78: Rent or Buy: A Sustainable Furniture Solution

Narrator 00:01

How would you like to improve your health and keep your family safe? You're listening to the Healthy Home Hacks podcast where we firmly believe in joining optimal health shouldn't be a luxury. Healthy Home authorities and husband and wife team Ron and Lisa will help you create a home environment that will level up your health. It's time to hear from the experts. Listen in on honest conversations and gain the best tips and advice. If you're ready to dive in and improve your well-being and increase your energy, you're in the right place. All right, here are your hosts, Baubiologists, authors, media darlings, vicarious vegans and avocado aficionados, Ron and Lisa Beres

Lisa Beres 00:28

Friends you've likely heard of fast food, and probably even fast fashion think Forever 21, H&M, Charlotte Russe and other stores with low prices, low quality, exploitive labor practices and potentially harmful products. But you've likely never heard of fast furniture. Similar to food and fashion. The fast furniture trend has gained attention for its negative environmental and social impact. Disposable furniture offers affordable on trend home decor options, yet, best furniture is made quickly and cheaply with often toxic laden material. And since it typically lasts for just a short period of time, one to three years that furniture ends up in the landfill.

Ron Beres 01:15

According to experts, nearly 10 million tons of furniture piled up in landfills in 2018. While consumers are budget conscious when furnishing their home, many are not aware of the environmental and social impact. Yet purchases of fast furniture are unintentionally contributing to the problem. This throwaway mentality driven by culture and lifestyle is not sustainable.

Lisa Beres 01:42

Now. And here to shed light is our guests. Kristen Todd, President and COO of Fernish, that's FERNISH furniture and home decor rental service that's making it as effortless as possible to create a home that allows you the high-quality modern home furnishings you want. Without the commitment or upfront high cost. Kristen career began at Zoo Lily as vice president of operations where she built and scaled operations to IPO. During her eight years at amazon.com Kristin led several teams across the company helping build prime launching same day delivery we can all give Kristen A big thank you for managing the movies and television category and launching Amazon's digital music cloud-based offerings.

Ron Beres 02:32

Kristen holds a BSc and an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Michigan, a sm and Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT and an MBA from MIT. She is the Board Chair of the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship. Kristen lives on Lake Sammamish just outside of Seattle, where she often can be found paddle boarding with her puppy, Maisie or wake surfing. Welcome to the show Kristen.

Kristen Toth 03:05

You know what she's not in here right now. But she may come visit me because she loves to do that with you here starting to talk or get excited.

Lisa Beres 03:13

Oh, we might get a cameo from Maisie. We need to meet Maisie before this episode is over. Maybe

Ron Beres 03:18

Maybe you want to bark, right little barking background. Okay.

Kristen Toth 03:21

He's pretty quiet. She's actually pretty good. Quiet. I don't know how I got so lucky. But

Lisa Beres 03:28

Well, welcome to the show. Kristen and Maisie. We're so excited to have you. Thank you so much.

Kristen Toth 03:35

I'm so excited to be here. And what a great intro that just hits on so many of the things that we think about every single day. So yes, I'm excited to chat with you all.

Lisa Beres 03:45

Oh, likewise. And this has been a topic that I'm passionate about Ron and I have wanted to cover for a while actually. And this is the first time we're talking about furniture in general. So, it's really something every single person listening can relate to. We've all gone to IKEA and these kinds of places and bought this fast furniture, and only to find out that it's falling apart in a year or two and that chipping of that laminate is coming off and you're down to just junky looking furniture. So, I want to dive right in. Can you tell our listeners more about the circular economy and how Fernish is partaking in it?

Kristen Toth 04:20

Yeah, for sure. Circular Economy is kind of what is becoming a buzzword today. But we were sort of built on this idea of we're not selling things and trying to forget about them. We're thinking about them through their entire life cycle. And what we do is we make it effortless to create your home which is not just their space, not just the things in the space, but how you feel when you're there. And as you know, you want new things, your life changes the people you're living with change where you're living changes how you're living, that space changes. And when you buy furniture, it's sort of heavy and it's static. So, it's hard to like have the emotional all sort of tied to the present moment when the stuff around you isn't sort of evolving with your life. So, we came up with this great model that allows customers to rent, rent to own or purchase furniture that they love that will fit with their lifestyle and evolve with them over time. So, we think about buying furniture, renting it out, going and picking it up, when that customer is done, bringing it back, cleaning it, refurbishing it, and then sending it out to the next customer who's going to love it for however long they love it. And then we do it again.

