I am a director of a small office supplies business based in England and very recently, due to the economic climate and the impact it has had upon our business, we have had to make some really difficult decisions. The decisions we needed to make, like others businesses on a growing basis were all around reducing overheads, ranging from staffing to office rental charges.

Our business had been hit with our largest customer going bust leaving us with a big hole in our finances as we had agreed with them 3 months prior an extended payment plan to monies owed. Staffing was our largest overhead and this was looked at first with a view to streamlining as best we could without losing too much impact upon the good service we give to our customers. We made the cuts needed grudgingly and reduced the staffing level by 10% by redundancy and shortening hours of work.

The next move was to then look at the next biggest overhead, office rental. We were renting a modern office large enough for the business with warehousing space for our products. The offices were located near to the motorway for easy distribution of stock.

We found another premises with reduced rental but the same amount of space albeit further away from the motorway. We decided to make the move after much consideration and started to pack up our belongings and stock for relocation. When we first moved in to the office 3 years previous we had less equipment and stock to move and moved with cardboard boxes which proved adequate. A colleague suggested this time however we use plastic removal crates to pack and relocate in.

I did not realise you could hire crates and was really surprised when my colleague found a good crate hire company and ordered the crates from them. Within 48 hours are crates were delivered and they were a god send. They actually cost less than cardboard and we did not have to worry about making the boxes up and then getting rid of them once we had used them. The crate hire company collected the crates when we had finished with them and we moved within a week. I cannot tell you what a difference it made to the move in an already stressful time for us and our staff.

So when looking at relocating your office you would do worse than to drop the cardboard boxes in place for the plastic crate option.