Many customers are deciding to construct home or garden offices as a direct result of the shift to home working. Howard Morris, Managing Director at Trade Fabrication Systems, explains how merchants can capitalise on this market growth by collaborating with offsite processing partners to develop a complete solution for cladded, timber frame structures that deliver practical office spaces.
Originally driven by health and safety concerns, the number of individuals who work from home has risen over the last year. That said, it also looks to be a catalyst for change to the long-term way of working for many, with businesses starting to consider permanent flexible working or hybrid models.
While many have welcomed working from home as a benefit, it is not without its challenges, with frequent reports from individuals finding the work-home-life balance difficult to achieve. As a result, garden office demand has grown exponentially as an efficient solution to draw a clear distinction between the two.
Due to timber’s versatility, ease of construction and cost-effectiveness, it has rapidly grown in popularity for use in garden offices. Consequently, merchant enquiries are on the rise for timber frame structures and components that can easily satisfy home office requirements.
Identifying an opportunity to embrace this influx in demand, merchants can be on hand to directly support customers to seamlessly facilitate these new spaces by working with offsite processing partners to offer the complete solution.
Taking timber processing offsite
Offsite processing partners work in close collaboration with merchant teams, helping them to enhance product offerings by taking methods traditionally finished on-site, offsite. Particularly useful when considering the demand for garden office spaces, merchants can offer an encompassing solution that drives efficiencies and adds value for the end-user.
Capitalising on garden office demand, merchant teams can work with customers to identify the exact specification required for the office space, and complete the majority of the finishing work offsite. Once the details are finalised, merchants can supply blank substrates to processing partners who will pre-finish the products to exact specification in a quality controlled, factory environment.
While this process improves the overall quality and saves time and money for the end-user, it also gives merchants the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by supplying the complete solution to garden office spaces.
Enhancing product offering
Offsite processing enables merchants to offer customers a wide variety of pre-finished timber materials that can be applied for both decorative and performance benefits, without impacting on stock inventory.
Types of finishing methods include:
- Tongue and groove machining for mdf panels
- Interior and exterior decorative and performance cladding
- Priming
- Pre-finished coatings (any RAL colour)
- Preservative Coatings/Stains
- Precision machining capabilities
- Euroclass B fire retardant coatings
Giving customers increased levels of choice, offsite processing supports merchants teams to develop commercial value, by offering products that are cost-effective, high-quality and save valuable time overall.
When considering garden office construction, merchants can provide pre-finished timber substrates for all applications. From durable and attractive external cladding that has been third-party tested for weather performance, or grooved interior panels, customers can be supplied with the building blocks to a robust garden office solution that seamlessly meets demand requirements.
Adding value for merchants and customers
Specialised processing partners tend to operate strictly within the business-to-business space, non-competing processors work alongside merchants to add the most value to substrates. Merchants can transform their existing product offering, without impacting on stock inventory by housing a range of blank substrates that are also suitable for pre-finishing processes.
This also means that merchants retain the purchasing power of raw and blank materials and therefore can be confident that their timber substrates will meet their customers’ usual expectations.
Whilst this is imperative to safeguard substrate quality, ensuring merchants and customers get the most value from the collaboration consideration must be given to quality assurances and processing standards. By identifying partners who operate to industry best practice, such as ISO 9001:2015, and are members of trade associations that evaluate overall product delivery for application, can help to ensure merchants can rely upon them to deliver to specification.
As the home has been the only constant for many over the last year, garden office spaces present a solution to retain this continuity while achieving work-life balance. Helping to maximise on this growth opportunity and encourage commercial gain, merchants who embrace offsite processing have the potential to support customers to complete projects to a high quality in a cost and time-effective way.
Moreover, offsite processing can help merchants to alleviate stock pressures beyond garden offices and could become a solution that satisfies all timber requirements by increasing choice, value and quality.
For more information on Trade Fabrication Systems’ full range of merchant support services, head to: https://www.tradefabricationsystems.co.uk/about-us/
