See how our Windsor chairs are produced from mold to shipping!
Our furniture is made from Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) – Overman is one of the only furniture manufacturers in the world to use this innovative process to produce furniture frames. In 1978 Overman pioneered the process which, over 40 years has evolved to what you see today.
The material starts as a granule base that is pre-expanded to a precise percentage before going into storage for our molding process. From storage, the material is shuttled into our presses where molding begins. During the molding process an exacting recipe of steam and heat are applied to finish the expansion process. At the completion of this process our molded frames are ejected to start their journey through the upholstery process. For the frames to accept the upholstery operations that will be applied down the production chain, a small amount of wood is fused into the molds. This allows for stapling and attachment of legs or bases.
Next, our frames make their way into our upholstery operation. The first step in the upholstery operation is to apply foam which adds comfort and design to the piece. For us this happens through a specialized gluing process that allows the foam to bond to our frames. Once this process is complete the frame continues its journey to our upholsters.
Upholstery covers for our frames are specially designed to fit and finish on these one-piece frames. This is a product of our in-house design team and product development specialists. Covers are produced in our cut and sew department. We have an extensive capability for in-house cut and sew that converts rolled goods to finished covers. All of our cutting and patterning is done through a CAD process to ensure quality and repeatability. After cutting our sewing department sews and inspects before delivering the covers to our upholstery department. Our skilled upholsters take covers and apply them to the frames ensuring along the way that the fit and finish are correct. From upholstery the newly upholstered frame makes its way to inspection and packaging.
Once entering inspection the chairs are checked for a series of quality points and are only passed if they meet all standards. During this process all additional components are checked and added to the piece, such as legs, bases and cushions. Now, on to packaging and shipping.
Our innovative process does not stop with our frame construction but continues on to our packaging and shipping. Product comes to shipping where labeling and cartons are matched to the product. Our shipping and packaging operation has been designed to handle extremely high volume of drop ship product. Our labeling process from identification and shipping is handled through our automated system that allows thousands of orders to be processed weekly. After all product is boxed and labeled it is placed on an outbound truck to make its way to you, our customer.
Here, you can see the EPS chair frame coming out of the press before having its wood bottom, seat, and arms attached with adhesive. Then, it’s transported to the form fixing area.
You can see this process for both our Windsor and Emma chairs in this video!
Getting the proper amount of primer and paint onto our cabinet components is one of the ways we ensure you have beautiful cabinets for years to come. Our cabinet components take several trips through the machine, giving them two coats of primer and one coat of paint.
After they’re primed, painted, and dried, employees load the cabinet pieces onto a palette, where they are then boxed and shipped out to our customers.
