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How the Stance Engineering Team Improves Lives by Design

As industry leaders in healthcare furniture, Stance Healthcare and Stance Behavioral Health continuously strive to improve lives by design every day. That starts with having the right people in place at every stage of the design process. The talented, experienced members of the Engineering Team at Stance are the people who bring the design to life, creating hardworking, comfortable, and inviting furniture for every type of healthcare space.

From 3D CAD drawings and CNC programming to research and product testing, the multidisciplinary team works together across a number of categories to produce industry-leading healthcare furniture day in and day out. Each team member brings specialized expertise that makes this possible. 

It all starts with Cesar Fernandes, the Design and Development Manager. Cesar has over 24 years of awarded experience in the industry, with his last three years spent at Stance leading the Engineering Team. He works with all departments at Stance to make sure product design and development are a success. With a background in furniture design, Cesar finds beauty in simplicity and helps bring a clean, modern look to Stance products. But it’s his ability to get the most out of his talented team that really makes a difference.

Ioan Popa, the Engineering Manager at Stance, is the team member who brings the most industry experience to the table, with over 29 years in the mechanical engineering field. As a manager, Ioan leads with his ingenuity and instills efficiency and integrity in his team.

Matthew Caskanette helps bring the Design Team’s ideas to life. His strengths in 3D modeling and CNC programming ensure the most efficient and cost-effective production solutions are implemented. He’s only been with Stance for 5 months, but he brings 14 years of furniture engineering experience and a great attitude to the team.

The Product Realization Specialist at Stance, Colin Cook, has over 20 years of product engineering experience specializing in the casegoods side of the brand. He works across multiple teams to develop, program, and test new and updated products, and he ensures that current products move seamlessly through the facility.

Adriana Achimescu, a Mechanical Design Engineer, has been developing furniture for Stance Healthcare for two years and brings over 25 years of experience to the team. She has applied her technical and structural skills to a wide array of products from tables to modular seating.

The final member of the team, Crawford Melvin, has been helping Stance bring concepts to reality since 2017. His experience is diverse and spans product engineering to product configuration. He has also been a primary specialist in providing customer service engineering support.

Every member of the team performs a key role and works together for a final outcome that benefits everyone in the healthcare space. With these experienced, collaborative, and highly talented people on board, the Engineering Team at Stance Healthcare will continue producing industry-leading furniture for years to come.

For the third year in a row, a few brave mo-growers at Stance agreed to grow a ‘mo in support of men’s mental health, suicide prevention, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer. Together, through direct donations from our friends, family, and partners, as well as mustache-themed fundraising activities at our head office, we were able to raise $2177. Moreover, since 2020, we have raised a grand total of $9778. Thank you to everyone who has made a donation and/or participated in our Movember fund-raising activities.   

Stance mo-growers week-by-week.

More options for durability and versatility

In a healthcare environment, surface areas like table tops and arm caps are a critical design aspect of a given space – they can affect everything from an area’s safety and cleanability, to its aesthetics and comfort.
 

At Stance, we are proud to offer Corian® Solid Surface finish options across many of our product categories. This material is the original solid surface offering in the marketplace and remains the go-to solid surface selection for healthcare furniture, and for good reasons: Corian® Solid Surface is a virtually maintenance-free finish selection that is highly customizable, easy-to-clean and withstands the test of time.

We recognize the benefits of this material and recently refreshed our Corian® Solid Surface finish options to include three new colors: Cameo White, Pearl Gray and Silver Gray, for a total of 8 neutral color options ranging from pure white to a speckled gray.

Corian® Solid Surface is offered as an option on several of Stance’s product lines, including the tops on our latest drum table collections: Pavilion and Capri, and arm cap options for several of our lounge seating products (Cassia, Carson, Huxley, Verity, Oasis Glider), and three of our metal seating collections (Legend, Vista II, Oasis).

DOWNLOAD OUR GUIDE TO CORIAN SOLID SURFACE FOR HEALTHCARE

Back and better than ever! It was our pleasure to attend and exhibit at this year’s HCD Healthcare Design Conference + Expo in San Antonio, Texas. In addition to spending time with our extended Stance team members and networking with many of our peers in the industry, we were excited to put our Improving Lives by Design mission on display – in our booth and through continued education opportunities.

