As a Couch CEO, I have access to a lot of couches. I even get them for free sometimes from brands that want me to try them. But there’s only so much room in a home… I mean you can’t have couches strewn about everywhere in your house, that would be a mess! I recently got a new leather couch, the Morrison 72″ Leather Sofa from Simpli Home, a Canda-based manufacturer, distributor, and retailer that has recently come onto the sofa scene with a lineup of high-quality couches that offer a tremendous value. The initial deal was that I was to get the sofa so I could write a review about it (link below) but I ended up loving it so much that I decided that Simpli Home and Couch.com should partner up and do more.
So this is part of the “more.” I scheduled an interview with one of the executive brains behind Simpli Home Furniture, Darcy McGilvery, who boasts an impressive resume in various industries but recently made a home for himself as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Simpli Home. He’s a friendly man and very well spoken and he had a lot of very insightful things to say about Simpli Home’s product lineup of sofas, sectionals, with eco-friendly leather and cleanable fabric options as well as their approach to sustainability.
Today, I also met with their head of logistics, Chris Lucky, who just came back from a trip to New Delhi, India, where Simpli Home has engaged in a program to essentially sponsor the education and growth from year one of school all the way through high school and college of over 100 under-privileged and poverty stricken Indian youth. These are kids who need help and Simpli Home is taking time and resources to harness their energy for good. Between what they’re doing to make the environment a better place and their humanitarian efforts, it’s clear that this is a company of great integrity. I’m proud to present my interview with Darcy here to shine a flashlight under the couch to reveal a little bit more about this fast-growing wonderful company.
Important Links:
Simpli Home: Ultimate Brand Review and Rating
Simpli Home Reviews: Morrison Leather Sofa Product Review
Simpli Home review: overview of my conversation with Darcy McGilvery, Chief Marketing Officer
- Introduction to Simpli Home and Its Philosophy: Alex from Couch.com introduces Darcy from Simpli Home, who shares the backdrop of the Vancouver-based company. They discuss the brand’s focus on delivering high-quality, stylish, and affordable living room furniture. Darcy explains Simpli Home’s motto that “great quality is a right,” emphasizing their mission to make luxury accessible in everyday furniture like sofas and leather couches.
- Sustainability and Environmental Initiatives: Darcy details Simpli Home’s commitment to sustainability, highlighting their environmentally friendly practices in producing leather couches and other value furniture. He mentions their achievements in plastic neutrality and their tree planting campaigns, which contribute to their goal of reducing the environmental impact of their products and operations.
- Challenges and Advantages of Online Furniture Retail: The conversation shifts to the challenges Simpli Home faces in the online marketplace and how they overcome these to provide value to customers. They discuss the advantages of selling sofas and couches through online platforms like Amazon and Home Depot, enhancing accessibility and convenience for consumers looking for value furniture.
- Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction: Darcy elaborates on the high-quality materials used in Simpli Home products, from solid wood to premium leather, ensuring durability and comfort for all their sofas and couches. Alex shares his personal experience with a Simpli Home couch, emphasizing the product’s quality and his satisfaction as a customer. This part of the discussion underscores the company’s focus on customer-centric values and high standards in living room furniture. We write a lot of furniture brand reviews at Couch.com and it’s clear that Simpli Home is a cut above the rest in many ways.
- Future Trends in Furniture Design and E-commerce: They explore upcoming trends in furniture design and the growing role of e-commerce in the furniture industry. Darcy discusses how Simpli Home is adapting to these trends, focusing on innovative designs for sofas and couches that meet evolving consumer expectations and preferences.
- Closing Thoughts and Company Outlook: The interview wraps up with Darcy expressing optimism about the future of Simpli Home and its impact on the value furniture market. They touch on potential collaborations between Couch.com and Simpli Home, looking forward to expanding their reach and continuing to offer exceptional value in living room furniture.
Simpli Home review: transcript of our discussion about Simpli Home couches, sustainability and commitment to great value
Alex Back: Hey, it’s Alex with Couch.com and I’m here with my new friend, Darcy from Simpli Home. Hello there. Where are you located right now?
