As I am a cheapskate when it comes to this, I would use a service that lets me find furniture people want to get rid off and that I can get for free. Maybe the service could also add a cheap van for transportation and monetize this way. It's a win win, people usually don't like throwing their furniture and sometimes have to pay taxes for that too.
Just out of curiosity how does this work from a business perspective? If you're re-selling furniture from another company do you have to secure the ok with them first?
I'm assuming they're not re-selling anything. They're acting as a data aggregator to simplify the product search process to a single site. They then link to the site and, in the case of Amazon, they get money through affiliate programs. Had a similar idea for shoes. Didn't work very hard on it and only made a few pennies before I shut it down.
Hipmunk is just an affiliate site with link s to buy plane tickets. Mint is just an affiliate site with links to sign up for financial products. Pinterest is just an affiliate site...
Mint - offers a personal finance app for budgeting, planning, etc. -- and perhaps monetizes with affiliate links.
Hipmunk - meta searches multiple travel sites, provides ratings and reviews, assigns an overall experience metric, and supplies other actionable info for travelers.
Pinterest - allows discovery and sharing of content and other interaction (BTW, unless they recently restarted their affiliate-monetization scheme, they no longer are "just an affiliate". I have no idea though).
I'll grant you that at some level anything is "just" an x. I'll also grant you that the determination of value is frequently subjective (for instance, I never got the fanaticism around Pinterest).
But, there is some point at which the added functionality/feature set of a given thing is so thin that it is very difficult to see where any significant value is being added or that there is any uniqueness. Aggregating products from different retailers? That's been done in spades.
The other element, I think, is that HN has a different standard. Because its readership is very highly tech and startup oriented, people who show here generally have something that is at least somewhat more unique. So, I don't think it's overly harsh for a reader to comment that he/she doesn't see anything unique or particularly valuable in this offering. In fact, that's pretty good feedback. The affiliate world is brutal and if this is all they are bringing, then they are likely to find it extremely tough going.
The brands you've focused on already have great online shopping experiences. The regional and small independent furniture retailers could really benefit from something like this where they don't have the knowledge or time to focus on their online experience.
Also, have you seen the numbers on big ticket furniture items bought online? Check out Wayfair's data. They're incredibly low so I doubt you can make enough money just through affiliate programs.
I might live in an area where furniture galleries are few and far between, and maybe I don't have a vehicle able to move anything larger than a small end table in the box.
I might have a friend whose place is completely decked out in furniture from these vendors, and she invites me over to a party, like tupperware or certain unmentionable things are sold.
You cater to a very specific group with high margin boutique furniture that is not available anywhere else but is nonetheless highly desirable.
Reasons I would not:
Furniture is like apparel and shoes; you can't describe an individual fit or feel over the internet all that well; that's why shopping malls stay in business and Amazon does much better selling coffee table books than coffee tables.
Try though you may, you would have to reach an economy of scale eclipsing a percentage of IKEA or Wal-mart to leverage the savings from not needing a physical showroom. IKEA thrives in spite of (and arguably because of) having really crappy delivery infrastructure, because non-crappy deliveries would blow anybody's margins.
What would really impress me is a self-assembling furniture kit, including 3-D printer/sewer, and all the raw materials to make it work. It may require a $10k deposit on a $40 chair, and require me to devote 6 hours of my labor, but I think that'd be an entertaining (and potentially quite profitable) alternative. Now to figure out how to make wood come out of a 3-D printer nozzle.
"It may require a $10k deposit on a $40 chair, and require me to devote 6 hours of my labor"
You might enjoy fine woodworking as a hobby.
I don't have the woodturning and wood carving gear to be able to spend 6 hours on a chair.
A large amount of time is spent in tool setup / teardown so I have built 3 bookcases in only about 10% more time than 1. This has some interesting implications for your dining room chair example, where it might be 6 hours to make one chair, but only 8 hours to make six chairs. Bolt together particle board kits usually scale much more linearly.
