How Zünd Drives The Seat Shop’s Success
What began in a garage quickly grew into a thriving business, fueling demand for a more efficient production. The Seat Shop’s first Zünd S3 cutter streamlined operations, but as orders increased, they took efficiency even further with a D3 and Mind software — keeping pace with growth while maintaining top quality.
The Seat Shop founded by Matt and Brian Verhalen, had its humble beginnings in a garage. The business of purchasing seats from a junkyard, fixing, and upholstering them soon expanded to factory-matched, pre-sewn seat covers. “We had stumbled on a market with a lot of demand,” Matt recalls, describing how their quick growth was driven by the lack of affordable options in the market. To keep their product offering manageable, The Seat Shop primarily focused on full-size trucks and SUVs, where the need for replacement seat covers was also the greatest.
The need for automation
Recognizing a hole in the market, especially with the high cost of dealership replacements and upholstery services, Matt leveraged his background in technology and entrepreneurship to bring a more competitive solution online. To reduce manual labor and production time, the Verhalens had acquired a dedicated leather cutter early on but soon faced challenges, particularly cutting the various other materials that go into the making of seat covers. Says Matt, “We had to find a machine that was versatile enough to cut not just leather but all different types of textiles.” With the help of modular Zünd cutting technology, they were able to bring the sewing process in-house, boosting both control over quality and profit margins. “The Zünd S3 just checked all the boxes, it was a gamechanger for us.”
Like having three machines in one
When the need arose for a “backup” cutter, the Verhalens considered adding a Zünd G3 but ended up purchasing a dual-beam D3 instead, complete with Mind digital workflow automation. The new system provided even greater efficiency and throughput handling both leather and textiles. In fact, “The D series had the throughput to cut all the leather jobs and all the textile jobs we needed in a single day,” Matt notes, highlighting the machine’s exceptional versatility and productivity.
Essentially, “it’s like having three tables in one,” he adds, “one work area where we capture the hide and flaw out what we don’t want to include and nest all the different shapes, the second for cutting, and finally the third, where we do the picking and sorting - and everything happens at the same time!”
Smooth operation
The Mind software and automated work-order system now used for controlling both Zünd cutters have made operations very smooth and easy, eliminating the previous chaos in the cutting department. “It’s just smooth sailing now. The operators just come in here and execute the jobs, and the tables run perfectly,” says Matt, emphasizing how modular Zünd technology—its ease of use, precision, reliability, and unsurpassed productivity—has been their front-row seat to success.