Darcy McGilvery: I’m in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Alex Back: Okay, and just for our viewers at home, I just want to make sure, is there a special Canadian spelling of Simpli?
Is that why we have the I at the end of the word instead of a Y? I’m just wondering.
Darcy McGilvery: I wasn’t with the company when we decided on Simpli Home with the I there’s a lot of Simplies with the Y and the I. But it’s nothing to do with Canada.
Alex Back: Okay, I was really digging for something juicy there, but I think we can move on. Tell us about the company. And just, I think for people who are not familiar with the brand, just what’s the general value proposition of Simpli Home?
Why does it exist?
Darcy McGilvery: Of course. Simpli Home we knew Whole Home Furniture, we’re a Whole Home Furniture brand. We [00:01:00] sell solid wood and upholstered furniture and it’s really high quality stuff, especially for the price point. We’re very high value in terms of what you can get for the money. Our slogan right now, we have a few different iterations of this, but largely we say that great quality is a right. So we’re very stylish and on trend, but it’s something that you can afford. We’re trying to be, that’s middle ground there. What we’re seeing online is that. There’s just this value proposition where you can either get ripped off in the terms of spending too much for something that isn’t worth that, or you can get ripped off in terms of getting a bunch of junk that doesn’t cost a lot of money. And we’re trying to not have either of those negative experiences through online buying with furniture. So that’s our commitment is to be very stylish have very high quality materials from the wood to the hardware. And we predominantly sell in the United States. We have our own websites and we sell through many online marketplaces like Amazon or Ashley, Wayfair, Target the usual suspects.
Alex Back: You guys are really dialed in with the marketplaces. I’d be interested to, to hear about that a little bit more. But first, I need to point out [00:02:00] to you and those watching at home that I am a Simpli Home customer. I have a Simpli Home couch right here in Burbank, California.
And I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s, I think it’s wonderful. I agree that I think it’s of very high quality. And I posted a little review here on the site, which I’ll link to on this post as well with me and my son unboxing and trying it out, the packaging, I wouldn’t stop talking about the packaging in this review, Darcy.
I don’t know if you saw it, but I really had a lot to say about it because it was really nice.
Darcy McGilvery: Thank you so much for the kind words and your honest and glowing review. We’re very appreciative.
Alex Back: Yeah, no, it really is. It’s great. It’s a legit piece of furniture, and that’s part of what really endeared me to you guys and your company. After I got it and experienced it, I wanted to understand more about, you about what you guys are doing. And I know that I know you guys have been around for a while in the furniture space and doing a lot, but upholstery, meaning couches, is like a newer thing for you.
So talk about that evolution in a way that would be interesting or understandable, at least to the layman.
Darcy McGilvery: , Simpli Home has been around a [00:03:00] long time. We’ve been around since 2001. We were founded by Yoram and Erez Weinrich they’re brothers. And so they worked in a multi-generational lumber company with their family. I think there were three generations there and they learned the ins and outs of wood and solid wood and wanted to make a transition over to furniture.
Erez was he had deep knowledge in retail. He was an executive at Home Depot and Yoram is like more of a, he has an MBA. He’s a very marketing forward person. He’s a creative. And he’s a great visionary and he learned the ropes pretty quickly on sourcing and the design of furniture as well.
So he just has a good eye and a good intuition. So Simpli Home started as a sourcing company and we’ve evolved where we’re now an international company both in terms of our structure and where we sell. So we’re in Canada and the United States, Canada and India and Vietnam, China, Macau and Scotland, and more in terms of the internal bones of Simpli Home and where we’re located. And our headquarters in Toronto. So you asked about why the transition into sofas, we’ve done upholstery before. So we’ve done accent [00:04:00] chairs. So it’s just, but sofas is, it’s, as you mentioned it’s its own beast. There’s many reasons why we wanted to do this. First off is that who doesn’t love sofas?
