Buying a couch sucks.
Not unlike when buying a mattress, most people find themselves picking one of two* options: heading to a chain couch store and haggling with someone who needs to keep the price up for the sake of commissions, or saying “screw that” and heading for IKEA. Then you’ve gotta deal with getting the thing to — and in — your house.
(* or, of course, option three: finding a free couch on craigslist and forever wondering why it smells like cats despite the post specifically saying “comes from a cat free house”)
Companies like Tuft & Needle and Casper put a dent in this model by focusing on direct-to-consumer, one-size-fits-most mattresses. They ship to your door, compacted as much as possible to fit up narrow stairways, sans showfloor negotiations or reseller markups. Don’t like it? You get your money back.
Burrow, a company in YC’s Summer 2016 class, is trying that same concept with couches. They’ll have one model of couch at first, and it can be customized in a handful of fabics in a two-seater or three-seater design.
Burrow’s couch is modular, and designed to be moved from house to house. The company’s founders tell me they were inspired when they saw peers paying couch cutting/disassembly services to physically cut apart their couches for the sake of getting them up narrow New York apartment stairways. Ross’ troubles are real:Like Casper et all, you buy Burrow’s $850 couch straight from them, shipping is included, and you’ve got 100 days to decide whether or not you like it. That puts it a notch above the big box couch stores, sure — if only because you don’t have to worry about negotiating or whether or not you’d be better off waiting two weeks for some big holiday sale. But how is it better than, say, Ikea? According to the founders: it’s all about the assembly process. They’ve designed this thing to come together in “under 10 minutes without tools”. (I actually put together Ikea’s Norsborg sofa just a few months back, and was surprised at how damned long it took. It wasn’t hard, just tedious.) While I like the idea of fixing the couch buying process, I worry that the one-size-fits-most model doesn’t translate as directly as it may initially seem. Unlike mattresses, which generally go covered/unseen for most of their lifespan, the couch is often the biggest, most visible thing in one’s living room. Last time I bought a couch, it took me and my wife a half dozen trips to every couch store around to find one we were both happy with. Mattresses just need to be comfortable – couches need to fit your style, your room, and your life.
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