Lisa Beres 05:39

Yeah, what amazing.

Ron Beres 05:41

Question. Okay, so yeah, if we were to rent furniture, from your organization, right, we have two floors here. So, you're going to come in, and you're going to take our furniture from the third floor?

Lisa Beres 05:50

They don't take it out, they just bring you new furniture.

Kristen Toth 05:52

Well, we'll bring you but when you're done with that, on the third floor, we'll go and get it and bring it back. And we have some incredible delivery teams who have navigated every tricky apartment that there is, when we opened up in New York City, we knew we were kind of raising the bar. And we were like in the big leagues there. And there was this 27-inch doorway at the end of this like, really strange triangle end of the hall and how they got a sofa through that door. It was nothing short of magic. But yeah, yes, we do all.

Lisa Beres 06:26

The delivery furniture delivery people, they deserve a big shout out. I think the same thing sometimes. How do they get the washer and dryer in that door? How do they?

Kristen Toth 06:35

Yeah, so we just want to make it effortless. So that means that we will bring everything, put it all together, put it where you want it. And then when you're done, we come and pick it up. Or if you're moving across town, we'll move your Fernish stuff for you. If you're moving from LA to New York, will magically make your thing show up in New York. We don't Oh, wow. Okay,

Ron Beres 06:54

that's, that's wonderful. Wonderful.

Lisa Beres 06:56

So, I've read on your website. So, you have three options, you can rent the furniture, you could rent to own the furniture, or you can decide that you fell in love with it, and you want to buy it.

Kristen Toth 07:06

Yeah, and absolutely. And they're all the same price. So that idea of rental is bad math or a bad financial decision, we're trying to take that completely off the table. If you rent something, generally, for 24 months, let's just say you sign up for 12 months, today, you renew in 24 months, generally, you can just choose to take all of the payments that you have made, apply it to the buyout price of that item, and you'll own it. Wow. 24 months, or you can decide, you know, I don't really want to own this thing. I want to swap it out after 12 months. No problem, we'll let you do that again. But you only then pay for you know, that portion Yeah, of the thing for the time that it's serving you. So, the idea is really to make it a good math decision with a lot of service around that for you to do exactly what you want or need to do right? Rent to Own where you don't have to decide up front, you can decide down the line what or buy out upfront, if that's really what you want. Everything is the same price.

Ron Beres 08:05

Okay, Kristen, I estimate tax is on my mind. Right? So, it's tax season. Right now. We're recording this on February 23rd. Right, yeah. Which is middle of tax season. Many of us know that I have businesses that if you lease the car, so leasing is like renting, right? You can actually write off part of that lease, if you use it for business purposes and so forth. Do you know I'm putting on the spot here? You know, one of the things I was going to ask originally, but I just have it on my mind, can you actually write off business furniture? If you lease it? That makes sense?

Kristen Toth 08:32

I will tell you that with all that education, I did not get any kind of tax degree. And I would say please, please talk to your accountant before.

Lisa Beres 08:43

It's home for another so I wouldn't think so.

Ron Beres 08:45

Well, no. We'll have couches, desks and things too. So I was thinking of another situation, particularly many people have even businesses in their home, you have people who have doctor practices that are part of their side of their house. So, there's much more to this and see I've just expanded your business, Kristen.

Kristen Toth 09:03

That's right. I love it. I love it. But I'm not giving tax advice today.

Ron Beres 09:07

So, I know you're not getting. I'm sorry. I should have never asked that question.

Lisa Beres 09:11

And the thing and I don't know if he even said this, because obviously your furniture is, I mean, I think elephant in the room here is that you're actually renting to own or purchasing quality furniture.

