It could have been a nightmare: Ken Irwinson, facility manager for a major Southeast company, had to consolidate five branch offices into one central location in six weeks.

But the work stations at the branch offices weren't compatible with each other, and Irwinson's supervisors didn't want to buy new furniture for the 300,000-square-foot location.

Irwinson's solution--using pre-owned furniture purchased through Jon Driscoll of TradeIn.com.--not only allowed him to complete his Herculean task within the allotted time, but also saved his company $400,000 it had expected to spend on the move.

In 12 years as Vice President of Administration for his company, Irwinson had tried to use pre-owned furniture only once before. The experience nearly soured him from trying again.

"Some years ago, we were trying to save money on the installation of 30 workstations, but what we got was a low-quality product--the refurbishing was not all that good, the panel colors were different, the trim was nonstandard on the work surfaces, the paint chipped from the file drawers and the fabric sagged," Irwinson said. "That made me nervous about (buying pre-owned furniture) again."

By the time Irwinson was preparing for the consolidation, he had standards prepared for the colors and sizes of the branch workstations.

"We'd already made two major purchases of Haworth systems and we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted," he said. "We still wanted to keep our costs down, but we had multiple locations with different systems to be consolidated at our new facility. One 60,000-square-foot office was furnished in Haworth and another 30,000-square-foot office was furnished in 10-year-old Herman Miller. We also had Steelcase in another location from a corporate acquisition, but about 70 percent of our systems furniture was Haworth. At that point we started looking at our options."

Having attended IFMA shows for years, Irwinson said he knew refurbishing was a viable option, despite his unhappy first experience.

"I decided to try again because there was still tremendous opportunity to save money and solve a lot of problems this way," he said.

Relying on word-of-mouth recommendations, Irwinson contacted TradeIn.com President Jon Driscoll, who agreed to take the company's furniture at a guaranteed price, find another inventory of pre-owned systems furniture, install that at Irwinson's new facility, and then collect his old furniture and dispose of it.

"It was basically a turn-key operation," Irwinson said. "Driscoll proposed that as an alternative to purchasing new furniture, which made sense to us. I mean, we had 700 people in the old buildings using perfectly good work stations, so why should we buy more furniture?"

Irwinson and Driscoll agreed on a plan to move the 700 employees into the new
building in stages, tearing down and setting up about 500 of their old work
stations in domino fashion as the employees were transferred.

To maximize the re-use of existing work stations and components, TradeIn.com was asked to incorporate the company's existing inventory with the new plans and to provide specifications of items to be ordered to make sure the new work stations were compatible with each other. After a strategy meeting, Resolutions' inventoried the company's existing work stations at its different locations, provided detailed listings, specified new product to be ordered and huddled with the architects to devise new floor plans using the now-standardized Haworth equipment of 48-inch, 62-inch and 80-inch panel. The Steelcase that Irwinson had was version 9000 first generation 1, which is incompatible to newer versions. We suggested to Irwinson that we would sell this product for him and he was thrilled.

Comparing our inventory to the architects plans, TradeIn.com produced a set of installation drawings and a list of furniture to complete the project. Irwinson was impressed.

"TradeIn.com also did a condition report. so that damaged panels were excluded from the list and panels that needed to have new fabric were identified," he said. "I was able to use TradeIn.com knowledge to save an additional $150,000. They showed me a 13-percent direct saving by redesigning the modules to use 3-foot and 5-foot panels instead of 2's and 4's. That's significant, when you figure I saved $150,000 at list by changing the panel sizes."

After the completion of the project, all the Herman Miller had new fabric which was compatible with Irwinson's Haworth systems.

We also changed the old-style hinge connection to the new-styled rigid connectors. It updated the look, making old Herman Miller look like new Herman Miller. The results were wonderful.

Irwinson's company bought about 150 replacement stations, installed them in the new buildings and began moving the people in, tearing down work stations behind them for the next group of people to move in. After moving 700 people, Irwinson's company had reused every single piece of office furniture they had on hand, except for some attic stock they decided to retain.

"It worked out well for me," Irwinson said. "We were able to use TradeIn.com expertise and we used a much higher percentage of our own furniture. They helped us get fabric and gave us some insight on installation and time frames to get the move done, in terms of phasing. And they also provided parts and pieces as the installation progressed. That made my life easier." Irwinson had the opportunity recently to recommend TradeIn.com services to another friend who is a facility manager in Minneapolis. "They built a new building and moved from conventional furniture," he said. "They wanted a more efficient workplace since everyone used computers. We suggested they buy systems furniture through TradeIn.com, and they saved themselves over $100,000 for 60 workstations. I think pre-owned furniture is the direction companies should be going. The product just doesn't go bad."

"Sure, the manufacturers will give you 60 percent off the list price, but Jon Driscoll can give you 10-20 percent more. That adds up," Irwinson said, "I know that I saved money, and I'd say using pre-owned furniture is highly desirable option for any company considering a move or expansion. Our move went off without a hitch--as it should have."

Thanks to good planning and the right resources, Irwinson's final report was a dream instead of a nightmare: his company had purchased $1.4 million worth of systems furniture for $400,000, including $25,000 in replacement fabric and installation costs of $75,000 for 500 stations.

                                Copy Write 2000-2002