Benchmark of excellence

“Built in America with Italian passion.”

That’s how Giorgio Usai sums up his work making and selling weight lifting benches. So sturdy, so reliable, and so elegantly simple, the weight benches and racks have become the standard at prestigious championships of pure human strength.

Usai and his son, Giorgio Usai, Jr., are the guys behind a company called Forza Strength Systems.

Usai got his start 24 years ago when he tired of driving a forklift for Kaiser Aluminum Corp.

He scraped together most everything he had and started a Spokane Valley gym that was heavy on weights and fitness, and light on fluff. Called Giorgio’s Fitness Center, it remains a serious place for workouts.

Though he no longer has a stake in the gym (it is run by his former wife, Susan, and their son, Usai, Jr.) the one-time powerlifter has plunged headlong into the business of selling his self-designed benches.

He got a lift when his son, a former Central Valley High School football standout, decided to hang up a job he hated to join the family businesses.

It was during a powerlifting meet 20 years ago that Usai noticed the benches used for bench presses were unsafe.

“I looked at what we were using and I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I thought ‘I can make better equipment.’ “

And sure enough, in no time his benches were supporting some of the top weightlifters in the world.

The news spread and today Forza benches can be found from coast to coast and in Europe and Asia, too.

In weight rooms across Spokane, lifters will find Forza benches.

“We love them,” said Jon Schuh, a health and physical education teacher at University High School. “He makes beautiful equipment, designs it for your weight room and paints it in your school colors. It just makes everything look snazzy.”

Many other regional schools use Forza equipment, including Central Valley, Mead, Walla Walla and Post Falls high schools and Spokane Community College.

It’s a pride point for Usai. He likes being able to provide quality equipment to local programs.

Even a stranger to weight lifting can tell Forza equipment is different that what one might find at local retailers.

The steel is half-inch thick and the welding is expert and generous.

At a recent regional meet, somebody using a Forza bench lifted 975 pounds.

“That’s incredible,” Usai said. “You put that weight on a bench, plus the 300 pounds a guy like that weighs … that’s a lot of pressure.”

For years, Usai and a few employees made benches and handled the sales and marketing.

It was a chore. When Usai Jr. finished college and realized that he wanted to work with his father, the two decided to try to make Forza into a bigger company.

Within the past few months they have turned metal fabrication over to Hydrafab Northwest. The bench pieces are then sent to Powder Tech to be painted. Both are Spokane companies.

“I wanted to keep everything we did right here at home,” said Usai. “These two companies are just incredible.”

The business of making and selling fitness equipment becomes more advanced and competitive each year, said Usai, Jr.

“Companies are welding stuff with robots and so we had to look at what we were doing,” he said. “For us to keep up and grow, we knew that we needed to be out there selling, meeting people.”

The company has two distinct product lines.

Most emphasis is placed on what Usai calls his championship series. It is his own design and the foundation upon which Forza was built.

But the company also sells another line of equipment. With technology improvements and high demand for good machines, Forza also sells weight machines often found in gyms. The Usais buy the machines from another manufacturer, negotiate the right to put the Forza name on the machine, and then sell and deliver them.

Each has to pass Forza’s quality test. While they won’t rule out someday selling benches and machines for novices, their focus remains on the high-end equipment.

“When you get into home equipment, it’s a price game,” Usai, Jr., said. “That’s not much fun.”

The Usais do sell championship series benches for some home gyms, but not often.

Instead, their focus will be on college weight rooms and wherever else strength conditioning is taken seriously.

As Usai, Jr., put it: “We’re having fun and within a few years I think sales are really going to take off,”