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The area’s largest and oldest office furniture dealer on Monday announced plans to relocate its headquarters and showroom from Indianapolis to Noblesville.
Business Furniture Corp.—which does business as Business Furniture + Co.—plans to open its new 62,000-square-foot facility in March 2026 at 11500 E. 146th St. at Campus Center Business Park. The 103-year-old company is currently located at 8421 Bearing Drive on the northwest side of Indianapolis.
Business Furniture’s headquarters and showroom will be located in the second part of a building where Indianapolis-based Kittle’s Furniture has a 93,500-square-foot distribution facility. The company also has showrooms in Fishers and Dayton, Ohio.
The showroom will be across 146th Street from the future corporate headquarters of Bastian Solutions, a Carmel-based subsidiary of Japan-based Toyota Industries Corp.
In addition to selling office furniture, Business Furniture + Co. focuses on designing health care, education and corporate office spaces.
“This move isn’t just about square footage—it’s about possibility,” CEO Mary Beth Oakes said in a news release about the move. “We’ve always believed that space shapes behavior, and in Noblesville, we’re excited to shape the future of work.”
The new headquarters and distribution center will house 75 employees and feature showroom spaces showcasing health care environments, K-12 and higher education settings and hybrid corporate workspaces.
Cy Ober founded Business Furniture in 1922 and operated the business from several downtown locations, including the historic Schrader Building at 101 S. Pennsylvania St. for 42 years before moving to its current headquarters in the late 1990s.
Ober’s family owned the company until 1987 when they sold it to Dick Oakes, a former executive with Grand Rapids, Michigan-based office furniture company Steelcase Inc.
Dick and Mary Beth Oakes co-owned Business Furniture until 2020 when Dick retired. Now led by Mary Beth Oakes, the $75 million Business Furniture is 100% woman-owned and a certified Woman Owned Business Enterprise.
In 2020, the pandemic caused a nearly 40% loss in revenue at Business Furniture. Four years later, though, the company achieved an 18% growth in sales revenue over its record pre-pandemic sales volume.
The company reported revenue of $66.9 million in 2023, according to IBJ research.
Mary Beth Oakes, who was recognized last year in IBJ’s Women of Influence awards, also co-founded Choreo to provide data- and people-driven research and change management to help organizations create workplaces that maximize their real estate and cultures. Choreo will also be housed at the Noblesville facility.
Campus Center Business Park features a 22-acre business park and a 16-acre commercial and retail area on the northeast side of the intersection of East 146th Street and Promise Road. The business park has two multi-tenant industrial buildings sized at 188,000 square feet and 127,000 square feet. Leo’s Market & Eatery, Dunkin’ Donuts and Jersey Mike’s Subs are open in the commercial and retail area.
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Good for Noblesville. No so good for Indy.
Moved here in 2015 to ‘get away from it all’. ‘It’ followed me🥺. The housing, commercial, medical, engineering, industrial and retail expansion is off the charts. Too many stacked townhomes. Intersection overpass at Allisonville and 146th has taken longer than the larger project 1 mile east at SR 37 4 years ago. Farm land acquisitions prior to 2010 would have made someone a very wealthy 💰 person.