We want it faster, we want it cheaper, and we want it now is the refrain of consumers in almost every product market. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about food, internet service, or modern office furniture—market demands are still the same.
How Can U.S. Modern Office Furniture Companies Afford to Produce Stateside?
For this reason, modern office furniture manufacturers can no longer afford to pay U.S. labor rates to produce their furniture, given their existing dealer network business model. It’s no secret that office furniture producers have had to seek sources outside the country in order to meet the demands of the U.S. market.
This change of process has brought with it new sets of issues to be considered. Setting aside what the transformation has done to U.S. manufacturing, the question becomes: how can we get modern office furniture from there to here…and make it cheaper in the process?
The biggest problem that stands in the way is freight cost. Shipping costs for fully-assembled office furniture offer no savings, so somewhere along the line, companies decided to ship office furniture knocked-down. This little maneuver would save cube space in the container, affording office furniture producers the advantage of lower-cost world labor markets.
The Office Furniture Assembly No One Thinks About
The problem with this scenario is that the furniture still has to be assembled by someone. In most cases, that’s the customer. Any way you slice it, a portion of the manufacturing still has to be done stateside. With that formula firmly embedded in the American way of doing things, does anyone ever factor in the cost of their own time to build the furniture in their office—or does that not matter?
Issues with Office Furniture Assembly
You receive a box at your office with your modern reception desk. There are a hundred pieces inside, and you need to figure out what goes where. That’s issue number one.
Issue number two is that no matter how good you are at assembly, and no matter how good the office furniture design team is, few designs can substitute for factory construction and assembly.
Modern Office Furniture Solutions to Think About
For these reasons, every modern reception desk manufactured at our 90 Degree Office Concepts facility is built and assembled before shipping to our customers. This way, we know every piece has been well-fitted, saving the customer time, thought, energy, and quality concerns. Even in cases where furniture does require some assembly, like 12' L receptions desks, we take the furniture as far along the installation process as is possible and practical, so the client has far less work, trial, and error to deal with. All hardware remains in place, so simple installations are a breeze.
Here’s the bottom line. We feel this method saves the client time…time best used to further their own business, not ours. It ensures control over quality, because our office furniture is glued and fastened in place right from the factory.
