When you think about hospitals, your first thoughts are probably about doctors and nurses taking care of people and trying to restore them to health. Your second – or even third – thoughts likely don’t turn to furniture and upholstery. That, however, is the initial focus of Scott Eisdorfer.
Eisdorfer is President of Upholstery USA, a family-owned business that was founded by his father more than 30 years ago. While the company has long been working with a most impressive array of clients, including Ballys Las Vegas and Atlantic City, Sheraton Health Corp., Hard Rock Hotels in various locations, and Starwood Properties, as well as some hospitals, he believes now is the perfect time for health care facilities to be turning to Upholstery USA."With the ‘going green’ and trying to save the Earth movement that everybody is involved in, it pays to re-finish and reupholster furniture that already exists (at the facility)," Eisdorfer said. "It’s furniture that already works in their environment; it pays to re-use it and reupholster it, and then it’s brand new again."
He added that his company works in such a way as to not interrupt the daily flow of business. "We can come to the hospital and set up in a room and work right there for as long as it takes. If it takes a week to finish or if it takes three weeks, I can set up the skilled upholsterers and seamstresses and we can work right there. We take a piece (of furniture) out, we put a piece back in, and so on. This way they have no down time."
If you’re still wondering just what kind of reupholstering a hospital would need, Eisdorfer is quick to enlighten: "You don’t think about it, but a hospital has a ton of upholstered furniture. There are waiting rooms and lobbies, and there are chairs at nurses stations and in doctors’ offices and lounges and cafeterias. A cafeteria could have 500 chairs in it, and people sit on them every single day. Even the gurney beds have vinyl on them and need to be changed out every once in a while. Anything that has fabric, anything that has padding in it could be upholstered. There’s always chairs and sofas, and they are subject to abuse: they get ripped or people spill stuff on them, and they need to be kept fresh and clean, so that people feel like they’re new."
And Eisdorfer is in the perfect position to have Upholstery USA do this type of work because he has the personnel to handle large jobs. "The business is actually coming back," he said. "We were very large. At one time we had more than 40 employees, and then we lost a lot of business after 9/11 because people weren’t traveling and spending money, so we lost a lot of our hotel and restaurant business. We had to downsize, but now we’re going back the other way, we’re increasing the amount the employees we have."
Upholstery USA currently has 11 employees, and Eisdorfer said that in the upholstery game, "We’re big. The average upholstery shop is one person. So if you had 30 sofas to do, that one person would probably take about 90 days to do the job, whereas I can knock it out much quicker. For that reason, I don’t think there are many upholsterers out there who are looking for the hospital business; they can’t handle it."
Eisdorfer said hospitals and other health care facilities should think about reupholstering as an alternative to new furniture. "If they think they need six new sofas, they will send out an order for six new sofas. But if I can save them $100 a sofa, they just saved $600 (by contacting me). If you multiply that over hundreds of pieces of furniture for one hospital for a year, they can save a ton of money."
He added, "As long as the wood frame, the structure, has its integrity, then the piece of furniture can be reupholstered and is as good as new. So it pays to re-use your furniture as many times as you can.
"And by reupholstering, the hospital doesn’t have to throw it away and take up landfill. It works out for everybody."
