Fasten Your Seat belts

We believe this is going to be a long slow recovery from this recession. All of us are fastening our seat belts, and tightening our budgets to ride out the ups and downs of a turbulent economy. There is still business to be had and opportunities to be found. We believe the young crop of entrepreneurs with small businesses will help bring us out of this recession quickly. We also hope the current government will provide tax incentives to stimulate this quick market growth.

Office furniture dealers are also seeing a dramatic competitive change in their market. Big Box and National Retail competition is dropping out or severely reducing their commitment to office and home office furnishing. Office products super stores are reducing or in some cases eliminating entire categories of office & home office furniture dealers?

Value Business Interior is a growing entrepreneur business that has a great line of new office furniture, but also used furniture in stock. If we do not have it we will find it in a very short period of time.

Call 864-232-5377
e-mail scott@vbisc.com or david@vbisc.om

With the increased use of mobile technology – from cell phones to BlackBerries to PDAs – today’s knowledge workers can just as easily be “on work” while traveling, in the local Starbucks or in the office. We say “on work” because it more accurately reflects the way people are working today. There are fewer people at work in the office than there are people on work – or working – from multiple locations throughout the day.
Research Steelcase conducted a few years ago showed that people only spend half the day working at their desk. Other industry studies say workers are away from their desks 40 to 60 percent of the time. This change in the way we work today has a strong impact on the way organizations manage office environments. Traditional environments with rows of desks and cubicles no longer suffice. Work has changed, and as such, the workplace must change accordingly. How is it changing? A recent survey of Fortune 500 real estate professionals conducted by CoreNet Global, the Atlanta-based association of real estate executives, found that 65 percent of those surveyed have stopped providing an assigned workspace to at least 10 percent of their workforce. The percentage is expected to grow to 25 percent by the end of the decade.
Whether people work in dedicated “home base” stations or temporary “touch down” spaces, all aspects of the environment must support collaboration. Knowledge work today involves complex tasks and requires the thinking, opinions and ideas of a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. Physical space that encourages this interaction between employees is critical and organizations must understand how and where employees spend most of their time.
Let Value Busines Interiors help you with these complex office place requirement whether it is at the office or at home.
Call 864-232-5377
Scott@vbisc.com

The Cornerstone to Buying is Online Browsing

The Internet has had a dramatic impact on the way American consumers shop. The biggest change is click-to-store behavior - consumers using the Internet to research products before purchasing them in stores. In fact, 81 percent of Internet users go online to research products they're considering buying, and 20 percent do so in a typical day. But the Internet is unlikely to make retailers obsolete. Consumers overwhelmingly purchase products in stores, not online. According to a Pew Internet study, e-commerce accounts for only 3.4 percent of total U.S. retail sales.

Click-to-store furniture shoppers, for example, go online to research their purchase a median of 10.7 times, 53 percent more often than click-to-store shoppers of other products, according to a Diering Research Group survey.

Furniture shoppers have embraced click-to-store shopping for several reason, most important because it is convenient and saves time. We hope this is the case for you. Please let us know what we might do to improve your on line shopping. Secondly, we trust this will then lead you to visit our show room and a very pleasant purchase of your requirements.

Article is by Mike Bernsteing .

Visit the showroom

What are the steps you take when you want to buy a new car? Go on the internet and search around. Sure. It's always nice to take a look at your options and check out availablility. But when it gets right down to it, in order to make the best choice based on your needs, you need to go to the dealership. You need to sit in that car, look at the interior, check out the engine, and look at the other cars on the lot. You need to compare prices and see what kind of value you're getting for your money, Luxury car, compact, or hybrid, automobiles, just like office furniture, offer unique options, huge price variables and many different styles and feels.

Why not come to our showroom and check it all out?

Leasing Office Equipment / Cubicals

We are still in a market environment where it is prudent to hang on to your cash. Some indicators may be signaling a slight turn around in some sectors. Perhaps you see this turn around or you have a start up business. If it is necessary to set up an office or complex and now you need office furniture and/or cubicles, why layout a large amount of cash at this time when it could be used for other start up costs or even expansion.

Why not consider leasing. Value Business Interiors has a great leasing program that can help you in this regard. Why not be on the leading edge as your business makes a turn around and leads our country back to good market days.

Refurshing Office Furniture

Refurbishing is the value-adding process that transforms one company's previously owned office furniture into another company's customized solution. This process can include the re-upholstery, refurbishing, and painting of various components. Using refurbished office furniture allows dealers to meet very specific space planning, design, and budget requirements while also meeting environmental core value and/or LEED objectives.

Value Business Interiors is a leader with these aspects. Please e-mail or call us. We will respond promptly

Herman Miller Ergon Chair

Great Deal on most popular chair.

Herman Miller Ergon Chair $65.

Ample supply for any size order is

available.

scott@vbisc.com (864-232-5377)

Used Office Furniture Donated to Needy School

Toronto, ON (January, 2009) —When Cancer Care Ontario wanted to refurbish its offices with Allsteel Inc. furniture, the Canadian cancer services agency preferred to find a new home and more sustainable solution for the used furnishings it was replacing instead of sending them to the landfill.

Summerlee Office Solutions, the Allsteel dealer responsible for the new sale, found the perfect, if unexpected, answer thousands of miles away: four schools in Belize that were in desperate need of supplies and furniture.

