Tips for buying used cubicles?

With the business climate mired in a recession, anyone looking for furniture these days is asking the used furniture question. Many times I have heard the statement “There must be a lot of used furniture available with all of these companies laying people off or going out of business.” This is true.

There is a lot of used furniture available. Much of it is old or junky, because a lot of furniture was purchased in the late 90s and early 2000s during the boom. Or it is in dot-com colors like purple or yellow or orange. But there is a lot of good furniture as well.

How do you take advantage of the great price advantage of used furniture in your company’s facility? Here are some tips.

Be flexible – Be flexible about what you want. Most cubicles are 8x8 or 6x8. Most are also taller heights like 66”. Everyone wants smaller cubicles with lower panel heights these days. Those inventories are more rare and therefore more expensive. So when I get a call saying, “I want 48” tall 6x6 cubicles in light beige with glass elements.” I tend to suggest refurbished or new furniture.

Think Long Term – Unless you know you are outfitting a space for less than a year, look for something that you can add to later that will match. Either that or plan your space so that you fill it up and by all you will need for the full space. Buying matching furniture later is always more expensive than your original furniture. Some people don’t mind having the second set of furniture not match. This is the very cost effective.

Set a realistic budget – Decent used cubicles (Like the Allsteel Terrace shown at the top) in this market cost from $500 to $800 per station. Cheaper cubes are available, but they will be older and possibly in bland or nasty colors and finishes (Like the cube shown below). This price does not include installation charges. And no, you cannot install them yourself. Installation for a bare bones crew in an easy access building will cost $150 to $225 per station. If you have to have weekend or after hours access, require union labor or a stair-carry is required, add more money.

Plan ahead – Give yourself as much time as possible to determine your plan in advance and then look for the right inventory. Get a plan from your landlord. An AutoCAD (.dwg) file allows your vendor to plan the space to scale so you know what can fit. Do a block plan in 6x8 and 8x8 cubicles and see if the counts work for you. Then go look for the size you want. Think about what height panels you want. Full privacy is 62 to 70 inches. Seated privacy height panels are 47 to 56 inches. Open plan heights are below 47 inches. You can mix the heights too. Don’t get too specific though. (See point 1)

Find a vendor you trust – If you commit to one reputable dealer before you start, they will work harder for you. Ask for two or three names from your real estate broker or colleagues. Interview them and then select someone as your top choice. Be open about what you are doing and tell them if you are talking to others. If you see something else from someone else, show main partner vendor. Odds are they can find something similar or even get you the same furniture. Be aware that dealers may show you inventories that they do not own. This is okay and will get you a look at more product. A true partner will show you more and work harder to get you what you want. Give your partner the last look before you buy.

Good luck shopping.

SRK

Formaldehyde - A Bad Chemical Being Phased Out

Beginning in January 2009, the California Air Resources Board will begin phasing out formaldehyde from being used in the manufacture of fiberboard, plywood and other products prominently used in the making of office furniture.

According to the press release 08-90: "All businesses that manufacture, sell, use or supply composite-wood products to California will be subject to aspects of the regulations. These businesses include panel manufacturers, importers, distributors, retailers, and fabricators of finished goods. Only composite-wood products that meet the standards may be used in the fabrication of finished goods, such as furniture, cabinets, etc. once the sell-through provisions expire. The regulation allows for current stocks of non-compliant composite-wood inventories to be sold for a period of time in California."

"The regulations are expected to increase the cost of four foot by eight foot panels by one to two dollars but they will dramatically reduce the public's exposure to this carcinogen. Phase-one will cut formaldehyde emissions by 180 tons-per-year and phase-two another 500 tons-per-year." Phase 2 will be phased in by 2012.

This may have a big impact on furniture imported from Asia, as these regulations will be the most strictly in existence.

Photo of medium density fiberboard from Wikipedia. I also told about how fiberboard is used in the construction of wood and laminate furniture in my previous post Laminate or Wood Furniture - What is the Difference?

SRK

I Don't Want My Back To The Door

"I hate having my back to the door." This is a constant refrain I here from cubicle dwellers. Gunslingers like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name never liked doing it in the old west. And according to Dragon Feng Shui, "Facing a wall can make it seem as though you will never get ahead, as your progress is blocked." They recommend a mirror. But we can show you how to face the door without using mirrors.

With a few extra planning steps. It is a snap to configure your cubicles so that you can work on the computer and not have your back to the opening.

Just place the corner on the wing panel as shown in the first photo of Steelcase Answer cubicles. As an added benefit, this configuration results in more workspace for the person using the cube than the standard back-to-the-opening configuration. You will need to figure out how to bring power out to the corner. This can add to the expense. Of course, a cheap solution would be a long plug strip.

If the cube is at least 8x8, you can use a 36" corner and a 24" return surface to get workspace to the right of the corner. This still leaves a three-foot opening.

Another idea is to use a curved straight surface that is slightly wider on the end nearest the opening. This work especially well in smaller cubes like 6x8. In these days of flat screen monitors, you really don't need the depth of a corner worksurface to accommodate the monitor. See the second photo of Teknion Leverage cubicles.

