Posts Tagged ‘Office Furniture’

NeoCon East - New Commercial Furniture Part 5

Saturday, December 3rd, 2011

Worksurfaces were in evidence everywhere at NeoCon East this year. Here are just a few of the desks and tables that stood around looking impressive at the Baltimore convention:

All-in One and One for All

This ISE All-in-One Desk is designed for student or employee training environments. It isn’t just ergonomic – it’s electric! The desk features an automated lift mechanism to raise and lower the flat screen monitor. This means the monitor can be hidden away when it would interfere with line of sight to the instructor. The CPU shelf is part of the leg of the desk for both use and storage. Cables are all tucked away neatly in the body of the desk. The whole thing is on casters so it can be relocated easily as needed.

Hello, Motus!

This piece of office furniture combines the best features of a conference table and a Murphy wall bed. When you use the table, it looks like a normal boardroom table with a classic dark wood or ultra-modern white glass finish. When you store the Motus, the legs rotate out and the top flips up to minimize the floor area required to store the table. The first table you roll into a corner or closet takes up a space only 24” deep. Each additional table in the nested series only adds an extra 15” to the overall storage footprint. This table is more fun than a transformer robot and less likely than a Decepticon to destroy human civilization as we know it.

Do I Hear an Ekko?

This table doesn’t have any fancy moving parts. It doesn’t have to. The Ekko Table Series from Davis Furniture arrests the viewer with the sheer beauty of its architecture and the richness of its materials. The table top rests on a swirled tripod of metal that’s unlike any other table leg or column in the office furniture industry. The list of available “toppings” is better than what you’d find at your favorite froYo shop. You can choose traditional surfaces like solid marble or select a rainbow of colors or patterns captured in clear resin with a tabletop by 3form®.

Best Time to Buy Home Office Furniture

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Savvy consumers know that prices vary with the seasons. With many different items, there’s an “ideal” time to buy. For home office furniture, that time is fast approaching. Here are a couple of reasons why.

Fresh furniture designs are often rolled out in springtime (starting as early as February). Many dealers are looking to empty their showrooms of older models to make room for new pieces. Check for a sweetheart of a deal between now and Valentine’s.

Many new businesses get kicked off in January. Dealers may capitalize on this fact by offering special sales on items that are great for home offices and small office locations.

Of course, any time of year is a great time to get rock bottom prices on used office furniture. We’ve always got plenty of items on hand for your startup business venture.

3 Antique Office Furniture Features That Deserve a Second Look

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

Office furniture from a century ago isn’t designed for today’s modern technology. You won’t find it riddled with data ports and tricked out with articulated monitor arms. But there are a few features from days gone by that would still be kind of cool to have in today’s mass produced office furniture items.

Roll Top and Drop Top Desks

It’s nice to be able to lock the individual drawers on a modern desk. But it’s even nicer to have a lockable screen roll or down or fold up over the entire desk top. You could leave your good pens and your favorite stapler out on the desk without being afraid they would disappear. The computer monitor and that stack of work you left undone wouldn’t be able to stare accusingly at you either. Sure, finding a roll top desk that would actually accommodate a computer monitor would be tricky. But a laptop would fit in there easily!

Slant Top Filing Cabinets

The Klamath County Museum has just added an ancient wooden filing cabinet to its historical furniture collection. Besides being a lovely piece of equipment, this 4 foot high pedestal style cabinet also has a useful feature – a gently slanted top. This surface provides a place to open a ledger book or sort through a file folder at a comfortable viewing angle. Another feature of this cabinet that is surprisingly modern is its modular nature. It’s actually composed of five components that fit and lock together to create the full piece.

Solid Construction and Natural Materials

We think most designers would agree “wood and leather go together”. Both these materials have a unique grain that ensures no two pieces of office furniture are exactly alike. Back at the turn of the last century, a good office chair was made of solid oak with leather upholstery. While many of the parts were machined, the finishing was often a matter of custom craftsmanship. It’s no wonder you can still find a chair made 100 years ago that’s still in working condition today. Of course, the tradeoff is that these wooden chairs usually weren’t that comfortable. Perhaps we need to blend space age materials with these old fashioned good looks to create the perfect office chair today.