Summerlee was able to find the schools thanks to Green Solutions North America Inc., an organization dedicated to repurposing and recycling used office furnishings and supplies. Through Green Solutions and its School in a Box program, Summerlee loaded a 40-foot container with Cancer Care’s castoffs plus various supplies and donations from others, and shipped it to the Cayo District of Belize, a rural area of farmlands and rugged mountains. But the donation didn’t just supply furnishings for the needy school children. The holiday season came early for 75 kids who also received backpacks filled with school supplies and an American dollar, courtesy of Summerlee and Allsteel.

The project, which began a year ago, involved more than 100 hours of volunteer time from the Summerlee staff, with added help from Allsteel’s Market Manager for Ontario, Peter Livingstone. Summerlee also generously covered the shipping costs for the project.
“Working with Summerlee and Green Solutions on this project was truly rewarding and it’s great that Allsteel now has its own active partnership with Green Solutions,” Livingstone said. “It’s fantastic to witness how we can have a positive impact not only on the environment but also in extending a helping hand to our fellow man.”

This past fall, Allsteel became the first American manufacturer to officially partner with Green Solutions North America, Inc., having had the direct experience with the Belize project.

From Office Furniture Design.

Recycling Office Furniture

• By re manufacturing office furniture rather than buying it new, US businesses could avoid $93 million in disposal costs.
• Purchasing a re manufactured product can cost consumers 30 to 50% less than a new product.
• According to the EPA, three million tons of office furniture and furnishings are discarded each year.
• The amount of labor and energy required to alter an existing product during manufacturing is 85 to 95% less than that required to manufacture a new product.
• Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur oxides, nitrous oxides, volatile organic, compounds, and particulate matter are all reduced by the recycling office furniture, thereby reducing air pollution and global warming.
• The annual energy savings resulting from manufacturing activities worldwide is 120 trillion BTU's. This equals the electricity generated by eight nuclear power plants, or 16 million barrels of crude oil.
• The annual material savings resulting from re manufacturing activities worldwide is 14 million tons a year. This is the equivalent of a fully loaded railway train 1650 miles long. This would be more than half way across USA (60%).

Source: Rochester Institute of Technology and the Office Furniture Recyclers Forum.

Stimulous Package

Stimulus Office Furniture Package

It would be hard for us to compete against the government on "stimulus packages". That said, we think we can come to market faster than the government. Why not take advantage of this offer.

If you print this message, list your e-mail address, and bring it by our show room, we will offer you the following "Stimulus Package" according to the amount you order. Offer is off the sale price. There is no intentional mark up to offset this "Stimulus Package" for new or used furniture.

Offer is good only through 02/28/09

Stimulus Package Offer:

1. 10% off an order equal or greater than $5000

2. 8% off an order $2500 to $4999

3. 5% off an order $1000 to $2499

Print this offer and bring it with you to the show room. This offer is good through February 2009

Unusual Furniture Sale

Under the current economic conditions both customers and businesses are doing everything possible to make their purchasing power go further. We all must be more frugel.
We are a dealer of office furniture. Because our manufactures are great producers of wood products, they not only provide office furniture but also home furniture. These great manufactures provide us with catalogues with office furniture and home furnishings.

We had a customer that came in the other day and wanted to buy a dinning room suite. They looked through our catalogues and we were able to provide them with great value. Most of our customers who buy home furniture are setting up corporate housing, large institutions that need home furnishings, etc.

If you are looking for a dinning room suite, bed room suite, etc. why not pay us a visit or give us a call. You would be surprised how much money you can save buying from us verses a large show room dealer with high overhead.

Conference Room Planning / Implementation

Conference Room Considerations

The design of a conference room is extremely important. To start off you need to know how much space is available. Secondly, you need to determine the full functionality. More frequently than not, the sales person is brought in after the fact. The salesman will then have to make the available space work for the customer.

Here is a quick checklist for functionality:

Conference table length , width and height
Chairs, how many and functionality
Teleconference unit hook up
Computer and Internet connections or Wi-Fi
Microphone connections
Telephone lines
Projection Screen / Area
Marker board

The aesthetics are extremely important. So how does everything fit together? What will the conference room look like when it is completed? The value-adding professional should look and provide new ways to cement relationship. The office furniture professional should help the customer walk through decision-making cycle.

Value Business Interiors (VBI) has the professional sales person to help with your conference room considerations. VBI provides not only new conference room furniture but also pre-owned quality furniture.

Fire proof files

Are you safe guarding the future of your company with vital records protection (VRP)? The National Fire Protection Association Standard 232, "Protection of Records" recommends that when keeping vital records on-site, they should be stored in a fire-resistant file or vault that has been tested and rated by Underwriters Laboratories (UL). Looking for storage approved by the UL or other nationally known independent testing labs is imperative in safeguarding records.

Many organizations choose to outsource Vital Records Protection to off-site records storage facilities that claim to offer "state of the art" protection from fire and flooding. Unfortunately, that sometimes means cardboard boxes in an open warehouse with sprinkler system.

Price should not be the overriding factor when the issue is protecting vital records and documents. Losing your vital records can be devastating. Some companies are known not to recover.

Let Value Business Interiors help you with the protection of your vital company records. Not only do we have new UL Fireking fire proof safes, from time to time we have great used ones at a great price. Why not make it a priority to protect your records this year.