When the last recession struck, the North Devon-based manufacturing company Renatus found its organ-building business was starting to suffer. Salvation came in an unlikely form – a machine sitting unused in its factory. Now up to 20% of its business comes from orders for precision-cut pieces of simple wooden desks and chairs. The precise plans of the furniture are emailed to the company and then made on a computer-guided machine that etches out shapes from plywood sheets which are then delivered to the customer, usually within a short time frame, and then clicked together.

Behind this new take on production is the London-based firm Opendesk whose brief is to overhaul how furniture is manufactured and bought. It connects the designers, who create desks, tables, chairs and stools for offices, with customers anywhere in the world and nearby manufacturers such as Renatus who can cut out the design.

By taking the storage facilities, lengthy shipping times and showrooms out of the equation, Opendesk says it can cut out the numerous middlemen and change how furniture is sourced, in what they describe as an attempt to do to firms such as Ikea what Airbnb is doing to the hotel industry.

The process begins with a customer selecting a piece of furniture from a database of items made by designers linked with Opendesk. A nearby maker which can cut out the plywood pieces for the design is sourced and the item goes into production. The items are made using computer numerical control machining in which computers control the cutting tools. When completed, the boards can be transported flatpacked and erected by clicking together the legs, sides and tops of the furniture, each of which are designed to not need metal parts.

Joni Steiner, one of the five co-founders at Opendesk, which was established in 2013, said they took a guiding principle from economist John Maynard Keynes, who said: “It is easier to ship recipes than cakes and biscuits.”

One of the first jobs for the start-up was an order for a desk in New York which they then linked to a local company that they had not worked with before. “You have these designers who have these digital designs, you have the makers who have access to the tooling, and then you have an online platform which connects them and provides a retail point for people to place an order from someone local. That is where Opendesk sits, in the middle of that process,” said Nick Ierodiaconou, another co-founder.

“What we are able to do is give a consistent level of information for people wherever they are in the world in order to make something that comes out as a makeable quality piece of furniture.”

Still in its early days, Opendesk has a database of 200 makers across 32 countries and has designs for about 50 products. One of the designers, Denis Fuzii, published the specifications for a lounge chair, made of six pieces which can be assembled in a minute, from his studio in São Paulo. Fuzii has now reached a worldwide audience, with his designs downloaded more than 5,000 times across 95 countries.

“Unlike a traditional channel for a designer where they would have to negotiate big contracts with distributors and retailers in order to get discovered and off the ground, in our minds once you have the internet, there are already so many channels online [where] people can self-publish,” said Ierodiaconou.

By changing the way in which the furniture is produced and moved – without time-consuming and expensive shipping, costly showrooms and storage facilities – the slice of the cost price which each side earns also changes. Typically, 10% goes to the designer, 60% to the maker and the rest for Opendesk themselves. As the furniture is made on demand, the amount of time it takes to be produced is also reduced.

Where this can work against Opendesk is that it doesn’t have a showroom for companies to look at its furniture to kit out their offices. Instead, some of the businesses which have bought from Opendesk allow prospective purchasers to come in and have a look.

“Do you need to have a showroom for all of your products? Well, yes, if you are on the high street and you are competing with the shop next door, but no if there are businesses all around your business which have the same furniture that you can just pop in and have a look at,” says Ierodiaconou.

One of its trademark four-person desks sells for about £1,400, which the company says is 50% cheaper than a high-design solution and just two to three times higher than the Ikea price. If sold at retail, where there is a typically a 200% mark-up, the designer would receive half of what he would get through Opendesk, says Ierodiaconou. “The maker would be completely squeezed, there would be a huge amount of shipping plus environmental costs.”

Customers who have bought furniture from Opendesk include Greenpeace and actor Steve Coogan’s Baby Cow production company. The focus at the moment is on businesses, such as start-ups, which are growing and need furniture. A move into residential furniture has been mooted for the future. The company deals with orders in the UK and parts of North America at present and connects customers and makers outside of those areas online.

Around £640,000 has been raised so far by Opendesk in crowdfunding, angel investment and grants, with profit forecast for 2017. Opendesk expects to sell £250,000 worth of products in the first half of 2015. Another of the founders, the CEO Tim Carrigan, used the example of Made.com (the online furniture retailer which cuts out the middleman and allows customers to buy furniture directly from the makers) to demonstrate how people are prepared to change the way they buy furniture. Along with Ierodiaconou, Steiner and Carrigan, the other co-founders of Opendesk are James Arthur and Ian Bennik.

Back in Devon, Jeremy Hayden of Renatus says its new system, using the largely unused CNC machine, has given the company a boost. “Within a year, it has gone from nothing to perhaps 15% to 20% of the turnover,” he says.

The desk of the future may not be a fixed piece of wood but have parts which can be chopped and changed as technological advances happen, says co-founder Joni Steiner. Opendesk is looking at ways in which a desk can be upgraded over time to clip on new products, such as wireless phone charging or LEDs which blink when there is a phone message.

• You can read our archive of The innovators columns here or on the Big Innovation Centre website where you will find more information on how Big Innovation Centre supports innovative enterprise in Britain and globally.