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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

I remember seeing a shop near Old Street in London that I thought was definitely just selling the office chairs of failed businesses. You'd walk past and there would be some fancy chairs and desks, from yet another dream that died.

Vital part of the economy, a bit like fungus in ecology.

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The failed startups are a vital part of the Aeron economy, putting these back-savers into circulation at 1/3 of MSRP

There’s a place in London Bridge called something like ‘London office furniture’ that regularly sells Aeron chairs for about 100 quid

Apaprently there's an "Office Furniture in London" that might be it: https://www.officefurnitureinlondon.co.uk/product-category/s...

Their online listings for Aeron chairs are for more like £400, but that's still less than a third of the price when new.

I think that's where my Aeron came from, or somewhere similiar, but it was more like 300ish quid and via eBay.

Bought a Mirra from there about 15 years ago for £115 including delivery, sitting on it right now, still going strong!

I live in Stockholm and there are _tons_ of stores like that here, Stockholm is one of the big startup centers of Europe. The difference is that most them just sell IKEA furniture because that is what all the offices buy...

Although to be honest the IKEA standing tables are quite good, I own one myself (bought from one of those stores). Some of the ikea chairs are good but not top-notch.

Ikea is nice design, but from what I've seen it doesn't last. You still get what you pay for. That makes it perfect for young adults, who aren't buying for the next 20 years, but it's not a vote of confidence in the startup.

Ikea has different quality levels. You probably default to thinking about the MDF furniture which can never be successfully moved to a new place and is cheapish and breaks. That's what most people think of, and I believe how they started. But they also have 100% wood or steel framed furniture that while not fancy is durable and has a nice design.

I dunno if they have different designs in different regions, but even the "cheap" stuff on ikea feel a lot better than equivalent price cheap stuff from other stores.

Like their MDF stuff feels more solid/denser? I don't know how to explain it.

I kin the US at least, IKEA’s cheapest stuff is usually particle board, not MDF (which would probably actually be a step up). They also have this weird cardboard honeycomb with a very thin layer of mdf on top that they use for their cheapest desktops and the infamous Lack side tables.

It's possible their MDF is really HDF, which is literally the same thing but denser.

As much as people joke about breaking up over building ikea furniture, it's almost always easier to assemble than other furniture at a similar price point

That's fascinating because I have the complete opposite experience. Flat pack stuff from eg Wayfair or Target is way more annoying to assemble compared to the Ikea versions of the same, which just feels like it has more thought put it into it on how to assemble it.

You’re in agreement with the parent comment; I lean furniture is comparatively easy to assemble.

Very little is 100% wood, mostly because it doesn’t need to be. The best mid century furniture is typically veneered. That said the Stockholm range from IKEA comes with a 20 year guarantee and is vastly better than almost anything sold by supposedly “proper” chain furniture stores. IKEA know a lot about how and why things break and wear.

MDF is considered premium now, when they even substitute screws with plastic.

> But they also have 100% wood

Yeah, the bed I'm sleeping in is something like 20 years old, has gone through 3 moves (plus one where it wasn't dismantled) and is from Ikea. It's a full wood and is quite sturdy. I guess my parents paid what was needed for quality stuff.

> but it's not a vote of confidence in the startup.

I'll take a startup that doesn't waste its money on overvalued furniture over the opposite any day of the week. Shows they're not stupid about spending money. I've seen the opposite too often to count.

You can get the Aeron after the money starts really flowing in.

You'll sing a very different tune once you reach an age where parts of your body start sending you twinges that they didn't before. Workplace ergonomics matter. I'm not going to sacrifice my health for any kind of employer, startup or not.

I am at that age. And I stand by my point; you can have ergonomics with Ikea products.

Well, it doesn't have to be an Aeron, but if a startup wants someone to gamble half their compensation or more and fuck up their back with long hours in cheap and painful office chairs, they may not be able to get good employees.

The main problem with those Aeron chairs is that most people don't have fixed sitting arrangements in the office anymore. With hybrid remote work people just take the first chair available and people don't bother tuning those every single day. So all those knobs on those chairs are not only useless, but harmful.

My office uses the "Markus" IKEA chair and those are great, fit well with most people and only has two adjustments possible: height and inclination.

I think in the US a company could be subject to legal action for not providing ergonomic equipment

https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/osha-national-news-re...

Wish I could post a pic of my Ferrari-red, "high end" Ikea KLAPPE office chair I'm sitting on right now, purchased 15 some years ago, still going strong holding me up. The floor demo, however, that had reached EOL, lol!

Okay, okay, it's not Ferrari-red but it is a nice red that has not faded in 15+ years.

Congratulations on getting the KLAPPE!

Can you name drop some examples?

This is the one I bought my table from:

BBS Used Furniture Group AB Fridensborgsvägen 57, 170 60 Solna

Tack!

Do you think it's still there? I wouldn't mind getting a fancy office chair at discount.