If you can't reconfigure your cube, Dragon Feng Shui has more tips.

SRK

What the heck is a pedestal?

Being an Office Furniture Geek, I often slip into "furniture-ese", that obscure lingua franca of my fellow furniture shleppers. One of the primary terms in this language is the term pedestal.

Pedestals, BBF on the left and FF on the right.

A pedestal is a small set of file drawers that sits under a desk, or in a cubicle it sits under the work surface. Normally about 15 inches wide and 28 inches or less tall, they typically come in two varieties. Box/Box/File (BBF) or File/File (FF). A BBF is a 3 drawer pedestal that has two 6 inch tall (or box) drawers and one twelve inch tall (or file) drawer. A FF pedestal has two file drawers that are 12" tall.

Box drawers store your pencils, calculator and other small items. My Mom used to call this the junk drawer. The uncharacteristically clearly-named file drawer is for filing.

Just to confuse the issue, some people call a Box/Box/File a 6/6/12 and a File/File a 12/12. There are also B/F files with just two drawers of 6 and 12 inches, respectively. These tend to hang from the worksurface which makes them a suspended pedestal. Suspended meaning it is attached to the worksurface and does not touch the floor. Also there are mobile pedestals, which have wheels. And freestanding pedestals that are not attached to the worksurface above them. Some pedestals can have a pad on top and double as a guest chair in a pinch.

Below is a photo of what most people think is a pedestal.

Open versus Collaborative Environments

Whenever I am planning spaces for customers the issue of privacy versus openness comes up. Do we want our people to collaborate in an open environment? Or do we want more privacy so people can concentrate and do their work?

This often comes up as an issue of tall panels versus short. But it also incorporates, cubicle size, station orientation (Do I sit with my back to the opening or facing the opening?), who gets private offices and common areas like conference rooms, "all-hands areas" and informal "bean bag" areas.

Mark Erickson from Mark Erickson and Associates says it involves hi-tech versus hi-touch. "People often think they are communicating, when they are really only talking through their computers. The contact with other people is often missing."

With Mark's help, we came up with three phrases, probably not original, that describe the scenarios we see most often.

CAVE - where private offices and/or large cubicles, 8x8 or larger, with tall walls of at least 66 inches in height are used. Conference rooms are available for meetings as well.

CAVE and COMMONS - with tall cubes or mixed-height cubes where open areas are liberally interspersed throughout the space. These can be both formal conference rooms and informal areas for ad-hoc meetings.

OPEN COLLABORATIVE - with typically smaller cubes with height of less that 53" so that you can see throughout the space when standing. These may also include areas just loaded with tables. Open Collaborative spaces often have lot's of conference rooms for private meetings as well. (Above; Photo of Teknion workstation at Zazzle.)

I will be profiling different users in future blogs to point out the plusses and minuses of each design. Stay tuned.

SRK

Remanufactured Furniture

A Wall Street Journal Article titled "In With The Old", details the process of reconstruction as a green solution to both customers and producers. Furniture is featured prominently in the article.

The article describes three main processes that are encompassed by the term reconstruction: recycling, refurbishing and remanufacturing.

Recycling is breaking down products into their various components and then reconstituting them into another or similar product.

Refurbishing takes an existing product and restores it to its original condition.

Remanufacturing is like refurbishing but it aims to make the product better than the original. In the case of cubicles for instance it may add updated fabrics, finishes or features not in the original.

This process is very common the cubicle world. My experience is that the customer would save 25 to 40 percent over similar new product.

SRK

Fight Terrorism While Buying Cubicles

The U.S. is under severe pressure to reduce its dependence on foreign oil. This isn't just to keep prices down at the pump. It directly affects world politics with regard to the support of terrorism by Islamic Fundamentalists like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Every time we buy oil from the Saudi's, we are shipping money to them. They in turn fund these groups by financing Islamic fundamentalist madrassas (schools) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many of these schools are where young people are taught the fundamentalist teachings which later make them more likely to join these terrorist organizations.

These ideas are outlined in great detail in the books Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and Oliver Relin.

As Americans, every purchase we make has an effect on the world. If you want to choke off the supply of money going to these organizations, the best thing you can do is buy items that use as little petroleum in their transport and manufacture as possible.

Most office furniture these days is manufactured off-shore, primarily in China. The manufacturing process alone is petroleum intensive. But the transportation of those items to the U.S., is also petroleum based.

By purchasing previously-used furniture locally, you can eliminate almost all of the petroleum consumption. Another option is to purchase locally refurbished product, eliminating the long-haul transportation and most manufacturing.

One new line of furniture, GQA Furniture, is produced from over ninety percent repurposed content. Cubicles are recovered with fabric made from recycled plastic bottles. Pedestals and all other metal are repainted using water-based environmentally sound painting practices. Worksurfaces are used surfaces that are turned upside-down and re-laminated. They are then edged with polypropylene edge banding. All the work is done locally to reduce transportation costs. Right now GQA is just being rolled out in Northern California, with plans to expand to the larger market soon.

Whoever thought you could be a Patriot while buying a cubicle?

SRK