I, you, I happen to know are a very big fan of couches…
Alex Back: Man, boy, boy DO I love couches. So much so that I’ve devoted my life to them.
Darcy McGilvery: that’s right. Yeah. So it’s it’s one of those things that. I love sofas. We all do. It was one of those boxes we needed to tick, but more so than that, we want to become a sofa brand. We’re in so many other categories. Sofas just had to happen for us to become a whole home brand. . We have an amazing supply chain. And we work and have access with the best manufacturers in the world. We have great relationships.
We have great designers, too. I feel like we’ve been bulking up for this for a long time. So we can just come in and take the industry by storm.
Alex Back: I love it. From what I’ve seen so far, and I’m not just, giving you a fluff.
What I’ve seen from what I’ve seen so far, I think you guys have a real shot at that just based on if you’re able to deliver this type of quality product at the price [00:05:00] point
There’s a lot of value here. It’s a great piece of furniture. And I think having sold many couches, like I was more on the up. on the train of ripping people off is what you were saying before. And I–
Darcy McGilvery: Yeah. Yeah,
Alex Back: No, I think I know a good quality couch when I see one.
And yeah, again, and I told you this privately too. I’m really curious to understand, how you guys are doing it for the price. I think it’s a really good price. And there’s a sustainability story as well. That at least I saw on the website and tell me a little bit about it.
Cause I’ve heard a lot of fake ones.
So what are you guys doing to, to address this push for sustainability?
Darcy McGilvery: Internally at Simpli Home, we have the values that every company should have. And then we have our core values that kind of define us as a business. So when we hire those are the things we hire on and it starts from the top as well. So these are things that are really near and dear to Aeros and Yoram’s heart. As well as mine and the other members, the executive team. We are hungry. So we stay hungry. We bring the wow. We just want to impress with everything we do internally or externally. And then we want to do the right thing. In business, you can’t really do the right thing [00:06:00] without being environmentally conscious. As an older company, we’ve been around since 2001. The ability to ship furniture internationally in a sustainable way is not always being there. I think that the planet, the things that are available to us. Are more approachable now, and we’ve tried to lead be at the head of that curve with what’s possible. For instance, we’ve been sourcing 100 percent sustainable, sustainably sourced wood for a very long time. That’s always been a part of our regimen.
Three or four, four years ago we became plastic neutral with our partners, Clean Hub and Green Worms, to remove ocean bound plastic in India and other parts of the world as well. So that, that makes us a plastic neutral company. So there, there is trace amounts of plastic in our packaging some unavoidable aspects but that’s always offset in those ways with some of the efforts that we’re doing. We’re planting a tree for each purchase on Simpli Home. com. First that was mangroves in Kenya, and now we switched that over to dry deciduous trees in Madagascar. And so far we’ve absorbed one, over a thousand tons of carbon, which is great. And we’ve recently updated our packaging [00:07:00] to be eco friendly. No styrofoam. We’re using honeycomb cardboard for box fillers. And as I mentioned, there’s still minimum amounts of plastic, but just the bare minimum.
Some wrap that we would have around it. Shipping and furniture it’s, that is definitely one of the biggest challenges because you want to be environmental, but the things that you put into the packaging, Need to be conducive for the person receiving their furniture without it being broken.
And then there’s the build of our sofas, for instance. So we’re using kind leather which is a very environmentally sustainable aspect of leather on our website, you can click through and go through the website and learn more About kind leather, but we’re doing our very best to make the components of what we’re creating as sustainable as possible.
Alex Back: Wow. That definitely passed my sniff test.
Darcy McGilvery: Yeah. Okay, cool. Great.
Alex Back: No, that’s great. That’s all really great. Something as a customer. and a user of this furniture. My son is still sleeping in the box every single night…
Darcy McGilvery: Kids love boxes. Yeah
Alex Back: It literally, we still do have it, actually. And no, that’s really great to hear.
It makes me feel good.
