One-Year Oliversary: Celebrating Our Community
Time flies. This month, we at Oliver Space are celebrating our 1-year since officially launching here in the Bay Area.
We are creating an entirely new way of furnishing a living space for urban consumers — solving intense and far too familiar pain points of massive costs, decision fatigue, and terrible logistics associated with furniture and home decor.
Practically, that means we offer an end-to-end solution to make the process of furnishing your home flexible and delightful:
- A flexible subscription for high quality furniture and decor: pay a fractional monthly rate, where the monthly payments can count toward buying at no premium to retail (or just return or swap!)
- A guided shopping experience: help you design your space and pick out the right items.
- A free 3–day white glove delivery/assembly/pick up service: enough said.
Though we have already delivered 10s of 1000s of items to our customers, we are still a very new concept and company. Our friends and partners always ask — “who are your customers and why do they use your service”?
As we look back on our first year, we have noticed a few different common use cases for what we have built, and why it has resonated with consumers. If any of the below sound familiar to you, you should consider checking us out and see what the fuss is all about!
Shana: excited to move in with partner, but daunted by the challenge of home design
Shana and her partner Tim had been dating for most of their early and mid- 20s, and were taking the next step in their relationship — moving in together. They were excited to create a new home for themselves, except both had to leave behind all the furniture they had been using for their respective set of roommates. They were furnishing from scratch.
This is when Shana and Tim found Oliver Space. Through our live-chat and Moodboard features, we helped them design a perfect Netflix-binge set up for their new living room, a cozy bedroom, and even a breakfast nook all in one afternoon. They did not have to spend days and weeks debating and arguing over what to buy, which would have been a tricky start to their new journey together :).
After a year with us, Shana and Tim are now moving onto their second apartment together. They decided to buy out some of the Oliver items that will still fit nicely in their next space, returned some, and swapped in some of our newest pieces!
Lin: moving across country for a new job, starting work two days later
Lin accepted a job opportunity in San Francisco, after the first 10 years of her career spent on the East Coast. Moving companies quoted 1000s of dollars to ship her stuff across the country. Forget it.
She spent the entire week prior to hopping on the cross-country flight, selling her furniture and other belongings, haggling with Craigslist buyers for cents on the dollar, and then leaving a bunch of stuff on the side of the street. She felt guilty, but crunched for time, what other choice did she have?
For her new home on the other side of the country, she wasn’t bringing anything but herself and some clothes, and decided to use Oliver Space.
She found our flexibility concept intriguing, given what she had just gone through in Philadelphia. She was especially delighted to hear that we would coordinate with her property manager to go and furnish her unit before she arrived!
After a long flight across the country, Lin landed in SFO at 7pm on a Saturday, took an Uber to her new address, carried several heavy suitcases up the stairs, and was absolutely ecstatic and relieved to find what we had done to the place earlier that day. The only thing she had to do was put her clothes and some books away, and she was ready to settle into her new home and get ready for her first day on the new job two days later.
No nights spent sleeping on the floor. No days spent hustling to buy furniture. All the benefits of a pre-furnished apartment, without the huge premium.
James: the new roommate and a sofa split three-ways.
City living and finding roommates are almost synonymous. Look no further than a plethora of local Facebook groups across the country where thousands of people are looking for new roommates at any given moment.
One of our customers, James, was joining a flat with two other roommates who were already living there previously.
The apartment had one furniture flaw. The living room had only one loveseat sofa — needless to say, not enough room for all 3 roommates, let alone any guests that may come over
This is when James suggested they use Oliver Space, where they would subscribe to our beautiful Cleopatra sofa.
Without the awkward conversation of who was going to pay, how much, and who would keep it after, the three housemates would simply split the monthly payment (~$20/month/person) until one of them moves out, at which point the new incoming roommate can start picking up the tab for their share.
Furnishing a new home well is a daunting uphill battle — simply way too many options out in the wild, costs too high, wait times too long. Figuring out how to assemble a bed or split a sofa three ways can challenge the best of relationships.
The furnishing industry has ignored these problems for decades. They have focused more on selling individual products, and not enough on providing a suite of services that solve other ancillary but important problems for the consumer, such as flexibility, design choice, and logistics. One by one, we have begun to shed light on a better way forward by making that uphill battle, a leisurely downhill glide.
Pay us a visit, talk to our team, and we’ll show you how great your new home can be. Feel free to use promo code: Oliversary to get 10% off!
It’s time to stop living with ‘good enough’ and start living somewhere you love.
Til all-of-your spaces are Oliver Spaces,
Chan and Christian, Co-founders
