Giving old furniture a new lease of life
Recently, the largest coffee shop chain in the UK approached us in preparation for a large refurbishment campaign. The chain was in the middle of separating from its parent company, so in addition to managing the separation it also needed to worry about finding an adequate partner to assist in the remarketing and recycling of the furniture and installations. We were tasked with providing a method of disposal for the furniture that they were removing in a fast and economically viable manner. As we had successfully worked with the company before, we were naturally approached for a fully managed solution to alleviate the issue.
The main issue to contend with was the low expectations that the company had for a solution. At the time they had been spending money to dismantle and recycle their old furniture. There's nothing particularly wrong with this solution, it fulfils their environmental policy, but it accrues unnecessary costs which could be avoided, and does not provide allow for any recovery of their original costs.
We took on the obsolete furniture from over 2,000 stores across the country, selling over 120,000 units and requiring a great deal of logistical expertise. Through our auctions we turned a costly recycling process into a route of disposal that tapped into our 300,000 strong established buyer base allowing the vendor to reclaim a large amount of revenue, thus vastly exceeding their expectations and securing them as loyal clients for future projects.
