Launch HN: Spoken (YC S21) – Better furniture shopping
Buying physical things on the internet is hard. You have to quality-check a product without touching it, double-check dimensions for where the thing will go, and evaluate a seller's credibility, often with little data. But buying furniture online is a special case of hard, because the market is deliberately deceptive.
Furniture sellers actively prevent consumers from easily finding the same item at other stores, or under other names, because this allows them to charge more. The sellers get to name the products and they name them in confusing ways to facilitate price discriminaton. For example, this table at Wayfair (https://www.wayfair.com/furniture/pdp/williston-forge-veroni...) can also be found at Appliances Connection under a different name for roughly half the price (https://www.appliancesconnection.com/modway-eei2034brn.html). With most online shopping, the products you want have unambiguous names—if you want, say, a TV, you can simply search “Samsung 55 inch” and see what both Best Buy and Walmart are charging. But with furniture, sellers work actively to disrupt an accurate product graph and keep the market inefficient.
The net result is that buying furniture feels icky, noisy, and predatorial. It is much like buying a used car from a used-car salesperson might have felt before Carmax. This is reflected in how much consumers hate the industry: across 14 of the biggest furniture retailers the average NPS is -11, compared with 37 for e-commerce as a whole.
At the same time, people are buying furniture online more than ever. It is a $50B online market per year (roughly 1/3 Amazon, 1/3 Wayfair, and 1/3 everyone else) but it’s nowhere possible to do a simple apples-to-apples search for like items. Even on Wayfair, you can find the same exact item with different names and prices.
There’s no reason why furniture shopping online shouldn’t have the same advantages over going to a physical store that, say, shopping for a TV online does. It just needs to become possible to search across the entire catalog of furniture inventory.
We encountered this problem when Dane moved to New York and went through the labor of buying and assembling an apartment's worth of furniture, only to discover that one of his pieces of furniture was listed at another store but called something completely different and sold for 50% less. We discovered this behavior was pervasive among furniture sellers. We devised a solution for a small set of items. Our findings generated excitement in several threads on Reddit (here’s one: https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeDecorating/comments/s1oz0p/urba...). Many users told similar stories of frustration and confusion without a good solution and there was a lot of energy in these reactions—it turns out that the feeling of being taken advantage of is universally infuriating.
At the time, we were working on a tool to enable service professionals to grow their businesses. We did not find an acute enough pain for our then-users. When we started getting all these positive responses to exposing exploitative discrepancies in the furniture market, we realized we had hit on something people really care about, so we decided to build Spoken.
We crawl, scrape, and map product data and metadata across 1,000+ furniture stores to connect the exact same ...
121 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadI recently helped a relative furnish a new home, and the process of shopping for furniture online was worse than buying a car online, exactly for the reason you described. I thought Wayfair is the only retailer that changes product names, but found out high-end stores like Crate & Barrel do the same thing (and charge 2x).
The process was so bad that we stopped shopping, and the home remains only half furnished. Maybe now we can get back to it...
I actually found another problem that is also very annoying, at least where I live. I had specific items from my architect, but I wanted to touch most of the things before buying. Had to call 10 shops for each item to ask if they have it on exposition!
Harder to make money on this, and not sure if this problem is in USA but so annoying for buyers
After that, I did a lot of buying without touching things. Also bought a lot of IKEA because seriously I got fedup with the whole experience of buying furniture
One counterexample for something I've bought though: https://www.spoken.io/page/f7f35682-d0d3-4f2b-a917-43d8d4926... ($1599)
https://www.burkedecor.com/products/goldie-media-console-by-... ($1279)
FWIW, I had a long conversation with an ex-enginner who switched to selling European furniture in the US. He described European factories building steel-reinforced furniture on one shift for the European market, then on another shift flimsier too-thin-wood-reinforced versions for the US market.
One easy hack can be to look from the bottom into e.g. a new sofa and reinforce sections which appear likely to sag over time.
