At Work: Office Furniture NYC

Name: Office Furniture NYC

Type of business: Sales and marketing of office furniture liquidations

Address: Scotch Plains

Telephone: (908) 998-2401

Website: www.officefurniturenyc.com

Number of employees: 1

Founded: June 2006

Top officer: Josh Bernstein, president/project manager

"My business is selling and marketing high-end used office furniture through the internet," said Josh Bernstein, president.

"My company is the internet sales arm of the largest office furniture liquidators in the country, primarily serving clients throughout the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania tri-state area.

"The liquidations we do are of major companies in finance, media, manufacturing, and other industries. The inventory includes tens of thousands of items, including executive office sets, filing systems, seating and conference tables, and workstations with well-known brands such as Allsteel, Geiger, Haworth, Herman Miller, Steelcase 9000, Teknion, Knoll, and Kimball."

"I provide a great product, priced right and a very fast turnaround time. Typically if you are looking to purchase professional-quality office furniture, you are looking at hugely expensive items. I personally sit on a Haywood chair. Buying it new would cost $1200 to $900. If you order the chair new, it might take up to 12 weeks before it's ready. I'm able to sell the chair for $200 because it's liquidated -- something that we own -- and deliver in three weeks."

"My goal is to keep growing the business and continue to develop my network of clients who will come back to me or refer me to their friends.

"It's one of the nice things that I've experienced -- to get phone calls from clients who call me who are happy and want more product, and the phone calls from people who have been referred by these previous clients."

"When I started this business a year ago, I was just generating leads for Furniture Exchange. Now I'm an internet marketer using search engines to sell the product and make it known at the same time. I'm becoming more knowledgeable about solutions for offices and the inventory, which is constantly changing."

"Starting the business by setting up the internet website to provide additional business for Furniture Exchange -- an office liquidation company where I had worked before taking a job to teach English in Japan for a year. When I worked for Furniture Exchange, I had asked them if I could put up a website to provide them with additional business. They said no, and I dropped the idea. Then while I was in Japan, I decided to set up a Web site and registered the domain and put up phone line in South Japan a few months before coming back home.

"Within a week, people came on the Web site. I called my former employer and asked him if he would like to try a lead I generated, and gave him the information -- selling $30,000 to the client in office furniture.

"When I got back from Japan, I got this business running and began selling by taking some of the smaller leads and working with clients, helping them find furniture for their offices from the liquidations inventory.

"Reduce, reuse, recycle is the foundation of this business. To reuse eliminates a lot of manufacturing, the need for raw materials, and the need for larger landfills. These [things] are all eliminated by using recycled products.

"Another important deal was receiving membership this June in the Co-Op American Business Network as the first office furniture liquidators company in our markets. The Co-Op's mission is to harness economic power to create a socially, environmentally sustainable society."

"It's hard to predict the future. Right now I am just focused on taking care of clients that rely on me, and ... doing my best for the company I work with and trying to develop the business.

"It's all so new. I don't have a 10-year-plan in place.

"We don't try to compete with office furniture found in the big box stores. Our focus is on the small, medium size businesses -- the companies that have from five to 10 employees. In the office supply business, we realize that people are continually going in and out of space in the New York tri-state area, and we are able to help them on both ends --getting into or out of space."

"The most important thing in the market place is to be the best. Provide the best product, the best prices and the best lead time, and the customers will come to you. In a world where there are a million choices, being reliable and consistent in your quality is what drives clients to come back to you and continue to do business with you.

"I haven't gotten a complaint that we didn't deliver as we promised. If I make a promise to a client, I have confidence it will be fulfilled 100 percent."

"To start a business, the first step is to take some action to start the ball rolling, because if you don't nothing will happen. That happened to me when I was in Japan. I knew I would be going home in a few months, and I believed in starting an Internet Web site to sell liquidated office furniture. I thought, 'What's the worst thing that could happen?' So I built a Web site and I came home to enlarge the business I started.

"When I went to college, I wanted to spend a semester abroad in Jerusalem and be able to graduate. I never imagined I'd graduate with a degree in business, but I did because of the accounting courses I took, which come in handy now.

"I recommend temping for anyone for anyone who doesn't know what they want to do, or have a clear picture of what the next step will be. I worked as a temp for Furniture Exchange, an office furniture liquidator with the capacity to clear out complete floors of furniture from buildings and office parks and transport the contents and store them at their 100,000 square foot warehouse facility, where the pieces are refurbished and redesigned to client specifications. I parlayed my experience there by finding a service, a market, and a niche that wasn't being exploited."

"I really enjoy doing what I do right now, and I'm learning more about internet marketing every day."