For more than two decades, Rich Trubacek built and sold desks, chairs and other furniture at CI Select Furniture to aid students and office workers performing their tasks in schools and commercial businesses in St. Louis.
For all their business success, Trubacek and some of his installers began wondering a couple of years ago if they could not find a way to use the furniture they were selling to also make schools and workplaces more secure. That effort crystallized on Valentine’s Day last year when a gunman opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others.
“We kept seeing these interviews with students who said they were told to get behind their desks, but the bullets tore right through their desks and the desks provided very little protection,” Trubacek said.
Trubacek and two other furniture veterans – A.J.Unger and Kyle Kostos – decided to start their own business to make a bullet-proof desk to offer secure cover for those in schools or workplaces when a gunman attacks and begins firing. Through the company they started – First Line Furniture – a flip-top, bullet-proof desk was developed that includes wheels and a handle for both mobility and protection.
The patented design will shield those behind the desk – or desks when several are lined up against one another – from nearly all ballistics, even those fired with semi-automatic guns such as AR-15s or similar weapons.