Office Liquidation Checklist & How to Sell Office Furniture

I have office furniture to sell. What do I do?

You have office furniture you no longer need & it is time to get rid of it but you want to keep as much of it as possible from the landfill. What are your options? You need an office liquidation checklist.

The first questions we ask when we get called about an office decommissions: Do you have pictures & quantities you can send us? What is your timeframe?

We have had companies tell us they have a lot of furniture & some companies only have 1 desk. If you have less than 25 matching of anything, we suggest you post it on your Facebook page or NextDoor. As a first step, this will show the office furniture to people you know or live close to you. Next, you can also post to the items on Craigslist & Facebook Marketplace. If you need help with a flyer, you can buy our canva template for $4.95. It is already formatted for you. You just need to change out the pictures and titles. Email us at nikim@greencleandesigns.com for this.

Canva Template for Used Office Furniture Flyer

Office Liquidation Decommission Checklist

If you are still reading, you must have a bigger liquidation or decommission. Here is our office liquidation checklist of items to access your project:

Office Decommission Take Pictures

Pictures of what you have in the number one thing we need. We want a picture of each item. Focus on your chairs and cubicles. For example for the offie chairs, we want the front of the chair, back of the chair, & tag from underneath. The tag will tell us the manufacturer, finishes, & date of manufacturer. Also, the condition on a scale of 1 – 10. Are most of the chairs pretty clean? Do the chairs work? Arm caps in good condition?

For cubicles, the tag is on the top of the panel underneath the top cap. You can pop off the top cap to get this information.

where to look for the cubicle manufacturer

What is the typical cubicle size?

Draw the typical size of the most common cubicle in your office liquidation. This will let us know if the cubicle can be reconfigured to a different cubicle size. Do not worry if you can not draw. A line drawing will work. Here is an example of information needed.

typical cubicle size greencleandesigns.com

Also, we want a close up of the underneath storage file cabinets. These are the pedestals. What is the depth on these? You want the depth to be under 24″. If they are deeper than this, they will not work under a 24″ work surface. Do the pedestals have a top or are they supporting the weight of the work surface? If they are not current finishes or have a remanufacturer with interest, the metal is being recycled. The pedestals may have value & can be sold to offset a portion of the labor removal cost. Every office furniture liquidation is different. In a recent decommission, a refurbisher was interested in the panels but not anything else. The storage was all taken for metal recycling.

Are your cubicles a top manufacture and current brand like Steelcase Answer, Knoll, Haworth, or Herman Miller Ethospace? There are several refurbishers of these manufacturers which increase the chance of interest for the secondary market.

Office Furniture Installation

Weekly, we are contacted to recommend professionals for office furniture installation. When it comes to the removal, we make the same suggestion. Once we know what you have we want to know more about your office building to understand the labor costs for the office furniture removal. What is the distance from the furniture to the outside of the building? Are there freight elevators? Any other elevators available? Is there a dock? Any staging area at the dock? Can a 53′ trailer fit in the dock?

Tip: Invest in some orange cones and mark off some of the parking lot to get the trucks as close as possible. Not only will this lower your labor cost, this will reduce the risk of a wild panel cart hitting a parked car.

Timeline of Office Liquidation

What is the timeline for office furniture removal? Can we do this during the day? The more work that can be done during the day the better for the cost. Is union labor a requirement? Any other deadlines to note?

Too many times a day, we get calls with the office furniture removal needing to happen as soon as possible. If this is you, your options are limited. Office Furniture Installers are scheduled weeks in advance. The more advance planning the better for all involved and the higher the chance we can give your furniture a second life.

Office Furniture Removal

You have assembled the information, now what do you do? E-mail it out to the local used office furniture dealers & installers in your market. If you e-mail us nikim@greencleandesigns.com, we can give you some local contacts for office furniture removal. Office liquidation nationwide is one of the services we provide.

Office Furniture Donation

Can you donate the office furniture to non profits? Maybe! We have facilitated these connections. If you are looking for an office furniture donation or have furniture to donate, you can e-mail me what you have or what you need. On the donation side, non profits need the furniture to be in good condition. For the non-profits, even with the donation there will be some cost. Most likely you will want the furniture to be cleaned and the furniture delivered.

This is a wonderful option for keeping the furniture out of the landfill. Flexibility on both parties is the best approach to make this happen.

Can I get money for my used office furniture?

The used office furniture industry has changed in the last 5 years. With the pressure of import pricing, it no longer makes sense for dealers to keep used office desks, tables, lateral files, & reception desks for stock. Companies can purchase these items new for less than a dealer can charge for them. Plus, the used items are very bulky to store in warehouses. This has reduced the number of used dealers in the marketplace and those dealers are very picky about what they keep for stock. Most office liquidations are going negative. This means the value of the office furniture does not offset the labor cost to remove it. We had one dealer tell us that 39 out of 40 liquidations are going negative. Do not be surprised with a high labor bill…that is normal. Whether you can get money for your office furniture will depend on the manufacturer, age of the furniture, and timing. High end chairs have the best return. If you have a bunch of Steelcase Leaps and Herman Miller Aerons, that is good news. Do not let someone just buy the chairs from you and leave you with the headache of unmarketable furniture. Too many times, we hear that an office liquidator came in and just took the furniture with value. They left all the no value furniture for the company. If we can’t handle the project ourself, we are happy to recommend reputable office liquidators near you.