State Sales Moves from Trenton
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This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the July 24, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Sublease at 9 Roszel
ClinPhone, an electronic clinical trial management firm,
will quadruple its space with a move from 6,200 feet on Lenox Drive
to 25,489 square feet at 9 Roszel Road, subleased from Merrill Lynch.
ClinPhone is taking most of the first floor of the three-story, 111,768
square foot building on Roszel Road, almost adjacent to the Princeton
Hyatt.
Just two years ago ClinPhone had tripled its space. Calling itself
the leader in electronic trial management, with more than 700 trials
in over 80 countries and 60 languages, the firm takes data directly
from doctors and patients and manages data electronically to cut down
on a tremendous volume of paperwork. The new quarters will have space
for a larger training area and for in-house demonstrations of client
systems.
ClinPhone’s Lenox Drive quarters are up for sublease, says Joe Boiseau
of GVA Williams, who with Ken Abrahams represented the firm. The remainder
of 9 Roszel Road is also available for sublease, represented by Raymond
Sohmer of Insignia/ESG. Upgraded features here include teleconferencing
capabilities, interior loading facilities and CAT 6 voice and data
through the building.
"The new Princeton headquarters gives ClinPhone a solid corporate
base in the heart of one of the major global centers for the pharmaceutical
industry," says Howard Goldberg, vice president and general manager.
A graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Class
of 1977, he has a PharmD from the University of the Pacific (U.S,
June 23, 1999). "We are also actively recruiting for offices in
Chicago and San Francisco."
08648. Howard Goldberg, vice president. 609-620-7000; fax, 609-620-0258.
Home page: www.clinphone.com
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Office Furniture: `Pre-Owned’
In times past, buyers preferred new cars to used cars
under any circumstances. Now many choose the "pre-owned" luxury
car, loaded, to the dirt-cheap new car, stripped.
It’s the same with office furniture. Corporations are falling all
over themselves to buy each other out, which results in staff cuts.
Fewer workers means fewer chairs are needed. And fewer desks, wall
modules, and conference tables.
Here’s where "pre-owned" furniture presents a choice similar
to the one offered by car dealers: choose from high-end new furniture,
lower quality new furniture, or high-end "pre-owned" furniture
that has better ergonomics and better soundproofing.
Mercer Corporate Interiors, an office furniture outlet on Brunswick
Pike, caters to the latter market. It buys and sells such brands as
Herman Miller, Steelcase, Kimball, Knoll, and Jofco. It also gets
the occasional unusual piece. For instance, it priced a $10,000 10-foot
solid cherry conference table for $1,500. "Clients come in here
and get top quality stuff, and pay maybe 20 percent of the value,"
says Ralph Finaldi, general manager. Finaldi’s parent company, North
American Inc., does moving, warehousing, warehouse management, storage,
and furniture liquidations. It set up this office furniture outlet
on Brunswick Pike to solve a problem: What to do with the expensive
furniture it had acquired.
"What’s interesting is that they had sales outlets in Manhattan
and Newark, but you had to rummage around in a warehouse to see what
treasure you could find. And over the last few years, due to consolidations
and downsizing, the quality of the furniture they were acquiring was
just too good to sell in the warehouse. It was undervalued, and we
were pushing it out to get rid of it," says Finaldi.
In Mercer Corporate Interiors’ 6,000 square foot space, three-fourths
of the stock is pre-owned. Finaldi has 50 or 60 chairs, two dozen
files, desks, office suites, and sofas — plus inventory that can
come from the warehouse. The firm also does corporate art consulting
and office design.
Finaldi grew up in Newark, where his parents were in the manufacturing
business, and majored in fine arts at New York University. He lived
in Red Bank, working for ad agencies, and as a marketing consultant
for the print industry, he helped companies put together marketing
plans for publications. "Then, with Country Magazines, we worked
with residential developers to dress houses and put together sales
marketing centers." One of his clients was North American, which
is a major buyer of liquidation furniture.
"A couple of dinners and glasses of wine later, we thought that
a real showroom might be the thing to do, and the Princeton market
might be the place to do it."
"With preowned furniture, there is limited quantity, but it is
perfect for a small office or a start-up — and Princeton has lots
of smaller companies. We found that out by asking around among the
real estate brokers and office parks," says Finaldi. "I was
asked to set up Mercer Corporate Interiors as the first retail shop.
We started early in 2002." In just two months he sold 475 of the
500 Herman Miller chairs he had in stock. In his current stock is
a leather top conference table and a turn of the century Manhattan
partner’s desk.
Lawrenceville 08648. Ralph Finaldi, general manager. 609-671-9400;
fax, 609-671-9420.
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State Sales Moves from Trenton
After 57 years in Trenton, the mother/son team of Alma
and Larry Mosovich have moved their firm, State Sales Office Furniture,
out of Trenton to Hilton Realty’s Princeton Arms Shopping Center,
where it has a 1,700-foot office furniture showroom. It sells new,
refurbished, and as-is office furniture; it leases furniture, and
also does design and planning. The firm’s former quarters, a three-floor,
24,000 square-foot building at 694 South Broad Street, had an entire
floor of used furniture, but much of that market went away when big
box stores began to sell home office furniture of lower quality at
discount prices.
"We are looking to give some competition to Staples," says
Mosovich. Her company has a new line of economy home office furniture
for the entrepreneurial market. "The quality of commercial furniture
that we carry sets us apart from the discount stores. It has a guarantee
behind it and will hold up for years of daily use." State Sales
also carries a wide range of computer workstations — new, refurbished,
and as-is. "There is a dramatic savings in buying a refurbished
station," she says. Refurbishing a work station could mean repainting
the frames of the panels and/or refabricating panels. "But an
as-is unit can be acceptable."
