ASI: Past, Present & Future

The Founding Years

While today ASI is well-known for its decorative plant containers and green walls, the company was actually started back in the 1960’s as a metal spinning company in the Bronx, NY. Under the leadership of designer Paul Mayen, the company flourished, making everything from aluminum plant containers to furniture. Eventually, this caught the eye of an acquirer, DeSede of Switzerland, who purchased and held the company until 1996.  

New Ownership & Direction

In 1996, ASI fell into financial hardship as DeSede struggled to sell plant containers through the traditional furniture supply channels. The company merged with then Robert Charles Products, a company held by Philip Feinman.  During that merger, Phil acquired a minority share of Architectural Supplements Inc. and together with his future partner, Steven Decker, they managed the company out of Danbury, CT. It became clear that furniture and plant containers required separate business models, so in 1997 Steve and Phil exercised options to purchase the remaining shares from DeSede. They expanded manufacturing to include their own fiberglass production and spun off the furniture division, Intrex Furniture, to a company in Brooklyn, NY.

New Horizons in the East

As many in the interiorscape industry remember, the events of September 11, 2001 caused a deep economic downturn that necessitated a reimagining of the ASI product line. Metal manufacturing became a relic of the past and in order to remain competitive with West Coast companies that were bringing in product from Asia, Architectural Supplements opened its own wholly owned foreign Enterprise in Fujian, China in 2007.  The unique ability to control the manufacturing of fiberglass products using Western technology catapulted ASI back to the top of the market and allowed it to introduce injection-molded post-consumer plastic planters into the product line.

Going Global

In 2012, in an effort to diversify away the company’s dependence on the US market, the company started Natures Green B.V. with the help of a well-seasoned veteran of the Dutch market, Mr. Robert VanAerts.  Robert works with the company to this very day and helped in the design of our first living wall product “Wall of Life” and was instrumental in helping to design the next iteration of living wall “NextGen.”  Today, Natures Green is the market leader in the Benelux market of Interior Living walls, many of which can be seen on our website at nextgenlivingwalls.com  

A New Generation

2020 has been a year full of change and this is no exception at ASI. At the beginning of the year, Steven Decker retired from Architectural Supplements and Philip Feinman became the sole owner.  After receiving his MBA from The Harvard Business School, Jason Feinman joined the company as COO on June 1, 2020, rendering ASI officially a second-generation family-run business. Together Philip and Jason intend to grow the business by entering new markets, improving the current offerings, and developing entirely new products. Indeed, the future is bright for ASI!