I got my current chair nearby, possibly where OP is talking about. I wanted to be able to sit and adjust chairs and needed one that would tilt forward. Their selection is a bit chaotic and didn't have the chair I really wanted, but I liked being able to try out a few.

I think you'll have similar success watching Gumtree, craigslist, etc.

---

Andrews Office Furniture - Old Street & The City 250 - 254 Old St, London EC1V 9DD

Haha small world! I went to the kebab shop across the street on a regular basis when I lived nearby for Techstars in 2015

Yo that's the one!

Nearly every city has one. Every office needs some form of desk and almost always a chair. These are also worth repairing in enough cases that it is worthwhile for some small local company to deal with that, but they are not worth repairing often enough that any company would keep that repair person on staff (most chairs are scrap when they break). So nearly everyone contracts with a local company to buy office furniture and keep it repaired. (where I work there are 10 extra chairs in a back room, when your chair breaks you trade it for one in that room, if you hire someone you grab a chair. Then they come once a week and count chairs, replacing any broken ones, and adjusting our chair lease if there are more/less than 10 chairs.)

Finding this company shouldn't be too hard, but they don't have a nice retail location since most of the business is they bring chairs to you for an extra fee. However they always have a location and generally they have used chairs for cheap they are happy to sell you.

Andrews Office Furniture, next to inmarsat?

We have office liquidation companies here as well, but unfortunately when I checked them out they basically just had Aeron chairs which I find incredibly uncomfortable. So it's a great deal but on something I won't enjoy using.

I only buy used high-quality office chairs. I have two Aerons that were essentially brand new, and seemingly fart free (maybe the mesh just let the farts pass through). One char I've had for over 10 years it is still good as new, though with far more farts.

Would you sit in such a "haunted" chair if you're just launching your own startup though?

I would need more data on how many businesses failed based on ownership of the chair.

If you told me that chair had been used by n successive failed businesses, there is a value of n where I would reject the null hypothesis that the chair has no association with the business failing.

I don't think n=1 is sufficiently large.

You will never get to n sufficiently large - chairs don't last that long. Even if a chair really is that haunted, it will have to be in a startup for 6 months before the money runs out (it will take that long to run out of money after the chair forces it on the bad track - if the startup runs out sooner it wasn't the chair at fault).

But when it breaks, they take the roller wheel and put it on another chair.

I bought Aeron chairs for an agency I joined after the 2008 financial crash. They were from Bank of America. Six months later I found a hole in our agency's finances and we went bust.

A bit stitious too.

On the etymology of "superstitious":

* https://oxfordre.com/classics/display/10.1093/acrefore/97801...

imagine that same chair is recycled over and over again that chair has fineprint of killstreak of how many bussiness failling like how pilot cross their cockpit to signify how many plane he shootdown

Sounds like something Netflix would make into a two season show with a cliffhanger that the chair makes it into the Oval Office but Netflix cancels the show without resolution.

House of Chairs

Was the hole in the agency's finances due to high spending on very expensive chairs, tho?

You learn more from your failures than your successes. Those chairs have experience.

Give "Facebook signboard with SUN on the back of it" vibes.

I'm not superstitious. Well, maybe I'm a bit stitious.

I'm not either, if only because being superstitious brings bad luck.

But still. There's this inexplicable feeling that "failure is contagious"

You can look at it another way - the chair's bad luck is all used up!

I don't want to be the one getting the dregs of someone's chair's bad luck.

I want it completely clean of bad luck, or I want my own fresh bad luck!

Yes. It's not contagious through sitting on surfaces.

Some cultures believe in objects absorbing negative energy. Tons of Asian films are about homes harboring souls who faced injustice.

Very famously, US cabinet member Donald Rumsfeld purchased Mount Misery to live in. Even in the west this shook a lot of heads https://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/22/rumsfelds_mount_mise...

I'm aware. I have not been given convincing evidence that there is any real effect.

Yeah because I got it effectively on discount. Sitting in it would be a reminder of how to prioritize business and spending.

Both a trophy and a reminder of our financial mortality.

Yeah! I don't know if it's still there but I kitted out my first company's office with chairs from there! It was a cool place.

There's also a junk shop, for want it a better phrase, just off the top of Brick Lane that is similar, it has office stuff but also way more general stuff too.

It doesn't even have a GM listing but it's here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CWDZ3goLKXeJb3eAA?g_st=ac

The mural on the wall is of the guy who used to own the shop. He'd sit outside all day in his car. I can't remember his name now but he was famous locally.

I always called 2.0 the "Steelcase Employment Project"

I don't know what company died so I could get a Steelcase Leap for $5 but it's worked out well for me. Over a decade with a used chair and it still feels new. The only problem I've encountered is a screw in one of the armrests falls out from time to time. Whatever it is meant to bite into seems to be stripped out. Might glue it in the next time it falls out.

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