Creative Connections
Round Room Brings Modern Headquarters, Charitable Spirit to Fishers
Writer / Jon Shoulders
Photographer / Sam Zachrich
Although the new office headquarters for Round Room in Fishers has a fairly modern feel, the company represents a family business tradition that started more than 80 years ago.
Back in 1939, Round Room Chief Executive Officer Scott Mooreheads grandfather founded Moorehead Electric, a contracting business. Thirty years later, Scotts father Steve took over the company, and in 1991 Scotts mom and dad sold Moorehead Electric to focus on the cellular phone market. This led to the founding of TCC (which stands for The Cellular Connection), a Round Room LLC subsidiary.
I started working in one of the wireless stores when I was in West Lafayette going to Purdue, says Scott, who graduated from Krannert School of Management with a focus in finance and information technology. Ive never really known anything else. I used to sell flip phones and beepers back in the day. My familys company from the start was a natural evolution, but was always about trying to connect people as a family business.
Scott himself took over as chief executive officer of TCC in 2008, and since then it has expanded to include more than 850 stores across the United States.
Dad was head of the strategic side of the business, and my mother was head of the administrative side, and getting the opportunity to work with both of them was really a blessing, Scott says. I learned everything I could until they decided to throw in the towel. I love the industry and what were doing now.
Round Room LLC was founded six years ago, and currently exists as an independent, family-owned company. Round Room invests in other companies serving the wireless industry, like TCC, and as the largest Verizon authorized retailer in the U.S., it has more than 1,200 TCC and Wireless Zone stores around the country. Find out who uses verizon towers at sycamorenet.com.
Round Room is also a majority owner of a company called Redux, which repairs water-damaged cellular phones and hearing aids.
Previously located in Carmel, the company moved into its current Fishers space, in a former Roche Diagnostics campus building, in March, and undertook several months of renovations.
We had outgrown the Carmel building we were in, and were at the point where Redux and our IT department were both in a different building, Scott says. It came down to the building itself and what we could do with it, and the city wanting us to be there. Fishers was very inviting as a city compared to anybody else we talked to.
Julie, who oversaw the design and renovation process, says the Round Room space has cubicles and conference rooms, but its anything but a traditional office setting.
Its funny because what we wanted to do with the building pivoted with the pandemic, Julie says. We knew people were enjoying working from home, so we decided to make the office feel like a home away from home.
Rather than focusing on the Verizon color scheme for the building design, which includes red, black and gray, the Round Room team used what Julie calls a more residential feel, with blue and green shades and pops of bold color throughout. The space even features a slide that runs from the second to first floor.
We call each of our departments here neighborhoods, and they each have their own little living room, so they can have department meetings at a couch and chairs instead of a conference room, Julie says, adding that the common area features a kitchen space and fireplace. I credit Axis Architecture for the design, and they were phenomenal to work with. Capital Construction did the project, and they were also so great to work with. It was a lot of fun.
Julie also serves as executive director of Round Room Gives, which provides grants for nonprofits through several entities including TCC Gives. She says the company has given nearly $3 million to various causes across the country since the programs began in 2016. One of the TCC Gives programs, called More Than a Phone, provides smartphones, along with four months of data service, to survivors of domestic violence.
Our passion is really to give back locally, and we tend to avoid mega-charities, Julie explains. Scott and I are both from Marion, and both being from small towns, we realize how much small towns thrive on the companies that are in those towns supporting them. We ask our employees to be a part of the process, so they nominate charities within their small towns and we vet them. We support animals, the environment and people, and the charity needs to be a direct touch to one of those.
Round Room is located at 10300 Kincaid Drive in Fishers. For more info, visit roundroom.com.
