San Diego Cubicles Blog

NeoCon East – New Commercial Furniture Part 4

2011-11-24T15:12:28Z

This week, it’s time to take a look at what NeoCon East participants found underfoot. There were a number of new commercial floor coverings on display – including a collection from Atlas Carpet Mills. The Archeologique line features modular carpet tiles with a velvet-cut pile surface. The pile is carved with what Atlas describes as a selection of 5 different “organic and linear loop textures” in 24 colors. These ancient glyphs bring a sophisticated touch to walkways while letting the eye wander over patterns that evoke ancient cities and unearthed ruins.

Companies War over Windfall from Foreign Furniture Duties

2011-11-24T15:09:36Z

Sometimes, the furniture business is as full of foreign intrigue as a good spy movie. There are backroom deals, squabbling over loot, and all sorts of shenanigans. For example, the Byrd Amendment (the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act) was put in place in 2000 to deter countries like China from dumping cheap goods onto the American market. Furniture was among the products affected by this anti-dumping Act. Although this legislation has now been repealed, there is still a tidy sum in collected duties waiting to be distributed.

Who gets the money? According to U.S. Court of International Trade, the funds are to be distributed to American furniture companies that were affected by dumping. The catch is that only companies that supported the anti-dumping petition in the first place are eligible to benefit. Now, furniture companies that did not support the Byrd Amendment are clamoring for a share of the spoils anyway. They claim that it is unfair to penalize them for not marching in lock-step with the government in instituting the CDSOA when it was first proposed.

You can read more about the decision at Furniture Today. What do you think would be fair in this situation? Let us know in the comments.

NeoCon East – New Commercial Furniture Part 3

2011-11-18T19:49:12Z

Next up on our tour of new items for the office is Peter Pepper Products, Inc. This firm introduced two lines of recycling receptacles for use in the workplace. The HexBin (as its name suggests) is intended for use in groups of 2 or more that fit together like pieces of a honeycomb. The bins can be used for paper, aluminum, glass, plastic, or trash depending on the lid and labeling you choose. There’s even a rain hood you can attach for outdoor locations. These bins come in sizes up to 37 gallons for use in large facilities.

The REMIX collection is a sleeker version of single and dual waste stream recycling bins. These oval bins are finished with a dent resistant aluminum composite in your choice of silver, bronze, white, or stainless. The semi-rigid bin liners are made of recycled billboards – a very hip and ironic way for Peter Pepper to advertise the sustainability of its products.

Steelcase’s Futuristic Workspace Design

2011-11-18T19:42:17Z

An article has been making the rounds recently about Steelcase “designing for the future of work”. The company is using the coworking concept to bring the feel of entrepreneurial enterprise into corporate spaces. According to Greiner and Grazziano at Steelcase, all signs point to a future where work areas are less closed off and more communal.

In an on-site office space planning experiment, this furniture manufacturer remodeled its own cafeteria and turned it into a space for meeting, eating, and working. It has quickly become a favorite place for employees to get things done. They get to see what it’s like for business owners and mobile workers who (at least in the movies) get to start their day working in a local café instead of behind a desk.

Spreading Out May Concentrate Productivity

There’s evidence that as people become less tethered to an assigned workstation, they become more productive overall. Satisfaction increases when workers have choices about where to park their laptop to work on individual tasks or group projects. Steelcase believes having a layout that includes several work area choices will be an attractive feature for high-value job candidates. Imagine coming in for an interview and finding out that you have your own desk – and 3 or 4 other places where you can work whenever you want a change of scenery. That would certainly make you feel less caged in.

This sense of satisfaction might even grow over time as you settled in. Even if your workstation is next to an annoying coworker, you aren’t chained to your desk. When Joe in the next cubicle starts clipping his toenails or Susan starts yelling at her boyfriend on the phone, you can get up and leave – without having your pay docked. You can simply find a quiet corner to do your work or sit in with a group of coworkers you actually like. Now that’s freedom!

Office Chair Fabric is a Prickly Subject

2011-11-18T19:44:51Z

Steelcase made quite a splash with its introduction of mushroom and cotton seed hull packaging; but it’s far from the only office furniture company that is going green with organic products. Albany Office Furniture in the UK is making use of locally occurring natural resources for a different purpose. The company is using nettle stems and wool (two materials that are found in abundance on the chilly isles of Britain) to create textiles for office chairs.

Nettles are most famous for their sting. Fortunately, the chemicals that cause skin irritation are easily neutralized by cooking or soaking in water. Users of the nettle textile won’t have to worry about sitting on a pin cushion. The method by which the fiber is extracted from the stems and processed into fabric should take the sting out of these hardy plants. Albany Office Furniture is showcasing this new textile at the Green 4 Go exhibition where many small businesses will be meeting to discuss sustainable strategies.

When Office Furniture Dealers Go Bad

2011-11-18T20:01:17Z

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

2011-11-18T19:57:15Z

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 2

2011-11-18T19:54:32Z

We’re headed across the country again in this second post on the NeoCon East office furniture show. This time, let’s take a journey through Inscape System. This “Inscape” workstation and panel solution is designed to help employers “Escape” from wasted space and confusing office furniture specification. Like many popular cubicle brands, the goal of this product is to provide a wide range of pieces that can be mixed and matched with little effort. Ensuring interoperability of as many parts as possible provides more options while ensuring that future expansion is seamless and worry free.

Conserving Office Space Inch by Inch

The most well-publicized feature of Inscape’s product line is the ability to use multiple panel thicknesses to save space here and there without any integration issues. The extra inches you save can add up to quite a few square feet – perhaps even enough to comfortably accommodate a couple more workstations as your company grows.

For locations where you don’t need full 3.5” panels, you can install 2.75” panels instead. The universal connectors work with either one – you just flip the connector over from position A to position B to connect two thin panels rather than two thick ones. The frame and tile components are identical for both. It’s the clip components that determine the interior dimensions of the panel. Worksurfaces and other parts work equally well with both panel thicknesses because the frames are all the same.

Beneath the Surface

Although the lines and shapes of Inscape’s designs are simple, what you see is not all you get with this system. The post and beam structure that supports panels and movable walls also houses power distribution. This means it can be used for data cable and electrical wiring management just as easily in a private office as in a cubicle. Again, it’s all about one stop shopping with these guys.

NeoCon East: New Commercial Furniture Part 1

2011-11-05T17:12:17Z

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.

Vintage Office Etiquette

2011-11-05T17:06:57Z

This office etiquette video from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Films archive offers a delightful peek at what was expected from white collar workers in the 1950s. Some of the advice is still very relevant for today. After all, the Golden Rule doesn’t change. Going to work is much more pleasant when everyone treats others they way they want to be treated. Being considerate never goes out of style.

Of course, today’s employers tend to be a little more lax about some behaviors. For example, making an occasional personal phone call or spending a few minutes surfing the web is not considered problematic in many offices – as long as you get your work done. We’ve also got a very different attitude about work/life balance. For example, few of us would spend hours every night learning skills that should be acquired via company paid training during regular business hours. Plus, not that many people actually learn shorthand anymore!

Which ‘rules’ shown in this film do you still find relevant in today’s work environment? Let us know in the comments.