The HON Company designs and manufactures

office furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating ( tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). ...

including

chair A chair is a type of seat, typically designed for one person and consisting of one or more legs, a flat or slightly angled seat and a back-rest. They may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and may be padded or upholstered in vari ...

filing cabinet A filing cabinet (or sometimes file cabinet in American English) is a piece of office furniture for storing paper documents in file folders. In the most simple context, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored. The two most comm ...

s, cubicals, tables,

desk A desk or bureau is a piece of furniture with a flat table-style work surface used in a school, office, home or the like for academic, professional or domestic activities such as reading, writing, or using equipment such as a computer. Desks of ...

s and education furniture. Headquartered in

Muscatine, Iowa Muscatine ( ) is a city in Muscatine County, Iowa, United States. The population was 23,797 at the time of the 2020 census, an increase from 22,697 in 2000. The county seat of Muscatine County, it is located along the Mississippi River. The lo ...

, it has

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

facilities located throughout the United States and China, and sells its products through a nationwide network of dealers and retailers. It is the largest operating company of HNI Corporation, the second-largest office furniture manufacturer in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

. Sister companies include Allsteel, Gunlocke, HBF, Maxon and Hearth & Home Technologies. The HON Company has factories located in Muscatine;

Cedartown, Georgia Cedartown is a city and the county seat of Polk County, Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 10,190. Cedartown is the principal city of and is included in the Cedartown, Georgia Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is ...

; as well as distribution centers in Muscatine and

Lithia Springs, Georgia Lithia Springs () is a census-designated place and unincorporated area, formerly incorporated as a city, located in northeastern Douglas County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the community had a population of 16,644. The area is ...

. Showrooms are located in Muscatine;

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, New York;

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, Illinois; and Washington, D.C.

History

The HON Company was incorporated as The Home-O-Nize Company on January 6, 1944, by brothers-in-law

C. Maxwell Stanley Claude Maxwell Stanley (1904–1984) was an American civil engineer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, peace activist, author and world citizen. He founded Stanley Consultants, an engineering and consulting firm, in 1939 with his younger brother Ar ...

and Clement T. Hanson along with H. Wood Miller. It was founded with the intent of providing employment for those returning from duty in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

.Rodengen, Jeffrey. True to our Vision. Ft. Lauderdale: Write Stuff Enterprises, Inc. 2004. The Home-O-Nize Company began in the production of kitchen cabinets; first in

Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and ...

, and then in the old US Button Company factory in downtown Muscatine. Following the short-lived production of kitchen cabinets, the company began manufacturing aluminum gas-bottle hoods on contract for Stampings, Inc. With the scrap left over from the hoods, they made flower-identification labels,

beverage coaster A coaster, drink coaster, beverage coaster, or beermat is an item used to rest drinks upon. Coasters protect the surface of a table or any other surface where the user might place a glass. Coasters on top of a beverage can also be used to show th ...

s and recipe card file boxes. For a brief period, The company also produced pick-up attachments for John Deere /

Deere & Company Deere & Company, doing business as John Deere (), is an American corporation that manufactures agricultural machinery, heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, transmissions, gearboxes) used in heavy equipmen ...

combines, Iowa Corn Pickers for Associated Manufacturers Inc., and did contract work for local companies such as Red Jacket, Carver Pump,

Collins Radio Rockwell Collins was a multinational corporation headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, providing avionics and information technology systems and services to government agencies and aircraft manufacturers. It was formed when the Collins Radio Compa ...

, G.W. Timmerman and Peter Products. In the end, it was the recipe-file boxes that paved the way for The Home-O-Nize Company’s entry into the office furniture and supply industry. In the early 1950s, the office products division of The Home-O-Nize Company became The H-O-N Division, and, in 1967, it officially became The HON Company. Their parent company, Home-O-Nize, changed its name to HON INDUSTRIES Inc. in 1968 and changed again to its current name, HNI, in 2004. In 1980, The HON Company moved from the HON INDUSTRIES Inc. headquarters at 414 East Third Street in Muscatine into its current headquarters at 200 Oak Street, the former home of the Huttig Manufacturing Company.http://www.huttig.com/aboutHistory.aspx The HON headquarters building was renovated in 2009.

Products

The HON Company provides workplace furniture for small and medium-sized businesses, universities, large corporations and government offices. Its core product offering includes workstations, desks, chairs, tables and storage.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hon Company Companies based in Muscatine, Iowa Manufacturing companies established in 1944 Furniture companies of the United States Manufacturing companies based in Iowa American companies established in 1944 1944 establishments in Iowa