For decades, the dealer’s fundamental job was relatively straightforward. Dealers had to understand what a customer needed, sell furniture, manage the order and installation, and move on to the next project. Of course, all that business still exists. But it is increasingly surrounded by a much more complicated set of customer demands.

Ryan Anderson’s presentation to the Michigan chapter of CoreNet last week was ostensibly about the changing workplace. For anyone in the office furniture industry, though, it was really a 45-minute lesson in why our industry needs to spend less time talking about furniture and more time understanding what is happening inside the organizations that buy it.

When I consider my 25+ years covering the office furniture industry, most of the connections I’ve made have come from attending shows. I know someone who knows someone else who introduces me to the next person.

For 30 years, the cubicle has been the office furniture industry’s favorite punching bag. It’s the visual shorthand for everything workplace design has supposedly evolved past: the gray fabric walls, the fluorescent hum, the soul-crushing sameness lampooned in the movie “Office Space” and Dilbert cartoons.

For a long time, nobody had to make the case for the office. It was simply where work happened. Companies leased space, employees showed up, furniture filled the rooms, and everyone got on with it. That argument doesn’t work anymore. The office has to earn its place.

Every June, Chicago turns into a fire hose. NeoCon fills THE MART floor by floor, Fulton Market Design Days spreads exhibitors and pop-ups across a neighborhood that didn’t used to have any, and for three days, the entire office furniture industry tries to absorb a year’s worth of product launches in 72 hours.