An American office furniture company has changed its business model for the better in the wake of the pandemic.

 

New Jersey-based Office Furniture in Stock (known as OFIS – and not be confused with Harvey Norman’s ill-fated office supplies superstore venture) has changed its focus from ‘office furniture’ to work-from-home furniture.

 

“’In stock’ is key phrase there because it’s so hard to get anything in timely fashion because of supply chain issues,” OFIS owner Russell Castro said.

 

“Our business has picked up a lot over the last few months, over the last year, because we are our own supply chain,” he said.

 

Castro and his wife started liquidating expensive office furniture 30 years ago. Since the pandemic started, many more big corporations have consolidated office space, so he had a lot of supply and new demand.

 

“We were getting calls from all the employees that were working from home,” Castro said.

 

“People were okay giving up their commute, but not their high-end supportive office chair,” he said.

 

Castro had to switch gears and start selling directly to individuals one chair at a time, as opposed to reselling hundreds at a time to companies.

 

He said a big benefit of coming to the warehouse was test-driving the chairs instead of ordering blindly online.

 

Castro added that  as soon as they made the switch to retail they had families walking in, suddenly in need of desks and chairs for virtual learning and work-from- home.

 

OFIS calls itself a green company, recycling lightly used office items and saving them from ending up in a landfill.