We want to thank the Healthcare Design team for once again providing a wonderful forum for Stance and our industry colleagues to meet, exchange ideas, and draw inspiration together. Below are just a few highlights from an action-packed few days at HCD ‘22:

• Our expo booth: Providing a pop of our signature color in a sea of neutral, Stance stood out and showed off our collections in style. This was the biggest and most sophisticated of our brand in an expo setting yet, and we were excited to make our mark by showing off our Improving Lives mission, new photography, and standout collections surrounded by warm and inviting tones. Thanks to all who stopped by to relax and enjoy our products and learn more about our mission!
• Debuting Spry & Clover: Sitting pretty in our styled vignettes were our new and popular Clover and Spry collections, which both made their HCD debuts. Clover offered a wow factor with its eye catching cream finish and soft, welcoming shape, while Spry offered a comfortable and well-spaced seating area for groups to enjoy and explore the versatility of this new release.
• Welcome back, Flo: Our 2021 HCD Nightingale GOLD Award winner was a crowd draw once again, with many dropping by to say they’d been eager to see the collection in person. Flo is our dining collection for Behavioral Health that offers many uses for patients and care providers to engage safely in therapy, conversation, or to share a meal.
  
       

• Standing room only for Behavioral Health education: Speaking of Behavioral Health, the topic continues to be more relevant and popular than ever, as demonstrated by the amount of BH product-related inquiries we received from booth visitors, and the standing room only demand for our Behavioral Health Interior Design Consultant, Suzanne Fawley’s ‘BH 101’ presentation on Sunday. There is still so much work to be done, and new insights to be discovered around every corner in Behavioral Health, and we will continue to do all we can to support this growing area with our products.

All in all, it was a successful and productive week at HCD. We are grateful for the opportunity to truly demonstrate what Improving Lives by Design is all about before our industry peers, and can’t wait to return for more in New Orleans in 2023!

Stance Healthcare’s Treatment Tables Are Designed To Last Longer and Work Harder.

The Stance Healthcare Treatment Table is a well-built, durable and dependable table for exam rooms and clinics. With a heavy-duty, 14-gauge, powder-coated steel frame and maximum weight capacity of 750 lbs, it’s able to withstand heavy use and meet the demands of the healthcare space for longer. Stance CEO Carl Kennedy even refers to it as a “workhorse” due to its durable functionality. 

Designed with a better patient experience in mind, the Treatment Table has a number of features to help create a comforting environment. The 3 inch foam overlay provides a soft, supportive feel. It’s available with a pneumatic spring-assisted elevating backrest, so the patients can find the position that makes them most comfortable. Another aspect of a comforting environment is the look and feel of the space. The Stance Treatment Table comes in a variety of laminate, metal and custom vinyl finishes to match the physician stools in the space, offering ultimate flexibility to fit the aesthetic of any healthcare facility.

The physicians will appreciate the functionality and flexibility of these tables as well. The table allows them to choose a custom height that works for them, plus oversize height-adjustable leveling glides to make sure the table is always safe, sturdy and balanced. The proprietary quick-change paper roll holder and optional moisture barrier make cleaning up quick and easy between patients — so facilities can stay on schedule and focus more of their time and attention on their patients.

On top of all that, the Stance Healthcare Treatment Table has one of the top lead times in the industry, with orders expected to arrive within 6-8 weeks. Stance understands the needs of the healthcare industry and the importance of having the right furniture in place when and where it’s needed, especially when it comes to vital spaces like clinics and treatment rooms.

With its impressive lead time and durable versatility, it’s easy to understand why the Stance Treatment Table has become a trusted favorite in the healthcare industry. To see all the features, finishes and customizable options of the table, visit StanceHealthcare.com today.

Occasional tables are a practical addition to complete any furniture layout within a healthcare setting — and Stance Healthcare is proud to offer the industry's largest selection in the category. The recent additions of our latest tables, Pavilion and Capri, continue the evolution of this product category with a modern aesthetic, thanks to a new tapered base. Designed with customization options for general healthcare and supervised Behavioral Health settings, Capri and Pavilion offer endless opportunities to customize, including highly durable Corian® solid surface, laminate, or Marmoleum finish selections to choose from.

Speaking of Marmoleum, the flooring material is an innovative choice for a table — but it’s not the first time Stance Healthcare has reimagined it for use on one. Our award-winning Resilia drum table collection was the first to feature this tough and long-lasting material, and Pavilion creates another opportunity to take advantage of its durability in supervised Behavioral Health environments.

Pavilion is available in eight standard Marmoleum finishes, as well as 8 new colors – Violet, Fesco Blue, Leaf, Aqua, Honeysuckle, African Desert, Lemon Zest and Scarlet Witch – all of which provide playful and colorful palettes to support pediatric settings. The Marmoleum color selections are also newly available on Stance’s best-selling Resilia drum table series. Adding to its aesthetic appeal, Capri’s available color selections include four new laminate colorways recently introduced by Stance Healthcare: Aria, Palomino, Dolce Vita and White Chocolate.

