401k Furniture

Warmly colored armchairs make the conference room at Great Spaces look more like a lounge in a hip café than a place you might expect to attend an office meeting. Company officials say that’s because the kids who spent their college years working on group projects at places like Starbucks have now graduated and are ready to send that long, rectangular conference room table at their new job to a museum.

Great Spaces, a new downtown Honolulu resource center for office construction, furniture and design, is ready for the day when those kids are old enough to sign big checks – and for companies eager to attract and retain younger workers. “Part of what we can do is create spaces that are more fun, more productive, and will encourage employee retention. … It’s kind of like a 401k plan of furniture,” says Great Spaces president Brian Woolford.

That means being able to construct offices that provide comfortable environments for this new generation of employees, but also doing it in a way that doesn’t crush their values of living green and protecting Hawaii’s natural resources.

How is that done? The traditional way to construct an office is to make a floor plan, build frames, install wiring for technology and seal everything with drywall and floor product. Tearing down those walls to make room for new employees when the business grows creates a lot of noise, dust and garbage. To add to the hassle, depending on the size of the renovation, it can take months just to obtain a permit to do construction in downtown Honolulu.

Great Spaces sells unique pre-cut and reusable wall and floor products that they can take down and reconfigure within days without destroying technology or creating waste. Since they are officially considered furniture, no construction permit is required.

And, of course, the furniture is also pretty trendy.

While the cost for a Great Spaces remodel is 10 percent to 15 percent more than a traditional remodel, company officials say, their products are reusable and provide a better long-term investment.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to Hawaii Business Magazine »