The internet has had a significant impact on the UK office furniture market over recent years. Prices have fallen substantially in the budget to mid range market as national online dealers have undercut the more traditional suppliers.
The majority of UK domestic internet office furniture sales are handled as drop-shipments where the manufacturer delivers goods to the end customer without the dealer ever seeing the goods.
The drop-shipment business model may work painlessly with many products however things do not generally run quite so smoothly with office furniture orders. Furniture products are often heavy, 80 kilograms (175 lbs) or more is not particularly unusual and these items are also more prone to transit damage than many other products unless handled extremely carefully. Specialist transport is required to minimise transit damage but no company claims to eliminate transit damage completely.