full house at 7:30 AM in Washington, D.C. is a clear indicator that the CBRE Furniture Forum is resonating among the shared community of CRE, A&D, manufacturers and furniture dealers. The D.C. event on October 26th, led by Julie Deignan, Director, Furniture Advisory Services at CBRE, Amanda Schneider, Founder & Consultant at Contract Consulting Group (CCG), and Suzanne Maynard, Partner Contract Consulting Group along with a panel of representatives from all four constituencies. The event provided a lively discussion of the findings to date of the teams assembled in Chicago and D.C. to discuss issues around the contract furniture bidding process. As previously reported, this has been an ongoing project, initiated in Chicago earlier this year. As interest has grown, momentum to identify and develop actionable ideas that can be implemented to further the efforts and bring better understanding, cooperation, and process improvement that will benefit all stakeholders in the industry.
As the event kicked off, Amanda noted that it’s clear that how we work is changing, but the furniture purchasing process has not. It’s universally acknowledged that the system is broken, yet to date, there have been limited attempts to reset the process and bring up to speed with how business is done today.