We’ve been living in Zoom coffins this year

This is an excerpt from an article. To view full article, click here

By Nate Berg 

Before the pandemic, an estimated 70% of U.S. companies worked out of open plan offices. Their employees, by and large, hated them. With few, if any, walls separating them, workers were constantly distracted by each other’s noise. And when there was a need to get away from that bustle, for a private phone call, a small meeting, or just to quietly sit and do some focused work, the open plan office did not provide many options.

In 2018, a startup called Room stepped into this void with a suite of cleanly designed stand-alone privacy booths aimed directly at noisy offices. They were small, compact spaces with room for someone to stand and take a call and write notes, or even sit at a small desk, and blissfully shut the door behind them. Tiny realms of privacy turned out to be a hit in offices around the country. By year two, the company was doing $30 million in sales, according to cofounder Morten Meisner-Jensen. “And then we hit COVID in February 2020 and things looked very different,” he says.

White collar workers abandoned offices in droves. It would seem to be an existential problem for a company like Room. But soon enough, offices began coming out of dormancy and into a new reality: Instead of open plan offices full of noisy people, they were sprinkled with noisy Zoom and Teams video meetings.

Call it office noise 2.0. “There’s almost always a digital component to every meeting now,” Meisner-Jensen says, and that means a new source of aural distraction for workers. Privacy booths are suddenly even more relevant. The spaces on offer vary widely, from Room’s high-end, design-focused booths to privacy capsules that can feel a bit like stepping into an upturned coffin. Meisner-Jensen says Room has sold about 28,000 of its privacy booths, with prices ranging from $5,995 up to $19,995, and demand is growing.

Room is not alone. Many office furniture companies have also started building their own privacy booths, including companies like TalkBox, KI, and Buzzispace. The 2022 edition of NeoCon, a major commercial interior design convention, was flooded with them. “Everybody had a booth. It was like a phone booth conference,” says Andrew Flynn, TalkBox’s COO. “The market that is out there for these things is only growing.”

View Full Article