How to start an office furniture dealership in the UK

Many people who start an office furniture dealership have already sold the stuff for someone else. They know which chairs come back with a failed gas lift and which desk frames arrive in eleven boxes. What they have not done is the rest: opened accounts with manufacturers, set up the company, insured fitters working on a customer's premises, priced a range from scratch, and found the first ten customers without the old employer's name on the van.

This guide takes that route in the order you will meet it, for the UK. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, an ecommerce platform for dealers, so we have a stake in how you sell. Orbit gets one section near the end, and every outside fact has a link and the date we checked it.

What does an office furniture dealer actually do?

A dealer sits between the people who make furniture and the people who use it. You don't manufacture. You choose ranges, advise on what fits the space and the budget, sell at your price, arrange delivery and installation, and put things right afterwards. Your income is the gap between trade cost and selling price, plus what you earn on delivery, installation, space planning and taking the old furniture away.

Most of that still happens by phone, email and site visit. CSIL's research on European office furniture dealers (March 2020 edition) found about 32% used some form of ecommerce, web sales were still below 5% of total office furniture turnover, and online buying was "still a price-driven business" (worldfurnitureonline.com, checked 29 October 2026). Old and European, but the point stands: a new dealer can make the website a sales channel from day one.

Which niche should a new office furniture dealer pick?

Pick one to start. Each needs different suppliers, different skills and a different website.

The small-business end is bigger than it looks. In the same CSIL work, dealers' small-business customers split roughly 58% small and medium offices, 17% private or home offices and 13% co-working facilities, with the rest in other commercial segments. Contract fit-out pays more per job but brings longer cash cycles and installation risk. If partitioning or electrics come into scope, "fitting out" is expressly included in the definition of construction work in the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026), which brings duties of its own.

How do you open trade accounts with office furniture manufacturers?

Expect two kinds of supplier, with two kinds of door.

• Trade suppliers and distributors hold stock ranges, sell only to the trade and want volume. Teknik, for example, says it supplies "trade only" through furniture dealers and retailers, and delivers next day or by a two-person room-of-choice service, including plain-label single items direct to your end-user customers (teknikoffice.co.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Accounts like these are usually a form and a credit check away.
• Brand-led manufacturers choose their dealers and rank them. Herman Miller's UK dealer page describes a Dealer Review and Accreditation programme in which dealers progress "from Dealer to DealerPartner to Accredited Partner", with more services and support at each step (hermanmiller.com, checked 29 October 2026). Expect a conversation, not a form: who you sell to, where, and how much you expect to buy.

A trade or credit account application usually asks for:

• Company name, registration number, addresses and VAT number.
• Directors' details and consent to a credit check; a new company may be asked for a personal guarantee.
• Bank details, and often a bank reference and two trade references.
• Your website, any showroom, the sectors you sell to and your expected annual spend.

A brand-new company often starts on pro forma, paying before goods ship, until it has some history, so plan cash for that. Then get each supplier's discount from list, carriage-paid threshold, drop-ship charges, lead times and returns terms in writing. Our guide to office furniture dropshipping in the UK has the full checklist for suppliers who deliver to your customer.

Do you need a showroom to sell office furniture?

No, but you need some way for a customer to sit in a chair before they buy forty of them.

A showroom gives you that, along with credibility with bigger accounts and somewhere to sell ex-display stock. It also gives you a lease, business rates, display stock bought at trade price and someone to staff it. Before you sign anything, ask the brands you want whether display stock is a condition of the dealer level you are aiming for.

Online-first works when suppliers deliver direct and your range is mostly stock items: task chairs, desks, storage, screens and accessories. Fill the gap with sample chairs lent to serious buyers, finish swatches, visits to a manufacturer's showroom, and product pages showing every finish. Many dealers land in the middle: a small appointment-only studio, with the website selling the stock lines. Our guide to selling office furniture online covers which products sell on the web and which should stay quote-led.

How do delivery and installation work for a new dealer?

There are three options, and most dealers end up using all of them.

1. The supplier delivers to your customer: kerbside, two-person to a room of choice, assembled or installed. No van and no warehouse, but you depend on their dates and their crews.
2. Your own van and fitters. You control the job, the customer sees your name, and one visit can cover a desk swap and a chair collection. You carry the van, the wages and the insurance.
3. Installation partners. Self-employed fitters or installation firms on a day rate or per item. Agree rates, packaging removal, insurance, damage and snagging, out-of-hours work and waste carrier registration in writing.

Whichever you use, the price on your website has to cover it. Pricing by weight, postcode and service level is a subject of its own, covered in charging for delivery and installation online.

What margins should an office furniture dealer aim for?

We have not found a published UK benchmark we would trust, so work it out from your own terms. Most furniture is priced as list price less a discount. Your trade discount sets the room you have; your selling price decides how much of it you keep. Every figure below is an assumption for illustration: a chair with a £400 list price, sold to the customer at 30% off list, which is £280 ex VAT.

