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Early this summer, the staff of Sundberg-Ferar Inc. will emerge from the American Center for the last time and move to a new home in Commerce Township after 18 years in the Southfield office tower.
The move comes as part of the industrial-design and product-development company's current efforts to maximize its capabilities for its manufacturing and marketing clientele.
"We're a 60-year-old start-up," said President Curtis Bailey. "When (management) started buying in, we started diversifying into full-service industrial-product development. This new building is designed around what we want to be doing as a company."
The building also will replace Sundberg-Ferar's 8,000-square-foot design and production shop at Eight Mile and Telegraph roads.
Industrial designers such as Sundberg-Ferar work to integrate technology so that it is easy to use, while making sure that the product is attractive and economical to produce. Industrial design, for example, is critical in the layout of a car's interior or in the arrangement of a dishwasher's external control panel.
Bailey joined Sundberg-Ferar in 1983 as a staff designer. Today he and the company's three other shareholders -- Jeff DeBoer, Mark Bonner and Gary Blake -- are working to put the company on the leading edge of industrial design.
The foundation for their work was laid in 1934 with the creation of the company by auto designers Carl Sundberg and Montgomery Ferar. The...