A buyer's guide: major Indiana suppliers of office furnishings.

If your company is in the market for new furniture, or if your old furniture needs an update, you won't have to go far. This month, we're profiling several of Indiana's many office-furniture dealers. Looking for Kimball products? Sold on Steelcase? Confused by ergonomics? Read on.

ATLAS

Atlas Commercial Interiors is the largest HON dealer in the state, according to its president and sales manager, Steve Nahmias.

The Indianapolis company was founded in 1946 by his father, Aaron Nahmias, as Atlas Specialty Co.

"We're unique now because we sell office supplies and furniture, with furniture comprising about 35 percent of our business," Nahmias says. For its stock, the company relies on many Southern Indiana furniture manufacturers, such as Inwood, Jasper Desks, Jasper Seating and Indiana Desk.

"We sell systems furniture - panel systems or dividers in anything from lower- to middle-market to A-Grade, and any price range except budget," says Nahmias. "We're very strong in the middle market."

Atlas offers complete design services, free delivery and installation, space planning, and computer-assisted design with Giza software.

The new focus is on ergonomics, adds Nahmias. "Adjustable-height tables and desks, where you can work both sitting and standing, are big in Europe, and they're becoming big in the U.S.," he says. "A gas lift or easy mechanical crank lets you lower or raise the table easily, so a person can adjust from sitting height to standing height several times throughout the day."

BUSINESS FURNITURE CORP.

Business Furniture Corp., Indianapolis, will celebrate its 75th birthday by moving into a 70,000-square-foot building at Interstate 465 south of 71st Street next January.

Founded in 1922 and now owned by Richard and Debra Oakes, Business Furniture Corp. was the first Steelcase dealer in the country - quite a distinction, since Steelcase is the biggest provider of office equipment in the world, according to Mary Beth Schneck, the company's vice president of marketing.

The company also carries items from other Steelcase-owned companies, such as Brayton, Metropolitan, Vecta, Details and Turnstone, and lines of furniture by National Office Furniture and OFS.

Business Furniture Corp. is capitalizing on the diversity of the workplace by tailoring work spaces to fit the employee. "People do different jobs throughout the organization, so you can't design one work station for all employees," Schneck explains. "Some people are stationary, and some are up and down all day. You can't put all employees in one type of chair."

The company's services include delivery and installation, customized service contracts, refurbishing, reconfiguration and space planning.

"We realize that not everyone is interested in buying all-new furniture," Schneck acknowledges. "They just need help utilizing what they have."

BUSINESS SYSTEMS INC.

It's all in the family for this 62-year-old company, founded in 1934 in South Bend by Julius L. Tucker. Its present owners, Thomas and Richard Tucker, are sons of the founder.

Business Systems Inc., a Northern Indiana dealer of office products, sells items by HON, Hanter, Paoli and Jofco, and has a computer-design department. Customers can see a prospective office configuration on the salesperson's laptop computer before a stick of furniture is purchased.

Other services include a furniture-maintenance program, installation and reconfiguration of panel systems, wood refinishing, touch-up and reupholstery.

"Teaming is the new concept in office furniture and design," notes Tom Tucker, owner. "We bring people together in a common area to interact."

COMMERCIAL OFFICE ENVIRONMENTS INC.

Growing up, Sara Cook watched her father run his own excavating company and decided to follow in his footsteps. Well, almost. "I knew I didn't want an excavating business, but I did want my own company," she recalls.

So, after working in office-furniture sales for six years, she founded Commercial Office Environments Inc. in 1987, now a successful northside Indianapolis company. "Haworth is our major supplier. They're the second-largest manufacturer in the industry, and they're very innovative, very aggressive in new-product development," says Cook. "But we carry many different product lines as well."

Cook notes that many of her customers demand warranties and service. "We get customers who have bought from a discount chain or from a catalog, and within a few months, the product is breaking. People are spending more money to have a company that will stand behind the product and come out and take care of something if it breaks."

Services include delivery and installation, subcontracting when needed, a computer database of products, and furniture maintenance and refurbishing.

CONTINENTAL OFFICE FURNITURE

This full-service office-furniture dealer in Indianapolis offers all price points and product types, from systems furniture to filing solutions. The focus of Continental Office Furniture of late has been speedy delivery.

"A significant trend is providing furniture in shorter lead times," says Conrad Kuczynski, president of the company's Indianapolis division. "People are looking at a two- to four-week lead time as standard now. Historically, lead times have been six to 12 weeks."

