Elizabeth Dvorak, CEO and founder, Workscapes Inc. a Herman Miller Dealer in Tampa, Florida.
NOLA LALEYE
Why Elizabeth is a big deal: Elizabeth Dvorak founded Workscapes in 1998 and leads one of the largest woman-owned businesses in Florida. The company has gone from less than $2 million in sales early on to more than $55 million, expanding to five Florida locations. The company has become a dominant specialty contractor and has a large focus on the well-known and popular Herman Miller line. Workscapes ranks as one of Herman Miller's top 10 all-around performers nationally. Workscapes was based in South Florida. But just before moving into newly built out space in Miami’s Doral neighborhood, the company had an unexpected suitor offer to buy its South Florida business. It was not a deal to pass up. She and her husband, Richard, decided as a family to come to Tampa rather than return to Orlando, where the company was founded 21 years ago. Richard Dvorak is the company president and has a diverse industry background from paper to logistics — all of which has been parlayed into Workscapes ops. Originally in a small warehouse space on Tampa’s eastern outskirts, the company moved to downtown Tampa to establish its new headquarters on the ground floor of the BB&T building where a Konica showroom once was. “Family first” is Elizabeth’s philosophy and the spirit is an integral part of the Workscapes environment and tradition, its website says. Workplace design is evolving. Now, smart furniture uses sensors that anonymously aggregate data around occupancy.
You made a big investment in your downtown Tampa space. What have you learned? The biggest thing I notice is not enough people know who we are and what we are doing here. We are definitely not a coworking space. People think we are. They stop once or twice a week to ask if we have desks available. We say we can sell you a desk but not coworking space. It has that connotation. One thing we are going to do is utilize our windows better and refresh our showroom to exhibit more of what we do and communicate that. We build great environments to help people do their best work. How do we? We really understand the company, the business drivers and what they are trying to achieve. What are their pain points? Maybe they have too much real estate or too little. People aren't talking to each other. They have a morale issue. They have a productivity issue. We take all that and we are an ingredient of the built environment with furniture to accomplish a better environment. We help corporate, health care, higher education and government. Ninety-three percent of Fortune 500 companies choose to buy Herman Miller around the globe. So Herman Miller [products] are about half our business. The rest is hundreds of other lines to outfit the office. So we do all the space planning and we do all the furniture specs. We work with the architect. We are an extension of their services to their client. We can do test fits for spaces which is very helpful to the brokerage community. With good design and space planning, sometimes you don't need a lot of real estate and you can save a lot of money. The other thing is looking at mobility patterns and how are people moving throughout the day, to place people in the right areas by what they do so there's not traffic jams and you can control noise that way too. So it's really good planning. We do a lot on the front end. It's not just preparing a furniture order.
What are some 2020 office design trends? I think it's a very democratic approach to the floor plate so that everyone can utilize the whole space instead of people individually assigned to specific spaces. Now they can have a touchdown space but they also have five or six other choices of where they can do their work if they need to go into a private room, or if they have a small meeting, or if they want to be in a team setting. There are other shifts. One is speed-to-market. We are doing a lot of premanufactured wall and case work. People are not building in wall and millwork anymore. First of all, they can't find the millwork company a year later. If something happens, they can't find the people. These are warrantied, premanufactured, factory-built, that's assembled elsewhere and when we get it we just assemble it and just move it in and place it. So, for example, in the medical community, we are doing premanufactured casework and millwork that is for all these medical clinics and stand-alone emergency departments because they can open weeks ahead of schedule and not wait on trades and try to find labor.