"Our first priority is to understand the needs of our customers and make thier experience with us easy and fun." —Charlie Nicholls
Santa Rosa-based Trope Group creates workplace solutions for businesses in Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Solano, Mendocino and Lake counties. The company represents manufacturers of open plan and conventional office furniture, and it’s the sole authorized Herman Miller dealer in the North Bay. Herman Miller is a recognized innovator in contemporary interior furnishings and solutions for office, education and healthcare environments.
According to Charlie Nicholls, principal and co-owner of Trope Group, “Our first priority is to understand the needs of our customers and make their experience with us easy and fun.” The company offers a single point of contact for all your workplace needs such as furniture, filing and storage, ergonomic tools, lighting and conferencing solutions. Its services include professional consulting, space planning and design, certified installation and asset management.
Enjoying its sixth Best Office Equipment award from NorthBay biz readers, Co-Owners Christina Pratt and Nicholls attribute their success to the belief that, “Our customers are partners, and we’re there for them every step of the way.” Both believe customer service begins from the first call and should continue until the project is complete.
With increased awareness of how the physical environment can affect employee attraction and retention, workplace design is moving away from “cube farms” and more toward settings that enhance collaboration. Trope Group designs include comfortable lounge areas, open cafés for more relaxed work areas and private settings for meetings and video conferencing.
Pratt and Nicholls are concerned about the environment and the impact that office buildings can have on carbon footprint. To that end, Trope Group specifies products with recycled content that are Greenguard certified for indoor air quality. They are also members of The Redwood Empire Chapter of the US Green Building Council, whose mission is to promote environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy design. Additionally, they support the Sustainable Enterprise Conference, an annual day-long learning and networking conference dedicated to helping North Bay businesses, nonprofits and other organizations transition to economic, environmental and social sustainability.
The company will soon move to a new facility at 2305 Circadian Way in Santa Rosa. “The new showroom is double our current size and will better let us demonstrate our capabilities to design new ways of working in a true ‘living office’ setting,” says Pratt. “We’ll also be adjacent to our warehouse, which will be more efficient in many ways.”
Successful projects require a team effort, and Trope Group’s 19 professionals demonstrate that good customer service and collaboration are key to client satisfaction: ”We believe in the talent of our team. Every member of our organization is encouraged to take responsibility for the success of each project and ‘do whatever it takes’ to achieve our customers’ goals.” Teams are led by account executives that interface with designers, project coordinators, accounting and installers. This ensures the client’s needs are heard through every step of the process. “We focus on discovering our customers’ business needs first and looking at projects from their perspective. We want to support their goals by helping them achieve more with their real estate.” says Pratt.
