Spokane-based commercial furniture dealer and interior services company Contract Resource Group Inc., which does business as Freeform, has merged with a Boise company.

Fernando Jauretche, Freeform’s principal and market president for the Inland Northwest region, says Business Interiors of Idaho will take on Freeform’s branding over the course of this year. Jauretche declines to disclose the terms of the transaction.

Jauretche says the merger, which was completed Jan. 12, was prompted by a shakeup in the design manufacturing industry. Last July, the manufacturer that Freeform had been aligned with, Knoll Inc., was acquired by competitor Herman Miller.

“Competing manufacturers saw that as an opportunity to approach me regarding changing alignment,” Jauretche says. 

The manufacturer Business Interiors of Idaho that contracts with Holland, Michigan-based Haworth Inc., had an eye on Freeform, he says.

“Rather than … approaching me directly, Haworth asked Business Interiors of Idaho to approach me to switch from Knoll, and to combine the firms and scale our resources,” he says.

The merger is indicative of broader trends within the commercial interiors sector. As big firms combine and take over more markets, smaller dealers are left vulnerable, he says.

“We’re definitely not a lone event in the industry,” Jauretche adds.

In total, 13 people now work at Freeform’s office at 715 E. Sprague, east of downtown. The combined company will have about 50 total employees.

Jauretche says the transaction triples the number of designers Freeform works with to nine from three.

The merger also more than quadruples the number of service technicians Freeform works with, from four to 18.

“We have more scale to service larger projects and larger accounts than we did when we were a smaller dealership here,” Jauretche says.