As the world moves faster, Continental Office Furniture keeps an eye on the needs of its customers. "We're planning offices to accommodate work teams - more meeting rooms, furniture layout that allows for quick and easy access to members of certain departments, and so on," explains Kuczynski. "We base our program on discovering the customer's needs and making sure the furniture solution we recommend helps the client become more efficient and profitable."

The downtown Indianapolis store sells Kimball International products, including Kimball Office Furniture, National Office Furniture and Harper's, all Kimball-owned brands.

Services include asset management, warehousing, upholstery cleaning, wood-maintenance programs, space planning, computer-aided drafting, delivery and installation.

DOANE-KEYES ASSOCIATES INC.

Terry Doane and Raymond Keyes started their company in the basement of Doane's Peru home in May 1981, and rejoiced when they hired their first employee three months later. Now the Miami County company boasts 50 employees, 11 delivery trucks, 60,000 square feet of space and 750 regular customers. "We have 1,800 furniture items in stock," Keyes says. "We deliver to a 300-mile radius area around Peru, covering Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio and parts of West Virginia."

A full-service wholesaler, Doane-Keyes Associates recently hired a full-time designer to accompany its dealers' sales staff on visits to potential clients. "We use a powerful new software program called 'Giza' that has taken the industry by storm," says Keyes. "Our people carry laptops and lay out an office, showing it to the customer from several perspectives. If it works on a computer, it'll work in reality."

Doane-Keyes delivers to both dealers and customers, and provides dealers with a 144-page, four-color catalog, as well as quarterly sales fliers. The company offers sales training and installation as well.

The wholesaler carries HON (one of the biggest names in the medium-price range, according to Keyes), as well as La-Z-Boy, Bush and Chromcraft. The company has seen an explosion in the popularity of panel systems for dividing offices, and contends that today's customer has a much wider range of fabric choices than ever before. "There's much more color than there used to be. It used to be all browns and beiges," says Keyes. "Then we went to burgundies, and now you're seeing more two-tones."

FIRST OFFICE FURNISHINGS INC.

First Office Furnishings helped develop ergonomics software that is widely used throughout the office-design industry today. Dubbed OccuHealth, the voice-animated CD-ROM demonstrates exercises to help avoid repetitive motion injuries and to pinpoint possible causes for pain throughout the body.

"I can sell you the best office furniture in the world, but if you don't use it properly, it won't help you," points out Tony Hodge II, ergonomic specialist for Indianapolis-based First Office Furnishings.

Hodge says the company, founded in 1985 by Tony Hodge Sr., offers more than 1,000 lines, including Trendway, Center Core, All Steel, Body Bilt, Hag, Davis, Dar-Ran, HON and Haskell.

Services run the gamut from refurbishing, computer-aided design, space planning and electrostatic painting to moving, delivery and installation. The company offers ergonalysis of clients' offices, a free ergonomics handbook and an Ergonomics Resource Center that features periodicals and independent studies published on related topics.

"We're seeing employers taking better care of their employees," says Hodge, "not only to reduce lawsuits, but also to increase productivity."

INDIANAPOLIS OFFICE INTERIORS

Jim Cleary, president and owner of Indianapolis Office Interiors, has an interesting take on his field. "It's a very complex business. We're almost like general contractors," he notes. "We may deal with the electricians, then turn around and provide carpeting."

Before Cleary started Indianapolis Office Interiors three years ago, he spent 17 years as senior vice president of a Boston dealership. He says the major difference between the Boston market and the Indianapolis market is timing. "In bigger cities, they often leave the furniture to the end of the project," he says. "Here they do it months and months in advance."

The downtown Indianapolis company sells primarily Haworth office furniture, "but we have hundreds of other lines - Crug, Executive Office Furniture, Kinetics," Clearly says. The dealer specializes in systems furniture and executive offices.

Services include design and space planning, delivery and installation, project management, inventory services such as storage, and refurbishing. "We provide workplace solutions, making the office environment more productive."

OFFICE INTERIORS INC.

After starting up in 1982, this Elkhart company proved such a success that owner Maria Slager opened a second facility in South Bend.

Purveyors of Haworth, Kimball, HON and American Seating office furniture, Office Interiors Inc. also provides design services, space planning, moving services, reconfiguration and furniture refurbishing and repair (including reupholstery and electrostatic painting). In addition, the company sells carpets, wall coverings, artwork, plants and desk accessories - "all the things that put the finishing touches into your interior," says Slager, who is also the company president. Prices range from lower- to middle-market into the high-end arena.

Office Interiors employs a design team that works with AutoCAD, creating an office to specification. Advanced software can even yield proposals in 3-D color.

