STYLE THERAPY.

• Author: Pressler, Alyssa
• Position: STATEWIDE: Triad

Fabio Delmestri is proving that a small U.S. furniture company can thrive by picking a niche and out-hustling larger rivals. Thomasville-based IoA has more than doubled annual revenue to $30 million over the last decade, selling customized furniture to U.S. hospitals including giants such as the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins.

Delmestri, 57, is a third-generation owner of a family business that started near Venice, Italy, in the 1920s and moved to Thomas ville in 1978, when his father, Dario, concluded North Carolina's business climate was preferable. "Italy is a beautiful country, but it is a hard place for entrepreneurs," Fabio Delmestri says.

IoA, which stands for Images of America, historically produced general commercial furniture. Things changed when Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, now part of Novant Health, asked the company to make a patient recliner it couldn't find elsewhere. The Delmestris realized that hospitals valued innovative, customized products and great customer service, which he says gives IoA an advantage over larger companies that make many different types of furniture. By the early 1990s, it was focusing exclusively on the medical market.

"Hospitals are made of so many different departments, and each department has its own needs and dynamics," says Delmestri, who has a design degree from Pratt Institute in New York. "As an industrial designer, it was an endless opportunity to pursue design innovation."

Though his father, who is 83, is no longer president, Delmestri says he shows up every day. Even his mother, Annina, sometimes assists the...