Haworth International Ltd history

To reflect this new focus, the company changed its name to Modern Partitions In 1976 the company took its current name, Haworth, and the company began focusing exclusively on office furniture systems.

So in November 1985 Haworth filed a civil lawsuit against Steelcase.

1986: Company becomes third largest in United States office furniture industry.

The case was tried in a Michigan court, and in May 1988 a United States District Court judge ruled in favor of Steelcase.

In January 1989, however, the decision was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals, which found several errors in the Michigan court's interpretation of the case and ruled that Haworth's rights as patent holder had been infringed upon.

Some of the companies it bought included Mueller Furniture Company, Kinetics, and Lunstead, all acquired in 1990.

In 1992, Haworth becomes the first office furniture manufacturer to achieve ISO 9001 certification.​ Manufacturing expands with production in Shanghai, China.

Haworth picked up GSP Manufacturing in 1994, a maker of upholstered wood office furniture located in Tijuana, Mexico.

He explained his system in an article he authored for the January/February 1995 Mergers & Acquisitions, detailing how his firm worked for five or six years sometimes with companies it hoped to buy, moving cautiously toward formal acquisition talks.

A New York furniture distributor quoted in a May 1996 Forbes article described Haworth's policy thus: "If Miller and Knoll are offering 65% off on a project, Haworth says 71%." By 1996 Haworth boasted that it won 65 percent of all new contracts it bid on.

In September, 2003, Haworth acquired Interface AR of Grand Rapids, Michigan.