SEATED FOR SUCCESS

Lake Forest-based United Group COO Heather Gray o!ers a look inside the specialized world of high-performance seating.

WHEN YOU WALK INTO the headquarters of United Group in Lake Forest, you’re greeted not by sleek, minimalist showroom aesthetics, but by something more telling—hand-built chairs, industrial suspension seats, and a team that clearly knows one another well.

“We’re in seating,” says Heather Gray with a laugh. “I need to work on my elevator pitch because people hear that and think crops or wedding charts.”

In reality, United Group manufactures and distributes high-performance seating solutions for some of the most demanding environments imaginable—24/7 control rooms, 9-1-1 dispatch centers, oil and gas facilities, casinos, and heavy equipment from brands like John Deere and Caterpillar.

“Those machines last a lot longer than the seat does,” Gray explains. “We provide the replacement seats so they can get back up and running the next day.”

It’s a niche industry—and one most people never think about. “We just take for granted what we sit on,” she says. “But for someone sitting eight to 12 hours at a time, three shifts a day, that chair matters.”

United Group was founded in 1988 as a distributor of industrial components. Over time, seating emerged as the clear specialty. Then, in 2007, a conversation at Jimmy’s Char House changed everything.

“Scott [Radtke] and Paul [Monfardini] were sitting there and said, ‘Let’s design an office chair for the American market,'” Gray recalls of the United Group’s founders. “Let’s just design the best chair we can and figure out the cost later.”

The result was Iron Horse—the company’s in-house office chair line—now accounting for roughly half of the company’s business.

Most of United Group’s chairs are black. “Sort of like the Model T,” Gray jokes. “Everybody wants every color available, but everyone almost always chooses black.” While black remains the dominant choice, the United Group recently introduced custom color options to bring more personality into workspaces.

Gray didn’t begin her career in manufacturing. A competitive swimmer at Mundelein High School, she headed west to continue swimming at Pepperdine University, where an advertising professor steered her toward marketing. After college, she worked at a small, family-run agency and later in the cinema industry, traveling internationally and gaining experience across cultures.

“I loved marketing because it’s really about understanding what makes you different and what somebody needs,” she says. “Whether it’s your employees or your customers, it’s about bringing those two things together.”

In 2012, after years in California and London—where she met her husband, Terry—Gray returned to Illinois. United Group’s leadership invited her to interview. She had once been a top-performing intern for them. “‘You told us you were never coming back to Chicago,'” Gray remembers. “‘But if you are, would you consider working for United?'”

She joined initially in marketing, later becoming vice president and now chief operating officer. Today, she oversees daily operations while working closely with Monfardini who serves as president and Radtke who is the vice president of engineering.

Gray’s marketing lens remains central to how she leads.

“It’s much more about people than process,” she says. “How do you grow the team? If they understand how everything works, they’ll make the whole business better.” Today, United Group employs 26 people, a size Gray considers ideal.

“I wouldn’t want it much bigger,” she says. “That’s not who we are.”

Many employees have been with the company for decades. Others are just beginning their careers. This blend is on purpose.

“We’re not going to compete with big corporations,” Gray says candidly. “So, what can we do is make this a place people want to come to work.”

Gray and her husband moved to Lake Forest in 2016. Their daughter now attends Sheridan School; her stepson graduated from Lake Forest High School after moving from England.

“We absolutely love it here,” she says. “We can walk to get coffee. We can walk to school. It feels like a real community.”

That community focus extends to the company. Since 2021, United Group has grown nearly 28 percent—growth that has allowed reinvestment both internally and locally. The company supports organizations like Heart of the City in Waukegan and sponsors local events and schools. “It’s more about building relationships than moving product,” Gray says. “That’s what makes our work meaningful.”

Though deeply grounded in the company’s culture and history, Gray remains energized by what’s next.

“What keeps things fresh for me is asking, ‘What’s the next growth? What’s the next evolution?'” she says. “Technology is changing. AI is changing expectations. But you still can’t lose the human touch.”

And while most of us may never think about the chair we’re sitting on, Gray absolutely does. After all, when you work for a company that builds the very thing that holds everyone else up, you have to get it right.