THE DISRUPTORS
Five brands transforming house and home
From fast wallpaper to curtain-measuring apps and build-it-yourself cork walls, Retail Week looks at five brands taking an innovative approach to homewares
Home is where the heart is and, since the pandemic, it is also increasingly where the work, relaxing and socialising are.
According to Mintel, the way people use their living spaces has undergone an evolution since the pandemic. From decor to furniture, people are increasingly selective about the choices they make for their homes.
Writing in Mintel’s 2022 homewares report, analyst Piers Butel says: “The Covid-19 pandemic has driven consumers to spend more time than ever before in their homes. This shift has led to a renewed focus on the home and how it can be optimised to fit new ways of living and working.
“The homewares sector, with its budget-friendly, lower-ticket items, can help consumers still uncertain about their financial situation to update their homes without paying for more serious renovations or expensive furniture.”
As living spaces are expected to work a lot harder, brands are responding with a wealth of trend-led, ultra-responsible and customisable products that make shoppers feel happy to be home.
Here are some of the challenger brands making waves in the sector.
Lust Home
Design-led wallpaper brand Lust Home can launch new products so efficiently that it leaves its old-world rivals in the dust.
“We don’t have the same lead times as traditional retailers,” says Chelsea Clark, Lust Home head of brands and project management.
“I can ask our designers to mock up an idea and we can have it printed and with a customer via DPD by 9am the following morning. We can turn it around that quickly.”
An offshoot of Henderson Design Group, Lust Home controls the entire production process, with everything from drawing up the design to shooting imagery for its website handled in-house at its Hartlepool HQ.
“A couple of rooms along from the big printer, we have a studio where we have our head of creative and photographer, so they spend a lot of time creating room-set imagery and lifestyle pictures the press will respond to,” says Clark.
It is this efficiency that enables Lust to hop on viral trends in fashion and social media and turn them into designs for people’s homes, earning it more than 70,000 fans on Instagram alone.
Lust’s bright and bold designs, which include everything from magic mushrooms to vulvas, are especially popular with women in their thirties who are decorating their first home. The brand is currently processing thousands of orders each week.
Clark says: “We launched because we identified there was a real gap in the market for design-led wallpaper at a really affordable price. I’m trying to jump on the back of popular trends and expand on those.
“Last year, we launched a strawberry wallpaper just because I’d seen a dress that had strawberries on and decided we needed them on a wallpaper.”
Fast wallpaper, unlike fast fashion, does not need to be unsustainable. While other retailers will order in quantities, Lust can print to order, keeping a handle on waste and its carbon footprint.
Fact file
Date established: 2021
Country of origin: UK
Price range: From £40 to £60 a roll
Stitched
When electronic engineer Elinor Pitt decided to switch up her career and move into interior design, she realised measuring up for new curtains is difficult, whether you’re a professional or not.
“Through my six years of doing interior design, I identified a huge pain point in made-to-measure products, particularly window coverings,” say Pitt.
“All windows are unique. It’s not like a generic product that’s stored in a warehouse. And the two biggest pain points are visualisation and measurement. I worked with off-the-shelf solutions like Shopify, but they’re all built-in, inventory-based products. So I left my job and took a deep dive into 3D customisation technologies.”
The result is Stitched, a custom curtain and blinds brand that allows people to see what their new window coverings will look like and provides the measurements they need to order them via an app. And the app doesn’t just make the ordering process easier – it offers customers far more options than would be available from a traditional retailer.
Pitt says: “We have 3D configurations so we have way more choice and variety. There are loads of different heading and lining types, and we can configure much more complicated products compared with traditional retailers, which have more of a pared-back offering. 3D is what empowers us to produce anything for a customer.”
Stitched’s average order comes in at around £1,000. Its infinite window covering combinations have a growing B2B client base.
“Traditionally, about 90% of our revenue would come from direct-to-consumer, but we’ve focused a lot more on interior design revenue,” says Pitt. “Just because interior designers are generally working with more affluent customers, which protects us a little bit.”
Though Stitched’s app solution and minimalist aesthetic may look geared towards younger shoppers, Pitt has her sights set firmly on Gen X.
“I’ve spoken to so many investors who say: ‘Oh, you’re going to tackle the millennial brand’ and I don’t think millennials or Gen Z are ready for made-to-measure curtains – they’re expensive,” she says.
“We do definitely have some younger customers but, realistically, most of our customers are in their mid to late-thirties and forties. And they’re ready to spend money on a high-quality product.”
