At the start of the pandemic, a number of people went shopping for office furniture. While some had to shop online, others got these furniture directly from their employers. In essence, a lot of people tried to recreate their office space at home or bought into inflexible reality.
As these employees return to offices, they are also facing the grim reality of what to do with these furniture. For decades, furniture has been seen as an investment that gets discarded for new furniture overtime. NORNORM, a fully circular Danish startup, is rethinking this notion with its subscription-based furnishing model.
A regenerative business model
At the heart of NORNORM’s business model is a vision to move away from the linear business model. A linear business model, a traditional model where businesses generate value by providing products or services to customers, is degenerative by default.
A degenerative business model does not stand a chance to compete against 21st century challenges like the climate crisis. Thus, a new thinking is required and regenerative business models need to be developed. There is no startup embodying this business model like the way NORNORM does.
Anders Jepsen, CEO of NORNORM, says that the pre-pandemic office furniture landscape has been a traditional one involving middlemen like architects, advisors, interior designers, and others. These middlemen played a key role in the process of defining what furniture to buy and even drove prices.
“Companies were locked in with furniture solutions that were designed mostly for everyone working full-time at the office,” says Jepsen.
Now, Jepsen feels a large number of businesses have understood the need or benefit of being flexible. This means that businesses are now looking for alternatives to owning in order to stay flexible and “making changes to the furnishing solutions as the needs change.”
An optimised workplace solution
Businesses are constantly trying to optimise their products and solutions and this mentality is now coming to the use of office furniture as well. Driven by the demands of the pandemic, businesses are looking for new ways to optimise the use of space and accommodate for the new role of the office.
With hybrid work here to stay, Jepsen sees the ideal use case and need for companies vary between teams and the nature of their work. “This is why flexibility will be an essential requirement for the future of office,” he adds.
Speaking of hybrid work, Jepsen is worried about those working in conditions that are not good for health and wellness. “Companies should be concerned with what is a healthy workspace when working from home,” he says offering a clear perspective on the role furniture plays in our wellness.
When asked about the obstacle that’s stopping us from reaching parity between home and office furniture, he says private homes have a lot of prerequisites for available space. He says a better optimisation of home space can be achieved with a smaller sized sit-stand desk.
“Today, many compromise on this aspect and work from the kitchen table sitting in unergonomic solutions,” he says. “I do not believe that we have seen the consequences of this yet.”
Circular is the future
The circular nature of NORNORM’s operation is visible in the way it operates. It all starts with a business detailing their style, functional needs, and floor plan. NORNORM then creates a “bespoke furnishing solution and generates an interactive 3D-model of your floor plan.”
This 3D model makes it easier for businesses to add or remove elements, get live price estimates and even share with their colleagues. Once the design is approved, NORNORM will install the furniture at the premises and thus begin the subscription to new-age office furniture that are circular and flexible.
When a business decides to cancel their subscription, NORNORM will disassemble and collect the furniture. As a circular model, the disassembled furniture is not discarded but instead renovated as needed and brought into a new location based on requirement.
Jepsen says, “We do this over and over, and hence keep the products in a constant loop.”
We no longer live in a world of abundance but instead one where all the resources are shrinking. Circularity provides a path for us to extend the life of products and keep them in loop regardless if we need them or not. For office furniture, NORNORM is emerging as a torchbearer of these ethos.
For Jepsen and the team at NORNORM, a circular way to keep products in use is the future within the furniture industry. “The key is to offer this in a way that customers do not have to compromise on quality, convenience or affordability,” says Jepsen and adds, “If we can offer a circular solution that is better and cheaper – everyone would choose this.”
Accepting refurbished furniture
Few months after its launch, Apple began to offer refurbished models of iPhone to customers at a slightly discounted rate. For years, people have chosen refurbished iPhone models as an affordable entry into Apple’s world. However, when it comes to furniture, there is always this preconceived notion to go for new ones and that’s changing now.
Jepsen tells us that they are surprised by how well accepted refurbished furniture has become in the industry. He says more customers are asking for confirmation that the furniture offered on subscription by NORNORM is not new. To nobody’s surprise, NORNORM prefers to call its refurbished furniture “better-than-new.”
If Netflix and Spotify made subscription a consumer business model then NORNORM aims to make marriage of circularity with subscription relevant for businesses. Its success shows that customers are ready to embrace circular products when shown the right way to do it.
“Subscription models are a highly relevant enabler for circularity,” Jepsen says and he sees there being other models like sell-and-buy-back in the future.
Unique value proposition
Apart from subscription to furniture, NORNORM also supports international companies with all of their locations around the world. Jepsen calls this their unique value proposition. He says, “We enable companies to demonstrate brand consistency and showcase how they live their ESG policies and ambitions in reality – across all their locations.”
In order to further inspire circularity across the world, NORNORM recently raised €110M in a funding round led by Verdane. Jepsen says they will utilise this new funding to “expand its concept to more markets and segments, starting with the EU and expanding to the US in 2023.”
NORNORM currently operates in 11 countries and sees month-on-month growth of 20 per cent. It aims to expand to Germany, UK, and France primarily, and in 2023, the company has set its sights on the US market.
NORNORM’s journey is one marked by reinventing an industry and it has done so with collaboration and innovation across the value chain. “We all need to start thinking differently if we wish to capture the huge potential that exists within the circular economy,” Jepsen says.
For Anders Jepsen, the priority is not only to bring NORNORM to new European and US markets but also keeping a zero tolerance to its vision. He says it is easy to talk about goals and set an ambitious ESG agenda but not slipping back to known models remains a challenge.