Staff members currently are being trained in Feng shui, the popular, centuries-old Chinese art of placement. Feng shui involves aligning work and living space with the positive energies of earth and heaven through form, color, shape and arrangement. For example, "you wouldn't want someone sitting with their back to the door. They could be startled by someone entering the office," points out Slager. "And an executive sitting back-to-the-door would have less of a presence."

OFFICEWORKS/OFFICE PAVILION

OfficeWorks/Office Pavilion sells primarily Herman Miller systems furniture, but has branched out into other professional furniture lines. Milcare, a line of health-care furniture manufactured by Herman Miller, sells well with hospitals, according to OfficeWorks marketing manager Joyce Posson. "We sell things like nurses' stations and carts for the pharmacy areas of hospitals."

OfficeWorks also carries Herman Miller's SQA line - that's short for "simple, quick and affordable." And it markets As New, a Herman Miller line of remanufactured furniture. "They actually take systems furniture that people have turned back in, perhaps because they downsized, and they repaint, reupholster, redo the electrical (wiring) and resell it for 50 percent less," Posson explains.

OfficeWorks has a service division called OfficeWorks Service, which offers installation, maintenance, repair and reconfiguration. Two other divisions, StorageWorks and Corporate FloorWorks, round out the company's service offerings. Tom O'Neil is president of the 12-year-old company, located in Indianapolis.

PRODUCTIVE BUSINESS INTERIORS INC.

Dubbed PBI for short, this company occupies a 140-year-old granary in the historic Fort Wayne area called The Landing.

Founded in 1982 by partners Douglas McPhail and Kay Miller-Mayberry, PBI has operated in the old granary since October 1986. This Steelcase dealership works with some 700 other vendors, offering "basically everything in office furniture, whether a corporation needs fancy audio/visual equipment or a gas station needs a desk," according to operations manager Maureen Gallagher.

With a nod to the "open" concept of business emerging today, PBI is focusing on configuring office space to allow for communication. "We're seeing walls coming down - even paneled walls," says Mayberry. "People are beginning to work much more in teams, and they need to communicate with their fellow workers. We're finding that workers are at their workstations maybe a total of two or three hours a day. The rest of the time they're conferring with other people."

Mayberry adds that mobility is another emerging issue in the workplace, and that PBI works to provide plenty of conferencing areas.

PBI offers a wide range of services, including a staff of designers who work with AutoCAD. The company also provides space planning, delivery and installation, furniture refurbishing, warehousing, furniture rental and leasing, and reconfiguration.

RJE BUSINESS INTERIORS

In business since the early 1980s, RJE Business Interiors has gained in market share every year it has been in operation. "We're a $13 million office-furniture dealer," says account executive David Gross. "We are definitely the innovative leaders in the industry - others copy us."

Owned by Ed Fucik, Jim Matthews and Rusty Lee, the northside Indianapolis store carries Knoll, Versteel, Harter, La-Z-Boy, Chromcraft, Paoli and some 55 other manufacturers. Two of the owners also operate RJ Contracting in Chicago, one of the largest refurbishers of commercial furniture in the Midwest.

RJE Business Interiors specializes in system furniture, featuring Knoll workstations and accessories. Services include installation, project management, interior design, space planning, refurbishing and warehousing.

Gross believes systems furniture is popular today in response to the need to use space efficiently. "With all the downsizing that's going on, fitting as many people into a space as possible while having a professional, aesthetic look is the number-one concern," he says. "We offer furniture that meets today's changing technology."

SANDERS OFFICE PRODUCTS

Formerly Southside Office Supply, this 25-year-old Indianapolis company changed names two years ago to make it clear that it covers all of Indianapolis.

Founded by current owner Harry Sanders and his brother, the business is operated today by many Sanders family members. Sanders Office Products recently opened a second facility a couple of doors down from the main store. "In January, we began buying and selling scratch-and-dent furniture," explains Beth Thompson, interior designer. "It's going really well. Many people just want a desk and don't mind that it has a scratch on it. They can get a really good price."

The main Sanders facility sells office furniture in every price range, although Thompson notes that most Indianapolis buyers are interested in the middle market. Among the top brands sold by Sanders are HON, La-Z-Boy, BPI and Trendway.

"We're a full-service company," adds Thompson, listing free delivery, installation and design as popular services. "I'll visit the company to take measurements and come back and do a 3-D layout for them on our CAD system. That's all free of charge," she says. "Then I'll consult with them on color choices, layout and brands that meet their needs."

Thompson says systems furniture - wall panels and dividers - are popular now. "People want furniture that allows them to take full advantage of the space in the office," she reports.