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XOuter Furniture Startup Targets Hotels, Shopping Malls
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him

It's no accident that this has been a banner year for direct-to-consumer furniture brand Outer. The Santa Monica startup co-founded by a former Pottery Barn designer seemed to emerge just as people were forced to stay home and its showroom concept seemed appropriately tailored to the social distanced demands of the pandemic world.
The company, which uses customer's backyards as a showroom for potential customers, is now looking to go beyond retail sales.
Outer CEO Jiake Liu said the company wants to furnish hotels, shopping malls and other businesses with their $95 throw pillows and outdoor sectional couches that retail at upwards of $9,000. And it's got some help. Outer announced on Thursday it raised a $50 million Series B round led by Chinese investor and Capital Today founder Kathy Xu.
"We're pretty excited to start testing the waters for working with hospitality groups: hotels, restaurants, and also shopping centers soon," Liu said.
The global outdoor furniture market topped $15.7 billion in 2020, and it's expected to grow 5.7% by 2027, according to a September report from Global Market Insights. The market was already on the rise before the pandemic, but like many industries, the coronavirus accelerated the existing growth trends.
Outer distinguishes itself from competitors like IKEA, Home Depot and Pottery Barn with their high-end eco-friendly designs inspired in part by co-founder and Chief Design Officer Terry Lin.
The company's wicker furniture, blankets and rugs are all made with recycled materials and Liu wants to use some of the Series B funds to invest heavily in making Outer's materials renewable.
A 2019 report from Grand View Research found that while residential purchases of outdoor furniture are still holding steady globally, the real growth is in the commercial sector. The report predicted explosive growth in commercial markets in Asia, including India and China, where Outer does its production at Liu's family-owned factory.
"The area that I'm from, there are a lot of master craftspeople that can actually weave rattan and this all weather wicker," Liu said. "It's a technique that we can't find that readily available in the U.S."
The facility isn't owned by Outer, but it's affected by its demand for sales. Liu said with the pandemic spurring customer demand, the production facility hired roughly 100 people in China over the past 18 months.
"I am really bullish about this marriage of Chinese supply chain and American design," Liu said despite the COVID-related supply chain disruptions that have delayed supply chains and bottle-necked the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports that it relies on.
Liu wants to use some of the Series B funds to invest heavily in making Outer's materials renewable. The company's wicker furniture, blankets and rugs are all made with recycled materials.
New investors Tribe Capital, C Ventures and Santa Monica-based Upfront Ventures joined the round, alongside participation from existing investors Santa Monica-based Mucker Capital, Marina Del Rey-based Mantis VC and Reimagined Ventures.
Outer co-founders Jiake Liu (left) and Terry Lin.
Since its launch in May 2019, the company has raised $65 million.
Liu says Outer's pricing reflects the supply chain and added that the production of its woven materials is difficult for Outer to do outside of China, where his family is from.
Another factor spurring Outer's growth is its unique model for showrooms. Instead of leasing costly real estate to operate a showroom, the company recruits existing customers who own their furniture to join its neighborhood showroom program. The furniture owners earn $50 per showing plus a 10% discount, and often network with people in their neighborhood to show off their new setups and encourage them to buy in.
"There is a huge influx of just customers, looking for anything for their yard" or outside spaces, Liu said. "There's never been this level of demand and it's largely catalyzed by the pandemic."
Linda Kruse is a member of the neighborhood showroom program. Kruse said she found Outer while looking for "gorgeous and interesting" furniture for her backyard in her new Woodland Hills home a couple years ago and was the third person to sign up for the home showroom program.
Kruse said beyond the designs and durability, the eco-friendly aspect of Outer was a selling point.
Outer counted 1,000 virtual showrooms across the country as of July. The company employs 70 people in its offices, but Liu said it'll use some Series B cash to hire more people and double its headcount by next year.
"The big selling feature was that they guaranteed their product for 10 years," Kruse said.
- How Outer Aims To Disrupt The Outdoor Furniture Industry - dot.LA ›
- Outer Founders on Why 2021 Could Be Their Best Year Yet - dot.LA ›
- Online Furniture Retailer Outer Raises $4.3 Million - dot.LA ›
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
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Phoenix Motorcars Raises Just 10% of Planned $150M IPO
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Electric vehicle startup Phoenix Motorcars went public today—raising only 10% of its originally planned, $150 million IPO target in a reflection of the bearish conditions facing both EV stocks and the stock market at large.
The Anaheim-based company raised a total of $15.75 million through its initial public offering Wednesday, pricing 2.1 million shares of its common stock at $7.50 per share. That’s well shy of the $150 million raise it targeted when filing for its IPO in December.
Phoenix—which makes all-electric, light- and medium-duty fleet vehicles including buses and trucks—also had a rough first day of trading on the Nasdaq, where it’s listed under the ticker symbol PEV. The EV startup’s stock plunged almost immediately after it started trading, ending the day down 46% at $4.06 per share.
Phoenix Chief Marketing Officer Jose Paul Plackal told dot.LA that the company had to re-price its offering to account for the negativity surrounding the equities market, which has not spared EV stocks.
“It really is the overall market [and] how it's done between now and the end of last year,” Plackal said. “The EV market is significantly compressed and the overall market sentiment is very, very different from what it was when we initially priced the IPO… If you look at the immediate [competitive set] of other EV companies who are offering products in the medium-duty space—from Lion Electric to Lightning to Workhorse—all of these stocks have significantly compressed.”
