A few years ago, Marc Rosenberg was trying to figure out what to do with his life after a career marketing toys for the likes of Hasbro Inc. He fancied himself an inventor, but of what?
Rosenberg discovered just what when he stepped into his daughter’s college dorm and saw her roommates on their beds, typing away on laptops. They barely used their desks because they said they were uncomfortable. An idea was born, and after crowdfunding about $500,000, Rosenberg in 2016 launched the Edge Desk, an adjustable pop-up workspace with cushioned seats that now sells for $400.
Almost overnight, the pandemic has created a booming work-from-home economy, and Rosenberg’s business jumped eight-fold in the past few weeks.
“It's been crazy,” said Rosenberg, who has just one full-time employee besides himself. “We’re managing the best we can.”
“This is going to be a seismic shift.”
As the U.S., and much of Europe, settles into weeks, if not months, of remote work, capitalism is adapting. Rosenberg said he’s not just selling a lot more desks, but he’s received interest from dozens of potential overseas distributors in Asia and the Middle East. ABC’s “Shark Tank,” a reality-TV contest for entrepreneurs, even reached out, he said, and asked him to apply to be a contestant. The 55-year-old is passing because he wants to focus on his next goal: building a sales team.
“This is going to be a seismic shift,” said Rosenberg, who was quick to point out that his desk comes assembled and can be collapsed for storage under a bed. It’s easy to move around, he continued, and on many days he works from the backyard of his Deerfield, Illinois, home. “So many people are demanding that they want to work where they want to work.”
According to Kate Lister, who has been analyzing and consulting companies on remote work for more than a decade, the current, forced work-from-home shift shouldn’t be underestimated. In the U.S., the evolution of telecommuting has been too slow and elitist, she says. It’s often only been a perk for executives and other high-value employees. The Great Recession did push firms to expand remote work to cut costs (think call centers). And over the past few years, more firms have rolled it out to recruit and retain talent in one of the tightest job markets on record, although unemployment is about to swell.
Only 7% of U.S. firms offer telecommuting
Even with those incentives, only 7% of U.S. firms offer telecommuting and just 3.6% of American workers (5 million employees) spend at least half their labor hours at home, according to recent government data analyzed by Global Workplace Analytics, the consultancy Lister founded and runs. The growth of remote work has been plodding along at about 10% a year—until now when tens of millions of Americans are thrust into setting up home offices on the fly.