"Research, Research, Research! Try to get opinions of as many diverse individuals as you can before you start to really understand all the opportunities, risks and potential challenges."
Please provide a brief introduction to yourself & ufurnish.com
I am the Founder and CEO of the UK’s market leading search and comparison website for home furniture and furnishings, ufurnish.com. The website brings together 125+ high street names and smaller independents in one place, giving consumers the confidence that they’ve found the perfect item. The idea for ufurnish.com was born out of my own frustration when trying to turn my dream home into a reality. As a law graduate with a successful career in investment banking, I took the leap and became a tech CEO in 2019, after raising £1.8m in seed investment.
In 2020, I won the New Entrepreneur of the Year at the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards which recognised the hard work of the whole team. We have a busy year ahead as we are now actively engaged in our Series A raise whilst on a mission to make ufurnish.com THE destination website for everyone to search, discover, compare and shop furniture for their homes.
What’s your favourite part of what ufurnish.com does?
Helping consumers find the perfect product for their homes. ufurnish.com brings together over one million products from 125+ of Britain’s furniture and furnishings retailers, from John Lewis, Wayfair, Made.com to Grace & Grey, all on one website. The website allows people to easily search and compare products, based on their relevance - whether that be delivering on price, colour, material or size preferences. Price filters are one of the many ways we help consumers find the perfect product for them and we also have filters for sales, including the level of discount.
What’s the most memorable project you’ve worked on?
Raising £1.8m in seed investment from investors. It gave me the chance to bring together all my skills from banking, together with my passion for furniture, to tell my story and show investors my plans to revolutionise the £25.5bn home furniture market in the UK.
Tell us about any exciting plans ufurnish.com has for 2021?
We have some exciting product releases coming in 2021 that are top secret so watch this space...
What advice would you give someone starting their own business?
Research, Research, Research! Try to get opinions of as many diverse individuals as you can before you start to really understand all the opportunities, risks and potential challenges.
What’s your #1 Top Tip?
Always be networking, it's amazing the opportunities that have arisen from my network, including investment, advice and attracting tremendous talent into ufurnish.com.
Tell us something interesting we don’t know about you!
My husband and I were the first people to get married in Ireland during covid. We had uncertainty around whether we would be able to have any guests at all up until 5 days before the wedding and ended up with a whopping 14 guests in the Church and another 200 watching via a live facebook stream. My husband is also my business partner.
@ufurnishcom
@ufurnishcom