I’ve also, while you were working through that, I’ve, [00:08:00] I was looking for like sort of some Canadian accent or colloquialisms. And I heard two.
Darcy McGilvery: Oh, really? I thought I
had a non regionalized dialect Oh,
Alex Back: no, I got you. I got you,
Darcy McGilvery: All right
Alex Back: You got, you said I have, it has been instead of been, I would say been,
Darcy McGilvery: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Back: then
process instead of Process
Darcy McGilvery: Process, Process, eh?
Alex Back: Process, eh, oh, and he gave us an “eh”.
Darcy McGilvery: I threw that in for good fun. No, I say “eh”, yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s it’s good crack up here
Alex Back: Yeah, I’m from Brooklyn, New York, so I say yo sometimes, that’s like what I grew up It’s like the Eastern version of the Vancouver, BC, a.
Darcy McGilvery: It’s hard to have insight into your own ism So thanks for that.
Alex Back: You’re welcome. You’re welcome. And it’ll be on the playback too. So you’ll have it immortalized,
Darcy McGilvery: Totally.
Alex Back: Speaking of you how did you get into the furniture industry? I know your background is elsewhere. Usually I always say people have got to be crazy to join this nutty furniture industry [00:09:00] of ours.
What was it that compelled you or how did end up here and how, what are your feelings about being part of this industry?
Darcy McGilvery: I think you’ve probably heard the phrase you don’t choose furniture and that furniture chooses you. Have you come across this? It’s very true.
Alex Back: What’s one thing that kind of stuck out to you when you joined the industry or that you think customers in general would be really surprised to know?
Darcy McGilvery: The things that didn’t shock me, but the aspects that were more or less surprising when I came in I, I’ve worked with a lot of companies, a lot of brands and a lot of different industries. And when I came in, I really got a firsthand look of the disparity between what the product costs, a furniture company and what the consumer pays. There’s all sorts of reasons for that. But it’s an eye opener in, in furniture, especially for some really high end brands. That are producing furniture in the same factories to the same would spec to the same with using the same hardware, same construction, same design, [00:10:00] and they’re charging 4 times the amount that they, some of the other companies might charge that, that is definitely a major eye opener and it speaks volumes to. A lot of times consumers come in and they’ll pay for something. They’ll feel good about it, but they don’t realize what they just paid for. They didn’t pay for furniture. One, one, one quarter of what they just paid for was their furniture. And there’s so much additional stuff that goes on that might needn’t really have to be there.
And a large part of it goes into some inertia that’s in the furniture space and how many hands that piece of furniture has actually touched before it gets to the end user. And that’s one thing we’re trying to do. You mentioned how is it that we do it? We’re really trying to be as direct to consumer as possible, even through our marketplace channels as well.
So that’s a major advantage we have, which is why we can have our price put the way it is.
Alex Back: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then maybe in simpler terms, just to recap, since you guys are very vertically integrated and have your own distribution manufacturing sourcing channels, you’re able to be a true direct to consumer and not a faux– [00:11:00]
Darcy McGilvery: sure. Yeah. Anyone with a website is a direct to consumer brand all of a sudden, but that’s not…
Alex Back: Look, that’s what it is.
And I know because I used to run one, like we, we didn’t manufacture anything at the brand that I used to run and, and yet created a brand around it and spoiler alert, neither, neither do some like West Elm and Crate and Barrel. They’re not necessarily in the manufacturing or distribution business.
They’re buying from suppliers like everybody else. So there are varying levels of this direct to consumer idea in the furniture industry. And I think the more customers are educated about that, the more it’ll force brands like yours and others to be more transparent and take that authentic approach.
Ultimately, it may be a little painful for some brands to be a little bit more honest about their manufacturing and sourcing partnerships. But in the end, it will be the healthy thing for the industry to, to move on in this sort of like new age where information and technology are so readily available.
The simpler version of that is like [00:12:00] customers can, are going to be able to tell they’re going to have a BS meter that’s going to be a lot more sensitive than it used to be. So all of us in the industry need to follow suit. And I think you guys being transparent about things, offering products at a fair price.
