Tuesday 8th October 2024
When I was planning to come to Minnesota, I had no idea that the Reuse Minnesota conference would be on at the same time. I was lucky enough to blag the last remaining speaker slot.
I first came to Minnesota in 1998 right after I graduated to work at an outdoors centre. It was my first proper job and this is also where I saw recycling being commonplace for the first time and it turned out to be the beginning of my whole career which then led to reuse. So, it was very bizarre (although also amazing) to be back here talking to Minnesotans about reuse in Scotland - it really felt full circle!
On Tuesday night before the conference I got to take part in a site visit to Furnish Office and Home . This particular business is one of a few operated by Emerge (they also have a mattress recycling business) who have a focus on creating skills and employment opportunities.
The showroom is really impressive, it's huge and really well laid out, and JP is their passionate and really knowledgeable manager who shows us round and rhymes off stat after stat and useful insight into the office furniture business.
"You gotta be nuts to chase office furniture after a pandemic"
Some insights:
· They collect everything office related (including pictures) and mostly collect free of charge if there is a resale value. If it’s something they can’t sell easily, they will charge e.g. Cubicles. Charge $200 to remove and recycle, however they are also now working with another company specialising in then (more on this below).
· They operate with up to six vehicles to empty offices. Work with large banks and other companies.
· Operate a busy office chair repair service. There is a real focus and pride in supplying quality products and have developed this service to keep quality things in use longer and save people money from having to rebuy cheap less well-made products. They also provide an ‘above and beyond’ service that sets them apart from new retailers, and balance people’s office chairs for them before they leave. It's important to them that people get the right product.
· Also operate a residential pick-up service and are quite prescriptive, because they need and can be - no stairs, and if it is not sellable then they will charge $200. They receive 5-10 calls per day.
· They are working with the University of Minnesota to develop a solution for recycling soft seating as this is a major issue for them.
· The company was flailing 4 years ago until the new manager came in and increased income by 400%, by hugely ramping up volume. He had come from working for a large private sector company and wanted to make a change to make money for a good cause rather than shareholders. He is very experienced in high throughput business models and although first deal with a huge risk – purchasing a large volume of equipment from a decommissioned office for a large price they couldn’t really afford - it sold within 30 days and this became their new, lucrative model.
· They are limited only by the supply of items. Demand for products is high with 75% of sales coming through Facebook marketplace and 25% then repeat custom. 50% of those sales are for home offices.
· They recently completed a big contract for the City of St Paul. I asked if it was mandated for the city or county to buy reused, and it’s not, it just took one interested and bought-in employee to make the right call and getting two quotes which showed the stark difference - $20,000 for quality products and supporting the community and local workforce, or $200,000 for lower quality products made elsewhere with zero social impact.
Takeaways
· The importance of understanding your market and limiting factors. JP saw there was a demand for certain items and bigger demand overall than they had product for. His solution was to source what he needed. Although it was at a cost, it allowed them to scale up and still turn a profit. Last year, 57% of their sales came from goods that they paid for.
· The synergies with small microbusiness is really important. Those that focus on small elements and niche markets, such as the cubicle business allow Furnish to take on business they otherwise wouldn’t.
· The individual stories of so important to really bring home the benefits and the impacts of the reuse work. The City of St Paul saving hundreds of thousands of dollars while also reducing their carbon footprint and supporting a local business, the important repair services they provide to allow goods to be in use for longer such as they guy with the 37 year old chair that they don’t make anymore that got to keep it with a $20 part salvaged from another chair and the physical benefits of supplying standing desks to individuals for a tenth of the price of new AND they will last 10 times as long
The next day at the conference, Furnish lead a breakout session where some other interesting things came out of the audience discussion:
Someone told the story of a large company that shall not be named who spent $15m (?!) on new office and IT equipment. Covid hit, and it wasn't used. It had been fully depreciated and from what I understand there was therefore no financial or taxt incentive to donate the items. As with most volume reuse, there was a small window off opportunity to link the items with a community benefactor. Miraculously one was found with a local public school district but in the end the itmes were all landfilled as the company didn't want the responsibility for the items if something hapanned to a child using one of their desks.
This lead to a disccion on mandating fro ESG reporting for large companies upgrading equipment.
If companies buy reuse, they're getting better products (build well and built to last, built for sustainability), for a quarter of the price and their ESG report looks good. this makes sense to all of us in the room but how are we collectivley putting out that message?
The good news is though there has been a 25% increase in the secondary sales market of office chairs in the U.S. So, perhaps the market is leading us there anyway.
More photos in this album on my flickr page.
Comments