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By Tarez Eisen
Office Furniture Partnership is an innovative dealership that prides itself on a business model that challenges the traditional, and knows how to have fun in a seemingly straight-laced world.
Created 10 years ago by three partners in the basement of one of their homes, and currently run by original founders Bob Rigby and Bob Marks, OFP aims to help clients create office environments that foster success and draw quality employees through creative, attractive furniture and designs. OFP helps create these inventive workspaces through the use of highly-regarded national and international product lines. Key lines include Davis Furniture, HBF, National, Global Industries, Inc., Humanscale, Keilhauer, and New Jersey-based Evolve Furniture Group. Kimball Office also recently made OFP its largest select dealership and products from DIRTT, a manufacturer of modular wall systems are also distributed through OFP.
DIRTT, says co-founder Bob Rigby, is a showcase of the new ways OFP is joining the green business world. The company’s modular wall systems are factory-built, featuring preassembled walls and access floors that can be easily moved and assembled in any creative configuration the client wants. DIRTT walls require no demolition and cut down on overall construction waste that traditional sheet rock creates. Of this new environmentally sound approach to building that OFP endorses, Rigby says, “It’s really a new source of business for us. We hadn’t gotten into this business until two years ago. And it’s a great way to offset the economy at this point.”
Most dealerships use a top-down model in which owners delegate responsibility, moving through layers of management before hitting the market. OFP instead aims to have every member of the company included on teams that interact with clients to achieve a low-cost, high-value end product. OFP decided to have a “flat” approach to business early on, says Rigby, where the teams always consist of members like interior designers and project managers at the same time.
There are no titles on business cards within the company, says Rigby, and everyone, including clients, design firms, project managers, and product line manufacturers, pow-wow on every bit of meeting, pricing, coordination, and education in the process. “One of our philosophies is that our employees are all a part of the solution. They don’t feel that they work for anybody; they work directly for the client,” says Rigby. “Everyone is empowered to make the right decision for the client.”
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