Five points of trade discount move your margin by about seven points at the same selling price, so the terms you agree in month one matter more than almost any other number. Card fees, unrecharged delivery and returns all come out of that gross profit. Keep markup and margin straight: a 50% markup on cost is a 33.3% margin, not 50%. Our free margin, markup and VAT calculator converts both ways.

How should you set up the company, VAT and insurance?

• Company. Trade suppliers and corporate buyers tend to be more comfortable with a limited company. Registering one online costs £100 and the annual confirmation statement £50 (gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Sole trader or limited is covered in do you need to register a business to sell online.
• VAT. You must register if your taxable turnover for the last 12 months goes over £90,000, and you can register voluntarily below that (gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026). If most of your customers are VAT-registered businesses, they reclaim the VAT you charge, so registering early costs them nothing and lets you reclaim VAT on your own purchases.
• Insurance. Employers' liability insurance is compulsory as soon as you become an employer, with at least £5 million of cover, and you can be fined £2,500 for every day you are not properly insured (gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Ask a broker about public liability (facilities teams often ask for the certificate before fitters go on site), product liability, goods in transit and, if you draw space plans, professional indemnity.

Which trade bodies should an office furniture dealer join?

• BOSS Federation calls itself "the trade association for the workplace supplies industry" and counts office furniture among the products its members deal in. It has three membership levels: Trade (networking, legislation updates, special interest groups and regional committees), Gold (adds HR and health and safety advisers) and Platinum (adds legal support and tribunal representation). Fees are not published (bossfederation.com, checked 29 October 2026). Its industry awards on 26 November 2026, at the Kimpton Clocktower in Manchester, put much of the trade in one room (bossfederation.com, checked 29 October 2026).
• FIRA, the Furniture Industry Research Association, says membership is "open to all", with full membership for UK companies at the core of the industry such as manufacturers, retailers and major suppliers. Members get a standards database, compliance guidance and testing discounts; traders and retailers pay a flat rate, quoted on request (fira.co.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Whether or not you join, keep each supplier's test certificates; public-sector buyers often ask.

To meet manufacturers in person, walk a trade show. Workspace Design Show London runs on 24 and 25 February 2027 at the Business Design Centre, and its site reports more than 5,300 attendees (workspaceshow.com, checked 29 October 2026).

How does a new dealer find its first customers?

• Office moves. A business moving premises buys furniture. Commercial letting agents, landlords, serviced office and co-working operators and removal firms hear about moves months ahead, so get to know a few in your area.
• Other trades. Fit-out contractors, architects and interior designers specify furniture they would rather not supply. Be their reliable supplier.
• Schools and the public sector. Steady buyers with rules of their own, from frameworks to purchase orders; see selling to schools, councils and the NHS online.
• Search. A Google Business Profile, product pages that rank for the model names people type in, and Shopping listings for stock ranges.
• Repeat business. Every new starter needs a chair, and the second order is the cheap one to win.

How do you launch with suppliers' ranges already on your website?

The hard part of an online-first start is the empty website: fifteen hundred products typed in by hand is months of work, out of date at the first price rise. This is where Orbit fits, so read it with our stake in mind.

On every Orbit plan, you connect a supplier on Orbit, tick the products you want, and they import with images, variants, brand, category and specifications. Selling prices come from your pricing rules: a percentage markup, a percentage margin or a fixed amount, rounded to .99 or .95 if you like, matched by brand, category or cost band. Stock syncs. Cost and content changes arrive in an Updates inbox for you to accept, or can be set to be accepted automatically. A connection can also be set to add the supplier's new products as they are published; that stays off until you switch it on.

When a customer's order is paid, Orbit raises one purchase order per supplier. For each connection you choose whether it waits as a draft for you to check or goes straight to the supplier: into their Orbit dashboard, by email with a PDF, through the API, by webhook or in a scheduled CSV or XLSX export. Tracking comes back onto your customer's order. Two limits, plainly: this works only with suppliers connected on Orbit (you can invite one that isn't, and import other ranges from a spreadsheet through a column mapper), and Orbit does not move money between you and your supplier.

Five office themes (Apex, Canopy, Depot, Index and Quorum) cost £120 each, one-off; Quorum, built for contract dealers, sends its quote buttons to your contact page, and the Forms plugin can take quote requests. Colour and image swatches for finishes are built in, the 3D Configurator plugin is £19.99 a month, shoppers can switch between ex VAT and inc VAT prices, and bulky items are charged with shipping classes, conditional rates and postcode rules. Company accounts, trade sign-up with approval and per-company price catalogues are on the Enterprise plan only (£999 a month, or £749 billed yearly). More on Orbit for office furniture dealers; plans start at £25 a month ex VAT (£19 billed yearly) after a 14-day free trial, see pricing.

How much does it cost to start an office furniture dealership?

It depends mostly on the showroom. An online-first dealer using supplier-direct delivery needs a company (£100 to register online), insurance, a website, samples and cash for pro forma orders while trade accounts build up. A showroom adds a lease, business rates, display stock and someone to staff it, so price both before you choose.