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 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEEMECO SUES RESTORATION HARDWARE FOR ALLEGEDLY STEALINGITS ICONIC “NAVY CHAIR®” DESIGN“What Restoration Hardware is trying to do is bad for the American consumer, bad forAmerican jobs and bad for the global environment.”--Gregg Buchbinder, Emeco CEO.SAN FRANCISCO—Oct. 1—Emeco Industries, Inc.the genuine handcraft company based inHanover, Pennsylvania, today sued home furnishing giant Restoration Hardware and itsformer CEO and present “Creator and Curator” Gary Friedman, asserting claims for tradedress and trademark counterfeiting and infringement.The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco in the United States District Court, alleges thatRestoration Hardware has engaged in willful and flagrant infringement of Emeco’s tradedress and trademark rights for its world-renowned Navy Chair® by selling a series ofcheap knockoffs with the near-identical “Naval Chair” name that copy verbatim the iconicand highly distinctive design of the Navy Chair®. The irreparable harm caused byRestoration Hardware, an established company, to Emeco’s reputation and significantgoodwill is massive, incomparable to that caused by a typical, small-time counterfeiter.Emeco has filed this action to halt that harm and protect its exclusive rights. Emeco seeksa preliminary and permanent injunction to stop Restoration Hardware’s unlawful conductand the damages to which the law entitles it.The allegedly illegally manufactured counterfeits also include the, “Navy Armchairs”,“Navy Barstools” and “Navy Counter stools”. Featured on page 94 of the Fall 2012Restoration Hardware catalog is a photo layout of no less then four “Naval Chairs” and“Naval Stools,” exact counterfeits of Emeco’s Navy Chair® Collection.Emeco’s quality guarantee of The Navy Chair® is the result of elaborate and precisespecifications developed by the U.S. Navy in 1944 in conjunction with ALCOA Aluminum.These specifications are still used by the craftsmen at Emeco in a unique 77-step processthat meets the most stringent American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and Businessand Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association (BIFMA) standards. The chairs aretested to last 150 years.
 
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“Emeco is an American success story that has demonstrated to the market its value andsustainability,” said Emeco CEO Gregg Buchbinder. “We create American jobs and workwith the best designers to manufacture a product respected and sought after around theworld. For us, stealing our Navy Chair® design is like stealing the Nike Swoosh or theMercedes Benz logo, and then exploiting our brand and reputation to produce an inferiorproduct.”Restoration Hardware distributed approximately 26.1 million catalogs nationwide in itslast fiscal year. By allegedly hijacking the Emeco brand, consumers are likely to believethat the products Restoration Hardware sells are genuine, legitimate articles. RestorationHardware has prominently marketed and advertised its chairs and stools with the “Naval”name in its print catalog and on its website.Restoration Hardware stated in itspre-IPO filingsthat, “at our core we are not designers,rather we are curators and composers of inspired design and experiences.” By“[e]xternally discover[ing] and curat[ing]” others’ designs, as opposed to “[i]nternallydesign[ing] and develop[ing]” its own products, Restoration Hardware can cut the productdevelopment process from “12-18 months lead time” to “3-9 months lead time” and“reduce product costs.” By contrast, it takes Emeco approximately 2 to 4 years to design,prototype, research and develop, engineer, and tool to launch a product that will last alifetime.Emeco has been the leading manufacturer of handcrafted aluminum chairs for 68 years.The company remains committed to the principles and values that built the business in1944, when the United States Navy came to Hanover to help develop an incredible newpiece of furniture. As specified by the Navy contract, the chair had to be capable ofwithstanding fire, weather, war and sailors. Because of its light weight and durability, thechairs soon became synonymous with American institutions from police stations andprisons to schools and hospitals. It did not take long for the chair to become a design icon.The Navy Chairs® have graced the cover of fashion magazines, appeared in Hollywoodmovies like Avatar and Batman, and have been ordered by restaurants and otherestablishments worldwide from Dean and Deluca to the St. Martins Hotel in London. TheNavy Chair® is in the permanent collections of museums around the world, including theDesign Museum in London and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Emeco sells itsNavy Chair® to trade architects and designers, governments, contract dealers andinternational distributors in 48 countries through authentic retail furniture and designstores, such as Design Within Reach.In 2006, Coca-Cola approached Emeco with a problem: the growing number ofpolyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles ending up in the U.S. landfills. Emeco took on thechallenge of reinventing the material for the classic Navy Chair® with the Emeco andCoca-Cola Joint Venture Agreement, and today each Navy Chair is made with 111 up-cycled Coca-Cola PET bottles. In 2010, the 111 Navy Chair® won the GOOD DESIGN Awardand the IF International Design Forum Product Design Award, and in 2012 the 111 NavyChair® has taken more than eight million plastic bottles out of landfills.
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