What happens when the furniture in your living room reaches the end of its life cycle?

Do you simply throw it away in the bin or move it into the back alley hoping someone will pick it up? Both ways are not proper ways of disposing of large furniture items yet this is still all too commonplace. Plenish has come up with a way for you to personalize your home as frequently as the change of seasons, while also keeping furniture out of the landfill.

Plenish’ service lets your space adapt with you, with beautiful, functional rental furniture items that suit your style and budget. The flexible model allows customers to swap, add, return, or buy out the rental items at any time.

We had the pleasure of chatting with Chang Li, Head of Operations at Plenish, to find out more about the team’s motivation behind starting a company amidst a global pandemic, and what their aspirations are for this budding new business.

C: Chang Li, Head of Operations, Plenish

Tell us about you. What is your background and did you imagine yourself in the furniture business before Plenish?

C: I studied business in school and I enjoyed exploring different sectors. Someone once told me the perfect job is solving problems you love, over and over again. That’s no different when it comes to Plenish, finding a better solution for a sustainable living environment with no compromise in comfort and style.

Among the founders are designers and architects, operation experts, technology entrepreneurs, and sustainability geeks. Being passionate, solution-oriented, and purposeful are inherent traits within each of us. We wanted to create something affordable, yet high quality - and we wanted to introduce this to everyone who struggled like us.

What sparked the idea for rental furniture?

C: When we first started, we wanted to create multi-use modular furniture. This was important for us because we saw the inconveniences of owning permanent pieces of furniture that were not flexible to our lifestyle changes, and we wanted to solve this.

We later realized that the problem was not the limitations of the physical furniture piece itself. The problem was that furnishing one’s home was a huge problem overall - from purchase and disposal to assembly and delivery, and everything in between. Thus, Plenish was born.

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When was the business established and how many people are on the team?

C: Creating smart, sustainable furniture has been on our mind since 2018. We focused on validating the idea and testing different markets before diving in and launching the business in late summer earlier this year. Our team consists of several advisors and six individuals. We have software developers, operational and logistic experts, designers, and marketing specialists.

How does the team decide on new items to acquire for the rental collection?

C: We consider several things. Design, trends, and of course, customer feedback. We want to make sure that we are carrying products people already want and products that people didn’t even know they wanted. So far it has worked well for us, but we are certainly looking to expand our inventory.

Your website shows that you work with furniture suppliers. When you first pitched this model to prospective partners, were there any objections to this model or were they supportive?

C: In general, we want to work with Canadian companies that share similar values. Furniture suppliers have shown a lot of interest in working together as it provides them with a new revenue stream and helps them reach new markets. However, many of these companies have also been highly affected by COVID and are not looking to partner until a later date.

Plenish carries furniture items from brands such as Article and Rove Concepts. Do you have an established partnership with these brands to promote a circular economy?

C: We have a partnership with them that enables us to rent out their furniture through our subscription service. This partnership has allowed home dwellers to have more choice, spend less, own better quality goods, and of course live in a more sustainable world as a bonus. It is certainly a win-win for everybody.

How did you come up with this unique business model that enables end-users to customize their home across shorter time spans and keeps furniture out of the landfill?

C: In the last few years, I moved around between cities and within cities because of schools and jobs. I never enjoyed moving and on top of that, I saw how much waste even a single person can produce. I thought that there has to be a solution that allows people to enjoy life in a quality living environment and at the same time, minimize hassle and waste. This was the pain point I have personally encountered and inspired the business model.

Who are your most active and engaged customers?

C: Furniture ownership is typically long. Our rental term lengths vary from 3 months to 12 months, but most users choose to own for longer months. Our current subscribers are very pleased about their subscription and are checking our inventory frequently to see what they can swap out or add on next. I’d say all our subscribers are hooked on this and seeing furniture subscription rental as a new lifestyle rather than a one-time purchase.

The rental price for each piece of furniture is extremely reasonable — under $100 for most items per month — in comparison to rental items from event rental companies which many sometimes cost a few hundred dollars for a few days(!) The delivery and pickup cost is also lower than average. How is this business model financially sustainable for your team?

C: Our business is designed to be flexible. It goes hand in hand with the products we choose and suppliers that we work with. Our business model is designed to best serve our customers in the long term while we can achieve corporate profitability and environmental sustainability. In a way, we are not looking to make a quick buck here but by building a long term, trusting relationship with our customers.

What have been some initial challenges the team has had to overcome since starting the business?

C: Furniture rental subscription is still a very new concept and many people have not even heard or considered this type of service before. One of the biggest challenges for us was getting people comfortable with this idea.

In the beginning, we really struggled when COVID hit. The substantial decrease (or elimination) of migration was a huge concern for us. There was a lot of ambiguity and at some points, it felt like the world was at a standstill. We weren’t sure how this affected people’s risk-taking behavior for trying new things or furnishing their homes.

To our surprise, we saw a significant increase in openness and willingness to try Plenish. Customers shared the impacts of COVID has forced a lot of change in their lives (downsizing, financial instability) as well as their lifestyle (staying at home more often, not going out to shop). A furniture subscription was their ideal solution to adapting to new changes in a COVID environment.

The business operations require shipping, moving, and returning furniture to the storage facility. How have Covid circumstances impacted business operations?

C: Adjusting our business operations to new COVID measures was definitely a challenge for us in the beginning. Like every business, we were still learning how to adapt and ensure that we could still operate without compromising the quality of our products, service, and most importantly the safety of our staff and customers.

Our new policies include contactless deliveries, meaning that we’ll deliver your item(s) up to the threshold of your home without entering the customer’s home.

We are continuously monitoring policies and recommendations set out by Public Health Canada, and remain diligent in protecting our employees, delivery assistants, clients, and the communities we operate in. In addition to the contactless delivery protocols outlined above, we have employed the additional following precautions:

· Cleanliness and sanitation for all items, including any items that are returned or swapped.

· Extra care for the refurbishment and cleaning process, requiring all surfaces to be meticulously disinfected with wipes or steam cleaning at high temperatures.

· Equipping our delivery trucks with hand sanitizer, masks, and gloves that will be changed between deliveries.

· Instructing our team members to stay home if they are experiencing flu-like symptoms or have been exposed to anyone with symptoms. We ask customers that are experiencing any flu-like symptoms to please let us know as soon as possible so that we can hold onto their furniture and reschedule their delivery to an appropriate time.

If we asked you to set tangible, measurable business goals for the next year and for 3 years down the road, what would those goals be?

C: Right now, our main focus is getting the concept of furniture subscription out there and letting people test it out for themselves. They can know first hand, how incomparably awesome it really is. Most of our customers come through referrals, so we are very confident in our products and services.

In three years’ time, we want to expand to Toronto and Montreal and be viewed as the leader of home furnishing solutions.

We want to thank Chang Li for taking the time to chat with us about Plenish, which changes the timeline and experience of furniture ownership for all. Although diving into a new business may seem risky during the global pandemic, it has actually turned out for the better for Plenish, as prospects are reworking their finances to find services and solutions that can assist in times of uncertainty, and subscription rental furniture appears to be one of the perfect solutions to arrive at the perfect time. We are sure that many more will find out about this innovative furnishing solution to keep our home interiors on-trend and sustainable (both financially and for the environment).

Photos courtesy of Plenish