Fact file
Date established: 2018
Country of origin: UK
Price range: From £200
Glassette
Founded by siblings-in-law Daniel Crow and Laura Jackson, marketplace Glassette specialises in bringing the coolest independent homeware designers together in one place.
Dubbed “the Net-a-Porter of homeware”, the site is meticulously curated by former End senior buyer Crow and broadcaster and interior design tastemaker Jackson, who say they’re “democratising an industry that felt out of reach and exclusive”.
“One of the reasons we set up Glassette was to reimagine the interior industry and create the new homewares zeitgeist,” they say.
“We wanted to build a community of like-minded customers, from brands to shoppers, to simplify shopping for your home on one beautiful platform.”
Glassette features several hundred products from independent and emerging brands such as viral artist Lucy Mahon, decor brand Petra Palumbo and ceramics designer Tatiana Alida Carrelet.
Operating a traditional marketplace model, orders placed are sent out directly from the independent designer. Several times a year, Glassette launches a select run of co-created products with its partners, which have so far included a bistro-style wine glass with The Vintage List and bobble ceramics with George Bronwin.
Fact file
Date established: 2022
Country of origin: UK
Price range: From £2.50 to £3,000
Glassette features hundreds of products from independent and emerging brands
Glassette features hundreds of products from independent and emerging brands
Fable
As shoppers become more aware of their environmental impact, Fable has identified an area where they are looking to make considered purchases: responsibly made tableware.
Its plates and bowls are handmade in Portugal from recycled clay and are sturdily designed to withstand wear, while its glassware is made in Japan using an ion-toughening technique, which makes it near-shatterproof.
A Fable spokesperson said: “We intentionally design our pieces to transcend passing trends. We believe in durable items that will last for years – not only physically, but aesthetically – and we design products that are as timeless as they are stylised.”
“Our collections are all thoughtfully considered, with colours and styles that complement each other and work seamlessly with the atmosphere of your home. With proper care, our tableware will flawlessly accompany great meals and memories for years to come.”
Fable is also transparent about its pricing. Available publicly on its website is a full price breakdown, including the true cost of the product from the first step of production onwards.
The brand says: “We believe in full transparency. From who we work with to our pricing model, we’re an open book.”
Fact file
Date established: 2019
Country of origin: Canada
Price range: From £20 to £480
Corkbrick
During the lockdown, people had to get creative with their spaces, with many having to create room for two new offices as well as a temporary classroom. So father-daughter team Catarina and Miguel Reynolds Brandão, an architect and a serial entrepreneur respectively, decided it was time to bring their idea for Lego-inspired building blocks to market.
“The market is wide,” says Miguel. “Within residential houses, families growing or shrinking, receiving guests or providing short-term rentals like Airbnb, this product allows you to adapt the space you live in within minutes. And when I say minutes, I really mean minutes. It’s so simple but it’s like the wheel – someone had to invent it.”
The product is versatile with easy-build sets that can be used to create anything from garden furniture and bed frames to staircases and office pods, all available to order online. Shoppers can also place a request for custom orders.
Hoping to turn over its first £1m this year, the business boasts more than 250 shareholders in 30 countries, with investors including senior figures at Nike, sustainability experts from University College London and, of course, the vice-president of Lego.
Corkbrick is currently fundraising on Seedrs to automate its production process, which would allow it to up production from 400 to 12,000 bricks a day.
The blocks are made from Portuguese cork, a sustainable material harvested from tree bark that is fire-retardant and ultra-light. It is also recyclable so the business offers a lifetime guarantee and an unlimited exchange warranty on every brick.
“Cork is a fantastic metaphor for sustainability,” says Miguel.
“It’s a business that, if you plant today, you have to wait five years for the first harvest. So it shows that if you treat nature well, you can profit.”
Fact file
Date established: Idea in 2014; first sale in 2020
Country of origin: Portugal
Revenue: €1m (£888,450) turnover this year
Price range: From £220
Disrupt or be disrupted: The retailers succeeding in a permacrisis
Join Retail Week and Juniper Networks on March 16 from 10-10.40am for an unmissable live virtual discussion with two innovative disruptors that are seizing new opportunities and reaping the rewards.
Panellists Neil Holden, Chief Information Officer at Halfords, and Millie Pearson, Chief Operating Officer at The Edit LDN, are ready to share strategic advice about meeting the ever-changing demands of the UK consumer.
What you will learn:
- Which investments will drive profit and what will drain your budget
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