Kristen Toth 09:15

Exactly. Yeah, when we started this business, one of the things that we knew was going to be really key to making it a business that can be not just environmentally sustainable, but like financially sustainable was that we were going to be needing to use this furniture for many customers. And that means that we have to think about the longevity or the durability of our furniture in four different ways. The first one really is what you would think durability. So, what are the materials that it's made with? And are they high quality? Will they stand up to the test of time and all of the things the cleaning and the refurbishment that we do? The second thing is style like we want it to be loved and wanted for a long period of time. So, she generally, we don't have this super flash in the pan fast furniture, trendy thing, right? So, you know, the style has to like last for seven plus years.

Lisa Beres 10:10

Yeah, classic looks, those pieces that you invest in, and that you're going to have forever. Because, you know, I know the serial designers and all of us who, you know, as soon as you get your house up to date with what's trending, boom, now that's out, you know, Oh, great. I just heard, you know, gray and white is so popular in kitchens, right. But it's like, oh, no more gray. Okay, we're leaving gray pretty soon now that everybody's got gorgeous, great kitchens and invested in this marvel.

Kristen Toth 10:37

Totally, totally.

Lisa Beres 10:39

So being able to say, ah, you know, I've just updated my house and that couch is not working anymore, boom, I can trade that in and get a new one, or Yeah, I can get a new dining room table. I think that's really fun, too. If you're a person that likes to change your decor a lot, this is a really great option for you.

Kristen Toth 10:56

Totally. And then I'll just quickly say the other two, the other two are refurbished mobility. So, the materials that things are made out of, you are talking about a laminate coming off of a piece of furniture, we don't do a lot of veneers and laminates. Because if those things do start to come off, or they're appealing, or they get scratched, or whatever it is, there's not really a good way to sand that down and make it look like new again. So that doesn't really work for us. So, we have to use wood that are durable, but also refurbish to build and then modularity. So, let's just say that one cushion is not holding up or had a spill on it, if we can replace just that cushion and not the entire thing and make it like new again, that really helps us keep these things sort of out of the landfill. So, in circulation for us. So, we really think about what the product is that we would put into our catalog a great deal so that we can make sure that we are doing our part from a sustainability perspective, but also so that our business can sort of make sense over time as well. Yeah.

Lisa Beres 11:55

And that just for listeners who might be new tuning in, you know that laminate furniture typically contains formaldehyde, which is a carcinogen, those, the particle board, the MDF, the cheap wood that you see under the laminate is usually held together with resins that contain formaldehyde. So, it's not just this concept is not just good for the planet, it's really good for your health to not be having exposure to those really toxic chemicals.

Ron Beres 12:22

Kristen, our listeners, I guess they want they want to know from you your definition, what is fast furniture? And how can it be damaging to the environment? We teased this earlier? Yeah,

Kristen Toth 12:33

Totally. You did a great job, too. So, what can I add? Well, fast furniture really is kind of what you were saying we started talking about fast fashion years ago, right where it was very much built, created, placed in stores for this kind of flash in a pan so quickly made cheaply made, not with longevity in mind, but there for this trend, sort of flash in the pan and then just kind of go away. So, the same thing kind of has happened with furniture where if you think of furniture as disposable, you don't want to pay a lot of money for it. And so therefore, that demand is sort of met by suppliers, and retailers who are going to sell furniture that's not made for the long haul, because people are not willing to or wanting to pay for that. So, we're trying to take that anti-fast furniture stance, which is let's find the things that are going to be built to last on all those different levels that we just talked about, and really be there for the long haul. Even if the long haul with you is a different amount of time, then you know what we would think of on a sort of macro scale because we can then find different homes for the same piece throughout its lifecycle. So, we're sort of anti-fast furniture. And it's detrimental not just because like Lisa just said, like materials that are used, the supplies that are used, those things can be not just terrible for your health, but because they don't stand up to the test of time they end up not being able to have a very long life cycle, and therefore they end up in landfills. And all of that work that went into sort of building them just kind of goes to waste. And obviously, like you said earlier around. It's like there's about 10 million tons of furniture that ends up in us land.

Lisa Beres 14:21

Millions and go, like, I know Ron breezed over that, but 10 million tons. Yeah, and that was in 2018. Yeah, we're in 2023. And we know that number is higher. It's not, that is just money. Well, Kristen, with today's consumers moving more and more often and settling down later in life. Can you tell us more about furniture sustainable efforts and some of the statistics of the sustainable measures that Fernish has taken?

