How to Start a Furniture Company from Scratch and Serve Companies like Google with Greg Hayes of Branch

Greg Hayes is the Co-Founder and CEO of Branch, an office furniture company. They’ve furnished companies like Google and Shopify with thousands of desks and ergonomic chairs and their office furniture company has appeared in many reputable publications. They make the most comfortable office chair and serve both large and small companies and even individual consumers. Their goal is to make it easy for teams of every size to create offices they’ll love.

 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Greg Hayes shares his insight on the buying trends and the future work in the new normal
• Why Branch pivoted from their enterprise-only model to include direct to consumer sales of office furniture
• How Branch’s workflow changed to enable individual customers to assemble chairs and desks themselves
• Greg talks about how he and his co-founders started Branch, from finding their first manufacturers and crafting their go-to-market strategy
• Greg discusses his work at Breather and his inspiration for starting Branch
• How Greg came up with the idea for Branch and the problem they are solving
• Where Greg and his co-founders sourced initial funding for their company
• How Greg met his co-founders
• Greg recalls a low moment in their business and why it’s important to have an attitude geared towards finding a fix

In this episode…

If you ever thought about starting or funding a furniture company, now might just be the best time to do it. The demand for office furniture has nearly tripled since the pandemic hit. Why? Because people are currently outfitting their homes with furniture that will help them maintain productivity and comfort while working. In fact, some are even adding outpost offices so they can work close to home but away from the kids.

One company that is currently serving this massive market is Branch. It started operations just over two years ago and they’ve already served big companies like Google and Shopify. They have since started accommodating individual clients which now turns out to be a great idea because of the shift in market trends.

Learn more about Branch and the topnotch furniture they offer from their very own CEO, Greg Hayes, on this episode of Inspired Insider. Tune in as Greg talks to Dr. Jeremy Weisz about the current trends in office furniture, how they shifted from serving big companies to doing direct-to-consumer sales, the challenges that he and his co-founders faced in raising and starting the company, and why he thinks it’s important to have an attitude towards finding a fix when facing low moments in business.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Branch
• Greg Hayes on LinkedIn
• Sib Mahapatra on LinkedIn
• Aashay Sanghvi on LinkedIn
• Verity Sylvester on LinkedIn

Honorary mentions: 

• Dean Dutro and Ryan O’Connor of Worth eCommerce
• Relationship Commerce Podcast

Previous episodes mentioned:

• P90X: Earning Food & Rent Money as a Mime to over $500 million in Sales- with Tony Horton [Business Inspiration]
• Why Did Nolan Turn Down Steve Jobs Offer Of 33% Stake of Apple for 50K? with Atari & Chuck E. Cheese Founder Nolan Bushnell

Book(s) Mentioned:

• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

 

Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders and you know some of the ups and downs of the journey. You know, Greg, I love talking about that and the challenges. I remember talking with Tony Horton on a P90x. Yeah, he sold millions of dollars of p90x, but he got his start as a street mime. He made his food and rent money back when he had on the street and doing street performing as a street mime, which was shocking to me, but I shouldn’t have been shocked. And Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari he was Steve Jobs’, his mentor talks about how Steve Jobs offered him 33% of Apple for $50,000. And why he said no, so check those episodes out many more InspiredInsider.com This episode is brought to you by Rise25 I co founded with my business partner, John Corcoran. We help b2b companies give to and connect to their dream 100 partnerships and clients by helping you run your podcast. And you know, Greg, for me, the number one thing in life in business is relationships. I’m always looking at a way to give to my best relationships and a podcast as a way I can have companies I love I believe in friends. You know, people share their story with the audience and give to them. So it’s been one of the best things I’ve done for my life and my business just to give to the people in my universe. So check out Rise25.com if you have thought about or want to start a podcast, or you could just email us with questions Rise25.com. Um, you know, I want to introduce today’s guest, and I want a big thank you to Dean Dutro and Ryan O’Connor, who run Worth eCommerce because they’re like, you got to have Branch furniture, you have to have Greg Hayes on his tell their story. So thank you to both of you. They are email experts. If you don’t know what they do. They basically I say, like this, Greg, like, they kind of are like an ATM for your email. So they send out emails, money comes back. And they’re telling me one story of a I think of all things, it was a cake delivery company or something. And they helped increase from 100,000 a month to 300,000 a month in revenue. 50% came from email. So I was like, Okay, if you could do for a cake company, you could probably do it for just about anyone. So check out and they have a podcast to Relationship Commerce. And today, I have Greg Hayes, he’s founder and CEO of Branch furniture. And as Dean describes it, they’re a badass Office Furniture Company, who has supplied companies like Google and Shopify with thousands of desks. And ergonomic chairs are featured in many publications, the most comfortable office chair, they serve both large and small companies and even direct to consumer. So if you need to furnish your home office, you know, check out their website, and I was checking it out the past few days, they have some amazing selection there. And it’s just an easy way to furnish your office furniture. So Greg, thanks for joining me,

Greg Hayes

Jeremy, thanks for having me.

Jeremy Weisz

You know, I want to dig in, there’s a couple things I want to talk about, at some point, what happened in Sweden, okay. But before we get to that, I thought you’d be you’d be a perfect person to talk about the future of work, because here’s the thing, you’re on the front lines, whatever people are saying it doesn’t matter. people vote with their pocketbooks. Right. And when you see what people are buying, and what they’re doing and their behavior, that’s really what is happening out in the world. So I love to have you talk about what you’re seeing is buying trends and the future of work as we see it as the new normal.

Greg Hayes

Yeah, okay, so so I’ll just get it out there right away. There has been a lot of commentary about the end of the office, and everyone’s going to work from home permanently from here on out. That is not what we’re seeing. But working home is going to be a big component of working going forward. Like, that’s just a fact. Now we know that. And so in terms of what we’re seeing, with all these white collar workers suddenly operating out of their living rooms, or from their their dining room tables, the first thing that we’re seeing is everybody needs an ergonomic chair. And so we’ve seen that part of our business explode, actually, to the point from kind of may onwards where we couldn’t even keep up with the demand that was coming in. So that’s been great. And then the second thing that that’s a good problem to have. Yeah, I

Jeremy Weisz

mean, I’ve heard people you know, from my conversations, I’m asking where you work, I’m working in the kitchen table on the couch, my back is killing me. I have a background as a chiropractor, so I totally relate to them on many levels. So but people are just making do and they’re needing to find different solutions because it’s just not working what’s at home.

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