Help Write Regulations or Suffer, Panelists Say
Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, December 16, 2010
NAPLES, Fla. - When it comes to dealing with regulation, you can be one of two places - at the table with government officials or on the menu.
Bob Schoenfeld, left, joins Andy Counts and Kevin Sauder for a panel discussion on pending regulatory issues at the 2010 Furniture/Today Leadership Conference.
That's a view expressed by Andy Counts, CEO of the American Home Furnishings Alliance. Counts should know. The trade group for U.S. furniture manufacturers, importers and suppliers deals with regulatory safety, health and environmental issues on a daily basis.
"If you think you will stop legislation, you will fail," Counts said. "At the AHFA, we try to be the voice of reason."
Counts took part in a panel discussion on pending legislation at Furniture/ Today's Leadership Conference here, along with Kevin Sauder, president and CEO of ready-to-assemble furniture manufacturer Sauder Woodworking, and Bob Schoenfeld, a quality control and compliance manager at Scandinavian Designs, a retailer in California, which has adopted strict formaldehyde emissions rules affecting furniture products.
In addition to the formaldehyde standards, they talked about legislative and regulatory issues governing such things as product tip-over, lead content and illegally harvested woods.
The speakers said it's better to help guide the creation of such rules rather than to try to stop them altogether.
"Now is the time to jump in and influence policy," Sauder said. "They (government officials) don't want to make policy decisions in a vacuum. It's our job to help them come up with something reasonable."
Sauder said his company has developed relationships with elected officials, which has helped the officials understand the business. For one thing, they realize that the Archbold, Ohio-based company employs some 2,000 people who could be affected by regulations.
"When you talk about 2,000 jobs, that's a big deal," he said.
As part of the regulatory process, Sauder keeps abreast of how the new rules will play out. That includes being aware of deadlines ranging from pending formaldehyde emissions standards to implementation of rules governing illegal logging.
Sauder said his company's staff pays close attention to product safety standards, which has improved its products and limited its exposure to litigation involving potentially unsafe product. For example, in the 12 years or so before hiring Gary Bell as its director of product safety in 2000, the company had sold some 27 million units and was exposed to 28 lawsuits and three product recalls. Since Bell's hiring, the company has sold about 26 million units and has faced no lawsuits or recalls involving any of those items.
Schoenfeld discussed his involvement in helping the California Air Resources Board understand the challenges the furniture industry would face in meeting the formaldehyde emissions standards CARB proposed in 2008.
At the time, only two of an estimated 5,000 producers of engineered wood such as particleboard and medium density fiberboard in China were set up to begin supplying the industry with CARB-compliant product.
"The government didn't understand the industry and it was my job to educate them," he said, noting that a compliance deadline was looming in January 2009. "We knew in two weeks we had to meet the law, but there was no way to meet the law."
He said the process involved educating rather than confronting the government about the challenges in meeting proposed deadlines. As a result, the industry received extensions on implementing various aspects of the law, including an extension of the time retailers were given to sell non-compliant products.
Schoenfeld's advice to the industry regarding government agencies? Get to know and befriend government officials at the staff level, where much of the work is done. In turn, they will learn about challenges the industry may have in meeting new rules.
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