Phoenix banked on the IPO as a way to raise capital to finance its operations, which are mounting in cost. According to its S-1 prospectus filed with the SEC, Phoenix sustained net losses of $14.6 million in 2021 and lost another $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2022. In the same filing’s risk factors, the company said it “may never generate positive net cash flow or become profitable” at all.
The IPO funding will go toward scaling Phoenix’s low-volume production facility in Anaheim, expanding its roughly 50-person team and developing new vehicles, Plackal said. He noted that the company could eventually team with third-party manufacturers as it looks to ramp up production in the future, but for now is making do with its current operations.
Plackal added that Phoenix has been impacted by the same production issues that many EV makers are facing—namely, supply chain constraints which have made it difficult to acquire valuable components like semiconductors and batteries. The company’s customers include Los Angeles Air Force Base, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Los Angeles International Airport, all of which use Phoenix’s electric shuttle buses.
Phoenix does not currently have plans to raise more money beyond its IPO, according to Plackal.
“We decided to go for it to fund our growth plans,” he said of the IPO. “We felt it was most prudent to go ahead with it and get the funds which [are] required to support different applications, including continuing funding the [research and development] and new generation vehicles.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Disinformation Spreads on TikTok Ahead of Kenya’s Election: Report
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Rampant disinformation and hate speech spreading on TikTok could impact Kenya’s upcoming presidential election, a new report claims.
According to the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, political content containing false information and violent threats have garnered millions of views on the video-sharing app ahead of the African country’s August general election, Business Insider reported on Tuesday.
The Mozilla Foundation blamed Culver City-based TikTok’s ineffective content moderation practices for allowing that disinformation to quickly spread across its platform. Observing more than 130 videos across 33 accounts, Mozilla found that posts featuring violent threats, manipulated content and hate speech had gained more than 4 million views.
Mozilla fellow Odanga Madung told BI that TikTok is altering Kenya’s political landscape by allowing false and misleading content to disseminate. “It’s clear that TikTok is the new political avenue on the block and Kenyans are using it heavily to connect with politicians and consume political content," Madung said.
Explicitly violent threats on the app have targeted specific ethnic communities in the country’s Rift Valley region, who previously experienced violence following Kenya’s 2007 election. Videos calling for the “removal” of tribes and featuring images of political violence and fake media reports are among those garnering millions of views. Attack ads have also bypassed TikTok’s ban on political ads by using #siasa, which translates to politics, and #siasazakenya.
The Mozilla report found that TikTok—which BI noted has recently grown a huge audience in Africa—has failed to adequately moderate its content across the continent. Former TikTok content moderators told Madung that they were expected to oversee regions and languages they were not familiar with and were required to inspect a large amount of content every day.
TikTok has since removed the videos flagged in the report, according to the company. A TikTok spokesperson told BI that the company is now working with news agency and fact-checker Agence France-Presse and will create a new election guide and content labels ahead of the August election.
“We're committed to protecting the integrity of our platform and have a dedicated team working to safeguard TikTok during the Kenyan elections," the TikTok spokesperson told the publication.
TikTok’s ability to properly moderate geo-political content has already come under fire this year—with the app criticized for spreading pro-war propaganda in Russia and misinformation influencing the the Philippines’ presidential election.
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
There’s Buzz That Netflix Could Acquire Roku
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
With Netflix racing to launch ads on its streaming service, a new report suggests that the company could get some help by acquiring a leader in video advertising: Roku.
Employees at Roku are abuzz with talk that the streaming hardware firm could be bought by Netflix, Insider reported on Wednesday. The chatter reportedly heated up after Roku shut down its trading window for employees and barred them from selling their vested stock—a move that companies typically make before releasing information that will affect their stock price.
Representatives for Netflix and Roku declined to comment on the report to dot.LA.
Although Roku is best known for streaming players that allow consumers to access subscription services like Netflix and Hulu on their TVs, the company has also developed a robust ad platform that earned $647 million in first-quarter revenue. After losing subscribers for the first time in more than a decade last quarter, Netflix is now jumping into ad-supported streaming—playing catch-up with rivals who have already offered cheaper subscriptions that include commercials.
Such a deal would also be a reunion of sorts. Roku initially started as a product inside Netflix before it was spun out more than a decade ago after Reed Hastings, the streaming giant’s co-founder and co-CEO, opted against getting into the hardware business. These days, there’s no shortage of streaming companies selling both content and hardware; Amazon and Apple each offer both streaming players and services, while Comcast now sells smart TVs along with its Peacock streaming service.
Not everyone thinks a reunion between Netflix and Roku makes sense, however. Rich Greenfield, an analyst at tech, media and telecom research firm LightShed Partners, told CNBC on Wednesday that such an acquisition would be “absurd” for Netflix.
“Netflix’s core business is not advertising, will never be advertising,” Greenfield said. “To spend $20 billion, let’s just say, to buy Roku to make advertising this huge piece of the company would seem very, very out of character.”
Netflix’s stock price is down 66% since the start of this year, closing Wednesday’s trading at $202.83 per share. While Roku shares have similarly plummeted 55% year, the company’s stock climbed 9% Wednesday following the Insider report, closing at $101.88 per share.
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.