Turning Decommissioning into Re-Commissioning. A new perspective on Re-use in our industry.

At TFX we are extremely fortunate to have great partners who bring us in for complementary skills and services on big projects that involve the disposition of corporate furniture assets.  One of those partners is Rheaply, a service provider whose online platform enables companies to maintain inventories of their office assets for re-use and reallocation. 

Rheaply mentioned The Furniture X-Change in a recent case study about a client whose “circular sustainability objectives” resulted in $96K+ worth of furniture being diverted from landfills. Rheaply helped find new homes specifically for a large inventory of Steelcase chairs in the offices of local community partners. 

Donating furniture to charities or non-profits is nothing new.  All too often “nothing new” is too true a description of the donations that the benefactors of this recycling strategy are expected to accept.  Typical liquidated furniture donations are often worn and even broken items that are a far cry from the high functional and design standards when they were newly purchased. 

What makes this story different is that of the 1000+ high end Steelcase Amia chairs that found homes in the non-profits Rheaply serves, the vast majority of them were remanufactured and restored to warranted “as-new” condition and functionality by TFX.

The article shows a few “before and after” shots, demonstrating the care and expertise TFX applies to each and every item of furniture whose useful life we extend as a part of our remanufacturing process. Items of furniture we remanufacture are sometimes reallocated in our clients’ own facilities, find new homes through donation as in this example, or are offered at resale for pennies on the dollar of what could be purchased new. 

This is a wholly unique aspect of TFX’s total capabilities underpinning our promise for sustainability in the services we offer. We know that our real value as a partner to our clients extends well beyond some fancy calculation for carbon offset that consultants who don’t really do the work themselves claim as their differentiation.  Real sustainability in furniture “re-commissioning”, as our friends at Rheaply put it, means doing whatever we can to extend the useful life of any furniture item so that it remains a real asset to the next owner and not a headache to a beneficiary of a donations or resale.

We love the mindset of the folks at Rheaply, and their specialized inventory management system is top notch.  We share their commitment to “next life commissioning” and we are proud to partner with them, for any circularity execution that requires end-to-end decommissioning and especially the furniture remanufacturing services that makes that “new life” a reality. 

Reach out to us for an estimate today. Contact us at inquiry@tfxfurniture.com to schedule a call.