Business Spotlight: Thistle Grove Designs

Owner: Leslie Funk

Founded: 1995

Address: 1045 S. Farm Road 193, Springfield, MO 65809

Phone: (417) 866-7352

Fax: (417) 865-4577

E-mail: lfunk4@mchsi.com

Services: Interior decoration and consulting for commercial businesses

Employees: 1

Bad floral designs and thoughtlessly decorated spaces are the enemies of Leslie Funk.

Funk is the owner and sole employee of Thistle Grove Designs, a Springfield-based interior decoration firm that caters to commercial clients.

Killian Group of Cos., which recently moved to a new headquarters complex at 2664 E. Kearney St., is perhaps Funk’s most notable and largest client. With 85 full-time employees and $168 million of work billed in 2006, Killian is the area’s largest general construction contractor, according to a recent list published by Springfield Business Journal.

Funk started Thistle Grove in 1995 in Kansas City, where she lived for nine years before moving to the Ozarks in 1998. Her husband, Lonnie, was a regional manager for John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts at the time.

Funk holds a bachelor’s degree in education from Washington State University, but she minored in speech pathology and art – her true passion. After three years of teaching full time, art went from “avocation to vocation” for Funk.

Funky finishes

Funk turned her artistic eye to the dull – and sometimes downright tacky – interiors of offices and public places, particularly hotels, and questioned higher-ups about the dingy décor. She was often told that decorating details get short shrift.

Some architecture and design firms were handing off finishing details to interns, who may have been instructed to buy artwork to match a certain color palette, Funk recalls. That approach, she says, overlooks important details, such as framing, art quality or the artwork’s intended message.

Funk says more interior decorators are approaching commercial design projects from a holistic standpoint, and she counts herself among them. She describes the Killian headquarters, which incorporates plants and original artwork, as a “retro-but-modern contemporary building with a whimsical, industrialized edge.”

Funk met Killian Group President Bill Killian, who has a business relationship with Hammons dating back nearly two decades, while living in Kansas City. Earlier this year, Funk accompanied Killian and wife Lisa to New Orleans on an art-buying excursion that yielded many pieces now on display in his employees’ offices.

Devil’s in the details

Details make all the difference for Funk, who carefully chose the name of her home-based company.

“Thistles are very tenacious,” she says. “Also, they would never grow in a grove without a definite design. Things that can be very unruly and unmanageable can be managed, but you have to have a plan.”

Funk welcomes the ever-changing styles that influence interior design.

“That’s the exciting thing about being in a visual arts business,” she says. “Your focus has to change by the very nature of it. Fashions change. Styles change in what people want to see on their walls.”

Cathy King, owner of Springfield-based Integrity Design, has worked with Funk on a handful of projects, including a Joplin orthodontist’s office and a two-story Joplin building that houses an A.G. Edwards & Sons office. King says Thistle Grove is one of a kind in the area.

“(Funk) provides a good service, in that it’s some of the finishing touches that I might not necessarily have the time to worry about,” King says. “She’s got a good eye for color and a good eye for design. And she can pretty much work with whatever she’s got, whatever that type of design happens to be.”

Funk’s fees vary, depending on the type of work she’s doing. She typically charges a percentage of the total project cost, whether it’s a consulting job or contract work for a designer.

Commercial clients always have been the focus of Funk’s business, and she doesn’t expect that to change any time soon. She says residential projects just don’t hold the same appeal.

“The thing about working with commercial clients that I enjoy the most is their ability to reach so many people,” Funk says. “When you have a commercial building, you’re really setting the tone for not only the clients … but to enrich the employees.”

Funk says decorative elements in the workplace help to “humanize” the spaces. Recent trends she’s seen include color palettes and materials that reflect green building trends and the use of natural light.[[In-content Ad]]