CURRENTS
Nailing down a niche
Commercial framing company finds an open market

Ashley Wilson
Inside Business - Hampton Roads
Monday January 9, 2006

In 1999, Linda Troche, a newly single mother who’d spent more than a decade of her life in part-time odd jobs, did something daring: She took $1,500 of inheritance money from her grandfather, purchased a sofa-sized professional mat cutter, and set up a business in her home.

Six years later, her upstart commercial framing and frame installation company in Virginia Beach, Center of Attention, has been successful enough to support her family, send her first child to college and pay the salaries of three other employees. Troche, 43, has never taken out a business loan, never hired a small-business counselor, and yet the tiny company’s sales have tripled in the past year, turning $100,000 in profits.

“My grandfather would start a small business every summer, and up until his 90s, he was notorious for coming up with great business ideas,” said Troche. “So when he passed away, I decided to do something he would do, and I was just in the right place in the right time.”

COA represents a remarkably small local niche: subcontractors that provide artwork consulting, selection and installation services to commercial interior designers. Combine a small niche and a big local construction trade, and Troche finds herself in the middle of an almost limitless market.

That’s something that Maxine Baer, an interior designer at HBA Architecture, can attest to. Baer used COA to select and hang three floors of artwork for shipping giant Maersk Line Limited’s offices in downtown Norfolk – something she wouldn’t have wanted to do herself.

“I’ve schlepped a lot of artwork in my day,” Baer said. “I’d go to the art galleries, pick out the artwork, lug it all down and hang it myself. When I was a junior designer, this was no big deal, but generally, I’ve come to the point in my career where it’s too expensive for me to do all that. And having to pick it all up in my Mustang is not so great.”

Finding Troche’s service was a welcome relief, Baer said.

“There are some national companies that offer that service,” Baer said. “There’s one located in Massachusetts that’s online, and they say they can get it hung, but for some reason it doesn’t have the same comfort level of knowing that you can meet her on site, which is what we did. We walked through the Maersk site and talked to the client, and she was right there with me, knowing what I was trying to accomplish there.”

Troche started knocking out her commercial niche from the moment she went into business. Years of working part-time in a local art and framing store had convinced her that retail framing was not the lifestyle she was looking for or the market she could compete in.

“Standing behind the counter all day at a retail place, staying until 9 at night and waiting for someone to come in – that wasn’t the direction we wanted to go down,” Troche said. “So we custom-designed our own company.”

To do that, Troche had to advertise her services in the cheapest way possible: networking.

“It wasn’t long ago that it was a major ordeal for me to walk into a crowd and say ‘Hi, I’m Linda,’” said Troche, who frequently finds business through the American Institute of Architects, HRACRE and other local networking groups. “The first time I did a presentation, I almost had a heart attack. But I realized that if I don’t communicate what I do at these events, nothing materializes. So you have to get your going pants on and get going.”

Troche also had to aggressively seek out new businesses entering the market or established businesses that were constructing new buildings. And she kept tight control of business finances, remaining in her home until it was no longer cost-effective.

“A lot of commercial vendors won’t ship to a residence, so it forced me to move to an industrial warehouse,” said Troche, who located COA in an aluminum-sided shop on Birdneck Road, just under the stairwell of local seascape artist Rick Romano. “You want to keep your overhead low, your satisfaction high and still make a living. I’d just take some of the larger projects we had, make sure payroll and things were taken care of, and then put it straight back into the business.”

Troche’s big purchases included an industrial-sized vacuum press for dry-mounting large pieces and a software program that allows her to select from millions of images instantly.

Troche’s services have also expanded to cover items like mirrors, signage and consultations.

“They’re helping me look at logo options, they’ve also called me saying, you might want to call this person or that person, like a consultant, almost,” said Candi James, business development manager for Prestige Floors Inc., which boasts several pieces of COA artwork on the walls. “They set themselves apart because they’re so diverse.”

In the six years that COA has done business in the area, the company has contracted with HBA Architecture, RRMM, Ionic Dezigns Architecture, Gwaltney Fleming and Eubank Design Concepts, and COA has performed commercial work for corporations including McDonald’s Corp., Gold Key/PHR Resorts and Dollar Tree Stores. Troche has overseen preservation work for Sentara Leigh Hospital’s 100th anniversary and has framed celebrity art for Mahi Mah’s and Croc’s restaurants. She keeps a business development manager on staff and hopes to one day obtain SBA and GSA certifications and to expand her location in the warehouse.

“I remember saying, ‘If we could just get one big commercial contract,’” Troche said. “Now I say we need one a week.”