Episode 38: On Growing a Furniture Rental Business with Ilyse Kaplan, President & Chief Operating Officer at Feather

Sep 7

On this week’s episode of Subscriptions: Scaled, we speak with Ilyse Kaplan, President & Chief Operating Officer at Feather.

Learn everything from how Feather works to the brand’s target audience to what makes the company so unique.

Live Feather

Feather provides furniture rental for a new generation of renters, people who are moving more because of changing jobs, roommates, and cities. The brand allows customers to rent furniture when they move properties, giving them more freedom and flexibility.

Ilyse begins the podcast episode by explaining the concept behind Feather and their target audience, which is 25 to 40-year-olds living in big cities. These people move fairly frequently, whether moving to another city for a job or moving to different properties with new roommates.

She explains that since Covid-19, people are more open to the idea of things being more temporary. This has helped shift the mentality to the idea that renting your furniture instead of buying it can make more sense.

Ilyse and Her Experience

We learn more about Ilyse and how she started working at Feather. She grew up in the Detroit area and is the daughter of an artist and a small business owner. Her dad ran a hardware store, and the smell of fresh sawdust still makes her smile.

Ilyse explains that their family home was the center of everything, from family dinners to a shared space for work and play. Her mother also had an art studio in the home.

So, Ilyse has always had a strong appreciation of how important a functional home is. Professionally, Ilyse spent most of her career as an investor. Over time, she began to dream of being on the other side of the table, not just investing in businesses but working with them.

Ilyse soon began consulting and had her own practice. But, this made her more eager to get involved on the other side. When the opportunity came up to join Feather, which was around three years ago, it seemed ideal.

When Ilyse first joined the company, there were only around ten people working there. Ilyse started by running the finance department and since then has grown her scope slowly. Today, she manages all aspects of the company, including growth and operations.

How Feather Works

We soon discover how Feather works and the life cycle of the furniture pieces. Customers need to head to the Feather website to choose from over 200 different pieces of furniture.

Clients can select what makes the most sense for them and their space, choosing furniture for the living room, dining room, bedroom, and other rooms in the home. The collection even includes rugs and art pieces.

Customers can choose what pieces they want for a certain amount of time. Feather currently offers three different plans. These are plans of one, three, and twelve months, with the latter being the most popular.

Feather then delivers and assembles the pieces in the customer's home, ultimately taking the stress out of the typical furniture selection process.

While Feather is a subscription service, customers have the chance to purchase pieces of furniture that they fall in love with at an excellent price.

Corporate and Commercial Sales

While most of Feather’s client base are consumers, we learn that the company also provides services to corporate and commercial accounts.

There are a couple of different verticals that Feather has served over time. One of these is short-term rentals, which are usually a hybrid of a hotel and an Airbnb.

These short-term rentals typically look for very similar types of furniture to what Feather offers to consumers.

Feather also provides furniture to offices and home-staging customers. As the way people are working is changing so quickly, the work-from-home scene is a big part of Feather’s business. People are looking for more flexibility in their work environments, and that’s where Feather fills a gap.

During Covid-19, Feather saw a huge increase in office furniture rentals as many people had to adapt to a home office environment. While the home office business was already thriving before the pandemic, Feather saw a 400% increase in demand for home office items during Covid-19. These pieces included everything from sitting and standing desks to premium office chairs.

What Makes Feather Unique

Ilyse also discusses the business model of Feather and what makes the brand so unique compared to other furniture rental companies.

She explains that the business model is different partly because of their target customer. These people often move and can afford to buy furniture, but it doesn't make sense for their lifestyle.

Ilyse believes Feather’s customers move every 18 months on average. While people who move around a lot can afford to buy something cheap and throw it away afterward, Feather’s target audience would not be interested in this as it would not meet their ethics.

She explains that, after food, fast furniture is the second largest contributor to landfill waste in the United States, with ten million tons of furniture thrown away each year.

Many people do not consider this when buying fast furniture, but creating a sustainable and eco-friendly practice for young people is at the core of Feather. It’s Feather’s mission to change people’s relationship with material goods for a healthier and happier planet. At the very least, it’s to put a dent into the problem of throwing fast furniture away and creating an accessible renting model for Feather’s customers.

The episode slowly wraps up with Ilyse sharing what she would do differently at the company a few years ago if she could. She explains that she wishes Feather would have started designing their own furniture sooner than they did. The team learned a painful lesson that so much of the furniture used is not redeployable in how they hoped it would be, which was a challenging lesson to learn.

However, Ilyse is glad they overcame that issue quickly enough. She also wishes Feather went remote more quickly as the company has benefited a lot from it since the pandemic.

They’ve been able to tap into the labor market that’s a lot broader than what they had before. Going remote has given them an incredible opportunity to bring in team members that weren’t all based in New York City.

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