Sofas are among the trickiest products to design and sell, when it comes to the world of furniture design. There are physical and logistic constraints to consider (especially for city and apartment dwellers), and they are often the most-used piece in a home, requiring flexibility, comfort, and durability. Buying a sofa is a significant financial and aesthetic investment, and marks the first major “adult” purchase for many young professionals. All of that makes it a tough sell for manufacturers–one that undergoes more scrutiny than a simple bed frame or side table.
Those were all issues faced by the Detroit-based direct-to-consumer furniture startup Floyd, which is adding a sofa to its small but ambitious product line. What’s more, the company had the added pressure of upholding its brand promise of providing an affordable, flat-packed design made for young urban dwellers frequently on the move. For the internet-spawned startup, which launched in 2014 with a Kickstarter campaign but today has aspirations to beat Ikea at its own game, that’s been an easier promise to fulfill on a smaller scale, with its spare, easy-to-assemble items, made purely from birch and steel components. Its first product offering, a Jean Prouvé-inspired set of steel table legs made to pair with any surface, was flexible and economical to produce, and has since been joined by similar designs: a bed frame, a dining table, and a side table, all of which now come with finished wooden parts.
Now, backed with a $5.6 million series A funding round that was announced this January, the team is boldly expanding its product line–not to mention its simplistic material palette–in a big way. And for Floyd, that means a sofa, something its customers had been demanding for years. Unveiled this week, “The World’s First Floyd Sofa,” as it’s cheekily touted on Floyd’s website, will be available for preorder starting September 17, with the first units to ship the following month. Floyd cofounders Alex O’Dell and Kyle Hoff are betting that the sofa will be exactly what its customers are looking for, because, in fact, it was developed in direct collaboration with them.