Rochelle Park, NJ - The DAK Group announced the formation of 4ONE LLC, a joint venture between USSC Group, Inc. ("USSC") and Freedman Seating Company ("Freedman"), dedicated to the design and production of passenger seating to serve the heavy and medium-duty bus market. The joint venture combines the extensive design and marketing capabilities of USSC with Freedman's proven manufacturing capabilities.

King of Prussia, PA-based USSC, founded in 1984, is the premiere designer and marketer of driver's seating for a wide variety of transport applications. USSC has also grown rapidly to become a significant player in the bus and light rail passenger seating market. Since entering this market in 2000, its new European-influenced designs have gained widespread market acceptance.

Freedman Seating, which was founded by Hyman Freedman more than a hundred years ago and remains family-owned, manufactures seating for the bus, rail, truck and commercial vehicle markets. Freedman has a strong position in the small bus market, which requires extremely quick manufacturing cycle times, demonstrating its strong production capabilities.

The DAK Group acted as strategic and financial advisor to USSC Group in the formation of 4ONE LLC. DAK's challenge was to assist USSC in realizing the market opportunity by identifying a strategic partner with worldwide manufacturing capacity and experience that could complement USSC's rapid growth in demand for its unique and creative products.

Alan J. Scharfstein, President of DAK, commented, "This was an extremely interesting opportunity, where we have combined the complementary resources of two quality companies within the transportation seating industry. We are extremely excited about the USSC-Freedman joint venture and anticipate that 4ONE LLC will quickly become the premiere source of passenger seating to the transportation industry."