Kristen Toth 14:46

Yeah, I would say you know, you're right. I do think that all of us think of our lives as evolving for longer and longer and so that might mean that you're moving around more often that might mean that you have a little bit less uncertainty where you'll be In eight months or a year, and Fernish such a great model for a customer who just doesn't really know exactly what they're going to be doing, and sort of like the long term, we find a lot of people that think of us for the long term as well, because they liked the idea of that ease of sort of moving things out or not having to make the decision upfront, or do you have really big investment of dollars up front? Yeah, for us, because we've really been focused on the longevity of our furniture, the big thing that we like to look at every single year and hold ourselves accountable to is how many tons of furniture have we been able to keep out of the landfill. And we just did our 2022 Impact Report. And one of the things we really love is that we were able to save 522 tons of just ourselves, wow, furniture from ending up in a landfill. And that's really just from selecting the right stuff and making sure that we're reusing it and reusing it. And even when we get to the end of life of something, so let's just say it doesn't hit our bar for that, like new condition, we have a couple of different ways that we really think about ensuring that things still don't go into a landfill, they get to a home that they love, either by being sold through like a used furniture marketplace, we have a couple of partners we work with there, or by going through some of our donation partners and our charity partners. Yeah, that we are really excited about. And so just making sure that we're thinking about that whole lifecycle. Yeah, beyond when we have it, of that furniture. So that's been our sort of big focus on the contribution or kind of contribution to the planet.

Lisa Beres 16:35

Yeah, that's kudos to you guys. I was thinking of newlyweds, this is such a great idea for newlyweds because your kind of are coming together. And you really don't know your long-term style. At that point, at least we didn't write around, we were just kind of buying whatever, when we first got married and furnish our house and you know, that all ended up changing. And so, it's a good idea to just go this route to see what you really want, you know, and together, decide, are you going to buy the pieces that you were renting? Or you're going to keep. Just newlyweds pop in? I think it's such a great idea.

Kristen Toth 17:08

100%

Lisa Beres 17:08

Yeah, you're on a budget to when you're newlyweds. And usually, that's great.

Ron Beres 17:13

Kristen how are you giving so many pieces of furniture 2-3-4 even more lives than what they normally would have? How do you do it?

Kristen Toth 17:21

Yeah, well, a lot of it is just about thinking about that long term, like I said, selecting the right stuff. But then we have to have really great processes that are in our warehouses, we actually hire our own delivery teams to make sure that we're taking really great care of the furniture as we're putting it into somebody's house or taking it back out. And just interacting with customers obviously too and then we also have a whole operation where we bring something into our back into our warehouses. We do a quarantine to make sure that everything is safe from like a bed but perspective, for instance. And like the fun fact there is, I didn't know this before starting Fernish but the way that we detect for bed bugs, that we have a trained dog who comes and smell them.

Ron Beres 18:07

Is that dog Maisie?

Kristen Toth 18:08

She's been trained to do this, but I was like, Okay, well, you might have a new job. Or service dogs you need to be bedbugs� dog. That's really cool. I've never heard of that. So, we keep it in the quarantine until it's cleared by the dog. And then it goes through a rigorous cleaning process. And then if there are more things that need to go through and be more touched up or repaired, that goes to a refurb team, and that whole team is in our warehouses, they know our furniture super well. And they've been able to sort of build out a besting process for keeping these pieces in circulation and for three, four or five, hopefully 10 plus different customers over time without anybody being able to tell that they aren't getting brand new furniture.

Lisa Beres 18:57

Wow, that's amazing. Well, besides the sustainable efforts, what are some other reasons for people to use the service.

Kristen Toth 19:04

The big thing is that flexibility and convenience. So, you know, Furniture Rental actually has been around for a while. It hasn't really been thought of as a consumer-oriented business, though. And so, because of that, I don't think that most of the furniture that's out there meets the style bar for what you and I would want. But on top of that, it doesn't necessarily have the same kind of service that we're expecting from, you know, our Amazon Prime experiences and sort of all of the kind of modern retail experiences that we're used to having. So, we really wanted to make high bar of service incredibly convenient. You don't have to do any of the lifting any of the assembly any of the moving around, whether it's going in or coming out of your place. And then we give you all of the flexibility to be able to decide what you want to do about your furniture and easily swap things out easily add to or subtract as your life sort of changes as you learn what you need as you get new needs along the way. And so, we just really wanted to have that flexibility and convenience. And that's what is really resonating with customers. And then when you add to it, that you're just sort of paying on a monthly basis, you know, to go and open up your wallet or take out a loan so that you can buy furniture, sort of like the cherry on the top. Yeah.

