During the early days of Office Direct, founder Phyllis Cannava woke up, put on her office clothes and headed to her car in the driveway. A short drive around the block and Cannava arrived at her office in the right frame of mind to work – right back at home.
Twenty-two years later, Cannava now has a parking lot to pull into and a successful furniture dealership and interior-design firm. She’s sold millions of dollars worth of furniture, outlasted competitors, decorated CEO offices – and enjoyed every minute of it.
“It’s rewarding to leave a client with a wonderful environment to work in,” Cannava said.
Warwick-based Office Direct serves a dual role. The company sells furniture direct from suppliers, often at steep discounts. Office Direct will also send in its two designers to create the office layout, and suggest flooring, paint colors and even artwork. The company can also coordinate a team of contractors to outfit an office accommodating five employees or 105 employees.
Office Direct’s work can be seen at Johnson & Wales University, Rhode Island Hospital, United Natural Foods’ Providence office and hundreds of other businesses in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. Cannava is especially proud that most of her jobs have come thanks to word-of-mouth and successful pitches to companies she approaches.
For Cannava, the thrill is in finding and making the deal. She scours newspapers searching for hints of companies on the move. She hosts informal lead-generating meetings every two weeks. She provides the conference room, the coffee and the doughnuts – a small group of contractors provides the gossip.
Her pitch is simple: Companies expanding or on the move are going to buy furniture and arrange it. So why not let a professional handle the process and lay out an office that employees enjoy? Oh, and Office Direct can save you substantial money by rescuing old but well-maintained furniture from former offices and ordering from discount catalogs.
The savings can add up. Cannava recently outlined a price for carpet for a potential client. Ordering them through her could save the company as much as $15,000 compared with buying it on the open market.
“I’m just like a [W.B.] Mason only better because Mason just sells you a desk. I tell you why that desk works and how that desk makes you work better,” Cannava said.
Cannava comes with a healthy stock of experience. She entered the business in the late 1970s. Fresh off a divorce, the 37-year-old mother of two needed a job. Attracted to the potential of working with decision-makers and playing in a man’s world, she sought jobs in the furniture business. She landed jobs at furniture dealers in Providence and eventually at National Office Furniture. As the company went through its fourth reorganization, Cannava became fed up. She was tired of working for companies that displayed indifference to their employees and convinced that she could do it better. In 1989, she quit and started Office Direct from her Cranston home.
She leaned on contacts that she made at previous jobs to build the business. By 1991, work was piling up and she hired a part-time administrative assistant. By 1996, she had outgrown her home and opened an office at Pontiac Mills in Cranston.
In 2005, she moved to an office along Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick. Last year she moved to a different suite in the building with three full-time employees.
Her landlord let her outfit her new offices and Cannava went all out. She and her team ditched the stereotypical office scheme of drab gray and traded in a pallet of colors. She put an old sewing machine table in the reception area, hung brightly colored artwork on the walls and laid nice carpet.
“My showroom should reflect us because this is what we do,” she said. “We’ve got to look good.” •COMPANY PROFILE
OFFICE DIRECT
OWNER: Phyllis Cannava
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Furniture dealer and interior design firm
LOCATION: 380 Jefferson Blvd., Warwick
EMPLOYEES: 4
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1989
ANNUAL SALES: $1.5 million