Extensive product evaluation leads me to estimate if you buy raw stock and cut it yourself you can upgrade about 1 to 2 levels of luxury. So buy a kit of particle board, or buy boards of solid clear oak, for the same cost. This is an issue for your proposed kit idea.
Oddly enough, last night I was hanging out online, decided to look at some furniture and noticed that browsing for furniture online still largely stinks. Consequently, I agree that you've found a problem in need of a solution.
Unfortunately, while I'm a big fan of browsing for furniture online, I wouldn't buy anything more substantial than a bookshelf online. I don't buy furniture terribly often, so when I do, I look for things that are going to last and that I won't regret in six months. Consequently, I like to see/touch the fabric, look at the stitching, and generally take a good look before I make a buying decision. So, while I'd traffic your site, I don't think you'd ever make any money off of me. I'm not one to tweet out links to products on shopping sites, or even like many things on Facebook, so to top it off, I'd be a viral dud. :)
However, I'm just one perspective and I may not be your target, so don't put extraordinary amounts of faith in my opinion. Congratulations for going this far, plus front paging Hacker News, and best of luck with your idea!
I'm actually somewhat similar. I'm moving relatively soon and was trying to find furniture but it's difficult to both find things and figure out how everything would fit together. I'm not worried so much about how long it'll last (other than general feel, I'm not sure I could tell) but it's generally not clear just how large the furniture would be.
Just recently got in the market for home furniture. Found it a bit of a mess. Something like this could be useful - effectively like hipmunk, but for furniture. i.e. make the experience of understanding your options and finding what you want easier.
I like it.
I also noticed you guys are up in Toronto (my original hometown). If you want more candid feedback from someone in the market for furniture, or if I can help with anything else silicon valley related (I live in SF). Let me know.
If your selection had some sort of curation/checking to ensure that items fit into correct categories, I'd totally use this to buy furniture. Having to scroll through endless websites of manufacturers, resellers, relabelers, etc is truly terrible.
Buying furniture and fitting them into right category/color and also fitting them into the color/style of your apartment are no easy task.
It takes lots of effort, and does not seem to work at all.
The most annoying part of it is that, there are no good tool for a general public to actually easily use planning tool to design/shop furnitures.
Since good furnitures are mostly quite expensive, there should be a good market fit, and if this is done right, it could be a really nice thing.
Just being a e-commerce site might not be so cool. But giving the ability for the users to compare/design/see the real actions in real time will be the features I would like to use.
What if we gave you an organization/collaboration feature where you could also save items you like, organize them by item type, tie them to a budget, collaborate with others to decide or get help with design. The idea, is that we are with you through every step of the process.
Would that make you more inclined to buy through us?
Not the GP, but I'd act the same way. Unfortunately, nothing that you can do online will make me buy through you. I'd need to see and try the furniture before buying.
Maybe you should focus on only presenting the furniture. That would make the site a kind of ad where selers pay to display their products. Or maybe you should just focus on people that are not like me.
Organization (by rooms, for example) and collaboration would be very useful features. Also a way to match things that go well together (maybe from other buyer's lists), and a way to add items you already have and maybe photos/videos of the rooms. But if you don't have a way to automate/make the buy easier, I still don't guarantee that I will order through you (especially if I choose 10 items from 4 sellers, I would loathe to then go to each seller's website and create an account there, place the order, add the delivery address and so on). And make sure you order exactly what you show on the website, as furniture is not as easy to return as a laptop - even if the seller's very helpful with the return, you'll probably take all the blame.
Your problem is, I only need to buy furniture once every few years, and even then only a few items - refurnishing a whole room or a house happens maybe once a decade.
Yes! This is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm in the process of buying furniture too. Another feature that I would love would be if I like a certain style, it would be awesome if you can suggest others like it.
