7.9.05 | Washington Post |Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but what Target has done to the venerable Emeco Navy chair shows disrespect. The Web store Target.com offers a "Cafe Aluminum side chair" from Asia for $249.99 a pair. The online listing describes the chair as a "classic design." That's true. The image closely resembles a trademarked American classic: the Emeco 1006 Navy chair. Target's response to lawyer's letters has been less satisfying. A champion of design might have whisked the knockoff from its lineup. Target won a Smithsonian National Design Award for corporate excellence in 2003, but now the discounter is behaving like a discounter: The knockoff is still online.

By Linda Hales, Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday

3.22.05 | Metropolis | Alice Bieneman, an interior designer contracted to Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH), in suburban Chicago, can outfit a new medical office from her desktop. Her employer dictates the colors and surfaces she can use, but Bieneman controls the installation. Using a database that looks and works a lot like Amazon or eBay, she selects furniture from ENH's stock, in remote warehouses. Bieneman wastes less time, her colleagues in warehouses waste fewer trips, and ENH wastes less inventory--all thanks to PinPoint, a software program from Iowa-based furniture manufacturer Allsteel. "If I'm trying to create a certain look and I have products available in standard finishes," she explains, "I can put that in a cart and quote [a price for] the balance." Bieneman estimates that in 2002--the year it adopted PinPoint--the health-care company saved as much as a million dollars by avoiding redundant purchases.

If you are looking for another handsome volume filled with 20th century furniture to place on the Nelson slat bench near your Eames 620 lounger, keep searching. Although it has its fair share of lovingly photographed modern room settings, this coffee table book is actually a compelling history of the Zeeland, Mich., furniture company and its philosophy: "Never to create anything without a purpose but to make everything they create attractive and interesting."  By DAVID KEEPS