Home Builders Association of Denver | 2018 Small Business Award winner: TRIO Environments

2018 Small Business Award winner: TRIO Environments

Principal creative director Angela Harris, center, leads a meeting at Trio. The firm’s work can be seen in more than 21,500 homes.
By KATHLEEN LAVINE, DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL

One day when Angela Harris was 7 years old, growing up in Englewood, she noticed her dad’s new storage shed in the backyard – and wasn’t impressed. It needed some flair, a touch of color, some pizzazz.

So Angela added some flower boxes beneath the windows, a shiny red door and even a small kitchen.

It’s no big surprise that she would go on to open her own design firm.

Today her work extends far beyond her childhood backyard – all across Colorado and throughout California, Nevada, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Ohio and even into Canada.

It wasn’t a straight line to design. She graduated with a degree in marketing and management from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1998 and landed a job with an engineering firm. She didn’t like it – she felt felt she wasn’t living up to her true potential.

So she began designing her own career – dropping everything and going back to her true love, interior design. She spent her last $500 on business cards and some direct mail pieces to launch TRIO Environments. That was 1999.

Today, TRIO’s 20-plus employees handle more than 70 projects at any given time. To date, the firm’s work can be seen in more than 21,500 homes and has generated over $7 billion in revenue for its designs in model homes, clubhouses, multifamily projects, restaurants, and other commercial projects.

How did the company get there? Harris says it’s mostly because of TRIO’s five core values: creativity, communication, consistency, collaboration and connection.

She says all five are significant, but creativity is the most important because “it’s the root of all innovation, problem solving, and relationship building.”

Another key Harris says is that the company has been able to carve out “a unique position” in the marketplace because it offers “a one-stop creative shop and pulls together the dots between marketing, branding and interior design. We’re a market-driven, creative, firm, and that makes us unique. Our mission is based on customer service … to provide projects on time and within budget.”

Harris is also quick to credit her employees for much of the success.

“TRIO is made up of an amazing group of people,” she said. “There is so much respect, admiration and inspiration here, and that gets articulated in the work we deliver and the relationships we build in the industry.” Read the Article by DOUG MCPHERSON – Special to the Denver Business Journal