Oliver Space today the close of a $13M Series A financing round, bringing the total amount raised to date to $21M in equity and an additional $16M in debt financing, to further its mission of bringing unprecedented ease and flexibility to the home furnishing experience. The round was led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), alongside Mayfield Fund, Abstract VC, Expa Capital, and Burst Capital. Rick Lewis, USVP's General Partner, will join the company's board of directors.
"Buying furniture is an outdated process that is simply no longer meeting consumer needs, with issues exacerbated by supply chain delays and a swiftly changing consumer landscape due to COVID-19. Consumers are demanding quality, flexibility, and speed, and existing industry innovators have not been able to offer a viable solution that addressed all three" said Chan Park, CEO and co-founder of Oliver Space. "As a team, we've collectively moved hundreds of times and deeply understand the emotionally-taxing nature of furnishing a new home, which is why we're solving all of the major pain points customers face when furniture shopping."
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many existing inefficiencies of the furniture buying process. Often expensive, customers are forced to choose between spending more on quality pieces they may not keep forever, or buying cheaper furniture that has a significantly shorter lifespan. Beyond the price, the process is also inflexible, impersonal, and slow, with made-to-order pieces sometimes taking months to arrive. With brick-and-mortar store closures and extreme surges in demand, production and shipping capacities were further strained, leading to steeper price increases and delivery delays of several months.
Oliver Space's bespoke model is tailored for the rapidly changing needs of consumers, whether they just moved to a new city, bought a new home, or are simply looking for a design refresh. Oliver Space offers customers flexible upfront or monthly payment plans, all at 0% interest, to enable them to keep, swap, or return designer-curated pieces, as often as needed. All catalog offerings are sourced directly from manufacturers and hand-picked by the team for seamless curation, and inventory is kept on-hand, allowing customers to receive their orders with white-glove delivery within 3 days – an unheard-of timeframe in the industry.
This Series A investment follows a record performance over the last year for Oliver Space through the pandemic, including a 500% increase in monthly revenue, 800% increase in monthly order volume, and a tripling of its employee headcount to support this trajectory. The company is actively expanding its city-by-city footprint, announcing the launches of Seattle, San Diego, Dallas, and Austin concurrently, increasing its serviced markets from two to six. Oliver Space plans to use a part of the proceeds from this Series A round to invest heavily in its logistics infrastructure, expand its technology team, and further fund its marketing capabilities.
"The consumer mindset completely shifts when using Oliver Space's service. Over the last two years, we've learned that the flexibility, speed, and convenience we offer unlock the possibility of experimentation with living spaces. We see the typical Oliver customer roughly double the number of items they get from us over the first 18 months," continued Park. "They use our service to furnish more and more of the square footage in the home. There is something amazingly refreshing about being able to tweak and evolve your space with ease, as taste and needs change."
"As long-time investors in the consumer space, and as someone who has personally felt the pain points of furnishing a new home, we understand that the furniture industry is poised for a seismic shift, accelerated by the pandemic. The retailers that will benefit most are those that quickly adapt their capabilities based on consumer needs. That's why Oliver Space's vision to reshape how people furnish their homes through flexibility, speed, and quality resonated immediately," said Rick Lewis, General Partner at USVP. "We believe that the Oliver Space team has created a truly innovative and one-of-a-kind experience that will completely disrupt how everyone thinks about and buys furniture in the future."