volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in construction materials, and installing GREENGUARD®-certified furniture from the Kimball Office and National brands.
Previously, the Kimball Showroom earned the prestigious Gold level LEED-CI certification for environmentally responsible design from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), in recognition of energy efficiency and environmental stewardship. Kimball was the first company in Indiana to win LEED-CI certification.
The GREEN GOOD DESIGN program is a specialized edition of the GOOD DESIGN program, founded in 1950 by architects Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr., former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, to promote and foster a greater public understanding and acceptance of Modern Design. Now, decades later, GREEN GOOD DESIGN aims to bring public appreciation and awareness for revolutionary design based on the ideals of energy conservation, reduction of toxic waste, and sensitivity for the depletion of the world's energy resources, with a focus on sustainability.
Projects from more than 30 nations were awarded GREEN GOOD DESIGN 2009 recognition. From hundreds of submissions from over 40 nations, the winners were selected by The European Centre's International Advisory Committee, consisting of worldwide leaders in the design industry. A final total of 105 products, programs, environmental plans, and architecture were selected as outstanding examples of Green Design. In July, The European Centre will display an exhibition of award winners in Athens, Greece. To view all the GREEN GOOD DESIGN award winners, visit www.europeanarch.eu. To learn more about the original GOOD DESIGN program, visit The Chicago Athenaeum's website at: www.chi-athenaeum.org.
Kimball was previously honored with GOOD DESIGN awards for its Hum. Minds At Work® desk system, its Scenario™ table line, and its Adagiato™ guest seating line.
View the Kimball International Corporate Showroom video to see some of the highlights of the renovation.
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Bob Bomholt appointed Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Kimball Hospitality
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JASPER, Ind. - March 31, 2009 - Kimball International announces the promotion and appointment of Robert “Bob” Bomholt to the position of Vice President, Sales and Marketing for the Company’s Kimball Hospitality unit.
Bomholt will have responsibility for the strategy and operational achievement of Kimball Hospitality sales and marketing objectives. Kimball Hospitality is a global leader in the supply of proprietary and custom designed furnishings for the hotel, casino, and resort industries.
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“Bob’s personality, skills and leadership style are a perfect reflection of our company culture and brand. He not only shares our vision of building success, but also our operating philosophy of being a true business partner to our customers,” says Stan Sapp, Vice President and General Manager, Kimball Hospitality. “Bob’s knowledge of and passion for our package of value will be critical to Kimball hospitality’s future growth and long term success with our customers.”
Key stats about Bomholt:
He began his career at Kimball in 2004, joining the Company as Director of Operations for Kimball Hospitality.
He became Senior Director of Sales and Marketing for Kimball Hospitality in August of 2007.
Previous experience includes 20 years with NCR Corporation where he rose to senior leadership roles in Finance and Supply Chain Operations.
He earned a Bachelors of Business Administration degree in 1982 from Defiance College where he played football all four years. He also earned a Masters of Business Administration in Finance from Wright State University in 1984.
He is a Certified Management Accountant.
He and his wife Michelle and their two children reside in Jasper.
Long-range executive development of Kimball International’s management team continues to be a priority, according to Kimball International President and CEO Jim Thyen.
“In spite of a slow economy, we have continued to build and develop our leadership team as we position ourselves for the business turnaround and future growth of our Company, and Bob brings ability, experience and enthusiasm into this key leadership role,” says Thyen.
Kimball’s long-standing reputation for quality and its performance record in the hospitality market is well known among designers and developers of hotel, casino, and resort properties worldwide. Products by Kimball have been installed in hundreds of thousands of guest rooms and suites across the globe. Increased growth by international customers over the coming years is anticipated to enlarge Kimball’s presence worldwide.
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