Office furniture resale company opens Danbury store, capitalizes on pandemic ‘work from home’
DANBURY — Just after droves of staff were abruptly explained to they’d be performing from property indefinitely two a long time back, Russell Castro’s cellphone started to ring.
As a substitute of substantial organizations contacting to order superior-conclusion office home furnishings from his workplace liquidation and re-sale enterprise, he was receiving inquiries from individuals seeking for an affordable way to furnish their new — and often makeshift — property workplaces.
Desire changed so a lot that he commenced seeking into smaller sized retail shops to fulfill unique clients’ wants, relatively than the standard enormous business buildings. Based in North Brunswick, N.J., OFIS Home furnishings, LLC began internet hosting pop-up retail places in Very long Island, Pennsylvania, and New York, and opened a permanent retail locale in Florida. And on the very first cold weekend in March, Russell Castro opened a next retail site in Danbury with the help of his brother, Rick Castro, who now manages the retail store.
“They’re acknowledging that they are likely to be operating from residence a ton longer now or permanently, and they want to ‘up’ their place of work home furniture for their dwelling,” Russell Castro, president of OFIS Furnishings, LLC, spelled out. “It was basically tens of millions of staff members that had been operating from dwelling in the total tri-condition area, so our market place pool was much much larger now. But we were being only undertaking just one chair at a time.”
Rick Castro life in New Fairfield and runs numerous small companies in the place. He knew the retail landscape and assumed Danbury would be a primary site for a retail workplace.
“It’s really doing work out properly amongst us from both of those our encounters, from my staying in the outside retail environment to handle these styles of destinations and with his awareness with the household furniture and the desires that he sees out there,” Rick Castro claimed. “I feel we are a great team collectively in that regard.”
Vehicles make the two-hour trek from New Jersey to Danbury as soon as a 7 days, hauling the things purchased in the city’s latest furnishings store.
“We pull from Hartford, we pull from Stamford, Norwalk. Men and women coming from all about Connecticut,” Rick Castro claimed of the spot and its clientele.
Without a doubt, the retail outlet, found in Plumtrees Plaza, attracts shoppers from all throughout Fairfield and Litchfield Counties.
Rick Castro routinely asks individuals halting in where by they arrived from for the reason that he normally will get diverse answers. So significantly, he’s met buyers from Westport, Darien, Hartford, East Hartford and Simsbury.
Russell Castro stated that most men and women who arrive into the retail keep or attain out to OFIS have “done their homework” and know what they’re hunting for. That is component of the rationale people today are inclined to travel so significantly.
He’s had a ton of requests for “soft seating”— a new phrase Rick realized, that refers to ready area furniture — for both equally new place of work areas and their own residences.
“They’ll drive an hour when your chair is $350 in the shop,” Russell Castro explained.
Persons appear in content, and they walk out delighted, Rick Castro stated.
Acquiring a specialized niche
OFIS meets a incredibly particular need to have in a submit-pandemic earth: self-sourced, expense-efficient business household furniture.
“The issue with that is they get sticker shock,” Russell Castro explained, of staff hoping to furnish a good dwelling place of work.
Anyone could want the same chair they ended up making use of at their workplace, only to know it prices hundreds of pounds. That’s the place OFIS arrives in. They can get that $1,200 chair for $350, Castro explained.
OFIS has also capitalized on world wide provide chain struggles as persons head again into get the job done and re-imagine business office spaces. Two many years into the pandemic, some companies have downsized or created satellite offices. Some have scrapped personal workplace layouts for open up meeting rooms. And because OFIS sources all its individual household furniture from liquidating places of work, buyers don’t have to wait around for weeks on finish to get their hands on the home furniture.
The organization title pretty literally serves as an acronym for what they guarantee: “Office Home furniture In Stock.”
“The household furniture is likely to be six months, 8 months, 10 months out, and which is been a massive trouble for a great deal of persons furnishing places of work. That’s why they are also flocking to us, due to the fact we are personal provide chain — I clean out all these structures, I have all the household furniture in inventory,” Russell Castro reported. “We’re capable to fill that void, as well, for individuals to get in into their offices, get them furnished speedily.”
OFIS has thousands of chairs, cubicles, meeting room furnishings, and reception place household furniture prepared to come across a new household. Appropriate now, they are clearing out all 49 floors of Deutsche Bank’s Manhattan offices.
You can only think about how quite a few countless numbers and countless numbers of chairs and private offices and cubicles that is, Russell Castro explained.
Although he goals of one day growing OFIS to grow to be a residence identify with franchises throughout the tri-point out area and broader United States, Russell Castro is centered on obtaining the Danbury site up and jogging with his brother.
“We in good shape a have to have,” he explained, “helping people today get out of their eating room chair, their 18-backs, and placing them into the correct household furniture, and [it’s] really affordable.”
