Tangram Interiors’ Director of New Business Development Adam R. Simmons lives downtown, walking distance from the company’s 12th floor offices and showroom on West 7th Street.
But no matter how far the commute, Simmons said the company wants its employees and clients alike to feel at home in the office.
Simmons likes to use the word “resimercial” to describe the L.A. space that Tangram, which said it is Southern California’s largest office furniture dealer, has occupied for about two years – about the same length of time Simmons has been with the company.
That does not mean the employees, or clients, are sleeping on a sofa in the showroom, or living above the store like the mom-and-pop shops of years gone by. In fact, telecommuting options allow employees to work most anywhere. However, when staff or clients enter the space, Tangram wants them to get comfortable.
Simmons said the company’s office style is on trend with what clients are asking for. Tangram deals mostly in furniture, but its products and services also include flooring, technology and design. Simmons bills it as a one-stop resource for outfitting commercial spaces.
“We spend so much time in our office, we want the elements that are familiar to us, that feel like home, that are comfortable enough that we want to stay until midnight and work on that proposal,” Simmons said about the company’s workspace designs.
Tangram’s open floor plan at its downtown office includes a full kitchen, and meetings might as easily be held at the Tangram-design kitchen bar as a conference table.
Tangram’s company headquarters is in Santa Fe Springs, and it has offices in Fresno, Newport Beach, Bakersfield and Riverside. Simmons calls downtown the company’s main business hub, however. Gensler, Rottet Studio, and SAA Architects are among the many downtown architecture firms that work with Tangram.
“We are very much a part of the downtown landscape,” he said. “Our clients are here.”
The location has become part of the company’s identity.
“We host dinner parties here,” Simmons said. “It’s centric to keeping people here on weekends, bringing our clients back into downtown on the weekends, letting them enjoy the space with a beer or a glass of wine while they wait for traffic to die down.
“We like this space not only because of being downtown, but it feels very warm. It’s somewhere than you want to hang out.”
While Simmons and other company staff spend plenty of time in the field, Simmons said he is in the office more than most. And, even with the open floor plan, he usually does his own work in one of the company’s smaller offices.
Why? Simmons, an Atlanta native, said his Southern gregariousness doesn’t always fit with today’s wide open creative spaces.
“For me personally, I tend to like to gravitate into one of the private offices because I am a very loud person,” Simmons said with a laugh. “I talk on the phone all the time, and I am nosy into everyone else’s business, or curious, I guess, about what is going on around me, so it’s often hard for me to concentrate.”
– Diane Haithman
