Our online office furniture shop is live, by the numbers

As of this morning, our online office furniture shop is live. You can browse it, specify it, price it and order it without speaking to a single person. That was the whole idea.

I spent years in this industry watching the same routine. A price that moved depending on who was asking. A spec sheet held back so you had to ring for it. Advice shaped around what the salesperson needed to shift that month. If you have ever tried to buy fifteen desks and ended up on a third phone call still not knowing the depth of the thing, you know how it goes.

So we built the opposite, and today it opens.

What is actually in there

The shop did not go live as a placeholder with six products and a promise. Here is what sits behind it this morning:

• 440 product listings, across 48 categories

• 20,366 individual variations behind those listings, every width, finish, frame colour, arm type and drawer count as its own orderable thing

• 28,263 product photographs

• 1,941 3D models, attached 33,280 times so that a chair in Tabasco Orange spins in Tabasco Orange rather than in the default grey

• 676 technical sheets you can download, covering 438 of the 440 listings

• 383,765 individual specification lines

That last one is the number I am proudest of, and it is the one nobody will ever notice.

Why a third of a million spec lines

A specification line is one fact about one thing. Seat height range. Desktop thickness. Weight capacity. Guarantee length. Fabric fire rating. Boring on its own, and there are 383,765 of them because we did not write them once per listing and leave it at that. We wrote them per variation.

The 160cm version of a desk has different dimensions from the 180cm version. The one with two drawers weighs more than the one with none. Publish a single spec table per listing and what you are really publishing is an average, and an average is how you end up with a desk that does not fit the alcove you bought it for.

So every variation carries its own numbers. Change the width on a cantilever desk with storage and the table underneath it changes too. It took a very long time. It is also the difference between a spec sheet and a guess.

Spin it before you buy

The 3D deserves its own paragraph, because it is the part people do not expect. On 173 listings you can turn the product round on the page, and on a phone you can drop it into your actual room at its actual size. It shows the finish you picked, on the model you are looking at, rather than a render of something roughly similar.

That is why the count reads 1,941 files but 33,280 attachments. One file per shape, wired up to every variation it belongs to. Fiddly work, and it answers the question we get asked more than any other, which is always some version of “yes, but how big is it really”.

One price, and it is on the page

Every price on the site is the price. It does not move because you sound like a big company, and it does not move because you sound like a small one. No negotiating, no phone call, no better deal for knowing the right person. Prices show ex VAT on the listing, because that is how a business reads them.

They run from £3 for a chair linking clip to £5,686 for a fireproof data safe, which tells you something about the range and possibly something about our buying department. If you want the shape of it quickly, office furniture under £250 and office furniture with a 10 year guarantee are two of the faster ways in.

What happens next

The catalogue is not finished and it never will be. Ranges change, suppliers add finishes, and we would rather add things properly than quickly. What will not change is the arrangement. Everything on the page, one price for everyone, and a real person on the phone when the page is not enough.

Have a look round the shop. Start with the office chairs if you want the deepest end of it. And if you find something wrong, a spec that does not match, a photo showing the wrong finish, a number that looks daft, tell us. With 383,765 spec lines, some of them will be wrong. I would rather hear it from you than not hear it at all.