It wasn't that long ago that I was looking for a coffee table; I browsed through the websites of several of the brands you're scraping and found absolutely nothing. I ended up wandering to the local Dania showroom and found this gorgeous thing made out of two pieces of glass cut into Googieish boomerang shapes, that was only like $250.
Then again I am pretty sure I'm not the typical furniture consumer; I'm an artist, who has very little furniture, and a very specific vision for what she wants her home to look like.
I think you should help your prospective customers by creating a section for "Apartment-sized" furniture. Most furniture being sold today is still House-sized and/or designed for very large people. Geometry is everything. Also, it would be cool if you could aggregate offerings from small, independent furniture makers. I like it already. Keep going.
I think these are the way to go. If you aggregated small, independent furniture makers in addition to or instead of the large companies, it would differentiate you from your competition a lot better. Someone else mentioned that these brands you are using have pretty good online experiences; I think that's true, but that the smaller or regional guys don't.
There is some competition on the high end here from One King's Lane and others, but I also noticed that under the 'baller' section you still have the max cost at 2500. Custom or really beautiful furniture like Thomas Moser costs significantly more than that.
I actually think this idea is pretty great. I am currently in the market for a new chair, and have a specific style in mind, but have had trouble finding it just by going to stores. I also think browsing on Amazon is a terrible shopping experience. A simple place to find furniture from different retailers could be really useful.
I stopped reading at "baller", which is irrevocably linked in my head to the word "douchey". That's not a lot of feedback, but I hope it's helpful, since it's easy to change.
FWIW, I really liked the use of "baller" as the most expensive furniture category. For me, it added a much-needed dash of humor to the site, and to me, it's an acknowledgement of how expensive high-end furniture can be. I actually shared the page with some friends and told them, "this is how furniture should be sorted."
I agree. At that price point, I believe it can only hurt you. I think my wife would find it stupid and once someone finds it stupid, they may never buy from you. The people who find it cute are not more likely to buy from you because of it.
There's a high chance that many people think of their mobile provider as stupid and still buy from them a monthly basis. Not sure your argument holds any value.
Virtually all mobile carriers (and cable companies/ISPs) are stupid... and mobile phones are an inextricable part of our lives. I'm afraid we don't have much of a choice in the matter.
We do have a choice when it comes to buying furniture.
Sure it does. Many people view early termination fees as stupid, so many have moved to the carrier that is eliminating them, T-Mobile. But if you have no option in carriers then I am not sure what your point is
The problem is its the old farts who think $2095 coffee tables are awesome, in comparison, for the kids at hot topic that might exceed 10% of their annual income so what they think is cool is not relevant.
If you're going to go class warfare and ageism, at least do it right.
I think it's useful. Last time I had to do furniture shopping, I had to keep going to a bunch of different sites to see who had what I wanted and what their price ranges were.
I also like the grouping of items based on cost range, as that was how I was primarily searching for stuff.
The only place it falls apart for me is in the ability to create a shopping cart. I may be in the minority, but when I was furniture shopping I was looking for a whole room or set of things. With this site, it's very easy to buy one thing, but when you want to buy 3 or 4 pieces it can become a bit of a hassle.
I would use it. I don't like going to furniture places and trying to figure out what I want, so your website appeals to me. In fact, if this is still around in a few months when I furnish my apartment, I will use this.
Why does "moderate" coffee tables have many that are $2000+? It makes me lose confidence in the site, and it is broken. I won't want to use it, in case there are other errors, ie. billing, etc.
I already use Houzz for something similar. Houzz lets me browse products by similar categories, but also lets me see how the product looks in actual rooms and has lots of social features.
First of all, well done on the website - it's natural to use and nicely formatted. If only there was a "baller" section at IKEA...
