History
Our corporate mission began with a focus on delivering the best office furniture solutions to the St. Louis’ business community. Since then our scope has expanded with our capabilities now global in scope and include the ability to provide fully modular interiors through “tilt up” interior —construction products and services. Our early decision to measure our success through the satisfaction of our clients, rather than sales volume, has fueled our growth which has been significant and sustained.
1988 – Larry Born, Bob Funke and Chuck Donnelly establish POE with an emphasis on being a single source resource for corporate clients. MCI Communications awards million dollar project to POE allowing for successful launch and profitability in first year.
1990 – POE shifts from Kimball, primarily a wood manufacturer to Haworth, a single source supplier of high quality office furniture. POE moves to prestigious first floor, MCI building
1991 – Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems is one of the first of the Bell Companies to move from their existing standard and buy from POE and Haworth.
1993 – Southwestern Bell Headquarters moves from their current supplier and awards POE a 22 story office renovation project for historic 1010 Pine Building. Sales revenue exceeds 10 Million.
1998 – Become St. Louis’s first “Preferred” Haworth dealer, considered Haworth’s best and most committed business partners meeting stringent criteria in business development, industry training, sales growth, and financial commitment.
1999 – POE acquires St. Louis’ most established office furniture dealership, The Clark Peeper Company. The combined companies also resulted with POE becoming the largest OFS dealer in the United States. OFS is the world’s largest privately held manufacturer of fine wood office case goods and seating.
2001 – POE enters adaptable interiors market teaming with Haworth to distribute Haworth’s Architectural Interiors products. Now known as “Organic WorkSpace” this environmentally friendly method of interior construction utilizes raised flooring, tilt up interior walls, plug and play voice/data and modular cabinatry
creating flexible, dynamic and first time cost effective work environments.
2002 – Enterprise Rent a Car adopts “Organic WorkSpace” construction method as their corporate standard. After through research it’s determine the initial costs are identical but there are substantial downstream benefits with “Organic WorkSpace”. All subsequent Enterprise spaces use this method of “tilt up” interior construction.
2003 – High growth allows POE to move to our 40,000 service center building in Westport. Move allows for better servicing of customers as all services and departments are under one roof. It also allow us to demonstrate “Organic WorkSpace” concepts to our prospects and customers.
2005 – Express Scripts uses the Organic WorkSpace approach for their new corporate campus. Enterprise Rent a Car develops the exterior construction of their new 200,000 square foot Weldon Springs building around the interior planning methods of Organic WorkSpace.
2006 – POE sales reach in excess of 23 million.
2007 – Ownership is consolidated through the retirement of Chuck Donnally.
Come visit our Corporate Offices and Learning Center. You’ll experience first hand how an Organic WorkSpace will give your business the competitive edge.
