Uriel Tannen and Daniel Ufland, co-founders of Flitch, talk about their new online interiors platform and how business has been since its launch.
Back in June, Big Furniture Group reported on the launch of a new online interiors platform that aims to make furniture shopping simple by combining over 100 retailers, advanced AI and dedicated human stylists. A few months on, we spoke to co-founders, and childhood friends, Uriel Tannen and Daniel Ufland to find out how the launch has been and the makeup behind Flitch.
“When I first furnished my home a few years ago, I encountered many of the challenges that I think are unfortunately all too-frequent for those looking for furniture,” Uriel revealed. “I didn’t really know where to start, and so spent a lot of time browsing Instagram, Pinterest and Houzz to get inspiration and try and define my style. Thankfully I had the experience of my father (a trained interior designer) to fall back on for advice, and he highlighted some themes in the moodboards I had collated.
“That triggered a lightbulb moment, where I realised that most shoppers at the start of their furniture shopping journey do not have clear or defined personal style preferences. They might have an idea of what they like, but it’s not something they have fully thought about or can easily articulate – people can instinctively say if they like or dislike something, but they may not know how to express or identify their preferences using the right furniture-related words. This can make it challenging for them to find exactly what they want.
“I wanted to create a tailored furniture shopping experience for each and every person, regardless of their means and access to expert advice. We simplify furniture shopping through a style quiz that sifts through the entire market to recommend items that are to each user’s individual taste, requirements and budget. As well as AI-driven recommendations, we provide users the ability to compare and search the market in one place – and for those who want a human touch, we democratise access to furniture expertise with an interior stylist service starting at just £25.”
With the furniture sector undergoing fundamental transformations and starting to move in line with other industries to meet 21st century customer expectations, coupled with the rise of online penetration and other industries such as fashion that have long embraced such tailored shopping experiences (such as Thread, recently acquired by M&S, and Stitch Fix), both Uriel and Daniel saw an opportunity for Flitch to flourish.
“My co-founder, Daniel, and I have put our savings into Flitch, as it’s something we passionately believe in given our first-hand experiences of the problems we are addressing. Prior to launching Flitch to the wider public, we spent a considerable amount of time and resources into enabling our AI-driven recommendations,” Uriel said. “That meant collating the product catalogues of dozens of retailers and then labelling hundreds of thousands of data points that would serve as the training data for our machine learning system. I don’t think we appreciated the size of that undertaking when we first started, as it turned out there were no existing datasets available, we could make use of and had to create everything from scratch ourselves.”
After years of development, Flitch has created a platform for the UK furniture market to put consumers at the front and centre of the shopping experience. So, how has business been since launching? Daniel said: “We’ve seen great interest in Flitch since our launch – both from furniture shoppers, who have really welcomed this transformative approach to furniture shopping, and from furniture retailers, who would like us to onboard their product catalogues.
“Our mission is to make furniture shopping simple. As well as some of the challenges Uriel outlined above, there are other issues that furniture shoppers must come to grips with too. Shoppers will frequently only be aware of a handful of furniture retailers, and are keen to discover more. They also want confidence that they’re buying at the right time, as price can fluctuate considerably based on the season. We help with all these challenges, and more. If in a few years we can look back and see that the Flitch approach to furniture shopping is the default, that furniture shopping is no longer a journey of endless browsing through retail parks and dozens of websites, then I’d say that’s mission accomplished.”
Uriel added: “We’ve just updated our website to make it evermore accessible and user-friendly, and we’re working on several new features that we know will be a hit with our users. We’re also working on onboarding new retailers and launching new partnerships to increase the reach of Flitch.”
Flitch currently works with key retailers such as John Lewis, Habitat and Sofa.com, while revealing they’re in talks with quite a few other brands too, although to be part of the Flitch journey, the business says it is selective on who they want to work with. “We’d like to expand our portfolio to include a wider range of retailers that cater to the average budget of a typical middle mass-market consumer, and are particularly keen to champion smaller, independent brands that we can bring to the attention of new shoppers,” Uriel said.
“We are quite selective in the retailers we work with, as we want great imagery and products that really add something to the varied styles that shoppers can discover on Flitch. We also require a daily data feed so that we present our users with accurate stock information and pricing. Retailers interested in joining Flitch should email retailers@withflitch.com.”