When Office Furniture Dealers Go Bad

Friday, November 11th, 2011

We’ve looked at a lot of office furniture scandals involving government customers over the last couple of years. But sometimes, it’s the dealer and not the consumer who strays from the straight and narrow path. The CEO of the Office Furniture Depot in Lakeland, Florida just busted an employee in charge of Accounting for allegedly stealing more than 100 grand from the company since 2005.

According to an investigator assigned to look into the case, the company’s controller, Timothy Butler, had been cooking the books and pilfering money for years. This activity included siphoning off money from cash sales and forging time sheets to pay commissions and bonuses to himself. As of Wednesday, the employee was still in jail. What did the investigator say when he found the culprit? “Looks like the Butler did it!”

Last Chance to Take Full Advantage of Section 179

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

You might be thinking about starting off the New Year with some new office furniture. However, if you wait until 2012, you could miss out on a pretty substantial tax benefit for small businesses. Under Section 179 of the IRS code, you can currently depreciate the full amount of business equipment purchases right away (up to $500,000) instead of on the regular schedule over a period of many years. This deduction is being steeply reduced in 2012 and even more in 2013.

Think about what a nice juicy deduction might do for your business tax return this year. The only caveat for this tax incentive is that you have to take delivery by the end of 2011. This means purchasing items that are in stock is your best bet. We’ve got a huge inventory of used and refurbished office furniture (including cubicles) that’s ready to go on short notice. Let’s see how much money we can save you before Christmas!

NeoCon East: New Commercial Furniture Part 1

Saturday, November 5th, 2011

Wow, first there was NeoCon in Chicago, then NeoCon Canada, and now there’s NeoCon East to talk about! Pretty soon, they’ll have to change the name from NeoCon to PerpetualCon. As always, the big names in office furniture all put in an appearance last week. The Tweetosphere was chirping with news and invitations to come see this booth or that. The most exciting part of the convention was (naturally), all the new products making their debut. In this series, we’ll take a virtual stroll through the marketplace to see what our favorite manufacturers are up to.

Humanscale

The Float™ work table actually made its first appearance at the Chicago NeoCon event, but it’s being shown to a different group of potential buyers at NeoCon East in Baltimore. As you might suspect, this Maryland event is focused on government buying programs. We’ll see if this sit/stand desking solution becomes a popular GSA item for ergonomic workspaces.

The idea of a height-adjustable worksurface has been explored in many different iterations by various manufacturers. Some use a motor to lift and lower the worksurface. Others rely on manual adjustment. The Float takes its mechanical inspiration from the principle of counterbalanced motion. This means very little force is required to shift the surface up or down – even when it is loaded with a hundred pounds of office equipment. In fact, Humanscale says you can operate the adjustment feature with one hand to float the tabletop into your desired position.

The table has a 20” range of motion to accommodate sitting and standing workers of many different heights. Options include different table widths from 36-72” and colors ranging from silver to black or white. You can even mount a tabletop from another manufacturer on the Float table base if you prefer a different look. So, that’s what’s up (and down) in the realm of adjustable workstations at NeoCon this year.

What Is It About Expensive Office Furniture?

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

As gossip-hungry Americans, there’s nothing we love more than a shocking and titillating story about financial irresponsibility. Recently, a civil servant named Bob Balink from El Paso was “exposed” for spending nearly 30 grand on office furniture. The man’s predecessor had simply made do with the furnishings already in place, making Bob’s spending seem even more extravagant. The big ticket item from Balink’s shopping spree was an 18’ conference room table that cost more than $9000.

