The lords are leaping and the maids are milking, but who’s been making all these stockings?

For the fifth year, holiday stockings hung along the corridors of the Herman Miller Design Yard and multiplied into the hundreds. And they’re not cookie-cutter stockings either—each are one-of-a-kind and handmade out of our textile leftovers. In fact, every once in a while, passersby try buying one for themselves to hang over their fireplace.

However, these stockings were not for sale, but rather made for a greater cause. In the season of giving, Herman Miller employees volunteered their lunch hours for sewing and decorating a total of 477 stockings. All those carefully crafted stockings were distributed to these handpicked charities: Holland Rescue Mission, Urban Family Ministries, Love INC, and St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. These organizations work directly with the families who took the stockings filled with goodies home for the holidays.

If you’re part of a customer tour of the Design Yard, it’s likely your first stop will be the Parlor, just a few steps from the front door. It’s a great room to relax in, unwind, and have a conversation with Herman Miller folks about your company, your needs, and what’s important to you.

“The Parlor sets the tone,” says Robert Hieftje, Herman Miller’s Customer Experience Senior Manager. “It’s a place of discovery a time of learning for us. After we talk and get to know each other, we’re able to personalize the rest of the customer’s experience at the Design Yard so it’s of most value to them.”

Furnished with a carefully selected mix of Herman Miller furniture, the room looks and feels like home.  A wall of bookshelves holds not only books, but also artifacts from Herman Miller’s legacy: photos of the companies legendary designers like Nelson, Rhode, Girard, Stumpf, and the Eameses; examples of Herman Miller innovation; and a treasure trove of fun conversation pieces.

For example, there’s a beautiful wooden envelope from the Hall family of Hallmark Cards fame, given in recognition of Herman Miller’s and Hallmark’s 40-plus years of working together.

“This means so much to us,” says Robert, “because it represents the kind of strong, long-term relationships we strive for with every customer.”

This last option fits in with our Health Management Program, which includes bicycle commuting, fitness programs, and flu shots. Why just the other day, as I was walking to lunch, I was nearly run over by the group in this picture. As I rounded a corner, they came barreling along, talking away, and intent on doing their noon-time walk. We all smiled, said hello, and I thought, “That’s one of the things I like about this place—work is part of life, and not the other way round.”

Herman Miller provided an initial financial contribution for this experiment in permaculture, which was the vision of a small team of employees: Willie Beattie, Bob Beck, Carolyn Maalouf, and Thaddeus Owen. They were intrigued with the principles of permaculture and how they closely parallel principles that guide healthy organizations. They recruited volunteers from the Design Yard, turning grass into a cardboard-compost-woodchip-layered source of nutrients for plants.

The team thought the garden could provide other benefits, too, such as encouraging self-sufficiency, reinforcing what it means to be a corporate citizen, engaging employees in new ways of planting, and learning more about our relationship with the planet. Plus, a community garden is consistent with Herman Miller’s corporate values and the philosophy of nurturing and growing inherently expressed by the Design Yard facility.

Many employees have been able to take home the harvest. When the yield is high, vegetables are set out in baskets for people to take home for free, which also encourages people to eat local and organic fare. Herman Miller’s customers benefit, too, since our corporate catering service often picks fresh flowers to fill vases where we welcome guests.

By Marcia Davis

Don Goeman, Senior VP of Design and Development, (shown in the photograph at left) says, “Bill had a huge impact on the company, its people, and our future.” Connie Garman, Corporate Workplace Strategist, (middle), oversaw the installation project. “We wanted to place this so that everyone could walk up and read Bill’s wonderful language—it’s really a way of having a conversation with customers about Bill’s design ideas.” Clark Malcolm (right), Writer and Editor, worked with Stumpf on many projects and was part of a team of employees who helped create the sculpture to honor one of Herman Miller’s most famous designers.

“Bill Stumpf was a genuine gift to the spirit,” recalls Clark. “His humor, his optimism, his deep concern for the human condition, his language, his childlike inquisitiveness, his impish delight in jokes and jazz, and the genius of his insights are all qualities that made him a first-rate designer and a fine human being.”

Here’s what this unassuming legend says about design:

Stumpf had become connected to Herman Miller when Bob Propst, inventor of Herman Miller’s innovative Action Office system and president of Herman Miller Research Corporation, visited a class he was teaching at the University of Wisconsin. Propst was impressed by the research Stumpf required of his students and by his sketches for a new kind of chair. Stumpf worked briefly for Propst and Herman Miller before setting up his own office. The connection to Herman Miller remained a central part of Stumpf’s life for the next 30 years. After Propst, Stumpf’s impact on the company was larger, in financial terms, than any other in the long list of famous designers to work with the company.

Born in St. Louis, Stumpf moved up river to Winona, Minnesota, as a teenager. He was Midwestern through and through, skeptical of the bi-coastal world of design that he moved in professionally. He loved the Minnesota Twins, Garrison Keillor, his family, his golden retrievers, and the fact that the titanium in his hip and his driver improved his performance walking and hitting a golf ball. In spite of his fame, he never lost his humility.

By Marcia Davis and Clark Malcolm

In 1985, Herman Miller decided to combine all of its design and development-related activities, then scattered in four different buildings, in one facility. Good idea. But where?

One executive proposed casually that we build on a 40-acre rural site we owned. “That’s a perfectly good cornfield,” came the stern reply. “We had better be sure we know exactly what we’re doing before we mess it up.”

After a good deal of soul searching and with help from architect Jeff Scherer, we did decide to build in the country. The question became, What form should this “office complex” take?

It became Scherer’s job to help us find a way to fit in. The final design became something that evoked a Midwestern farmyard. Like the schoolyard and the shipyard, the farmyard is a place where learning and work have coexisted productively for centuries. We wanted to honor that tradition.

Then came the construction. Having been mindful of our neighbors and the land, we also wanted to build smart. The Design Yard, as it was dubbed, cost $52 per square foot to build, inexpensive by any standard.

As popular with employees today as it was when it opened, the complex is also an award-winner (Progressive Architecture magazine, one of the top 15 designs of 1988). In 2005, an addition called the Front Door brought executive leadership to the site so that they could be closer to the design and development action. It earned LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).