Armed With a Fresh $15M Raise, Fernish Plans Expansion as America Redecorates Under Quarantine

Rachel Uranga

Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.

Armed With a Fresh $15M Raise, Fernish Plans Expansion as America Redecorates Under Quarantine
Fernish

Americans locked out of the workplace have been remaking their home offices by adding desks, plants and wall hangings. Some of it so that they look a little more slick on Zoom calls.

The new interest in a beautiful home office has been a boon to furniture services like Fernish, which sells itself as an affordable option to upscaling your home. The rental service recently closed on a $15 million Series A led by Kosla Ventures, alongside other top investors including Scott Cook (founder of Intuit), Eytan Elbaz (founder of Scopely), and Jeff Wilke (Amazon's CEO of Worldwide Consumer), and Spencer Rascoff (founder of Zillow and dot.LA).


Armed with the new infusion of cash, Fernish Chief Executive Michael Barlow is looking to expand their reach beyond their service area of Los Angeles and Seattle metro. "We're literally spending 100% of our days in our home. People are taking stock of what it looks like."

Orders for home offices furnishings at Fernish surged 300% over the past two months, and May is tracking to be its best month for new signups since the Los Angeles company's founding in 2017. Fernish truly broke out a year later after joining L.A. accelerator TechStars, and raised $30 million in January 2019.

"Because you are on Zoom calls all day," Barlow said of many professionals, "you definitely want to have a nice decor set out there whether it be wall hangings, new lighting or otherwise."

Fernish, along with a growing list of venture-backed furniture rental companies including New York-based Feather and CasaOne from the Bay Area, pitch themselves as the antidote for young urbanites sharing apartments or setting up their first place to live. Adulting.

Fernish Customer Spotlight: Lizwww.youtube.com

They may want nice furniture but don't want to invest up front or schlep it to the next city they might live in. These startups give commitment-free options while promising to be more eco-friendly than disposable furniture.

Barlow was in part inspired to build the company with his co-founder Lucas Dickey when he was trying to convince his girlfriend to move to Los Angeles from the East Coast. Moving was expensive and he wanted to eliminate that, plus a lot of furniture becomes disposable.

The company has also pitched itself as part of the circular economy, as second hand and used items have become more digestible to the eco-conscious consumer. "Fast Furniture is out," reads one of the taglines on Fernish's website, tapping into the dueling consumer desire to do good and buy. "Tastes change, lifestyles evolve and we demand different things from our home over time," it goes on. "With Fernish you can refresh your style with high quality furniture that's built to last."

Fernish offers mid-century and modern furniture, partnering with CB2 and Crate & Barrel. Prices range from a $79 month for a mid-century meridian blue sectional worth $1,895 to $13 a month for desk with a Walnut top valued at $299. The company also offers a lease-to-own program.

The model is nothing new. For years, the rent-to-own industry has gotten a bad name as shady companies targeted poor people who couldn't afford big payments to buy furniture. But Fernish and other companies have upscaled the service by targeting professional millennials and Generation Z, who don't necessarily want to be stuck with expensive furniture or may not want added waste.

More than half of its customers came to the company before or after a move. The majority view furniture as a disposable asset. And it's finding new customers through one of its investors, Real Estate Tech Ventures, which counts apartment owners among its clients.

But will the success continue once the pandemic ends? Direct-to-consumer services like Amazon and furniture Wayfair have seen sales jump, even as they face logistical challenges.

Barlow is convinced the company is working within a larger trend toward a service economy that built up Uber and Lyft and spawned a legion of food delivery apps and fashion rental services that offer short-term access to high end products like clothes (Rent the Runway, LeTote).

He's not the only one. Others that have done well during the pandemic like mobile software provider Tapcart, think the forced move online will permanently shift consumer behavior as traditional retailers struggle to recover. Consumers have become more and more willing to pay for convenience.

Co-founder Lucas Dickey (L) and Chief Executive Michael Barlow (R) of FernishPhoto courtesy of Fernish

"While the quality of the product is still important, the point of differentiation between brands is now often dependent on their ability to market the service (and) delivery," said a report from Deloitte on the future of retail that was published before the pandemic took root in the U.S. "Premium charges are already a regular aspect of meal and grocery delivery services."

Furniture can be a capital-intensive business and the company has invested heavily in a proprietary system that helps it streamline supply management and complicated reverse logistics that it employs to retake possession of furniture and refurbish it. Dickey said the company sees its investments in their technology akin to that of Amazon's investment in Amazon Web Service, which offers company software service for companies and individuals.

"No one does merchandising and upselling or operations better than Amazon, so we're trying to follow in their footsteps," Barlow said. "Should we have 1% of their success, we would be very happy."

dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff has a non-controlling investment in Fernish. Please read our Editorial Independence pledge for more information.

