A Northern California-based commercial office furniture dealership has purchased a competitor with offices in Spokane and Seattle.

One Workplace, of Santa Clara, California, has acquired OpenSquare at 126 S. Sheridan in Spokane, and OpenSquare’s flagship office south of downtown Seattle. 

The Spokane and Seattle companies will now be known as OpenSquare, a One Workplace Company.

One Workplace COO Mark Baker says tech-sector companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. and the health care industry are helping to fuel the industry’s growth.

“This was a good purchase for us as we’ve looked at better ways of serving our customers,” Baker says. “We have a lot of tech clients moving from here (Santa Clara) to Seattle and vice versa.”

With a total of eight locations now along the West Coast and one overseas in Manila, Philippines, One Workplace now has more than 1,000 employees, with eight in Spokane.

Baker says One Workplace is looking to grow the Spokane employee base in 2020 and will expand the current showroom floor or relocate to a large space.

“We’re running out of space where we are,” Baker says of the Spokane location.

Baker says the office furniture business sector is strong right now.

“The American workplace today is undergoing drastic change,” he says. “Spaces are changing and continue to evolve.”

In the tech sector especially, modern workspaces are now expected.

“How a company uses space is a key tool in the recruitment and retention of the workforce,” Baker says. “Today’s office workspace is more active than it has ever been, and work is more social.”

“The cubicles of year’s past served their purpose when workers came in, put their heads down and largely worked in a silo for eight hours,” he says. “Now, and especially in tech, work efforts are more collaborative and team-based in their nature.”

The health care industry also is undergoing dramatic changes in the way it serves customers, Baker says.

“Medical office furniture used to be designed for big hospitals and clinics,” he says. “Today, medicine is being practiced in mix-use spaces.”

The changing workplace also has altered the way office furniture dealerships do business, Baker says.

“Business models are evolving,” he says. “Our company has a specific technology group that handles just those businesses because they use space unlike most sectors out there.”