I typed "desk" into the search bar and came across posts with desk in the name, e.g. Four Hands Edna Desk Chair-Fedora Oatmeal (https://www.spoken.io/page/f8420225-c2ba-4048-8454-e4e3a897a...), as well as items that weren't desks (such as Signature Design by Ashley Hyndell Dresser, Brown (https://www.spoken.io/page/b0d3e420-34ef-43fe-b7ca-3066f0c98...)).
I also noticed that there wasn't an option to filter the posts by furniture type. I don't know if the metadata of each item keeps track of the type of item that it is, but if so then you could add a type filter.
With furniture, even the definition of the article/product is not always clear, and there are hundreds of small companies making similar items, and differentiation in features or design that is often not visible / you have to lay hands on it to figure out what the difference in quality is (unless you're going for some kind of nameplate item that is easily recognizable, like an Eames chair). Or the addition of some extra feature changes the nature of the product.
I think the difficulty is like trying to create a clothing aggregation engine if you took all the designer labels off the items. On the other hand, if they are truly interchangeable maybe that's all the more reason they can be compared. But, somehow I think people are more opinionated about finding the right piece of furniture that costs $1000 and not believing that the one from some non-brand website is the one they're looking for.
I'm sure you've encountered all these issues, and I'm no expert. I will be interested to watch how it goes!
One thing working in our favor is that relatively few manufacturers make a lot of furniture that is sold. There are few suppliers and many channels, which means that often items are truly interchangeable.
It is also the case that the stores with the cheapest prices tend to be recognizable big box brands (Home Depot, Lowes, etc.) not necessarily no-name stores.
Some suppliers control their channels better, especially in the high end of the market. And there are D2C furniture brands that don’t sell through channels at all. We do hope to offer these stores a way to sell through our marketplace via an easy API.
It certainly is the case that buying furniture is more emotional in a way buying a TV is not. We do want to honor this in how our site is organized.
Not to dig on manufactured furniture but because the labels do a decent job of hiding these folks work.
Small, nerdy question: how do you decide the canonical name for an item that is called different things from different retailers?
Renting-to-own is an interesting and important alternative to purchasing. Best of luck to you, too! We're always open to share things we've learned!
I think your site should offer more features like a way to validate the sellers or compare them somehow. Read the fine print/do the due diligence for me. Also, are you sure they're selling the exact same furniture and not something that has dings/was previously rejected and sold to these budget companies like TJ Maxx etc do?
Yes, we couldn't agree more regarding seller comparisons, and on the ability to compare across many dimensions. A way we think about this is that the price you are willing to pay might vary by the experience you expect to have. We have in mind something like Hipmunk's agony index. With a tool like that, users can decide how much more they would pay to avoid a possible bad experience.
I've never used either site so maybe Appliances Connection is actually that much better than Wayfair but I don't think I would necessarily draw that conclusion from the Trustpilot results.
Is this the sort of quest your site would eventually solve?
When you explained the problem in your HN post description, I got really excited about the product. But, I don't see that same story communicated on your website anywhere. I'm sure you've thought about this, but: tell users what you are doing differently on the website.
Would you mind if I asked: how might you do this?
Marketing is obviously not my strong suit, but that is what I understand the value of your product to be!
We did make these fun Instagram posts:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CYnOJt8lk08/?utm_source=ig_web_c...
https://www.instagram.com/p/CY5DOoyvFUk/?utm_source=ig_web_c...
One question I have: how can you be sure "exact same product" is really the same. One item from Wayfair had a defect and I asked for a spare part (seat of a chair). The article came and looked the same but had different hole patterns and even threads. I had to redrill a bunch of holes to make it work.
Building in some kind of feedback loop for this kind of problem would seem really important to me.
The question about replacement parts is interesting, and maybe more difficult. We may not solve it directly.
1) Furniture seems to have bifurcated. There’s the expensive stuff that you can only get from one place, and there’s the very cheap drop ship stuff that dominates search results.
1b) It’s hard to find things that aren’t midcentury. I understand it’s popular now, but I really don’t want my living room look like my grandmother’s.
2) For some things, like beds and couches, you really need to sit on them to decide. Firmness, sit height, and how the back tilts or bulges really make or break of a piece of furniture, and unfortunately they don’t translate into text well.