One thing I've thought of on my way home from IKEA trips getting furniture for my startup was how great it would be if there could be a better IKEA delivery service. Currently, they charge $100 to ship anything anywhere - hooking in per-mile shipping for a reasonable rate would be a lucrative way to eliminate the tedious task of buying furniture from a store. This doesn't necessarily have to be limited to IKEA - if you partnered up with an array of furniture stores, offered them on your website, and had a bootstrapped delivery service, this could become a really big thing.
But then again, adding in shipping is risky and would really only work when there is a critical mass on the website. Best of luck to you!
TaskRabbit is great for this if you live remotely near an IKEA. You can have the Rabbit act as a personal shopper, which gives you access to a much greater set of the catalog (many things aren't available online) while eliminating — in my opinion — the most painful part of the experience. As a bonus, you can often also pay them to assemble it.
No offence, but how is this a "startup" ? Seems like everything is a startup nowadays. You make an app - startup. You make a website - startup.
It just seems it crawls known furniture websites and displays it in a nice way. Useful? Maybe. Is it a startup? I don't think so. But who knows, lately in HN everything is a startup and everyone is "hacking".
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 99.5 ms ] threadHipmunk - meta searches multiple travel sites, provides ratings and reviews, assigns an overall experience metric, and supplies other actionable info for travelers.
Pinterest - allows discovery and sharing of content and other interaction (BTW, unless they recently restarted their affiliate-monetization scheme, they no longer are "just an affiliate". I have no idea though).
I'll grant you that at some level anything is "just" an x. I'll also grant you that the determination of value is frequently subjective (for instance, I never got the fanaticism around Pinterest).
But, there is some point at which the added functionality/feature set of a given thing is so thin that it is very difficult to see where any significant value is being added or that there is any uniqueness. Aggregating products from different retailers? That's been done in spades.
The other element, I think, is that HN has a different standard. Because its readership is very highly tech and startup oriented, people who show here generally have something that is at least somewhat more unique. So, I don't think it's overly harsh for a reader to comment that he/she doesn't see anything unique or particularly valuable in this offering. In fact, that's pretty good feedback. The affiliate world is brutal and if this is all they are bringing, then they are likely to find it extremely tough going.
Also, have you seen the numbers on big ticket furniture items bought online? Check out Wayfair's data. They're incredibly low so I doubt you can make enough money just through affiliate programs.
I might live in an area where furniture galleries are few and far between, and maybe I don't have a vehicle able to move anything larger than a small end table in the box.
I might have a friend whose place is completely decked out in furniture from these vendors, and she invites me over to a party, like tupperware or certain unmentionable things are sold.
You cater to a very specific group with high margin boutique furniture that is not available anywhere else but is nonetheless highly desirable.
Reasons I would not:
Furniture is like apparel and shoes; you can't describe an individual fit or feel over the internet all that well; that's why shopping malls stay in business and Amazon does much better selling coffee table books than coffee tables.
Try though you may, you would have to reach an economy of scale eclipsing a percentage of IKEA or Wal-mart to leverage the savings from not needing a physical showroom. IKEA thrives in spite of (and arguably because of) having really crappy delivery infrastructure, because non-crappy deliveries would blow anybody's margins.
What would really impress me is a self-assembling furniture kit, including 3-D printer/sewer, and all the raw materials to make it work. It may require a $10k deposit on a $40 chair, and require me to devote 6 hours of my labor, but I think that'd be an entertaining (and potentially quite profitable) alternative. Now to figure out how to make wood come out of a 3-D printer nozzle.
You might enjoy fine woodworking as a hobby.
I don't have the woodturning and wood carving gear to be able to spend 6 hours on a chair.
A large amount of time is spent in tool setup / teardown so I have built 3 bookcases in only about 10% more time than 1. This has some interesting implications for your dining room chair example, where it might be 6 hours to make one chair, but only 8 hours to make six chairs. Bolt together particle board kits usually scale much more linearly.
Extensive product evaluation leads me to estimate if you buy raw stock and cut it yourself you can upgrade about 1 to 2 levels of luxury. So buy a kit of particle board, or buy boards of solid clear oak, for the same cost. This is an issue for your proposed kit idea.
