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It’s no secret that the Bay Area is one of the most pricey cities to live and work in the United States. San Francisco is second only to Manhattan on Kiplinger’s 2019 list of most expensive cities to live in the United States. The median home value in the city is $927,400, and average rent for apartments is a cool $3,821. Oakland is seventh on the list, with a cost of living nearly 55% higher than the U.S. average.
Commercial property in the Bay Area is also among the most expensive in the country. Professional services and investment firm JLL ranked the 10 most costly streets in the country for commercial property in 2015. The Bay Area had three of them in the top five: Mission Street in San Francisco (#5), Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto (#2), and Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park (#1). Granted most companies that set up shop in the Bay Area are well-funded and can afford to break the bank on their new digs. But it never hurts to display fiscal responsibility when it time for Series B and Series C funding.
Used office furniture not only saves you money, but prevents salvageable furnishings from ending up in landfills.
Most Eco Office clients come in assuming that all their furniture will be brand new and there is no other option. Project managers, however, always informs them of alternatives.
"We let the client know that there are a number options depending on the budget," Project Manager Joe Cain said. "We have strictly used furniture as well as furniture that can be fully refurbished with new fabric and new work surfaces. We can customize the options to fit the customer’s needs and budget."
Eco Office obtains used furniture from liquidators, property management firms and current clients seeking an office makeover. Refurbished furniture appears like-new in most cases after all internal processes are exhausted.
"There are a couple of different levels of production we offer that includes some combination of repainting, refabrication, re-laminating and reupholstering," Project Manager Matt Benak said. "The overall final price is determined on the level requested. We do this so we can satisfy a larger pool of potential clients."
The amount of furniture deposited into landfills rose from 7.6 million tons in 2005, to 9.69 million tons in 2015 - a 27.5% increase, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. There are many companies doing their small part to lower these numbers. Toronto-based Green Standards collects unwanted office furniture from corporations in the U.S. and Canada, and donates it to nonprofits. The firm told Curbed in April that it has collected 50,000 tons of furniture from corporations since 2010 and given it to nonprofits.
Eco Office also collects used furniture from various sources, and gets creative with it to make it appealing to clients.
"We teardown and bring it all back to our warehouse, store all parts separately, then pull as needed to complete projects," Benak said. "We can mix-and-match our production line a thousand different ways. That is the beauty of it - the ability to use our product line creatively from inventory-to-inventory allows us to produce the best solution for our clients."
Eco Office buys used office furniture directly from Bay Area companies. We specifically buy cubicles, cubicle components and file cabinets. Want to talk about your office redesign with new furniture, used furniture or a combination of both? Give us a call at 408-437-1700 to speak with a project manager.
————————————Brian Wilkins is a freelance writer and digital nomad. He owns a content marketing company and runs it from his RV. Brian has worked in journalism and content marketing for over 20 years.
