Listen to this articleFurnishr is a turnkey furnishing platform that gets a room design of your choice delivered and assembled in a single day. Combining technology and interior design talents, Furnishr created this turn-key furnishing model that lets their customers kick their feet up and enjoy a home that is completely set-up for them. Below is our interview with Michael Van the CEO of Furnishr:
Q: What’s Furnishr’s story? How did Furnishr start?
A: Moving is terrible. From packing to shopping for furniture, it’s always a more time consuming process than you expect it to be. When I moved from my last dorm to my first “real” home, the empty home was daunting. Most of the stuff I had was mismatching hand-me-downs. Both Karen and I moved at least 10 times over the past 10 years and we were just so fed up with the whole process. We are time-conscious individuals who just want to hire an expert to get our home furnished, yet not one furniture or design company can do it all for us. The frustration inspired us to create Furnishr, the first turn-key solution for furnishing a home in one day.
We founded Furnishr in 2015 in Toronto. As a seasoned programmer, Karen started building the Furnishr platform that will coordinate the entire delivery process without us having to hold any inventory. We got our first sale in September 2015 and have been growing ever since. We have now installed over 100 rooms across North America and we now have offices in Toronto and New York City.
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Q: What makes Furnishr a good choice?
A: Furnishr is the easiest way to get your home move-in ready – go from empty to furnished in just one day.
On top of that, we source directly from furniture manufacturers, saving the storage and delivery costs of traditional furniture retailers, allowing us to provide the best value for our customers.
It’s just so easy and convenient! Speaking from experience, I didn’t truly understand how much time I spent shopping around for furniture so that I could get that perfect look for my home. If you believe time is money like we do, it just makes sense to use a solution like Furnishr.
On Furnishr.com, there are always 25 different room designs readily available to be set up in your home in one day. We aim to update designs on a monthly or bimonthly basis to keep things fresh. Each room was put together by our designer to fit any style. We guarantee the room will look good in any home. Furnishr is the first company who can furnish your home beautifully in one day while you can just sit back and relax on move-in day.
Recommended: Q: Furnishr is a Techstars Next alumni and a XRC Labs alumni; tell us something more about your experience and benefits?
A: Furnishr was just a ‘back of a napkin’ idea when we went into the Techstars Next program. We met great mentors through Techstars Next who taught us to always test and work with customers and stay focus on their pain points. We actually started selling the room packages on Craigslist before we had our website up and running. We were quite pleasantly surprised by the quick and positive responses from Craigslist users who were moving and just wanted their new homes to be ‘move in ready’.
After Techstars Next, we continued to refine our platform In May 2016, we were accepted into XRC Labs, a retail tech focused accelerator based in New York City. Their curriculum and network of mentors and investors continued to help us grow Furnishr and create the best experience for shoppers
Q: How is the response to Furnishr so far?
A: It’s been pretty awesome. Everyone hates moving, so this is a solution that people get excited about. They love the convenience more than anything else. Expats and professionals who are relocating for a new job especially love Furnishr, because they are new to their new city and probably have no time to spare on furniture shopping or waiting for deliveries. There’s no easier way to get a beautiful and comfortable home ready than with Furnishr.
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Q: What are your plans for next six months?
A: Our major goal is to drive customer awareness. We’ve been focusing mainly on one segment and now beta testing with a larger audience. We want to continue to refine our service offering to meet our customers’ needs and to create practical room designs that our customers want and need. We’re constantly learning from our customers as they help us stay innovative.
Besides that, on a business level, we’ll look at continuing to grow our team on the marketing and design end. We’ve created our own Furnishr room planner and aim to make improvements over the next few months.
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