Unfortunately, while I'm a big fan of browsing for furniture online, I wouldn't buy anything more substantial than a bookshelf online. I don't buy furniture terribly often, so when I do, I look for things that are going to last and that I won't regret in six months. Consequently, I like to see/touch the fabric, look at the stitching, and generally take a good look before I make a buying decision. So, while I'd traffic your site, I don't think you'd ever make any money off of me. I'm not one to tweet out links to products on shopping sites, or even like many things on Facebook, so to top it off, I'd be a viral dud. :)
However, I'm just one perspective and I may not be your target, so don't put extraordinary amounts of faith in my opinion. Congratulations for going this far, plus front paging Hacker News, and best of luck with your idea!
I like it.
I also noticed you guys are up in Toronto (my original hometown). If you want more candid feedback from someone in the market for furniture, or if I can help with anything else silicon valley related (I live in SF). Let me know.
Buying furniture and fitting them into right category/color and also fitting them into the color/style of your apartment are no easy task.
It takes lots of effort, and does not seem to work at all.
The most annoying part of it is that, there are no good tool for a general public to actually easily use planning tool to design/shop furnitures.
Since good furnitures are mostly quite expensive, there should be a good market fit, and if this is done right, it could be a really nice thing.
Just being a e-commerce site might not be so cool. But giving the ability for the users to compare/design/see the real actions in real time will be the features I would like to use.
What if we gave you an organization/collaboration feature where you could also save items you like, organize them by item type, tie them to a budget, collaborate with others to decide or get help with design. The idea, is that we are with you through every step of the process.
Would that make you more inclined to buy through us?
Maybe you should focus on only presenting the furniture. That would make the site a kind of ad where selers pay to display their products. Or maybe you should just focus on people that are not like me.
Your problem is, I only need to buy furniture once every few years, and even then only a few items - refurnishing a whole room or a house happens maybe once a decade.
It wasn't that long ago that I was looking for a coffee table; I browsed through the websites of several of the brands you're scraping and found absolutely nothing. I ended up wandering to the local Dania showroom and found this gorgeous thing made out of two pieces of glass cut into Googieish boomerang shapes, that was only like $250.
Then again I am pretty sure I'm not the typical furniture consumer; I'm an artist, who has very little furniture, and a very specific vision for what she wants her home to look like.
There is some competition on the high end here from One King's Lane and others, but I also noticed that under the 'baller' section you still have the max cost at 2500. Custom or really beautiful furniture like Thomas Moser costs significantly more than that.
We do have a choice when it comes to buying furniture.
If you're going to go class warfare and ageism, at least do it right.
Baller should be
http://www.hudsonfurnitureinc.com http://bocci.ca Herman Miller Skram Maybe even room and board.
Know the market better and you will have better success.
Other then that I think its a great start.
I also like the grouping of items based on cost range, as that was how I was primarily searching for stuff.
The only place it falls apart for me is in the ability to create a shopping cart. I may be in the minority, but when I was furniture shopping I was looking for a whole room or set of things. With this site, it's very easy to buy one thing, but when you want to buy 3 or 4 pieces it can become a bit of a hassle.
One thing I've thought of on my way home from IKEA trips getting furniture for my startup was how great it would be if there could be a better IKEA delivery service. Currently, they charge $100 to ship anything anywhere - hooking in per-mile shipping for a reasonable rate would be a lucrative way to eliminate the tedious task of buying furniture from a store. This doesn't necessarily have to be limited to IKEA - if you partnered up with an array of furniture stores, offered them on your website, and had a bootstrapped delivery service, this could become a really big thing.
But then again, adding in shipping is risky and would really only work when there is a critical mass on the website. Best of luck to you!
It looks great, I might need something like this soon, and I can grit my teeth and carry on past the word "baller".
But I''m in the UK not USA.