California furniture startup Woodsy announces pre-seed funding round, launches Kickstarter

Woodsy, a California furniture startup manufacturing affordable solid wood furniture, announced its first product on Kickstarter, surpassing its funding goal in 6 hours. Woodsy also announced a pre-seed round led by angel investors. Woodsy Desk is the first product from a brand poised to turn the fast furniture industry on its head.

David Chippendale, CEO, Woodsy: "There's an old rule in furniture design that you can never have all three: good design, good materials, and a good price. You have to pick two. With Woodsy, we're breaking that rule, on what inspired him to start the brand.

To accomplish all three has not been easy; Woodsy had to simultaneously reinvent furniture manufacturing to drive down costs and emissions while also reinventing how furniture is assembled.

The team at Woodsy realized early on that the only way to make furniture affordable was to do something unintuitive: bring manufacturing back to America. "By designing products that can be produced locally in under an hour, we keep prices low and quality high," says Chippendale.

Woodsy had to rethink how furniture was made and embraced robotics early. The result has been impressive: using a hybrid workforce, Woodsy Desk can be manufactured in under an hour and reduces CO² emissions by 80%.

The futuristic thinking behind the brand didn't stop at rethinking manufacturing; Woodsy's team had to take on a more daunting problem: the poor user experience of furniture. "A lot of furniture is just bad," says Chippendale, "it takes forever to put together. It's not customizable. And the materials break down quickly."

With those problems in mind, the team took years to prototype and validate the market for Woodsy Desk. But the result is impressive: Woodsy Desk can be assembled in just 5 minutes, is entirely customizable, and is made from solid slabs of Maple, Cherry, and Walnut.

www.kickstarter.com