Premium Seating Company Recaro Celebrates 60 Years, Ready For EVs

Sewing and embroidery machines whirring in one corner. Seats in various other stages of production in others. A quality control inspector goes through a rigorous routine while supplies of foam and other materials await their call to action.

That’s the scene at the suburban Detroit Recaro Automotive factory producing premium seating for everyone from racers to truckers to sports car drivers, office workers and gamers.

The company is celebrating the 60^th anniversary of its premium seating division through myriad changes and the almost miraculous fact it wasn’t gobbled up in the swirl of consolidations in the automotive supplier segment by breaking the same sort of barriers that’s kept it alive.

“I think we did the opposite,” said Emil Kreycik, Recaro Automotive President and COO during an interview at the company’s Clinton Township, Mich. headquarters. “Through 2020 we extracted the business out from a larger business. Our focus has beenhow do we get strength in our organization? The other was not this need to feel like we needed to be gobbled up. We started off with a with a strong balance sheet and we’ve just continued to work through those kinds of downtimes like when we weren’t producing for OEM seats we focused on how do we strengthen the organization to be more efficient to be more effective.”

Indeed, Ricaro produced a long list of firsts that include the first bucket seats, first retrofit seats for vehicles featuring foam upholstery and side bolsters, the first seat with integrated seat belts, the first seat for commercial vehicles with a shock-cushioning system and the first racing shell optimized for the usage of HANS (head and neck support system) to protect race car drivers.

Through six decades Ricaro’s gone through almost as many changes as its product line. Its true genesis occurred back in 1906 with the founding of Stuttgarter Carosserie- u. Radfabrik (Stuttgart Body and Wheel Factory)

In 1963 REutter CAROsserie became seating specialist, RECARO. It remained that way until 2011 when the Recaro Automotive Seating unit was purchased by licensing partner Johnson Controls, morphing into a business unit and premium brand for Johnson Controls spinoff Adient five years later.

In 2020 Adient sold its Recaro Automotive Seating business to Raven Acquisitions LLC, a Detroit based, privately owned investment corporation with Recaro operating as an independent corporate structure.

Employing about 500 people globally, Recaro has locations in the U.S., Germany and Japan.

Its four product segments are:

· OEM: Premium brands, limited editions, high-end performance options

· Commercial vehicle: Mass transit, heavy-duty vehicles, military

· Aftermarket

· Classic: Aftermarkets, performance comfort seats, performance tunings

No matter its name, structure or ownership, adherence to certain key criteria has been a constant explained Nicole McElroy, Recaro Automotive Global Vice President of Product Development and Brand.

“We call it form follows human form. What form follows human is the philosophy of the engineering and design of our seats so it’s always around the human ergonomics” said McElroy during an interview. “It has to have some type of innovation to the product. It has to meet the comfort standards. It has to have quality execution, because that’s what people are paying for and the safety is very important. If it’s not safe we’re not gonna have it out.”

During a quick stroll through a product display area, McElroy and Kreycik ran through Recaro’s latest innovations starting with seating for commercial vehicles that must survive a ton of punishment over a long time for a broad range of drivers.

“It has to go from a fifth percentile to the 95^th percentile. It has to be able to last 10 years. They have to be able to sit over 10 hours. They have to be able to hold up to 500 pounds,” said McElroy. “High wear, ingress, egress.”

To do that Recaro uses a material called “rhino vinyl” that McElroy explains the company saw used in race cars that’s washable and durable and can withstand punishment it can take from HANS safety devices.

Comfortable and safe seating for professional drivers is a financial concern for employer with Kreycik noting, “When you look at industry we service their third biggest cost is workman’s comp. The whole concept of form following the human body is actually what helps them reduce those expenses by making a more comfortable, more supportive seat for their operators.”

McElroy turns our attention to some aftermarket seats designed to protect drivers in extreme conditions from serious injury.

“If you’re doing a loop, going really fast and high impact it basically dissipates the energy from hitting into the spine. It’s almost like a coral hard foam and it has little air pockets like a coral and it takes that and separates the energy from going into the body,” said McElroy.

For road and track, Recaro is using lightweight carbon fiber to produce a seat that’s only 15 pounds.

Lightweighting is a key requirement as automakers boost production of electric vehicles since excess weight can reduce battery range.

“Everything we’re doing with that product line is focused on lighter weight,” said Kreycik. “It’s a tough engineering problem to solve so that you can create more space in the floor for the batteries. So that is very, very critical to cars, and a little less so for SUVs. Every point in that design of that seat has been really focused on you know, optimization with EVs in the back of our mind.”

Kreycik says Recaro is also well poised to pivot to serve a move to more on-demand vehicle production as automakers look to reduce costs and dealer inventories, noting, “I think we’re extremely well positioned for on demand. You know, there’s obviously some risk involved in it. We make forecasts, we make assumptions. But our target is to be in a position of customer picks up the phone and make makes the call and says hey, I want this product and we can support our dealers within days no more than a few weeks.”

Both McElroy and Krecik give credit to long time chief engineer of industrial design Frank Beerman who has been a leader and guiding light for a new generation of designers as well as the company’s engineering team for the company’s constant innovations and devotion to its key pillars.

What’s ahead for this sexagenarian seating company? Kreycik says Recaro will continue to focus on its broad customer portfolio of automakers as well as continuing to support the commercial and aftermarket businesses.

In addition, “we want to strengthen our presence to continue to build our dealer network, something that I would say in the past was, given the ownership, it was not really understood,” said Kreycki, “so we’ve made it a priority and we’ve actually seen significant growth since we’ve taken the business over.”

Executive seating, the new moniker for office desk chairs, is also a growth area according to McElroy along with what’s known as sim seating used for high performance gaming.

“We’re adding some cool trim,” said McElroy. “Put in onto a sim rig, go head and start gaming.”

Indeed, some spectators at certain professional sports stadiums McElroy and Kreycik said they were contractually not permitted to name will be viewing contests from the comfort of Recaro seats.

Through all its changes McElroy says what’s been a big reason Recaro continues to survive and thrive is, “A very dedicated team that’s very passionate about what we do. We would not be successful without the team that’s within every region, because it’s the people.”

Kreycik is proud of how the company navigated production cutbacks and supply chain challenges brought on by the Covid pandemic declaring saying the privately-held company’s balance sheet remains strong and is on track to maintain that trend.

From his comfortable Recaro seat, Kreycik smiles as he declares, “We’re just in a really good place.”