How Fernish is changing the way people live, one furniture subscription at a time
As frequent movers, we loved the idea of moving: new home, new city, new job, new furniture. But when it came down to it, we just didn’t love the reality. The expense and hassle of moving existing furniture that might not match that new home or style, kicking cheap furniture to the curb and contributing to the 9.8 million tons of furniture that ends up in US landfills annually. Worst of all, spending every free weekend shopping for new furniture, and then taking it home to assemble it.
We wanted to find a better way to move and to live.
We’re not alone here. No other generation has challenged, changed, and redefined ownership, living, and home mobility more than millennials. Gen Z has continued to breakdown the stigma around living with roommates, moving frequently, eschewing ownership, or apologizing for having make-everything-easy expectations. There’s also a growing part of the population that is consistently relocating for new job opportunities who just want to feel at home quickly so they can focus on their job and not the decorating.
Fernish is built to give people a fundamentally different option when it comes to creating a home and consuming furniture.
Being a furniture-as-a-service model allows us to accomplish Fernish’s simple mission: help everyone feel at home. By fulfilling the customer’s needs and expectations around ease, convenience, and quality, we help them create a home they want now, for as long as they are there. They no longer have to choose between quality, affordability, style, movability, and flexibility. Customers can have it all with our furniture subscription with the ability to swap, buy, or send back the furniture at the end.
Since launching Fernish in 2018, we have been selective with the brands we partner with so that we can deliver on our mission, values, and goals. We’ve built strong relationships with industry leaders like Crate and Barrel / CB2 and newer disruptive furniture brands like Campaign and Floyd that understand nextgen living and the need for durable, stylish, and accessible furniture. Over the past year, we’ve seen how our curated offerings have resonated with customers and have been looking for new partnerships to help us offer even more. So it’s with excitement today that we announce that we’ve been selected as 1 of 18 startups to join IKEA’s Bootcamp Program.
Collaborating with IKEA helps them to enter the circular economy, and allows Fernish to have a more accessible offering, while together, we can make an impact on nextgen and sustainable living.
Fernish and IKEA have shared missions, values, and long-term goals on sustainability, home comfort, and design, which makes this a very exciting relationship for us. We’re actively working with IKEA towards offering a curated set of products that not only fits customers design needs, but also the durability standards the furniture-as-a-service model requires.
We’re excited to collaborate with our growing list of partners and disrupt home design, home consumption and home commerce. Because we believe everyone deserves to feel at home, even if that home is ephemeral.
Michael Barlow & Lucas Dickey, Co-founders of Fernish
Michael Barlow, Chief Fernisher: A chronic mover, Michael’s background includes life as a (reformed) Investment Banker in New York for JPMorgan, and the first Business and Finance employee for LA based start-up Atom Tickets. In 2017, Michael came up with the business model for Fernish with his fiancée, Denise, who was in the process of moving from Chicago to LA (again). Frustrated with how complicated, expensive, and wasteful moving was, they created and validated a furniture-as-a-service business model which became the foundation for Fernish.
Lucas Dickey, Chief Product Officer: A millennial stereotype, Lucas moved up and down the west coast ten times in twelve years. He earned his product chops with a lengthy stint at Amazon, then with a series of product and engineering management roles in media, adtech, ticketing, and live events. Lucas brings his immense passion for sustainability to Fernish with a goal to reduce waste in landfills and actively contribute to the circular economy.
About IKEA Bootcamp: The 2019 IKEA Bootcamp program will be a three month semi-remote program, designed to accommodate the growth-stage startups, who are also managing their day-to-day business while co-creating with IKEA. Throughout the program, IKEA will continuously explore whether or not to progress with the collaborations. That means, the startups will only dedicate a full three months, if there’s a likelihood of partnering with IKEA. The program will be hosted in Älmhult — the heart of IKEA, where the startups will spend time on and off throughout the program. The Bootcamp will result in Demo Day as the “big finale” where progress and next steps with IKEA will be presented.
