The Office Is Dead, but Kid Cubicles Are Booming
Remote learning has created a thriving new target market for office supply companies
Christy Warner, a communications manager in Minneapolis, searched for months for a desk that fit her teenage daughter’s room and was priced less than $200. “I looked on Ikea, Wayfair, Overstocked, Target, TJ Maxx, everywhere, and everything is sold out,” she says.
Last spring, her daughter, a high school senior, converted the dining room table into a working desk during lockdown. Today, she’s upgraded to a folding table in her bedroom. “I just couldn’t find something,” says Warner. “It’s just like the toilet paper shortage.”
Covid-19 has created a whiplash cycle of unexpected product surges and shortages, from bicycles and pools, to flour and outdoor heaters. The latest unexpected pandemic rush: children’s office supplies. Call it the most expensive back-to-school year yet. As schools continue toggling between remote and hybrid learning, parents have been throttled into spending hundreds and sometimes thousands…