Like those just, those ideals are very important and cornerstone to a strategy that’s going to live on past today.
Darcy McGilvery: That’s true. To your original point and segwaying into what you’re saying when I also first got into the industry, I knew that there was a large online furniture industry, but I had never purchased furniture online. There’s actually a lot of people who hadn’t done it at that point, but there are people who are buying furniture online. But that is one thing that really struck me, which just how satisfying online furniture purchases can be. I think it’s a little bit scary for some people because they like to touch and feel and sit and that makes me Perfect sense, but there’s so many pros to buying online. For instance a lot of the companies that we work with on the B2B [00:13:00] side will, buy our furniture.
They’ll put it in their showroom. There are some companies that don’t buy our furniture and put us in their showroom. Instead, they have a kiosk. They’re an endless aisle kiosk. So shoppers go into their local furniture district and they go and they sit and they test their sofas and there’s. 20 sofas there and the one isn’t there and they go to the kiosk and they see this endless aisle of additional sofas and they wind up buying from that kind of technology anyway. So the fact that you can go online, whether it’s with Simpli Home or any other brand, it just, it opens up the door to what you’re able to buy. And there’s just, there’s a whole world out there. You can get really niche. You can get really Exact for exactly what you want, what the brand is, what the price is, what the construction is, what the style is, what the leather is or fabric. There, there’s a lot of pros there. Things like free shipping, things like augmented reality. You can take a look at this, the sofa in your own space beforehand. It’s amazing what technology is doing to make it such a not just viable, but a wonderful way to shop for free.
Alex Back: I totally agree. And I’ve been an e commerce furniture e commerce since it really was [00:14:00] getting off the ground and I’ve watched it, evolve over the years. And there’s still plenty of people who will say I will never buy a piece of furniture online. And to those people, I say that makes sense to me.
That’s fine. In fact, 80 percent in the U. S. 80 percent of the furniture buying is done online. On the brick and mortar level. However there are plenty of advantages like you just said the fact that you have obviously the convenience and also just the selection and choice I think makes is actually contributes to people’s feeling of comfort knowing that they have this, as you said, endless aisle, meaning like endless options available to them.
They’re not trapped into the 10 sofas at the local store.
Just because they chose to put on their floor. So I think that’s really interesting. Like psychologically to think about.
Darcy McGilvery: And then Couch.com for instance, is just a, an essential part of the regiment that we’re talking about, where it’s one thing if they’re nervous, they go online, they find a few brands, they can see some sofas, but it’s Couch.com is a great way to level the playing field and stack things up. I, one thing that I [00:15:00] really appreciate that you do is you do you’re looking at comparable sofa designs and you’ll say this one versus that one and you’ll go and you’ll take a look and just spell out the pros and cons of the comparison.
I think that’s really valuable.
Alex Back: Yeah, thank you. And yeah, ultimately just to tie it all together it’s all about making people feel more comfortable, literally, figuratively and literally, no, but literally like having people feel that sense of comfort prior to making their purchases. is essential. And then actually delivering a great product after that.
Also very important outside of the whole marketing and retail side of it. And like I said, I think you guys do a great job of that. So I’m super happy that we got to spend this time together. I’m really interested to see where, our relationship can go between Couch.com and Simpli Home going forward.
But yeah, thank you so much for taking the time with me. I really appreciate it.
Darcy McGilvery: Yeah, it’s been great to chat and thank you for spreading the word on Simpli Home. Trying to be the best value for luxury sofas. That’s what we’re trying to achieve and I appreciate the airtime.
Alex Back: My, my pleasure. I’m going to get my son out. Hey, Wilder, get out of that box. [00:16:00] Okay, he’s getting out now. Thanks, Darcy.Darcy McGilvery: Okay. Bye Alex.
Important Links:
Simpli Home: Ultimate Brand Review and Rating
Simpli Home Reviews: Morrison Leather Sofa Product Review