To give the customer an idea of what they would be getting, they put
samples side by side, one "refurbished," one "as-is."
To see the actual item, a client visits the warehouse. All products
— case goods and workstations — are delivered and installed
by the manufacturer or the source.
Mosovich’s father, Emanuel Relles, had been one of three original
partners of Central Paper Company, founded in Newark. In 1930 he opened
a branch in Trenton and was amazingly successful, even at the height
of the Depression. He put his daughter Alma to work in the family
firm when she was 17 and balked at her mother’s desire for her to
go to college. "My father argued — and he usually won,"
says Mosovich. "He wanted me with him."
When he died, at 57, his cousin Leonard and son David took over the
business. Meanwhile, Alma had married Jonas Mosovich, who was working
at State Sales with his father. Jonas declined an offer to join his
father-in-law’s business in order to stay with his own father, who
founded the furniture business in 1945. When her husband died in 1989,
she took the reins (U.S. 1, January 22, 1997).
His first question, and hers, is always about the client’s budget.
"We say, `Let us go to work to come back with the best quality
for the affordable choice.’ For 57 years that has been a major selling
tool."
"There are 50 million choices," says Mosovich. "We have
been in business so long that we know what will work best for the
client."
Road, Princeton Arms Shopping Center, West Windsor 08550-1931. Alma
Mosovich, president. 609-490-9740; fax, 609-490-9767. Home page:
www.statesalesofficefurniture.com
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Warehouses Expand
CenterPoint at 8A, Monroe 08831. Tim Margotta, DC manager. 609-860-9090;
fax, 609-860-9111. Home page: www.grainger.com
W. W. Grainger, currently with 350 people at 300,000 square feet in
CenterPoint at 8A, will move to Exit 7A in Washington. Matrix Development
Group will build a 435,950 square foot warehouse, including 30,000
feet of office space, and sell it to the Chicago-based industrial
products distributor. The move is expected to take place early in
2003.
James Murray, development project manager at Matrix, said Grainger
would use the facility as a distribution center for its Northeast
activities and may employ more than 400 people over time.
distribution manager. 732-329-0111; fax, 732-329-2879.
Petco Inc. is also expanding. It has a 225,000 square foot warehouse
in Dayton, but later this year it will occupy more than half of a
528,000-foot building at Matrix’s CenterPoint at 8A, a total of 307,000
square feet in a new building, built "on spec" at 24 Englehard
Drive. The retail chain store with pet foods and supplies is based
in San Diego, has a retail store at Princeton Shopping Center, and
has had a warehouse at Exit 8A since 1992.
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Contracts Awarded
John R. A. Scott AIA, president. 609-452-1212; fax, 609-452-1943.
Home page: www.cuh2a.com
CUH2A, the largest architectural engineering firm in the state, helped
Rutgers University break ground last week on the $28 million life
sciences building on the Busch campus.
The three-story, 75,000-square-foot structure, expected to be finished
in two years, will be the geographic focal point that connects other
life sciences buildings on the Busch campus. An 8,750-square-foot
atrium, the centerpiece of the building, will host interdisciplinary
meetings and lectures.
The Human Genetics Institute, the department of genetics, and the
New Jersey Center for Biomaterials will all be housed in the new building.
"The history of science is replete with examples of how informal
cross-talk has planted seeds of collaboration that have resulted in
important scientific discoveries," says Dean Kenneth J. Breslauer.
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Biotech Moves
Junction 08852. Scott E. Coleridge, CEO. 732-274-0037; fax, 732-274-0501.
The seven-year-old carbohydrate-based drug discovery company has introduced
a new program, DiscoveryCollections, to make advanced chemistry platforms
available to researchers. Pharmaceutical companies can purchase one
or more of four separate collections of compound "palettes."
Each represents a different aspect of a new technology platform for
drug discovery.
The chirality of a molecule is important to drug development, says
Rawle Hollingsworth, the founder and scientific director. Molecules
used to develop therapeutic drugs typically form in non-chiral, mirror
images of themselves. Each mirror image can react very differently
in the body. For example, one molecule may show a desired therapeutic
effect, but its mirror image may cause significant, undesirable side
effects.
Because the FDA requires that the efficacy and safety of each mirror
image must be proved before a drug can be marketed, drug companies
must go through the costly process of developing batches of chiral
molecules. Synthon’s technologies simplify the process (U.S. 1, May
2, 2001).
08648. Johannes Dapprich, founder. 609-637-0878; fax, 609-637-9483.
Founded in January, 2000, this company aims to improve genetic analysis
by associating individual genetic makeup and drug response using "haplotyping."
Haplotypes are combinations of genetic markers, such as SNPs, and
haplotype analysis is more informative than studies based on individual
SNPs, says Johannes Dapprich, company founder. He has worked at Orchid
BioComputers, done consulting with Praelux, and been visiting researcher
at Princeton University.
He uses a "string with beads" rather than individual beads
without the string as an example of the virtues of unambiguous analysis
through haplotyping. "Haplotyping is the ability to separately
read maternal and paternal chromosomal fragments. Current methods
can only read both copies at once — they cannot tell from which
copy defects or markers (SNPs) originate, and how they are linked."
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Deaths
She and her late husband established the Bonner Foundation and Bonner
Scholars Program on Mercer Street, and she was a founder of the Crisis
Ministry Program. Funeral will be Thursday, July 25, at 1:30 p.m.
at Nassau Presbyterian Church.
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