Sure you a quick return program could help, but getting a guy to bring you three couches is a bit insane.
We found that we ourselves sometimes became "siloed" in styles. One goal we have is to help our users understand their style preferences, whatever style this is.
We do believe that younger generations will become more comfortable purchasing things without seeing them. More can be done to increase this comfort, like being able to quickly visualize a piece of furniture in your room, and having some way to qualify difficult-to-see elements like firmness, etc.
You've just launched the site, so some site issues are understandable... I have found some misleading price tags.
https://www.spoken.io/page/cbf0bdd0-81bb-485b-975b-068bdeab3... is currently showing $1,199 at English Elm but https://englishelm.com/products/moes-home-vancouver-display-... is actually $1,499.
The issue I have, especially with online shopping, is determining whether something is cheapo junk. The quality of most online furniture, especially on Amazon, is so bad, and it seems like 90%+ of the marketplace is heavily "cost-engineered" (particleboard instead of wood, thin tubing instead of rails, cheapest vinyl available, etc.). Junk at a great deal is better than junk at a bad deal, but the real problem with online furniture shopping is determining whether something is junk in the first place.
I do think there is a place for cheap furniture. Not just as junk, but as a piece of a home when someone doesn't have the budget they wish to have. While there is a place for cheap furniture, there is not a place for overpriced cheap furniture.
I do also think that if shoppers can feel confident they are getting the best prices, then they might upgrade the quality of they are buying within a given price range. We just help them buy better quality furniture at their price point.
We do intend to add reviews at the product level that will help users discern quality. Where there is enough data, we can even gather interesting data like: what were the reviews of a given item at a given price?
My partner and I needed a couch and narrowed it down to IKEA, West Elm, and American Leather. We decided that we owned too much IKEA already, so skipped that. We liked the American Leather but it cost 2-3x the West Elm and we doubted it would last twice as long. So we bought the West Elm.
It’s been terrible. It was defective from the start. They sent someone out to fix one problem, and that kinda worked. Another problem popped up and they paid us to just void the warranty and keep the couch. I’m so annoyed. I just wanted a comfortable, durable couch.
I keep thinking we should have sprung for the American Leather one… but just a couple years later we’re changing things up and need a different sized couch. If we got the expensive nice one we’d be screwed because who’s gonna buy that off you.
So it seems that once again I screwed up by not buying IKEA. Higher end IKEA stuff has a great price/quality point. Apparently you have to spend 5x as much to get meaningfully better quality from somewhere else.
I do agree that IKEA, which is vertically-integrated at scale, offers very compelling price-per-quality.
IKEA does state materials, and some of their more expensive items are made of real wood - so at least choosing simple items like a desk is quite straight forward
Anything you won't replace within 5 years means the same "brand" names and models won't exist next time you purchase so there's no incentive for any quality whatsoever, and the inability to determine quality is a classic lemon market scenario.
The trouble is I barely had the time it took (single-digit hours) to compare new imported laminated particle board options that ship for free and then negotiate preferences with my partner.
Sometimes with things like this you can get lucky and find exactly what you want on Craigslist/Facebook but sometimes you don’t, and you just need a solution to your furniture problem more or less immediately.
That said I will never order any furniture from Amazon or Wayfair. Brand allegiance and avoidance is not always rational but my eyes just see junk there.
We are also looking to add collaboration tools for partners attempting to navigate preferences together.
Yeah, I feel like I'm the only one in this thread who bought 90% of their furniture at a garage sale.
Depending on condition, half the time you can use it as is immediately and finish it later when you have either time or money.
Couches especially look brand-new when refinished by a pro. My matching leather couches (2x1 seater + 1x2 seater and one rocking char, all reclinable with cupholders) would cost about 15000 ZAR if I paid someone to reupholster, but about 70000 ZAR to replace new.
It was hands down the worst piece of furniture I've every encountered, never mind owned. It was like a stage prop.
I love 'real' furniture (and design) but it's expensive... Furnishing a small sized condo with DWR or similar quality or vintage/antique easily costs $15k+
It's worth it IMHO and there are less expensive quality options too.