“Capri and Pavilion build on our established line of occasional tables, which blend high function with longevity of use – and these latest collections add a new modern flair to the aesthetic mix,” said Caesar Fernandes, Stance Healthcare’s Product Design & Development Manager. “Capri and Pavilion round out any seating environment with a safe, sturdy accent that is built to last in high traffic healthcare settings.”

In addition to Marmoleum, below are a few of the available features and options that set our broad selection of sturdy, high-quality occasional tables apart in the marketplace:

• Corian® solid surface: At Stance, we are proud to offer Corian® Solid Surface finish options across many of our occasional table collections. This material is the original solid surface offering in the marketplace and remains the go-to solid surface selection for healthcare furniture, and for good reasons: Corian® Solid Surface is a virtually maintenance-free finish selection that is highly customizable, and easy-to-clean and withstands the test of time.
• Several bases to choose from: From Gem’s geometric metal base, to the rounded frame supporting Huxley, and the solid steel disc base on Iris, Stance’s occasional tables offer a variety of shapes and materials to support our growing catalog of products.
• Customizable heights
• Tamper-resistant, non-removable glides to protect against damage
• Tech connectivity: Our Bali, Bora, Pavilion, Capri and Resilia tables have options for built in power and USB receptacles.
• Endless color options to choose from

Learn more about Capri here and Pavilion here.

The versatile new tables offer a tapered design and intentional materials and features to support use in healthcare and Behavioral Health environments

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Stance Healthcare, a leader in furniture design and manufacturing for general and Behavioral Healthcare facilities, introduces two new occasional table collections — Capri, available for healthcare settings, and Pavilion, available for both healthcare and Behavioral Health settings. Featuring a unique tapered base design, the new drum tables offer endless options to customize, and feature highly durable Corian® solid surface, laminate, and Marmoleum finish selections. Capri and Pavilion join Stance Healthcare’s impressive catalog of drum tables, which collectively supply the healthcare furniture industry’s largest offering in the category.

Designed for maximum cleanability and longevity of use, Capri tables are an ideal selection for today’s modern healthcare environments. Available in 24 different sizes, the laminate-finished tables can be customized with or without a plinth base. Meanwhile, the new Pavilion collection is offered in four models for behavioral health and twelve models for healthcare, with options including Corian® solid surface and Marmoleum finish selections, which are regarded for their ability to withstand wear and tear in high-use environments. Pavilion is also available with or without the supportive plinth base.

“Capri and Pavilion continue our track record of developing drum tables that stand the test of time,” said Carl Kennedy, Stance Healthcare’s president. “With many ways to customize, these new collections are suitable for healthcare and Behavioral Health environments of all types and sizes. Facility planners want to select furniture that will not only last, but provide a nice aesthetic — and these new releases achieve both with not only the durable finishes that come standard, but the sleek new tapered base that’s unique to Capri and Pavilion.”

Capri and Pavilion are a tech-forward offering for general healthcare and Behavioral Health settings, with optional electrical units. Adding to its aesthetic appeal, Capri’s available color selections include four new laminate colorways recently introduced by Stance Healthcare: Aria, Palomino, Dolce Vita and White Chocolate. In addition to being offered in Stance’s standard Marmoleum finishes, Pavilion is also available in eight new Marmoleum finish colors — Violet, Fesco Blue, Leaf, Aqua, Honey Suckle, African Desert, Lemon Zest and Scarlet, all of which provide playful and colorful palettes to support pediatric settings. The new Marmoleum color selections are also newly available on Stance’s best-selling Resilia drum table series.

The release of Capri and Pavilion continues Stance’s background of producing high-quality drum tables for today’s modern healthcare environments. The company’s award-winning Resilia table collection is a 2017 Healthcare Design Nightingale GOLD Award winner and top-selling series thanks to its Marmoleum finish — a material typically used as flooring, but reimagined for Resilia as a more durable alternative to laminate. Stance’s Bali and Bora drum tables are also versatile, sleek occasional tables built to last in medical settings.

Capri and Pavilion are available for purchase now.

Follow Stance Healthcare’s blog, LinkedIn, and Instagram to stay up to date on product releases, and engaging content centered on Stance’s Improving Lives by Design mission that educates and inspires.

About Stance Healthcare

Founded in 2006, Stance Healthcare manufactures furniture for healing environments, with a particular focus on hospitals and behavioral health facilities. Stance Healthcare has a reputation for providing high-quality products that meet the ever-evolving demands in the areas of design, comfort, safety, durability, renewability, infection control and environmental sustainability. With a strong understanding of patient-centered design, Stance Healthcare is committed to providing innovative furniture solutions that support the healing process. Please visit stancehealthcare.com for the latest news and in-depth information on Stance Healthcare and visit https://stancebh.com/ to learn more about our Behavioral Health offerings and insights.

