One thing that I wanted to do this month was to make the office environment a little cozier for everyone by buying new things such as leather office chairs instead of traditional task ones. From general observation, most decent ones can cost well over $100 each normally. One thing that people have told me is to simply go to say auction places as you can often find perfectly usable items and equipment for sale from companies that have closed down. I’m not too big of a fan of that option as from the auctions I have seen you can end up paying more due to the bidding frenzy mentality while having to pay transaction fees on top of it.
Like in many cases, dealing directly with the person who is selling the product can often be a better way to save money. My friend then told me that he was informed about a company that wanted to sell a lot of their old furniture and equipment. So, I thought that sounded good and went to the place in question. Apparently they were moving to a smaller space and wanted to get rid of a lot of their old furniture and equipment. Of course, I was primarily interested in the chairs.
It was pretty apparent that they were more interested in simply getting rid of things rather than making a profit or trying to calculate how much the items are really worth as they simply said $25 flat for any one of them. While some were in pretty bad shape such as having rips, a lot of them were actually in a perfectly good to use shape and condition. I ended up buying four different types in total.
They then asked if I wanted to buy other things such as office desks. Similarly, there were a lot of them that looked perfectly fine, but I had no use for them though. That would have be a bargain for anyone setting up a new office though. One thing that did catch my interest was a boardroom table and this leather couch set that they had. The boardroom table was about 8 ft long and looked perfectly fine and the couch I thought would make the lunch area more relaxing.
This was one of those situations where you stand there and think even though you don’t really need it, is it a dumb decision not to if the deal was good? Without me even saying anything, they told me the price for everything including the chairs for the table would be $150. At that point, I figured it would kind of be dumb not to as I don’t think I can ever find it for that price and I was planning to buy something similar in the future while. Most importantly too, I had ways to use to make use of them right away too.
In total, the price for everything was $250 and factoring in the expense in having to rent a large vehicle for this to have it moved it was about $300. Not bad as I could have easily spent almost a thousand or more to get something similar. So if you are ever in the market for some equipment or furniture, don’t rule out the possibility of finding good deals from companies or organizations who just want to get rid of their old items.
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