Blurring the Line Between the Home and Corporate Offices
Nearly a year ago, ThinkLab wrote an article on the “Four Takeaways from the Residential Furniture Rent Model,” highlighting lessons the interiors industry could learn from the residential furniture model demonstrated through Fernish. Flash-forward to current times, and the same company, which originally set out to fuse the service component with flexible home furnishings, now reports a 300 percent increase in home office orders since the start of COVID-19-related quarantines.
When asked what this metric says about the future of the home office, Michael Barlow, cofounder and CEO of Fernish, puts it best: “In terms of long-term implications, not only will the handshake go away, but we’re looking at a new definition of the word office. How will it be defined? Will we see an ‘office’ model that consists of a fully furnished home and corporate office where employees spend two days in the office and three days at home?”
