Any seat's good for Commack manufacturer
Seating Solutions owner Scott Suprina. (February 2010) Credit: William Perlman
Just about anybody attending a sporting event, parade or concert focuses on the players, participants or performers.
Scott Suprina, however, focuses on the seats.
But he's got good reason to. The company he started 20 years ago, Seating Solutions in Commack, has gone from a basement operation to a $10- million business whose sales in the next year or so are expected to grow to between $13 million and $15 million.
All that from seats? Well, Seating Solutions designs and manufactures about nine types of seats, including the luxury seats in VIP suites at stadiums. For the NBA's All-Star Game in Dallas next Sunday, Seating Solutions has provided 11,000 seats at Dallas' Cowboys Stadium.
Seating Solutions has provided about 17,000 seats for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for the past 11 years, and it provided the VIP seats for Sunday's Super Bowl in Miami.
Suprina's first seat company, started more than 20 years ago, failed. "I did a good job of selling, but I was a terrible businessman," he said. Joe Colarusso, a neighbor who had worked for a defense company for 35 years, later took Suprina under his wing.
"He taught me how to run a business," Suprina said.
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