There are some good finds like I have a coffee table from CB2. but have to look closely at the materials. Metal & marble. Solid __ wood or real __ veneer not on top of cheap particle crap.
Nice furniture actually retains value. Lasts forever. Can pass it down. I don't think anyone's Ikea Billy is going to last the test of time. But pieces from 200 years ago still sell at auction and some mid century originals go for crazy amounts of money.
Even though I make good money it's still expensive. after buying I spent like 2 years furnishing it fully.
The problem is almost no one can afford nice stuff upfront
and a recurring cycle of poverty
For instance bigger necessities: a nice pair of shoes or boots will last longer and thus cost 3x less over lifetime than cheapos.
But a large % can't afford the upfront cost.
IDK what a solution could be. Maybe all those online pay over 4 months zero interest are filling this need.
But still would need longer terms to afford something substantial.
Plus if those companies are making money it's from fees and debt. just reinforces the cycle with the added dopamine of ooh i get this for free today one click online buying
I hope that if someone has a fixed budget, but can be confident they are finding the best prices, they will by definition buy higher quality goods.
We certainly could offer reasonable financing terms for these higher quality goods.
I think your service could add value there in doing manual curation and better cataloging across. Like 'high quality' or search walnut veneer or no cheap fiberboard lol.
Crowd reviews are all gamed now it seems. i would be into some more sources of professional curation.
Financing in general isn't great. Not an easy thing to fix. Personally I'm into having it as a service for low income Americans through USPS. write-off losses or take them out of tax over very long time frames. A few $k with low or no interest + reasonable long ish time to payback would be life saving for a lot of people
We likely would use a partner like Affirm for financing. We don't want to emphasize it too heavily, but we do see it as an important tool in purchasing furniture.
I do fully agree with your point about a lot of people not being able to afford nice stuff upfront and often ending paying more more over the lifespan of the item. But I also think it is also an issue of consumerist societies where people rather want a 100 cheap things and replace them often, rather than 10 nice and long lasting ones.
Then there I think is also a matter of perceived value of especially furniture. I know many not rich but affluent people that don't bat an eye shelling out a lot of money for some electronic gadget or expensive traveling every other year but won't invest in a piece a furniture that could last a lifetime.
So we end up with either cheap mass produced stuff or designer ware for people for whom money doesn't matter. With little choice in between.
That's amazing you have a friend that will do that.
I recommend it for art too! Especially paintings.
However, one additional step I do is find out of the products are also listed on Alibaba or similar. As you often can find a bed being sold by a large company in America for $5,000.00, and it is actually purchased from an Asian market as a set of multiples (4 or 5) at $200.00/ea unit. Any chance of that being tracked as well?
We have considered also including secondary markets for the price-conscious.
We love to hear that you were already doing this by spreadsheet. I hope soon we build the tools for you to transition entirely to our site!
I noticed this exact phenomenon when shopping for a new armchair recently. I found one I liked on Wayfair but wasn’t 100% sure yet, so I checked a few other sites. I stumbled across the same chair on Walmart under a different name for two thirds the price. When I got the chair, the box didn’t include an assembly manual (and the chair was very finnicky to assemble), so I did a bit more searching and found it on another site under yet another name, which provided a downloadable PDF assembly guide. Of course, the name on the assembly guide was also different, but it was the same chair.
Can you share the most egregious price markup example you’ve seen? Are there certain product categories with more or less price divergence?
P.s. I really like the “Load More” / “Load Forever” buttons. It’s a small but appreciated detail that gives me a feeling that you care. It really fits with the overall theme of your business: giving your customers options so they can choose what works for them. The trend of “corporation knows best” is getting really old, I'm glad to see people working to disrupt it.
Soon, we'll allow you to sort by discount you can search yourself. In the meantime, I did find a set of outdoor furniture selling for ~$7,000 on Pier 1 Imports that you could buy on Amazon for ~$900. (Pier 1 did have it "on sale" for ~40% off, which is another dark pattern that is common in the space.)
In general, I find items that get marked up the most are: outdoor furniture, mirrors, and simple metal-and-wood items like coffee tables, shelves or desks.