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 listening to feedback from our staff, and we set out to define our own work experience and where it would happen. Our grand reopening is a celebration of collaboration, innovation, and the continuous pursuit to create spaces that inspire productivity and creativity,”
Custer just cut the ribbon on their new headquarters space last month, and it’s a testament to the rather revolutionary change in a selling strategy. Custer now seems primarily to be selling new models of work, and secondarily the furniture that can enable those models to take shape. Perhaps it was prompted by the immediate challenge.
When the recent global pandemic began to recede, the dealership needed to find a way to make it desirable for their staff to return to working at the office. The Custer design team decided to survey their colleagues to better understand what they might need and want in a workplace, what would make them actually want to return to the office workplace. And then they went about creating a layout to meet those needs. There wasn’t much consideration given to creating just a showroom display. ”With all the feedback we received from our employees, we were able to transform our office space into an amazing workplace and showplace that is “all the things”. We have created a destination, a place to do your best work, a place to gather, collaborate and thrive,” said Beth Godfrey, Senior Interior Designer, and member of the Design Team.
The survey uncovered some impactful insights. For example, the Custer workforce needed the latest and best technology to support their efforts. Because remote working wasn’t going away, they would need to be able to efficiently connect with clients and other staff, sometimes as individuals and sometimes as groups. This led to an innovative application of the Steelcase Ocular Table, an integrated furniture and technology solution for facilitating group video meetings and digital collaborations. This useful worksetting is located, somewhat appropriately, in a room monikered “The 1981 Room” after the company’s founding year and in what had formerly been the founder’s, Dave Custer, private office.
They also learned that people wanted to work in proximity to their colleagues in specific departments, so that meant the finance people were collocated with each other, and the sales team the same. The survey process validated the importance, ironically in this digital age, of the design library and design project workspace. This finding even led to the creation of a custom storage system for “project boxes”, conveniently in the large, standing-height worktable in the design library. Custer is now experiencing designers from local West Michigan firms actually asking to visit to use the welcoming design library.
Apart from a highly informative yet simple display of the impressive portfolio of Steelcase task chairs, there is no furniture in the Custer space that is simply “on display” for customers to shop. The entire floorplate is dedicated to supporting the daily work of the Custer teams. There is no receptionist for the office since anyone visiting has most likely made an appointment with someone on the Custer team. And, as you would expect and as the staff survey revealed, there are ample spaces for informal gathering… a welcoming café, enclosed spaces for personal calls, and unassigned touch-down settings for visitors and mobile staff. There is hardly a worksurface in the space that is not sit-to-stand height adjustable.
The bottom line is that Custer really doesn’t have a showroom anymore, at least in the conventional sense. They have, instead, a workplace that meets the needs of their people while intelligently showcasing the diverse array of products you can buy from them. The design team has managed to use a highly representative sampling of their impressive and wide-ranging furniture offering, but not for display but for use by their staff. A tour of the space is less about discrete products and more about how the configurations of furniture, technology, and work tools are meant to address the evolving needs of today’s workplace. That’s the story they tell. Not “look at this product” but instead “see how this application meets the needs of a distinct way of working.” Custer is displaying strategies for using the workplace for their people as a way of selling the furniture products that can make it happen.
The final feature of this refreshed Custer workplace is highlighted by their Director of Marketing + Brand, Tricia Jackson. “Our space is not really done. We’re not finished with this project. The space will evolve, it’s very organic. We’ll keep trying to align how we work here at Custer with the configurations where we do that work. We are asking ourselves how we can all do our best work. We have amazingly versatile furniture products at our disposal, and we’re eager to show our customers how wonderfully they can work to create effective workplaces.”
In the end, Custer certainly sells furniture. However, their strategy for doing that has changed dramatically.