Lisa Beres 20:24

Do you have a lot of interior designers say that might do that for staging a home? Or is there a minimum to how long you could rent a piece?

Kristen Toth 20:32

It's a really good question. We offer free delivery and pickup. And so, in order to make sure that we can pay for all of that we do have a minimum term of four months. So, we don't get too much involved in the sort of real estate short term stage. Yeah, it's really, we're more for the consumers who are going to maybe be on an internship or a little bit longer, right, if that makes more temporary situation. But yeah, we do have a team of sales folks who will work with businesses who have unique needs. And we always try to find a way to say yes, of course. Yeah.

Ron Beres 21:02

Well, I'm curious Not to put you on the spot. But if you were to rent to buy, is it typically three, four years rent to buy? Or what are the parameters around that, if someone was interested in doing that?

Kristen Toth 21:12

Yeah, is usually about two years, the monthly amount that you pay on any particular piece changes a little bit, depending upon how long you think you're going to have it. So, if you sign up for four months, the monthly payments are a little bit higher, versus if you sign up for 12 months. But if you sign up for 12 months, or you sign up for 24 months, that sort of our best rate per month, and after about 24 months, you could tell us, hey, I would like to go ahead and purchase this. And we just go and double check that all the sales tax is correct, and that you've paid everything, but at that point, give or take 24-25 months, you can own anything that you've been paying for that time.

Lisa Beres 21:53

Well, that's excellent. And for listeners that are like, oh my God, I want to do this now. What cities and states do you service at this time?

Kristen Toth 22:01

Yeah. Okay. So, I'll kind of go, I'll start where I'm at, we do the greater Seattle area. And then we're a big chunk of Southern California down by you all, kind of southern venture all the way down to the border along that west coasts.

Lisa Beres 22:16

That's where we are.

Kristen Toth 22:17

And then Dallas, Worth area, Austin area, and then New York City and New Jersey, as well as the greater Washington DC area.

Lisa Beres 22:26

Wow. So, you're really expanding? Is it like, did you start with one city and you've been growing, growing?

Kristen Toth 22:32

Yeah, we did. We started in LA. And we just got bigger and bigger and bigger. We started getting into Orange County, and we got down to San Diego. And we also opened Seattle, just as we were sort of in our early days of the business to learn what it was like to operate somewhere else, as well. And just learn the differences between Southern California and Seattle from a taste perspective.

Lisa Beres 22:55

Different types of furniture for different regions, right.

Kristen Toth 22:57

Yeah, exactly. Yes.

Lisa Beres 22:59

Or no, you're going to be on late. Yeah.

Kristen Toth 23:01

Yeah. It's funny, though, how there are these small differences, largely due to the kind of size of the apartments that you find in the different places. So, Dallas apartments are a little bit bigger than you are?

Lisa Beres 23:13

Oh, yeah. everything's bigger in Texas.

Kristen Toth 23:15

And not that we don't do some of our we have this really beautiful storage bed that is on hydraulics. And you sort of lift it up, and it's so beautiful. And you can put a whole bunch of things underneath your mattress. And that's really popular. And we still do some business with that in other markets. But it's so great.

Lisa Beres 23:36

So important in New York, right? Here, the average home apartment in New York is like 400 square feet is that pretty accurate thing? Like oh my god, it's so crazy, tiny, tiny, you need every inch when you're dealing with that? Yeah.

Kristen Toth 23:49

Absolutely. We offer all of the same things across our different markets. We just see different demand across those.

Lisa Beres 23:56

I see items. I can see that.

Ron Beres 23:58

Yeah, I was so excited. Well, Kristen, can you also tell us more about your partnership with holos communities and how it's adding an extra layer of sustainability, as well as social impact efforts?

