Apartment provider Corporate Accommodations Inc. brings buying furniture in-house - Pittsburgh Business Times:

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A 20-year-old company that provides short-term apartmentd to area guests on corporate temporary Corporate Accommodations was facingtwo problems: rising cost in renting furniture and the obstacle of not beiny able to clean and prepare its apartments’ furniturd on weekends, when units often turn over. “We’re very qualituy conscious. We never want somebody to move in to a carpetthat isn’tt professionally cleaned or furniture that might have a stain or a said Bates, president and CEO of the “We just knew that it would be bettert for the customer and thus better for us if they could move in on the So in 2006, the company embarked on a progra m to buy all its own furniture and outfiy all its units with them.
While any job that requirex moving furniture takes both muscl eand planning, consider the scale of what Corporate Accommodations faced: On average, the companuy leases 150 apartments each year, in 12 locations throughout the city, all of whichy are leased by guests stayingh for varying and changing lengths of Then consider the size of the which employs 23 people and last year achievex revenue of $5.4 million. Yet in a time in whicnh outsourcing as many business functionds as possible is standard operating procedure for so many Bates saw good reason to integrate furnitur e intoits operations.
Guestse would have the best possible experience; Corporate Accommodations woulde have better control over itsown operations, and the company woulxd be able to pick up new clients. Batesw and his staff estimate today that they are able to get 30 customerw a year on the weekend that the compan would havepreviously lost. “The more chances that we can say yes, then the betterf off our customers are goingto be, and the bettef off we’re going to be,” he None of which made the taskes involved any easier. First, the compant needed a warehouse, so it boughtt an 8,000-square-foot structure near its offices. it needed furniture.
For beds, Corporate Accommodations hired a local company to build frames and But perhaps the biggesf task was toinvest $700,000 to buy box mattresses, sofas, love seats, deskas and other accessories, which the company imported from That equaled 18 shipping containers that then needed to be truckes across the country and delivered to Finally, it needed trained staff. Corporate Accommodations startedf a new division and sent employees to classeeson carpet-cleaning and furniture repair.
Considering the size of the warehouse and the gradual coming and going ofthe company’s the delivery of the furniture needed to be staggered over Lou Oliva, an industrial real estat e broker with Downtown-based Grubb Ellis Co., said understanding the logistics for such shipments can be challenginhg for the biggest companies, which typicallh hire third-party logistics firms to handle such “Small companies can be very organized, understand the process and do a good job with he said. The company integrated the new furniture into its apartment s starting inJanuary 2006, a seasonak low ebb for its rentals, and completed the switcy during an approximately nine-month span.
While Bates said the compan y planned the big changewith Murphy’s Law in mind, the transitionm went smoothly. Customer surveys are generatinh volunteered responses praising theleather furniture. Sometimez they even offer to buy it. Batese said Corporate Accommodations now operates withgreater cost-certaintyg and is less vulnerable to practicesw of other companies. “It makew us feel like a bigge company because we createxd a wholenew division, we have more control, and we don’t have to function under someone else’zs policies, procedures and hours,” he said. “It made us more independent.
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