The Stance team heads to San Antonio for this year’s HCD Conference + Expo.

Stance Healthcare and Stance Behavioral Health are proud to be a part of the Healthcare Design Conference + Expo this year. HCD is the industry’s premier networking, education and product-sourcing event where attendees can learn about the latest research, strategies, and products that support thoughtful design in hospitals and other healthcare settings. This is a great opportunity to build industry connections and showcase how Stance Healthcare and Stance Behavioral Health are improving lives by design.
 

Stance Healthcare and Stance Behavioral Health will have a variety of featured products on display at the expo, each offering unique design features and functions to suit the needs of different healthcare spaces. One of the highlights being showcased is last year’s HCD Nightingale GOLD Award winner, our Flo Dining Collection. The Flo collection is a versatile dining furniture solution that provides style and durability in intensive use spaces. Exclusive for the 2022 HCD floor, we’ll be showcasing the new version of the Flo chair that’s launching next year, which features an upholstered back and seat pad for added style and comfort. Another Stance Behavioral Health staple being featured is the Frontier bed and bedside cabinet. Designed with safety in mind, the Frontier collection features rounded edges, a rotationally-molded frame and easy-to-clean surface for a comfortable patient experience. 

Stance Healthcare will also have a variety of seating and surface options on display at HCD. One of those is the Clover lounge chair, a popular new release from the past year, which will be showcasing its new Palomino wood finish. The stylish, comfortable lounge collection is available in a variety of fabrics and finishes to provide a warm, relaxing environment in any healthcare setting. 

Joining the lounge seating collection display are Jensen and Valet: The stylish and strong Jensen lounge collection offers a mid-century design with steel-welded structural integrity to provide a modern look that lasts for today’s healthcare facilities, while we will display the Valet High Back lounge chair in its original wire, disc, and new swivel base options. The Valet High Back has a clean, stylish design that creates a calming aesthetic and encourages patients and visitors to sit in comfort.  

Adding to the exhibited seating options at the expo are the Porto bench and some highlights of our Metal Seating collection — including the Legend, Marathon and Quantum lines. The Porto bench is built to withstand heavy use and offers a clean, contemporary look for modern healthcare facilities. The bench comes in 2-seat and 3-seat designs, with solid surface and power/USB options available. The versatile Legend, Marathon and Quantum seating options are available in a variety of sizes, fabrics and finishes to fit in anywhere. Offering a clean design, lasting durability and accessible pricing, the Stance Healthcare Metal Seating collection is the broadest selection in the industry.

But seating isn’t the only category on display at this year’s HCD Expo. We are excited to feature a range of table options at the expo as well, starting front and center with our 2022 new release, the versatile Spry collection. The Spry collection features a strong, stylish chair with optional 12” connecting tables. Designed with infection control in mind, the sleek, comfortable collection is easy to clean and provides ultimate flexibility and functionality.

The next surface option being showcased is the Resilia drum table, featuring a highly-durable Marmoleum surface that’s easy to clean and hard to crack or chip. Available in a variety of sizes and finishes, the 2017 Nightingale GOLD award winner brings style and dependability to the healthcare space. Also added to the mix is the versatile and sleek Iris table, which complements a range of seating arrangements and offers a practical solution for the surface needs of healthcare spaces. Finally, we will also exhibit the Zurich table, now with a new Palomino wood finish option for the legs. The Zurich coffee table and end table feature a modern design with a strong, stable base to provide practical style and seamless functionality.

In addition to showcasing products, Stance Healthcare and Stance Behavioral Health will join industry peers in learning and exchanging ideas together. Suzanne Phillips Fawley, the Behavioral Health Interior Design Consultant at Stance Behavioral Health, will lead a presentation at the expo on October 9. She’ll go over the dos and don'ts of behavioral health design and offer tangible takeaways that empower attendees to support healing environments through their design selections. Backed by research, subject-matter expertise, peer insights and years of industry experience, this session will guide and inspire attendees to approach behavioral health projects with humanity, confidence and passion  — providing a better overall experience for patients, care providers and visitors alike.

We hope to see you at Booth #427 in San Antonio!

Stance Healthcare’s collection of metal seating offers unmatched quality, versatility and variety.  

Stance Healthcare has been providing quality metal seating for healthcare spaces since its inception. The first Stance Healthcare product ever produced was the Accent chair, a dependable metal seating option that is still a favorite in many spaces today. Building off the success of the Accent line, Stance now has one of the largest varieties of metal seating in the healthcare industry, available at a full range of price points. That selection is what truly sets the company apart, but it’s not the only reason customers continue to rely on Stance Healthcare for their metal seating needs.

