Joe Gammons graduated from high school not far from the Mackinac Bridge on Lake Huron, in a town of 15,000. Then he went to a university of about 45,000 — Michigan State — where he earned a degree in political science. Soon he was staffing for politicians, including Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), an influential member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Now, as president of what is arguably the ultimate “office solutions” company on the southwest coast of Florida — Office Furniture and Design Concepts headquartered on J&C Boulevard in Naples and Metro Parkway in Fort Myers — Mr. Gammons has left politics behind. Instead, he’s selling to a market that includes about 1.5 million residents ranging from Marco Island to Sarasota.
The company carries what Mr. Gammons calls “the Cadillac of office furniture,” Steelcase, among others. He furnished Gulf Coast Hospital, along with the newest academic building at FGCU, for example. His furniture goes to Kraft Construction, Robb & Stucky, and the Allan Systems Group based in Naples, to name a few. All of them benefit from the company’s integral approach, which not only offers furniture but space design, workplace analysis and move management, along with cleaning, service and post-sale support.
But all that doesn’t mean much, the 34-year-old entrepreneur figures. Not without the attitude.
“Just be genuine and honest, and do what you say you’re going to do. If you do those two things, inherently it breeds success,” he explains, adding that the owners of Steelcase, itself a $4 billion international industry, are Michiganders based in Grand Rapids who have the same attitude as he does.
Mr. Gammons carried that attitude right into his political career and out the other side of it. He was finally offered the big carrot — a chance to manage the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, in Michigan, he says.
But he took the road less traveled, and turned it down flat.
“That path looked like one where you could end up in the White House and divorced,” he recalls. “Granted, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But I was newly married. And my dad was killed (in an automobile) when I was 19. It was one of those things where he left the house one day, got in the car, and never came back. That changes your thinking. I was close to him. So now I tend to look at it like, ‘if that happened to me, what is more important?’”
Family is more important than anything else, he insists. Now, Mr. Gammons and his wife, Carrie Gammons, are Neapolitans. She stepped out of her career as a teacher to help raise their two small children at home.
The family and business life both began after Mr. Gammons flew southward to look at the business, then for sale, with his silent partner, Glenn Steil, a 68-yearold former Michigan state senator. When they bought it, Mr. Gammons re-imagined the whole thing, opening the doors anew in 2003 and moving the Fort Myers shop to a 21,000-square-foot new location. Then he got to work.
“He’s dynamic, he’s fresh, and he turned this business around,” says Laurie Gatreaux, a sales executive with 14 years at Office Furniture and Design Concept, and previous time in similar businesses in Miami — an “A” market, as they call it.
Southwest Florida remains a “B” market, although with Mr. Gammons and company filling the bill, that term may be uncharacteristically imprecise.
“The ‘wow’ for us, I guess, is that he has your back,” adds Ms. Gatreaux. “He can and will do anything. If he has to go deliver 18 chairs, he will. I’ve driven in here in the morning and seen him blowing off the parking lot.”
And now, instead of six employees, there are 21. Which might lead to this question: What recession?
But Mr. Gammons is not blithe about his success.
“I don’t think anyone has sidestepped this recession,” he notes. “But year over year we’re flat — our revenues are the same. We haven’t seen any decrease. consider that a great victory, especially since other businesses are down 20, 30, 40 percent.”
Competition is intense. So he attributes part of his anti-recession “victory” to this fact: “We are the only locally owned dealership in Southwest Florida. Which I think is key.
“We employ people from here. This is our home, so our relationships are important to us. I tell my staff: ‘You’re going to see this person at the grocery store, or at church, or at the park, so you better do what you say you’re going to do.’ That’s different from somebody driving in from Tampa or Miami.”
Very different. And it makes all the difference.
