When Daniel Ramirez first moved to New York City, he had a hard time getting settled. Far from his native Puerto Rico and working long hours, he struggled to make any of his apartments feel like home.
“I really found myself always compromising on style and having to deal with all the logistical issues that come with living in a city and having furniture,” Ramirez told Built In. “It was very frustrating that, at a moment where so many things are so much easier and enabled by technology, this industry isn’t.”
So, he and his co-founder, Aditya Khilnani, created Conjure, a Brooklyn-based startup that lets users rent furniture that’s been curated by top designers. Formerly known as Mobley, the company announced Tuesday that it has launched out of stealth mode thanks to a $9 million seed round led by Pillar VC, Russ Wilcox, RiverPark Ventures and CoVenture.
Described as the “Rent the Runway of furniture,” Conjure lets users rent high-end pieces of furniture for about half of their retail value, according to the company. Customers pay a fixed price each month in the three to 12 months they have the furniture, then they can either buy the pieces they like for the remaining cost or swap them out for something else. The idea is to make furnishing one’s home both affordable and flexible.
“We’re spending a lot of time at home. As such, we’ve seen an increase in people who just want their home to look nice, they want their homes to reflect their personality and want them to be unique,” Ramirez said. “We’re allowing people to experiment. To have that loud sofa that you would never buy, but would be happy to rent for a period of time. We want to bring the ability for people to have their homes look like who they are in that point in time.”
Conjure touts itself as the first company of its kind to adopt this “flexible ownership” model, and claims this method will be increasingly important as people, especially Millennials, tend to move apartments more frequently. In the last two years, the company has seen nearly 8x revenue growth, as well as a 3x increase in monthly signups since March.
To keep up, Ramirez says Conjure plans to expand its delivery service outside of just the five NYC boroughs and east coast. The funding will also be used to grow the team. Ramirez estimates the company could double or even triple its headcount in the next year or so.
In the meantime Conjure is launching a new Bazaar marketplace, which will feature unique pieces designed and curated by artists and vendors that users can rent or buy.
“We all carry these small, unique pieces with us. We put them in a box when we move to our next apartment and those are the things we worry about if they break or not. They have a lot of sentimental value,” Ramirez said. “[With Bazaar] we wanted to curate a number of pieces from different artisans and different places that could be the finishing touches in someone’s home.”
