Melony Fields began selling commercial furniture for Corporate Interiors in January, using her contacts from previous jobs to reach out the designers and contractors to offer her services for upcoming projects.
With little more than half of 2016 in the books, Fields has already met her sales goal for the year.
“There was really a need for it,” Fields says of commercial furniture dealer based out of St. Petersburg, Florida.
The company, which operates under the umbrella of the CI Group, opened its newest showroom in downtown Baton Rouge’s the Kress Building in June. Other locations are in Tampa, Jacksonville and Deerfield Beach, Florida, as well as Columbia, South Carolina.
Fields, who co-owns the Baton Rouge showroom in a partnership with the company’s owners and is a senior vice president with the company, says Corporate Interiors are different from other commercial furniture dealers because it’s not forced to push their main line, Teknion. Other dealers are forced to push their main lines to meet quotas, she says.
“We’re concentrated on providing the best solution for the customers instead of pushing one specific line,” Fields says.
Besides Teknion, Commercial Interiors sells about 100 different brands, including OSS, Global, JSI and Hon to name a few. CI Group was led, in part, to open a store in Baton Rouge there had not been a Teknion dealer here for several years. Local businesses that use Teknion products include La Capitol Federal Credit Union and Republic Finance, Fields says.
Fields is targeting some of the industrial and petrochemical plants in the area as potential clients for the pallet racking and warehouse storage retrieval systems the company offers.
“I think it could be a huge point of growth for us to tap into that,” she says.
—Ryan Broussard
