In the wake of the pandemic, furniture design specialist Knoll has seen explosive demand for work-from-home solutions. As a result, the retailer is doubling down on investing in e-commerce and visualization capabilities. Knoll is also consulting with clients on their return to the physical office when the time is right.
Fortune spoke with Andrew Cogan, chairman and CEO of Knoll, for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, about how the outbreak has affected his business, his thoughts on the future, and how he is working through the pandemic.
Fortune: How has the outbreak of COVID-19 affected Knoll, and by extension, the interior design industry at large? How has the pandemic altered Knoll’s operations and workforce?
Cogan: We’ve learned a lot about keeping our people safe. We operate in countries all over the world, with associates in offices and manufacturing facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia. I wish I could say we had a pandemic playbook on the shelf, but what we do have is an amazing seasoned team that we’ve spiked with new talent. Together, we all pivoted pretty quickly to remote work and kept our principal manufacturing operations open in most locations with enhanced health and safety standards. We did have to suspend operations in Italy, but fortunately those facilities are open again.
I expect design-driven businesses like ours that continue to invest in innovation, design, and technology will thrive. With respect to the spaces we occupy—the workplace and the home—we see a lot of opportunity coming out of this pandemic. People crave the community, connectivity, and creativity of the office; at the same time, consumers will be spending more time in their abode than on travel or entertainment.
Have you been going into an office still? Or have you been working from home? What does your average day look like now?
I’m based in New York, and I am transitioning back to working at our headquarters in Manhattan. I continue to work from home a fair amount as well, which, like many of us, I did prior to the pandemic. In many ways, my day-to-day is illustrative of where we see our clients moving. People want to come back to the office; at the same time, we expect work from home to be a bigger part of the mix for many people going forward.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on our strategy to grow Knoll’s work-from-home solutions and e-commerce capabilities. Unsurprisingly, demand for work-from-home solutions has skyrocketed in the past few months. Fortunately, we were moving aggressively in this direction before the pandemic. We acquired Fully.com—an e-commerce brand devoted to home-office design—last year, which set an all-time record for sales in March, and our Muuto brand is poised to meet work-from-home solutions as well.
My other big focus has been our work to guide clients on the safe return to the workplace and envisioning what the post-pandemic office environment will look like. I check in with clients and stay close to the design team’s work, and we’re moving quickly on new offerings to help retrofit offices for short-term reopenings as well as longer-term workplace design solutions.
Depending on where they are, some nonessential workers have already started going back to the office. There are a lot of ideas out there, but what do you think the future of the office space is as employees readjust? What kinds of protective and social distancing measures need to be in place, and how does interior design play a role?
The workplace is not going away. The benefits of the mix of community, connectivity, culture, and spontaneity you get in the workplace is simply irreplaceable. We’re hearing from our own people and from our clients that they want to come back to the office. This has created lots of opportunities for the design community, dealers, and our clients to retrofit, redesign, and reimagine their workplaces. And I think we’re on point with the thought leadership, design collaborations, and products as well as the distribution channels to support all that.
Right now, to start to bring people back to the office, it’s all about reorienting circulation and reorganizing space—and providing screens for space delineation. I expect that this phase will be followed by a shift in overall facility design, exploring meeting and gathering areas, for example, where you are not in an enclosed room, but working in open freestanding architectural structures surrounded by lounge and individual work areas, all designed to facilitate distancing and enhanced airflow—a much healthier environment overall.