Addition Plus: The story behind Steelcase’s first Pride product

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A group of LGBTQ+ employees at Steelcase grew an idea for an internal Pride display into a national product.

Steelcase’s Pride core team was started almost eight years ago, with the goal of creating a more inclusive environment. It’s one of a dozen Business Inclusion Groups at Steelcase, which also has groups for veterans, working parents, young professionals, Black employees and even gamers.

The Pride team has grown to include more than 60 people across 13 countries.

“Each person is incredibly unique. Each of them has a story of their own, a personality, a background, a future that we look towards to see how we can better their life both at work and in the community in which Steelcase resides,” Melina Sinigos, the Global Pride Core leader at Steelcase, said.

The team donates to local and regional nonprofits, like providing furniture and helping paint rooms for Arbor Circle. In West Michigan, the group also partners with the Grand Rapids Pride Center and the AYA Youth Collective.

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Internally, it hosts educational events, working to teach other Steelcase employees about things like pronouns and safe spaces.

During Pride Month, the team attends Pride festivals, hosts booths and marches in parades. It had a booth at the Lowell Pride event Saturday, and will be at the Grand Rapids Pride Festival on June 22. The team also puts a display together for its global business centers.

In years past, the display has included six solid-color chairs arranged to create a rainbow. This year, the team wanted to do something more, Sinigos said. They partnered with Designtex, a Steelcase company, to create a Pride-themed textile.

It was originally intended to be used only for the display, but as the project got further along and more people got involved, they decided to launch it as the company’s first Pride product.

The Addition Plus fabric features plus signs — representing the ‘+’ in LGBTQ+. It includes all the colors in the Progressive Pride Flag, including brown and black to represent people of color in the community and white, light pink and light blue to represent gender non-conforming and trans people.

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“One of the Steelcase designers that we worked with ended up creating smaller and larger plus signs to create a wave effect, so every chair that the fabric goes on would be unique, just like people like me who are queer and a part of the community are all very unique and authentic to themselves,” Sinigos said. “With Steelcase creating this product, it showed a sense of belonging in a safe space, that you could have this textile on any of our high performance seating chairs within your home within your office, within your workspace, and not any of the chairs will be the same.”

The fabric was revealed on May 30. It’s available in the United States and Canada.

“It’s been fun to see the engagement on social media and just the reaction, even on campus or throughout our other offices where they’ve had exposure to the chairs,” a Ashley Upchurch, a senior product manager at Steelcase, said. “(To) see the reaction and what it means to them, not only as a company and what we strive for in fostering inclusion, but also what it means to people in the community as well.”

Upchurch said it illustrates what can come out of a simple idea.

“The textile is incredible in that it shows that there can be the idea within an inclusion group to show a way that creates that safe space, that grew from just the need of a display into something more,” she said.

Sinigos said groups like the Pride Core are important because it shows a global company listening to its employees.

“Respecting the people you work with and understanding that inclusivity can be contagious. It’s super important to be able to feel happy and healthy and safe at work,” she said. “Feeling that sense of belonging helps you feel like you’re happy to come into work every day.”

— Correction: A previous version misstated where the fabric can be purchased. It is only available in the United States and Canada. We regret the error, which has been fixed.

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