Evo Business Environments

After working in the commercial interiors industry for two decades, Chris Cerrato dreamed of owning and running a company built around people as passionate about the industry as he was.

In 2013, he founded Evo Business Environments with four employees. Cerrato compared it to “jumping off a cruise ship with a dinghy,” but at the company’s two-year anniversary party, it already had 10 employees and a newly renovated office. Now, 10 years later, the company has 31 employees and more than $10 million in sales for the past two years.

Evo’s target market is companies that value their people, culture and image so much that they are willing to invest in them. “We help customers create amazing, good-looking, productive workspaces,” Cerrato said, and the importance of a good-looking workplace cannot be overstated. “It says a lot to the employees about how much you care about them and want to invest in them.”

Not only is the look of the workplace vital, but Evo also prioritizes a thriving culture in its partnerships and its own company.

“Our No. 1 goal, and it’s written down in order, is enjoy going to work,” Cerrato said. “I love the fact that my people get how important culture is to the success of the company and the sanity of the individual. My No. 1 most important thing is having great people that I enjoy working with and are as passionate about this thing as I am and love what they do.”

The company has grown at an average annual rate of 26% during the past three years, and Cerrato hopes to continue that growth in northwest Arkansas at the company’s Rogers office.

The company has already expanded its team with its first warehouse manager, which allowed it to have its own 20,000-SF warehouse in North Little Rock. Evo also went from no installers to 16 of its own, and this year the company plans to build a new warehouse in Rogers.

“We were using an installation subcontractor, and we got to the point where we wanted more control over that,” Cerrato said. “Now, basically half our employees are field guys. That has given us the control, which relates to better service.”