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Unfortunately, sitting down is only one step in the production of their chairs, lounges, stools and tables, some of which have won recognition in national magazines, as well as prizes for design at art exhibits. The most recent honor was bestowed on their sling chair at the annual design show staged by the Akron (Ohio) Art Institute. From that prize-winning design, hundreds of orders have poured in from furniture merchants all over the United States and Hawaii. A feature of this chair, which is made to retail at $90, is that it can be dismantled in less than four minutes for removing the foam rubber pad and cleaning the zippered upholstery.

Like everything else the hobby partners make, it has a frame of wrought iron. But its design and attention to detail take it out of the usual cheap wrought iron furniture class. What McCartney and O'Neil are doing is creating almost custom-built indoor and outdoor furniture from materials which are usually thought of in connection with low-cost mass-production. For example, their boomerang chair rests on a frame of ⁵/8-inch black iron rod, which in turn supports the two side pieces of L-shaped Philippine mahogany that comprise the actual framework for the upholstered part of the chair.

ANOTHER prize-winning design, and one of the most popular items, is a loom chair, consisting of nothing more than the iron rod framework laced over with wire-reinforced white plastic cord. This is made with arms to sell for $48 or without arms in a cantilever shape for $56—more, because in the armless version the frame is ⁵/8 inch instead of ½ inch. These same two chairs are also produced with partial seat and back of Madagaska, a nonfading vinyl plastic fabric, in several favorite patio colors. An ottoman is made to match, and a patio table, slightly larger than the ottoman, is supplied with Masonite laced up inside the plastic for a more table-like surface. Then there's a sling chair, which is a fabric-covered foam-cushioned seat and back draped over a ⁵/8-inch frame. Cushions, held in place by their own weight and the weight of the sitter, flip off instantly. It's the downright functionalism of their furniture that has won McCartney and O'Neil such nation-wide success since they started making furniture three years ago.

Today, they're still pursuing it as a hobby, working in a two-car garage. It would take an investment of some $10,000 to lift it out of the hobby phase, they believe. But they also feel that, if they work at it hard enough, they can realize a gross income from furniture of $25,000 during 1955.

Chances are they won't, though, because Bob, who is 28, enjoys his job as assistant architectural designer for the Southern Pacific railroad, and Gene, 29, intends to go right on working as an adjuster for the Casualty Insurance Company of California. Whatever profits they have made they've plowed right back into their joint venture. They didn't start out with the idea of making money, but somehow they've managed to get ahead of the game by one late model station wagon, a sewing machine for Gloria O'Neil and a few pieces of equipment they need for assembling their products.

Plans are to buy some power woodworking equipment for those furniture items that are partly made of wood, a welding outfit to make their own wrought iron frames and a device for bending the iron lengths.

O'NEIL AND McCartney now buy the frames thirty or thirty-five at a time because that's all they have room for. They found a source by looking under the "Iron" and "Iron Ornamental Work" headings in the local classified phone directories, and shopping around until they procured the best price—which is about $3.50. Plastic cord for a loom chair is obtained from a plastics supply house, similarly located, at 1½ cents a foot, or $6 for the 400 feet used in a chair. The vinyl plastic material retails at about $8.60 a yard, somewhat less at the wholesale rate. Another item of expense is shipping cartons, which cost close to $1 each. They're costly enough so that the partners designed the furniture to fit a stock carton. They nested a laced chair, table and stool so all would fit into one carton, and that's how they're sold.

How to build this type of furniture is obvious because every detail of the design is exposed. It's a matter of first ordering the frames to your design from the local ironworker. The frames don't arrive all shiny black and smooth; instead they're full of rust and scale and rough spots. It takes a good hour to clean each one, filing down the welds and using acid to clean away the scale and prepare the metal for finishing. Spraying is done with a flat black acid-etch paint which eats into the top layer of metal to form a bond. It's a one-coat finish, requiring no primer coat.

If you're going to make a loom chair, prepare to occupy two people for an hour and a half with just the lacing. (This is where the sitting-down comes in. The laced frames must be sat in for five to ten minutes to get the stretch out so that they can adjust to the new tension.) Lacing is tedious hand work, not adaptable to mass production. It must be tight, but not too tight, and only a little trial-and-error can show how to do the job just right.

On those chairs and lounges and tables using sheet plastic, the material must be cut to size, holes punched and grommets inserted with a press to take the lacing. This material is stocked in a choice of thirteen colors. Fabric for the sling and boomerang chairs is not kept on hand that would be impossibly expensive. The shops all over the country that sell the partners' products select their own fabrics.

O'NEIL AND McCartney let the merchandising of their furniture follow the same casual precedent that was established when they first began production. At that time they stumbled onto the idea of their popular loom chair. At a friend's suggestion, they made up a model and took it to a manufacturer's agent, whom they located in the yellow pages under that very designation. These are factory representatives who usually maintain showrooms in the "merchandise marts" of many American cities. In return for a ten to fifteen per cent commission, an agent will display your product in his showroom and show it to his retailer customers when he makes the rounds of his territory. You can place your product with as many agents as you like all over the country provided their territories do not overlap.

Bob and Gene wanted to cooperate with their agent, so they gave him a supply of eight-by-ten glossy photographs which a photographer friend made of representative items in the line. The agent, being on the ball, sent the pictures, with descriptions, out to such national magazines as Interiors, Better Homes & Gardens and House Beautiful. All published some of the pictures thus providing valuable publicity and helping create a consumer demand. Readers saw the photographs and asked their local furniture dealers to obtain the furniture; the dealers communicated with the representatives, who were mentioned in the picture captions, and thus the chain reaction.

No reason why we shouldn't be businesslike about this, figured the partners, so they designed a handsome brochure which would do justice, they said, "to a factory six blocks long." On the first brochure, they made mistakes: Didn't allow for additions or deletions, and printed the wholesale price on the descriptive page. On the second attempt, they corrected these errors, and made the photographs bigger, and included a separate price list with the loose-leaf catalogue. The printing job cost $130 for 1,000, which go a long way if they are issued by the agents with discrimination.

THE MCCARTNEY and O'Neil furniture is not patented because, they explain, all someone would have to do is to change one element of construction to get around a patent. Best safeguard is to be as original as possible, because store buyers are partial to sticking with the originators of a design, which usually has a head start publicity-wise, anyway. And competition from the big furniture-producers is not to be feared, because these wrought iron items are custom-styled and have to be handcrafted.