Kristen Toth 24:09

Yes, absolutely. One of the things we did last year was we pledged on Giving Tuesday to do some extra donation. So, we're always doing donations. In fact, even with our company awards, we have an award where the sort of prize is that the winner of the award gets to say where we're giving that month's donation to but it's really fun. But Holos, are sort of giving Tuesday pledge and we did some really beautiful common area for a couple of their facilities with some of the stuff that you know, for whatever reason we were not sort of going to send back out to customers and sometimes we just decide like we're going to make some changes in the assortment that we're offering and so really beautiful furniture still in amazing shape, but we were able to donate it when it wasn't sort of right for our catalog anymore and we just have committed to being a part of this project, Amenita in Southern California, and I guess you all are in the area. So, you might have heard about this, but it's apparently repurposing a hotel to try to help people who are struggling with housing security. And so, there's suddenly five studio units. And then oh, for the support services and ADA upgrades that they're doing, its governor Newsom has, like, given some or announced just recently funding to help out with it. And so, we're going to be a great part of that. And we're super excited to partner with them. Again, we were just going through some of the furniture that we had that we think would be really great for these projects.

Lisa Beres 25:40

Fantastic, great job.

Kristen Toth 25:42

I just love it when we're able to take these pieces that for whatever reason, they've slowed down in demand. So, we don't need as many of them anymore, or, you know, there's a scratch on the back that we don't want to send to another person. But it's still a great yeah, piece of furniture. And then again, just that idea of keeping things out of landfills and finding the right home for them for years.

Lisa Beres 26:02

Absolutely. It's that cradle to cradle, right that cradle lifecycle from start to finish that, you know, we're not disposing of anything, I kind of live that way, no matter what it is, like when I'm cleaning up my closet, or you know, cleaning up, nothing gets thrown away, right around. I mean, I am like, either selling, I'll sometimes sell my clothes online, or always donate, we've got the VA truck that comes we go to the goodwill drop off. I mean, and or just give to people or just leave outside with the free sign or whatever. Like, I'm just a big believer that you might not want it. But there's always somebody that will and somebody that will appreciate it. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Right? Yeah, amazing. Totally. 100%. Well, this is so awesome. Is there anything you want to leave our listeners with before we wrap up?

Kristen Toth 26:48

I mean, I can't think of anything else we've covered so much. It's been so fun to talk about what we're doing and, and get to talk a little bit more about the sustainability aspect of how we think about things. I would just say that so many times, we talk about a sustainable business. And people will say, Oh, well, clearly, that's going to be more expensive, or it's going to be less convenient. Yeah, or it's just not going to be a great business, you can't make money off of that. And I think what is very rare, and that we get the pleasure of thinking about every single day is this is a great win for our customers, because the service is so amazing. Yeah, it's a great win for the environment, because we can really keep things out of landfills, give them a much longer life. And then it's also something that we can really build into a real business. So, we're not really sacrificing everything sort of pushing in the same direction. And we don't get to see very many of those and the pleasure to be a part of it. And it's not easy, but it's certainly a lot of fun. And it's very, very rewarding to work with this team on this mission. And they have satisfied customers and the environment for sure.

Lisa Beres 27:48

Oh well, they're lucky to have you. Your background is so impressive. And is your goal to be nationwide, then is that the long-term goal?

Kristen Toth 27:55

Absolutely. We want to get and bring furnish to everybody. And we want to do that responsibly and ensure that we can keep our high service and not overextend ourselves. But certainly, we want to bring furniture everywhere to everyone and hopefully won't just be nationwide one day we'll also be talking about other countries and things like that. It's really exciting. I have many things to do.

Lisa Beres 28:17

So Oh, yeah, the possibilities are endless. Well, Kristen, thank you for being with us. And remember friends, no one can do everything, but everyone can do something. Max Lucado. You can learn more about Fernish at Fernish and that's Fernish.com

Ron Beres 28:35

We'll have all the links in the show notes at Ronandlisa.com/podcast. Stay tuned for the next episode, and get ready to up level your health. See you then. Bye.

Lisa Beres 28:47

Bye bye Kristen.

Narrator 28:52

This episode of the Healthy Home hacks podcast has ended. But be sure to subscribe for more healthy living strategies and tactics to help you create the healthy home you always dreamed up. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best content. See you on the next episode.