The Complete Guide For Buying Office Furniture
When making any purchase, especially buying office furniture, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start. After all, there is a huge difference between small, frequent purchases like your morning coffee and large, infrequent purchases like buying a house. We often don’t have to think twice about the smaller purchases, but can spend weeks ruminating about the different options and implications involved with significant investments. Not surprisingly, the process of choosing and buying office furniture can often seem as daunting as purchasing a new house.
Worries about the quality of the school district, friendliness of the neighbors, and cost of the house are replaced by worries about the flow of the workspace, the timeline of the project, and meeting your budget. However, the office furniture buying process doesn’t need to be stressful or cumbersome if you find the best office furniture company to guide you through the process.
Just like an exceptional and experienced real estate agent that makes buying your new home a comfortable, stress-free experience, a great office furniture consultant can achieve your ideal look and feel while staying within your budget and time constraints – all without you having to break a sweat.
The Official 7-Step Office Furniture Purchasing Process
So what does the office furniture buying process look like? How does an office – big or small – choose the right office furniture? Here at Capital Choice, we make it easy. Following a 7-step, full-service office furniture purchasing process, we take the weight of office furniture buying project management off your shoulders.
1. The Initial Consult
After reaching out to schedule your office furniture consultation, or visiting a local showroom (like Capital Choice’s 40,000 sqft showroom), one of our experienced project managers will go through every last detail with you. They’ll ensure your office furniture plan supports your staff, is aesthetically pleasing, and fits your budget. Often, this will also include an on-site visit where your project manager will do a walkthrough of the workspace, ask comprehensive questions from our “Office Success Checklist,” and take detailed measurements to complete a three-dimensional office layout schematic. After the initial consult is completed, the project manager will immediately get to work on a furniture layout drawing.
2. Furniture Layout Drafting
Using a computer aided design (CAD) or measurements from the office visit, your project manager will utilize 3D office drawing software to create a visually accurate layout of your office. This furniture layout design will work in tandem with the initial “Office Success Checklist” to guide your project manager with choosing the correct size and layout choices for your new office furniture.
3. Product Selection
Using the furniture layout draft, your office design project manager selects products from our wide variety of vendors, bulk stock, and pre-owned sources to create an office that is not only functional for the workplace but also for your budget. Our project managers specialize in combining new and pre-owned furniture in a way that creates our “Better than New Advantage” – an industry low price without sacrificing appearance or quality.
It’s through informed product selection and strategic combinations that Capital Choice is able to provide service at the intersection of price and quality. Quality pre-owned furniture combined with new office furniture creates an aesthetically pleasing, modern, functional, and budget-friendly environment. After all, why pay new prices for fixtures like table legs, drawer systems, and other hidden pieces when used office furniture works just as well? A good project manager will combine the right components to maintain your ideal look and feel while saving money on unnecessary expenditures.
4. Competitive Quote
Once the perfect pieces are selected to complete your new office, your project manager will leverage our “Better than New Advantage” to create a quote that not only meets all your office needs but fits (and often goes under) your budget. Quality is our priority, and when it comes to office furniture, high quality does not have to equal a high price. Our quotes utilize our unique product mix to deliver durable office furniture that looks modern and slashes the cost of buying strictly new.
5. Prompt Fulfillment
The best office furniture company will have a system in place that allows them to offer a prompt fulfillment of your order. Capital Choice is a leader in Central Ohio for prompt assembly, delivery, and installation. Through our partnerships, strategic inventory procurement, and pre-owned sources, we are able to fulfill most orders, with the exception of custom furniture, within two to three weeks of the initial consult.
Our project managers devote their full attention to meeting (and often undershooting) your deadlines, and our operations team thrives on all the positive feedback we get from our customers when a job is completed ahead of schedule. Even with the recent supply chain hiccups, we have been able to deliver furniture within a week of receiving it from our partners and vendors.
6. Professional Office Delivery/Install
The quality of your office furniture and the speed of the process from start to finish means nothing if the delivery and install team is underwhelming. That’s why we invest heavily in our installation equipment and especially in our installation technicians. Our installation team has decades of experience in the office furniture industry and works hand-in-hand with our project managers to make sure that your office furniture design project is taken care of thoroughly, professionally, and with care.
7. Quality Furniture Inspection
Every office install should have a final quality inspection to ensure every last need was met. At Capital Choice, we utilize a 15-point installation checklist to ensure your furniture is installed correctly, in the correct layout, without any damage or imperfections. If there are any questions or concerns with the installation, our technicians are happy and willing to work with you to ensure your office is perfect.
Ready To Start Your Office Furniture Project?
Capital Choice Office Furniture has the resources & project managers available to help guide you through the entire office furniture purchasing process. When you’re ready to reinvent your office and improve your team’s environment with the perfect mixture of new and used furniture, we’ll be here to help.
By: Phillip DiSilvestri with Capital Choice Office Furniture