Name: Anthro 

Address: 10450 SW Manhasset  

City: Tualatin  State/Zip: Oregon 97062   

President:  Shoaib Tareen

Products: Shelving  Employees: 100 

Anthro started as a subsidiary of Tektronix in 1984 and became an independent company in 1988. Its middle name is Technology Furniture because it only designs, manufactures, and markets furniture for high tech equipment.

Its flexible, modular, and rugged carts and workstations are used mainly to support PC’s. Other uses include: computer chip manufacturing, biomedical applications, factory automation, broadcasting facilities, and engineering test and measurement. Anthro is known for offering fine craftsmanship and exceptional service, old-fashioned values uncommon in the high-tech world.

Operations

Anthro designs and manufactures almost every product it sells. This eliminates vendors who may not appreciate its quality standards or be able to meet its gotta-have-it-yesterday time frames. Anthro customers buy directly from Anthro, by phone, fax or Web, and Anthro ships directly to their homes or offices. Or, if they prefer, they can buy Anthro products through their favorite office or furniture dealer, buying co-op, GSA contract, etc.

Guiding principles

Here are some basic beliefs that drive its business. Anthro is a place where they:

•Are fanatical about the quality of materials and craftsmanship.

•Give incomparable service, always asking what’s best for the customer?

•Provide customers with fair value for the dollar, rarely raising a price on any product in its 15-year history. Its goal is to continually lower prices.

•Have exceptional hiring criteria, so all employees are star performers. Anthro was honored in 1999 and 2000 by Oregon Business Magazine as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon .

•Support customers with cutting-edge technology (machinery and equipment).

Customers

Anthro products stand out as the standard in the industry, especially in hardware-intensive environments. Its focus is selling business to business and customers span the globe. They include large corporations (IBM, HP, Intel, Nike, etc.), small businesses, hospitals, non-profits, OEM accounts, and government organizations. About two-thirds are in the high-tech industry.

Its customers are twice as likely as the rest of the population to be online and 67 percent of Anthro’s customers in the past year had purchased previously.

As you’d expect from a furniture company with roots in high-tech, Anthro launched an Internet site early on in 1996. The site has grown from brochure-ware, which sometimes took hours to download, to a sophisticated e-commerce site offering every product shown in the paper catalog. From an 800#-line to an on-line store, Anthro continues its tradition of no-storefront, personal, hassle-free shopping.

Service

AnthroCarts come with a lifetime warranty. Anthro has been around since 1984, and carts sold then are still going strong. Anthro also has a 100-day Risk Free Promise that lets customers order what they think they may need, then keep only what they want.

Toll-free phone lines for sales and customer service are open business hours, Monday through Friday, 6:00 am to 6:00 pm Pacific Time. On average, Anthro talks to 900 customers a day.

Anthro receives more than 800,000 online orders, catalog requests, questions, problems, and kudos annually. Each e-mail message gets a quick, personal response. Customer service reps receive 160 hours of training before they even field a call, and 30+ hours every year after. Sales staff apprentice as trainees for approximately one year before being assigned a sales territory.

All products are manufactured to order overnight in its factory, then packed and shipped next working day. Custom products are often viable, especially for equipment manufacturers who want a custom support solution to bundle with their hardware.

Anthro supplies a Touch and Feel Kit (wood, tube, plastic, and castor samples) for a nominal charge, which is applied toward purchase. Customers struggling to imagine the perfect setup can get a computer generated 2-D drawing of whatever configuration they’re considering.

Quality

Anthro employs no quality assurance personnel. It’s everyone’s job to check and double-check for smooth, blemish-free, and accurately boxed products. AnthroCarts are produced to its own quality specifications, a variation of the golden rule. Anthro continually asks: “If I were the customer, would this be good enough for me?”

Its quality assurance process may not sound sophisticated, but the common-sense methods work. It has passed every customer’s vendor quality review, even as part of the ISO certification process.

Anthro tests new products to tough industry (ANSI/BIFMA) standards by having independent labs apply stringent drop, load and racking tests. State-of-the-art manufacturing technology means its AnthroCart shelves are cut as cleanly as a hot knife through butter so customers get finely cut and edged product.

Anthro is short for anthropometrics, the study of human bodymeasurement.