All of Stance Healthcare’s metal seating options are engineered to be durable and dependable in any space, with a fully-welded, heavy-gauge powdercoat steel frame for added strength and long-term structural integrity. Most metal seating products are Level Certified, BIFMA compliant and/or MAS certified green, too. Regardless of the product line, Stance Healthcare seating is always designed with the safety, comfort and wellbeing of the user in mind.

The newest Stance Healthcare product offering in the metal seating category is the Spry collection. Designed with infection control in mind, Spry is a versatile seating collection that’s sleek, comfortable and easy-to-clean thanks to the 360-degree cleanout design. The metal chairs are available with three sizes of linking tables to provide space between patients when needed. Spry chairs also come with solid surface or wood arm caps and a range of custom finishes and fabrics for ultimate flexibility in any space.

In total, Stance Healthcare offers 12 metal seating collections. The full range includes Accent, Accent Jr., Qunatum, Marathon, Legend, Integrity, Vista II, Jensen, Spry, Oasis, Kite, and Bold. Each line has its own designs, features and uses that make them unique. The Accent, Quantum and Bold seating options are stackable for easy clean-up and storage. Kite is the only folding chair in the whole Stance Healthcare metal seating collection, offering a clean and affordable space-saving seating solution. The Jensen collection offers metal seating options with a coordinating lounge collection and tables — making it a versatile, multi-purpose seating collection.

Some of the Stance Healthcare metal seating options are also available for Behavioral Health. Made with physical, mental and behavioral health in mind, the Legend, Jax, Vista ll, Oasis and Accent are intentionally designed to bring calm and comfort to spaces where well-being and safety are most important.

Stance Healthcare’s long history of providing high-quality metal seating options continues to drive them today with new designs and product offerings that help more people in more healthcare spaces than ever.

It’s been a busy few months at Stance, as our team prepares new product lines for release and gears up for a successful exhibit at this October’s HCD Conference + Expo. But as we continue the important work to champion our exceptional products to customers in the healthcare world, we are also equally invested in Improving Lives by Design from within — and today, I’m pleased to share some of the work we’ve done together to make our team even stronger from the inside.

First and foremost, we’ve spent time examining what our mission statement, Improving Lives by Design, means for us all as equally valuable team members sharing a common vision and goal. When we launched the new brand last year, we focused the mission statement externally around how our products support patients, care providers, and visitors toward a positive, healing healthcare experience. Today, that’s still our guiding compass. But recently, we’ve reflected more inwardly on this, and considered how each Stance team member contributes to this higher purpose by showing up with this mission in mind each day.

A result of these conversations that I’m excited to share is our new core values, which empower our every team member with a collective ethos that upholds this mission. At Stance, we provide industry-leading products and unmatched quality that Improves Lives by following these STEPS together:
 

Small things are the big things. We take care of the small things, in order to get the big things right. Our attention to detail is how we exceed expectations.

Teamwork over ego. Every one of us plays a role in our success. Our team is humble, collaborative, and mutually supportive: We give credit where it’s due and own up to our mistakes.
 

Excellence is a moving target. We strive to continuously improve ourselves so that we can be better, healthier, and more knowledgeable tomorrow than we are today.

Powered by positive energy. We rely on intentional positivity to energize and bring out the best in each other, and embrace opportunities to celebrate our individual and collective successes.

Simply get it done. Our team does what it takes to overcome obstacles, find innovative solutions, and deliver results.

As a team, it was important to us that we chose values that go beyond lip service to authentically describe who we are as a company — and would serve as guidelines to remind us to stay true to who we are as we continue to scale the business. I am proud of the way these values reinforce that goal, and even prouder of the team who works together to implement them.

As your leadership team, we take this commitment seriously. In the spirit of our third core value, “Excellence is a moving target,” we have been deeply considering the organization, its growth, and how we can best work to lead the company toward continued momentum and progress. After some reflection on the best paths to get there, we have decided to update some of our roles and responsibilities. Effective immediately, my role will change from President to CEO, with Brian Kennedy stepping into the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer.

As COO, Brian will become even more integrated into the day-to-day business activities, and provide more structure and support for our organization’s many different teams. Brian and I will work closely together, and we will be interchangeably available to our colleagues at any time. Our hope is that the increased support from Brian’s new role will provide even more fuel to continue powering our team forward as we pursue the many exciting new paths toward growth and success – paths that always lead, most importantly, to Improving Lives by Design.

Carl