Selling Something Secondary
It wasn’t that long ago that an office furniture dealer had a pretty universal model for their company space. They would have a large showroom where they displayed products in small-footprint settings, or sometimes arranged by product type (seating, filing, workstations, etc.), and then they would have a “back room” where there were small workstations tightly packed for their staff and perhaps some larger private offices for the dealership senior leaders. Add warehouse space and some manufacturer-supplied signage and that was your basic office furniture dealership. Most dealers today would tell you that approach is just no longer relevant. Ask Todd Custer, President and CEO of Custer, a West Michigan based Steelcase dealer headquartered in Grand Rapids and with offices in Traverse City, Kalamazoo, Holland, and Fort Wayne Indiana. Todd speaks about their space from a central focus on their people, not on a furniture product showroom. “We started by …