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How the 'Thrift Haul' Boosted Secondhand Ecommerce Platforms

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
How the 'Thrift Haul' Boosted Secondhand Ecommerce Platforms
Evan Xie

If you can believe it, it’s been more than a decade since rapper Macklemore extolled the virtues of thrift shopping in a viral music video. But while scouring the ranks of vintage clothing stores looking for the ultimate come-up may have waned in popularity since 2012, the online version of this activity is apparently thriving.

According to a new trend story from CNBC, interest in “reselling” platforms like Etsy-owned Depop and Poshmark has exploded in the years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. In an article that spends a frankly surprising amount of time focused on sellers receiving death threats before concluding that they’re “not the norm,” the network cites the usual belt-tightening ecommerce suspects – housebound individuals doing more of their shopping online coupled with inflation woes and recession fears – as the causes behind the uptick.

As for data, there’s a survey from Depop themselves, finding that 53% of respondents in the UK are more inclined to shop secondhand as living costs continue to rise. Additional research from Advance Market Analytics confirms the trend, citing not just increased demand for cheap clothes but the pressing need for a sustainable alternative to recycling clothing materials at its core.

The major popularity of “thrift haul” videos across social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok has also boosted the visibility of vintage clothes shopping and hunting for buried treasures. Teenage TikToker Jacklyn Wells scores millions of views on her thrift haul videos, only to get routinely mass-accused of greed for ratching up the Depop resell prices for her coolest finds and discoveries. Nonetheless, viral clips like Wells’ have helped to embed secondhand shopping apps more generally within online fashion culture. Fashion and beauty magazine Hunger now features a regular list of the hottest items on the re-sale market, with a focus on how to use them to recreate hot runway looks.

As with a lot of consumer and technology trends, the sudden surge of interest in second-hand clothing retailers was only partly organic. According to The Drum, ecommerce apps Vinted, eBay, and Depop have collectively spent around $120 million on advertising throughout the last few years, promoting the recent vintage shopping boom and helping to normalize second-hand shopping. This includes conventional advertising, of course, but also deals with online influencers to post content like “thrift haul” videos, along with shoutouts for where to track down the best finds.

Reselling platforms have naturally responded to the increase in visibility with new features (as well as a predictable hike in transaction fees). Poshmark recently introduced livestreamed “Posh Shows” during which sellers can host auctions or provide deeper insight into their inventory. Depop, meanwhile, has introduced a “Make Offer” option to fully integrate the bartering and negotiation process into the app, rather than forcing buyers and sellers to text or Direct Message one another elsewhere. (The platform formerly had a comments section on product pages, but shut this option down after finding that it led to arguments, and wasn’t particularly helpful in making purchase decisions.)

Now that it’s clear there’s money to be made in online thrift stores, larger and more established brands and retailers are also pushing their way into the space. H&M and Target have both partnered with online thrift store ThredUp on featured collections of previously-worn clothing. A new “curated” resale collection from Tommy Hilfiger – featuring minorly damaged items that were returned to its retail stores – was developed and promoted through a partnership with Depop, which has also teamed with Kellogg’s on a line of Pop-Tarts-inspired wear. J.Crew is even bringing back its classic ‘80s Rollneck Sweater in a nod to the renewed interest in all things vintage.

Still, with any surge of popularity and visibility, there must also come an accompanying backlash. In a sharp editorial this week for Arizona University’s Daily Wildcat, thrift shopping enthusiast Luke Lawson makes the case that sites like Depop are “gentrifying fashion,” stripping communities of local thrift stores that provide a valuable public service, particularly for members of low-income communities. As well, UK tabloids are routinely filled with secondhand shopping horror stories these days, another evidence point as to their increased visibility among British consumers specifically, not to mention the general dangers of buying personal items from strangers you met over the internet.

How to Startup: Mission Acquisition

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

How to Startup: Mission Acquisition

Numbers don’t lie, but often they don’t tell the whole story. If you look at the facts and figures alone, launching a startup seems like a daunting enterprise. It seems like a miracle anyone makes it out the other side.

  • 90% of startups around the world fail.
  • On average, it takes startups 2-3 years to turn a profit. (Venture funded startups take far longer.)
  • Post-seed round, fewer than 10% of startups go on to successfully raise a Series A investment.
  • Less than 1% of startups go public.
  • A startup only has a .00006% chance of becoming a unicorn.

Ouch.

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From The Vault: VC Legend Bill Gurley On Startups, Venture Capital and Scaling

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Bill Gurley in a blue suit
Bill Gurley

This interview was originally published on December of 2020, and was recorded at the inaugural dot.LA Summit held October 27th & 28th.

One of my longtime favorite episodes of Office Hours was a few years ago when famed venture capitalist Bill Gurley and I talked about marketplace-based companies, how work-from-home will continue to accelerate business opportunities and his thoughts on big tech and antitrust.

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