The Couch Depot

We are a furniture business based in Scottsdale, Arizona and we are passionate about creating an online furniture marketplace selling gently pre-owned furniture (similar to Kaiyo.com or Aptdeco.com). Our founder, Mariah found passion through her experience being a young adult wanting good furniture without spending crazy amounts of money. Finding pieces she loved on Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp was challenging and being able to pick up the pieces was even harder. That's where we come in.  Finding great quality, curated, unique, and clean furniture will never be the same. No more talking to sellers or buyers and being ghosted, haggling with prices, scouring marketplaces with algorithms that don't show you all of the pieces, or renting a truck and driving to pick up your piece(s) just to be disappointed with what you purchased. We will make the process easy and straightforward for buyers and sellers. 

Our inventory will be sold locally from our warehouses and can be shipped if the customers are not local. We are also in the process of creating a system where we will partner with people in areas we do not/cannot purchase in to get our inventory (if we do not have a physical location there) as a consignment offer where they get a shipping label and ship it to the customer - think OfferUp meets Amazon.com for used furniture. In those situations we can have remote inspection/cleaning techs or third party contractors come and inspect and prep the item prior to listing and/or shipping once it sells.

Americans are estimated to dump over 12 million tons of furniture every year (up 2 million from 1960) and that number is rising according to the ESA. We want to be a part of the wave surrounding eco-consciousness and sustainable living. The used furniture market is expected to reach a market value of $16.6B by 2025 which is a projected 70% increase from 2018. The new furniture market is worth roughly $540B, allowing tremendous growth to be made from the resale market. Especially with companies that innovate and use tech to streamline and simplify the process as Amazon has done for online shopping. That, alongside our mission to obtain real estate crafts a great opportunity. 

As previously stated, we will innovate and use tech to make the customer experience seamless and streamlined (app development, social media presence, etc.). We are also real estate investors and have extensive connections and knowledge purchasing real estate in which we will use to grow the company further, expand to many markets, and create generational wealth for us and our partners. 

Projected margins greatly depend on the systems set in place (purchase price, consignment split, etc.) and our overhead expenses. By simplifying the process and having a clear system for purchasing and selling, our profit margins are relatively high per unit. The only expense into the piece is purchasing it and cleaning it/restoring (plus holding costs and miniscule expenses). With our market research and beta period, we saw an average cost of $30 per couch (most pieces were couches in the beta period) as we obtained a lot for free. As far as other furniture pieces that need some restoration, we can obtain for free to $100/unit on average. Our average sale price per unit is $650. That can be increased through creating a professional presence online and placing ourselves as experts in the industry, as well as being in charge of our own marketing and not leveraging other marketplaces like OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace. A lot of our items in the beta testing period would sell within days having minimal inventory and no branding/business presence and using other marketplaces. 

We have been creating a website where our items can be sold and we have a process down for listing, cleaning, storing, and managing back-end systems at the stage we are at. We have also structured the LLC, registered a DBA name in Arizona, and are working to trademark it with our attorney. With having a marketing team and other crucial team members we will be able to scale. We are willing to give a fair percentage of equity in the properties we acquire as well as the business. Right now our biggest struggle is having the capital to support the payroll and accumulating expenses which is what will allow us the ability to scale more quickly, as well as purchase large enough warehouse space(s).