

Startup Idea: The Best Way to Buy Furniture – Would You Use This?   - BeautySpesh
http://homehub.co

======
hluska
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!

~~~
msrpotus
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.

------
tptacek
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah; but like the music in mall stores that appeal to youth, sometimes these
things are filters to keep old farts out of the store.

~~~
VLM
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.

------
mchannon
Reasons I would:

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.

~~~
VLM
"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.

------
Mankhool
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.

~~~
ameister14
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.

------
primitivesuave
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!

~~~
didgeoridoo
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.

~~~
primitivesuave
Thank you for this awesome suggestion, I hadn't thought of using TaskRabbit
and will try it out next time I get the chance.

------
chriscampbell
this is just a website with affiliate links to buy furniture, I don't
understand how this is unique.

~~~
wmeredith
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...

~~~
unclebucknasty
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.

------
russelluresti
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.

------
egypturnash
Nope. Ain't got nothing that fits my taste.

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.

------
cnorgate
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.

------
petesid
I owned a furniture company for a little bit... So understand I am a furniture
snob. West elm and restoration hardware are shit...

Baller should be

[http://www.hudsonfurnitureinc.com](http://www.hudsonfurnitureinc.com)
[http://bocci.ca](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.

------
andzt
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.

------
chaz
OT: Please disable the Olark sound. There are few things more annoying than a
chat window that pops open on an unfocused-tab with a loud sound.

------
fuj
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".

------
kfk
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.

~~~
lowglow
scrape the free section of craigslist for keywords of furniture you're looking
to acquire.

------
nuclearghost
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.

------
wglb
My wife, who used to work at Walter E. Smythe, has a very good eye for this
sort of thing. I pointed her to the site and she said "yawn".

Admittedly, she has number of serious sites that she looks at regularly. Two
of our most prized furniture possessions she scared up on Ebay.

------
Qworg
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.

~~~
hotloo
I would say so too!

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.

------
ptnapoleon
I noticed that [http://homehub.co/product/355](http://homehub.co/product/355)
is in both the "budget" and "baller" categories. How are the items grouped?
Otherwise, I like it.

------
Jean-Philipe
Like the idea, would use it, but it's hard for me to find furnitures that I
really like. Especially I don't like the way most furnitures are constructed.
If its construction not elegant, I don't find it's beautiful.

------
hkhanna
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.

------
hangonhn
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.

------
steven2012
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.

------
ora600
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.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
No, I would not.

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.

------
hectoroftroy
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?

~~~
andzt
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.

------
hooo
I'd really like to be able to filter furniture and home items by dimension, so
I can find things that fit my specific space.

------
miahi
I would use a site like this to make a shortlist, but then I would go to the
shop to try it - so that means 0 affiliate money.

~~~
BeautySpesh
Thanks for the feedback!

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?

~~~
marcosdumay
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.

------
nathantone
i like [http://www.furniturenear.me](http://www.furniturenear.me) for this.
found a coffee table thru them a month or so ago

------
mkoryak
you did that thing to my back button that I hate. Other then that, the site
looks good and "modern" :)

