DESIRON

I'm Frank Raffaello, founder and president of Design. Today we're visiting our factory out in Kennellworth, New Jersey, some 19 miles from downtown Manhattan. Our factory is a 30,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility that houses three divisions, woodworking, metals, and upholstery. When I started Design 14 years ago, were only producing metal furniture. At that time I had one employee, Jose Sanchez, and Jose has been with me 14 years and is now the head of that division. He's been with me from the start and it's just a great feeling to be working with someone who not only knows the business as well, if not better than I do in the metal space, but is also able to come to me with different ideas of how to improve on the t Even though metal is not our largest division, it's certainly what we're known for doing and we continue to set the bar in the way of producing metal furniture un When we moved into these are not only the designs of our company and customizations that are given to us by our clients, but these are truly unique designs where a designer or an individual had a concept where they want to completely customize or put together a piece of furniture and it's realized here. T Dave Rimmel is the head of our wood division. He's been a wood worker for over 15 years. He's been here at Desire for the past 10 years. He came on board as a finisher and now Dave has 25 guys reporting to It's great to see the team that he's built here at Desire and he lives down the street in Union. I watched Quite honestly, I never thought I'd be in the upholstery business, but as we evolved as a company and as our metal business developed and our wood business developed, our clients continually asked me, why don't you have upholstery? It'so difficult and such a challenge for us to go out and find an upholster that can marry the metal work and the woodwork that About a year into making upholstered furniture, I realized that we needed the best in the business and went out and found Nestor. Nestor has been in the upholstery business all He makes classic reproduction pieces of furniture that were handcrafted in the old world fas As a result, we're now hand-making upholstered furniture that's on par with our metal and our wood production. People ask me why I make furniture in the United States and the answer is simple. To be able to have a factory 20 miles from downtown Manhattan and to be able to design in a way and produce in a way that turns out a handcrafted quality product that is made with social conscious, with sustainable proposition. It'somet To find out more about what we're doing as a company, set up a time to visit our factory yourself. Otherwise, stop by and see us in our Soho showroom on Wooster Street. Also, you can check us out at Desire. com.