But sometimes, the real story is buried in the details. Reporter Pam Zubeck revealed that Bob spent more than $4000 on a desk and $285 on a high backed executive chair. He probably could have bought a nice office desk for a couple thousand, but his real crime was buying such a cheap chair for himself. The best ergonomic chairs have an MSRP 3-4 times that high (although you can save a lot of money buying a refurbished model). So, here’s a piece of advice for government employees who plan to splurge on office furniture. Spend the big bucks on your chair – not your desk. That way, when you end up in the hot seat over your spending habits, at least it will be a comfy one.

What Grade Do Your Employees Give Your Office Furniture?

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

The interwebs are all agog with the results of Staples.com’s recent survey about the top items employees wish their employers would change in the office. Not surprisingly, one top item workers want is the opportunity to stay out of the office altogether. Telecommuting is one of the most popular perks and that’s not likely to change. The other thing employees would change is their coworkers – or at least how their coworkers behave. 44% of participants said office politics was their biggest peeve.

There is Something Easier Employers Can Offer

Fortunately, there is also a lot of room for improvement in more concrete items. A full 35% of employees put nicer and more comfortable office furniture on their wish list. More than 50% actually gave their current office furniture a grade of C or lower. What’s really surprising is that 34% of employees wanted more private workspaces. This is a big blow to the idea that workers are clamoring for more collaborative spaces and open office layouts. It appears that what they might actually enjoy is higher cubicle walls with better acoustic control. Or, perhaps they would benefit from having workstations separated into smaller pods.

Did You Celebrate “Improve Your Office Day”?

Even if you missed this October 4th observation, office improvements are likely to be welcomed by your employees at any time. Your workers probably won’t reach a consensus on what they consider to be “nicer” office furniture (for example, some people think wood is nicer than glass and vice-versa). But determining what constitutes more comfortable office furniture is fairly simple. The #1 item every employee loves is an ergonomic office chair. That’s a good place to start if you want to raise the grade your workers give their office furniture.

How The Heck Did That Happen?

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

One of the best things about writing an office furniture blog is the opportunity to find the completely weird and wonderful photos people post online. The Funny Potato website has turned out to be a treasure trove of startling and silly pictures showing what can go wrong in the office. Some stories are self-explanatory. We all know what happened to the girl with black printer toner all over her white pants.

Other photos are more surreal. For example, how the heck did this office furniture become completely coated with concrete? Did a cement mixing truck back up to an open window and flip the switch? Was it a (very expensive) prank? Corporate espionage? Part of a team building exercise gone horribly, horribly wrong? Give us your best guess in the comments.

DMI Shaves More Time Off Office Furniture Shipping

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

DMI just celebrated its 100th year in business at NeoCon 2011. That means the company began back in the days when Wells Fargo was still hiring stagecoach drivers to make deliveries. These days, the company is taking advantage of automotive transportation, modern logistics, and lean supply chain management to ship product faster than ever.

General Industry Quick Ship Options

For many office furniture companies, 2-3 weeks is considered a short lead time. When cubicles and workstations are being factory produced to standard customer specifications, that’s actually very speedy service. But when an office furniture company already has items in stock, it shouldn’t take that long – and they recognize this. For example, Allsteel has a 5 day Express Solutions® program that has orders for commonly requested items from their Concensys line ready to ship in 5 days or less.

But the DASH program from DMI is taking it to the next level. They are promising actual delivery in 3 business days or less for areas east of Oklahoma and 5 business days for western states. This service includes their entire product line with few restrictions. That’s a boon for companies that need to set up an office fast.

Potential Drawbacks of Fast Ship Programs

The main risk in purchasing your office furniture with a quick-shipping program is that it may tempt you to make decisions too fast. Buying office furniture isn’t just something you need to get out of the way so you can get down to business. The space planning and provisioning decisions you make now can have a major impact on both general business costs and worker productivity for the next ten years or more.

So, even if you need furniture fast, you absolutely shouldn’t skip the consultation and planning phase. That’s one advantage of going local with Cubicles Office Environments. We have a large and varied in-stock inventory of refurbished office furniture that’s available for fast delivery to save you both time and money. Plus, you get a free space planning consultation to help you make the right choices for your company.

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