At Shopify, we’re always on the hunt for ways to make work better for more than 4,000 employees in 11 global offices, including our headquarters in Canada. My team is responsible for the design, build, management and maintenance of our meeting, lounge and maker spaces.

Aside from meeting rooms, our offices offer very few places for private conversations. I wanted something affordable, well-built and easy to install, with a design that blended well into any office environment.

But it took awhile to find before ROOM.

Life before ROOM

Before discovering ROOM, we tried three different brands of phone booths, none of which worked well for us.

One company’s booth was made of glass and sufficiently blocked out sound, but it had terrible ventilation. You’d last maybe 10 or 15 minutes in the booth with the door closed, and it would turn into a sauna. You’d have to open the door, which defeated the purpose of privacy. Plus, the phone booth was pricey.

Booths that work with any design

Though it was a test booth, the team didn’t want to move the booth to another department because we liked it so much! Instead, we installed about a dozen of them on other floors and in our other offices. We spent 48 hours renovating our Toronto office, where we removed the desks, added couches and installed walls of phone booths, so ROOM offered an easy way to do a quick remodel without knocking down walls.

We hope to also customize a coworking space we lease using ROOM booths — a great fit since we can’t knock down walls or remodel the office. In one office, we customized a booth with a Chromebase for video calls when you don’t have a computer.

Unlike other booths, I never worry about whether a ROOM booth will look good in a space. Our offices are incredibly unique and comfortable, since they use furniture that often belongs inside a house. We’ve got hand-painted murals and couches. Neon green signs and industrial lights and cork floors. A lot of colors. Yet, wherever we put a ROOM booth, it fits. The booths we use are white with a minimalist design. They work in any space.

Not only was ROOM half the cost of the other models, it took under an hour and just two people to put the booth together. ROOM’s booth is just better-made. The holes for the screws lined up easily, for instance, and the floor is extremely sturdy.

The whole package, half the cost

The ventilation was far better — you could sit comfortably inside for hours at a time. It wasn’t too hot, wasn’t too cold. The booth offered great acoustics and plenty of privacy for those important one-on-one calls.

“We were blown away by how much better ROOM’s booths were compared to the competition.”

We also loved the fact that ROOM’s booth is made from recycled plastic bottles, which really resonated with our employees. Wherever we can, we try to consider the environment. For instance, we have motion sensors that detect when someone isn’t using a space and turns off the lights, and we monitor our food production to ensure we’re not wasting food.

ROOM offered a great fit for the culture of our company, which is about supporting companies with aligned principles. And as a company with offices around the globe, we know ROOM will easily work well within all of them.