Lockwoods Locked On Management Niche

Any office manager or business owner who has coordinated a companywide move from one location to another can attest to endless headaches. There are rental agreements to work out, office equipment to move and furniture to buy, space to design and construct, mounting deadlines and minute details — not to mention a constant barrage of unforeseen problems.

All of this is usually on top of a regular workload that just won’t wait.

Lockwood 2 Creations, owned and operated by Steve and Lisa Lockwood, specializes in workplace planning and project management services, specifically in company moves and facility redesigns.

L2C specializes in companies with 10 to 200 employees, but the Lockwoods also own Foresight Associates, a consulting company that designs workplace strategies for large corporate clients such as Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., and Wells Fargo Bank of San Francisco.

Lisa Lockwood said L2C can help a company with project management all the way from shopping for new space, or even building the space, to complete move-in set-up and operation.

The couple said sometimes companies don’t fully understand how an office environment can support the business, but it’s partly their job to help their clients see the full potential an office space can give a company.

Workplace design can add to a company’s efficiency, employee morale and ultimately to its profitability, the couple said. Ergonomic design and appropriate furnishings all lend them to efficiency, they said.

Steve Lockwood likens workplace design to a computer’s software. He said a salesperson needs different software than the company’s accountants or creative personnel. If you give the wrong software to an employee, they can’t do their job properly or nearly as effectively.

“We ask the question, ‘What is the right environment that will help you?'” Steve Lockwood said.

Most offices today are designed around concepts from the 1980s, he said, but look at how much organizations have changed since, based on technology and the required speed of business.

“Everything has changed, basically, except for the office environment and how that’s developed,” Lisa Lockwood said. “That needs to keep on track with the speed of change that the rest of business is changing at.”

The cost of designing a new workplace the right way is usually about the same as designing and implementing it the wrong way, Steve Lockwood said, so it’s obviously more beneficial to do it the right way the first time.

The pair said charges for their services are per-project, so due to the highly customized nature of the business, it’s impossible to put an average price on their services.

Through both their companies, the Lockwoods had 2004 revenue of nearly $500,000 — an increase of about 25 percent from 2003, Steve Lockwood said. The pair are doggedly chasing a 35 percent increase for year-end 2005 and may over-shoot that, he said.

Lisa Lockwood said in each project, L2C strives to mix in what’s good for its client company today, as well as what will be good for it in the future.

Both Lockwoods were in-house project managers for retail companies — Lisa Lockwood at Target Corp. of Minneapolis for 22 years, and Steve Lockwood at Meijer Inc. of Grand Rapids, Mich., for 30 years.

The Lockwoods moved to Bella Vista in December from their longtime home in Minneapolis, so their business is still a fledgling in the area. But the couple frequently travel north for on-going projects. They currently have three active clients in Northwest Arkansas and two in Minnesota.

A niche the two hope to capture is Wal-Mart Stores Inc. supplier teams in Northwest Arkansas.