Producing an office furniture catalogue can be a nightmare. Firstly, you have to understand the furniture market. Furniture manufacturers don’t usually sell directly to end users, they normally have a network of dealers and re-sellers and most business furniture dealers have a large number of manufacturers on their books.

Firstly, the business furniture manufacturer will usually produce some sort of catalogue or brochure on their products. However, their products change over time so that the brochures or catalogues can quickly become out of date. If they have a full catalogue of all their business  furniture products, they will have to re-print it often. Secondly comes the problem of pricing. Most end users want to know the price of their proposed desk or chair  before they enter into negotiations. There is no point spending a long time looking at a 500 pound desk if you only have 150 pounds to spend. The manufacturers may well propose a ’suggested selling price’, but due to the competition laws the business furniture dealers are free to sell the products at whatever price they wish. So, furniture  amanufacturer  produces a catalogue full of desks, reception units, meeting tables, chairs etc.

Secondly, the  furniture dealer has a customer who needs some  furniture. He doesn’t usually ask for a specific manufacturere, he wants to buy a meeting table or a reception desk, he doesn’t usually care who makes it. Therefore the  furniture dealer has to somehow cobble together some sort of pack of literature for ‘meeting tables, or ‘reception counters’ from all the many  furniture manufacturers information that he has available. Some of it is priced, other are not, and worst of all some of it contains the dealers buying price, which the dealer does not want the buyer to be aware of.

Many  furniture dealers and  manufacturers now rely on electronic brochures, and particularly websites to display their information. This can be changed as often as required and prices can be  modified easily. From the point of view of the office furniture dealer, all similar items can be classified together, for example all meeting tables from all manufacturers can be grouped in once place.