In The US Office Furniture Maintains Increase in Sales

Through the middle of this year, it seems in USA despite the recession, the office furniture industry is still growing. The reason for this is the delayed refurbishment projects the industry grew by 22.5% in June to 4.52 billion, over the same 6 months than last year. These are the figures put forward by the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association.

The administration manager for statistical information at BIFMA comments by saying that this is the delayed and underlying demand brought about by the recession. Businesses that have held of spending money on refurbishments in 2009 and 2010, have decided that now is the right time to spend the money. They feel that now is the time to change their environment and increase the efficiency and productivity of their employees that will benefit them in the long term.

Companies are now more than ever looking to buy ergonomic furniture such as office desks and ergonomic chairs as this is the quintessential tool in maintaining or increasing productivity in the workplace.

This influx of custom is not going to be permanent. It seems that the figures are suggesting that over the next few years we should see a decrease in the sales as the demand drops. Regan said:

“There was a lot of pent-up demand because of the duration of the recession, so what the conventional wisdom says is it’s an effect that is kind of temporary.”

BIFMA’s new quarterly projection that was prepared by Global Insight remains essentially unchanged in the past 3 months. Shipments to North America are set to grow by 17.6% in the whole of 2011 meaning that the total figure will be $9.8 billion and will increase by a further 7.5% in 2012 to a massive $10.5 billion.

Using this information we can assume that perhaps this might be the case within the UK. With the recession in full swing perhaps we will see UK companies switching to productivity amongst their staff to increase productivity and save money.