Mike Claman of Lewittes Furniture & Primarily Seating Passes

Furniture World News Desk on 3/28/2014

Mike Claman, the 85-year old retired furniture manufacturer and designer passed away on March 18, 2014.

Claman was the long time President of Lewittes Furniture Enterprises, Inc. Later in life he and his wife Edith founded Primarily Seating, Inc., a leader in contract seating for the senior living, healthcare, and hospitality industries.

Mike was a cheerful presence, a prodigious furniture designer, holder of many design patents and a peerless salesperson. He was a pioneer among North Carolina manufacturers in creating a desegregated working environment for his employees, and championed causes throughout his life involving issues of fairness and equal treatment.

He leaves behind his wife Edith (59 years), children Richard and Elizabeth (Clark) Claman, and Deborah Gutterman, grandchildren Emily, Karen and Amanda. Services were held on March 20th at Plaza Jewish Community Chapel in New York City.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on March 20, 1928, Mike attended elementary school in Brooklyn (Yeshiva Flatbush). He graduated from Riverside Military Academy in May 1945 then served as a sergeant in the US Army Air Corps. Following military service Mike graduated from University of Wisconsin at Madison with a major in American Studies.

Entering the industry as a trainee at the Charles Bloom Company in 1948 he worked for a short time a fabric salesman. Mike then moved on to manage a curtain plant in Memphis, TN, only to return to the Charles Bloom Company in 1951. In 1954 he joined Lewittes Furniture Enterprises where he learned the furniture industry from manufacturing through sales.

Mike was an innovative designer, a member of the American Society of Furniture Designers (ASFD) and an Ad Hoc Professor at the Leo Jiranek School of Furniture Design.

He designed his first line of upholstered furniture, the Howard Mark Collection, sold at department and furniture stores nationwide. This introduction jump-started his career.

In 1954 Lewittes decided to open a North Carolina plant in addition to its Beacon NY facility. He started working in the company’s Taylorsville facility that opened in 1955, attending to issues of design and manufacturing while assembling a more powerful sales force.

Mike  soon became sales manager and chief designer. Early on in his career, he popularized many chair designs, pioneering the use of cane mesh both in tub and wing chairs. He also developed a method of building a groove in chair frames to firmly hold welts in place on cane as well as fabric chairs. This method improved the industry practices of  just tacking them on to frames.

A gifted marketer, Mike coined and registered the name "Sitting Pretty" which the company used in its advertisements and fought continuously to protect.

To keep pace with expanded production, a second Taylorsville plant was opened in the mid 1960s with a ribbon cutting ceremony led by then Governor James Hunt. Together, over 600 people were employed at the two factories, producing over 1,000 chairs per day.

In the late 50"s and early 60's Lewittes rented space and showed  at the Lenoir Armory for Southern Furniture Market, becoming a major player in the "Western Show".  In 1967 Lewittes opened it's 10,000 sq. ft. freestanding Lenoir showroom while also maintaining showrooms in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Always involved in education, Mike was appointed by Governor Hunt to serve on the North Carolina Board of Higher Education where he worked with junior colleges to set up programs to prepare students to go into manufacturing careers. He was instrumental in helping to set up a furniture-manufacturing course at Caldwell Community College.

Under Mike’s leadership, Lewittes was the  first plant in the area to have an IBM computer, which filled an entire room, complete with special humidity and heat controls. The plant was also ahead of the curve in the adaptation of machinery to apply assorted poly colored finishes, introducing Italian machinery and know-how.

In 1982 Mike and his wife Edith purchased the company from the other family members. Edith had joined the firm full time in 1972 and from then on, they were a furniture team.

Mike became interested in rattan in the early '70s so Edith and Mike travelled to throughout Asia seeking firms capable of manufacturing Mike's designs to his standards, always with leather bindings. The Rattan category became very important to the entire industry once Lewittes Furniture introduced it to the marketplace.

In 1979, after learning of President Anwar Sadat's visit to  Jerusalum, an initiative towards Egyptian/ Israeli peace, Mike designed a chair with Egyptian motifs for President Sadat that he and Edith personally presented to President Sadat in 1980.   

In 1986 the Clamans sold the corporation to Corson Industries and Mike became a consultant. 

In the mid '80s while at Lewittes, Edith developed an interest  in furniture for the hospitality and healthcare sectors. Mike also saw large potential in this area, so in 1990 they formed Primarily Seating, Inc., a company dedicated to the production of healthcare furniture for the contract industry.

The company avoided design errors found in much of the furniture being sold to senior living facilities, nursing homes and other contract venues. Mike and Edith's products had proper proportions that looked like fine residential furniture.

Primarily Seating patented and produced many original, properly constructed and beautiful models. The company still exists today, following his guidelines and producing his designs.