lgabraham

We may soon. Are you asking for yourself?

Oh my. Furniture does seem to elicit strong feelings. The moment someone decides their home is worth more investment than they have ever invested before is a special moment, indeed.

Yes, you are right. We recently found out that Wayfair spends $69 to acquire a customer, and then recoup $59. They have built a machine. It is true that long as there is margin, they will sow confusion. We hope to stay ahead of them.

The Home Depot url seems to be working in the U.S. I wonder if they block, rather than redirect, European customers. It's good idea to look at access codes for urls. Thank you.

We have received quite few requests from users to expand into the European market, and also heard from users that the bad practices are common there. There is no reason our methods wouldn't also work in other markets. It's conceivable we would attempt, or at least test, such an expansion this year.

I would say it is quite useful to see your preferences so clearly communicated. Thank you for taking the time to share them with us.

May I ask, when you say "overstuffed" do you mean the make, as in having the entire frame covered by stuffing and upholstery, so only decorative features exposed? Or do you mean the quality or "feel" of sitting in the couch, as opposed to a firm couch?

We plan to index product details (and possibly reviews) for search, which should enable users to search on qualities like material, color, dimensions, etc. but also more ephemeral qualities like "feel" or ease of cleaning.

Thank you so much for your offer. Certainly, after we set up our filtering, we may reach back out to you!

Yes, this is a great idea, and something I have been thinking about. A clear risk of our site right now is decision fatigue. Some users we have spoken about wanting to be guided through their purchasing journey. I think you're right mass reviews alone won't do this.

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.

We built this precisely because we believed users didn't care much about which shop the item came from. We see the context of viewing items through the stores as a marketing tool that leverages established brands. We hope that being able to see much of an entire store's inventories for lesser prices feels like a superpower.

We will soon test charging a transaction fee on the items, which will be fulfilled by the stores.

Interesting points. It is true high quality furniture can retain value.

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.

Yes. Cheap furniture has a place. Marked up cheap furniture does not.

Yes, we do envision Spoken becoming a "power search" tool, with sorting.

What criteria would you like to search on?

Yes, even deciding on preferences, including time horizon, is difficult in the first place. I think rental models like Pabio (YC S21) will catch on for the optionality they provide.

I do agree that IKEA, which is vertically-integrated at scale, offers very compelling price-per-quality.

I was not simply not aware of the controversy around Trust Pilot or, more importantly, their business model.

This is an interesting point regarding brand aversion.

We are also looking to add collaboration tools for partners attempting to navigate preferences together.

A great point.

These are great points. The lemon problem is ultimately a problem arising from asymmetry of information. We are hoping to empower our users with more information to tilt buying more in their favor.

Thanks!

We found extensions like Honey to be invasive, so we designed ours to be low profile. It will alert you only when we've found item elsewhere. Right now, this is around 200,000 products.

Thank you! Yes, we intend to expand filtering with time. Thank you for the suggestion.

Oof. Thank you for this feedback. This particular item (the tables vs the set) happened to be human error. We will improve.

It is interesting to note you prefer browsing sites directly. We do have a Chrome extension that is light weight, and can alert you when an item is available elsewhere. This may offer the best of both worlds.

The "sales," yes. Once we have enough price data to show how "sales" change over time, we might be able to help users plan their purchases. Some "sales" are evergreen, while some are episodic but also predictable.

What a crazy story! It makes me wonder if we can aggregate manuals, too.

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.

I understand your disillusionment. I certainly respect those who choose to buy used.

Interesting point. We have only started to look into the international market and want to understand dimensions such as shipping costs, shipping times, quality, etc.

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!

It is a fair point. In making this site, I have come to respect quality furniture makers most of all.

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?

Thank you for pointing this out. We are currently updating our prices every week. Indeed, this isn't quick enough for how quickly the sellers change prices, and especially given by how much they sometimes change them.

Oh my, that is very strange and interesting. Thank you for this note!

Interesting points. Our site does, for now, mainly aggregate the stuff that can be found at more than one place. We don't think all of it is merely cheap.

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.

Great points and excellent research. It impresses upon us the importance of diversifying the source of our reviews and ratings, and introducing our own means of validating sellers.

Thank you! We did have something like this on our site for some time. We recently simplified our language. You have pointed out for us that something was lost.

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...