Ed Metzger is turning over his big chair at BioFit to Jim Connell.

After 42 years at the chair and table manufacturer — the last 14 as president — Metzger retired at the end of 2021. Connell, who has been controller and chief financial officer at BioFit, is taking the reins.

The move for Connell to be president has been planned for about three years.

“We really started hitting it hard, probably in March we really started coming up with a plan,” Connell said.

BioFit is a good fit for him, Connell said.

“I’ve always enjoyed the middle market, or the smaller privately-owned companies. The family feel that you have when you work at a smaller company, is what I’ve always been drawn to,” he said.

Metzger said that Connell will do well as president, maybe better than his run.

“I was a sales guy with a business degree. But Jim’s a businessman with a business degree, with a good financial background,” he said. “Our plant is older, a lot of our equipment needs refreshed. We need to be looking at what markets we’re going to attack.

“We need someone that has that finance background, to be able to look at all the things you have to consider.”

Connell is an advocate of careful, reasonable growth.

“I’ve got 20-25 years left here,” he said. “I think long term, not what we’re going to do in the next three to five months, but three to five years. One of the biggest things that I want to do is to start improving the facilities and the equipment we have on the floor.”

The plan is to incorporate more robots, co-bots and automation to make the job easier for employees, Connell said.

As BioFit grows in the next few years, it will be doing so in the same spot on Ohio 65, as the road curves from Bowling Green into Haskins.

“My intent would be to keep the roots here in Northwest Ohio and the Bowling Green area,” Connell said.

The family vibe has helped BioFit maintain workers, even during the pandemic.

“People come here, they like to work and they stay,” Metzger said.

The global company has 78 employees and has shipped to 45 different countries.

“But we still have that family feel to us, and it’s really important,” Connell said, adding that average tenure of a production employee is 22 years.

BioFit has been in business for 75 years. It manufactures about 60,000 chairs and 4,500 tables per year.

The company doesn’t just make any office chair — they have 13-year warranties.

Its best-selling product is the MVMT (say it out loud) chair, which has 13 different settings, lumbar support at every angle and cleaning and static-control features.

“Laboratories are a big area for us,” Connell said. “When you think about someone leaning over a microscope … well, they’ve got no back support. That’s one of the things, when we made the MVMT chair, it actually can ratchet forward, to provide them with lumbar support.”

Metzger is most proud of the technological advances made in the chairs over the years.

“When we talk about technology seating, we’re talking about really sophisticated clean rooms and critical environments where static has to be controlled,” he said. “Particularly electronics manufacturing, where a static charge can blow a chip.”

The original BioFit stool line came from a company in Adrian, Michigan. It was sold off and ended up at a Bowling Green manufacturer on Conneaut Avenue, across from City Park. The existing Biofit building was built in 1970 and added on to in the mid-1990s.

Metzger has been with Biofit, which is owned by the Fisher family, since he stopped by on a whim on his way to a teaching job in Anthony Wayne.

The former music teacher worked his way up, starting in 1979, from the factory floor to purchasing to customer service to sales and marketing. The owners asked him to go back to school for his Master’s of Business Administration degree, which he obtained from Bowling Green State University before taking the helm of the company.

His bachelor’s degree is in music education, also from BGSU.

The music will get more focus in retirement. He has a studio in his basement and does acting at church.

He plans to remain on the Wood County Board of Developmental Disabilities. He got involved with that through his son, who has developmental disabilities.

Metzger and his wife, Sandra, will also continue volunteer work at First United Methodist Church.

“Sandra and I feel strongly about under-served individuals in the country. How can we help with hunger issues, and also try to break the cycle of poverty,” he said.

They plan to develop a curriculum that may be presented to Crim Elementary students. FUM and Crim have a partnership, Metzger said.

“Part of why we’re here on earth is to contribute to the betterment of society. Especially in retirement, it’s time to give back to the community,” he said.

Sandra is also retiring from BioFit where she has worked for 34 years. She is the customer service manager.

The Metzgers have five children together and eight grandchildren.

Connell and his wife, Pam, have three children, ages 12, 10 and 5, and live in Luckey.