In the News

Ending our NeoCon experience on Wednesday at Integra Seating, we toured the Odyssey Collection Expanded—a Best of NeoCon Silver Award winner for Healthcare Guest & Lounge. What was once a chair has evolved into an entire field-replaceable upholstery system that includes ganging, shelving, and stools. Designed to extend the product’s lifecycle by enabling worn fabric to be replaced in minutes rather than requiring an entirely new chair, Director of Operations Rob Jankowski noted that “the fabrics can wear out a lot sooner than the chair will,” making the innovation “a sustainability issue” as well as “a cost of ownership over a lifetime issue.” Together, those priorities underscore a growing emphasis on designing products that remain in service longer through adaptability, performance, and thoughtful lifecycle planning.

Taken together, the introductions throughout The Mart demonstrated that innovation is no longer defined solely by what’s new, but by how thoughtfully products support the evolving ways people connect, heal, learn, and work. BoF