UPDATED 14:32 EDT / FEBRUARY 11 2016

NEWS

Furniture-as-a-Service is a real thing: Swivelfly rethinks enterprise services

The cloud has become a scalable service for businesses on a budget, now furniture is following suite. One startup is targeting the enterprise sector to make furnishing an office that much easier with a Furniture-as-a-Service model that grows with a company.

Swivelfly announced the launch of its office furnishing application aimed at easing the transition from small stage startup to successful fast-paced business. It utilizes the Furniture-as-a-Service (FaaS) business model that not many may be familiar with.

Swivelfly believes furnishing office spaces should not be a lifelong commitment, as it enables growing companies to outfit their workspaces quickly and with minimal risk.

“The FaaS model removes the guess work and specifically calculates a company’s needs based on headcount and workspace size,” said Bruce Paul, CEO and founder. “Because fees are charged as a monthly expense, companies can plan better and stretch their dollar further.”

What you need to know

How it works

SwivelflySwivelfly offers a monthly subscription model so customers only pay for what they need, instead of purchasing furniture up front. This monthly subscription model allows customers to scale furnishings based on the number of employees. Think of it as furnitures for lease with the added bonus of an interior decorator. 

The company utilizes Swivelbot, a design intelligence assistant that helps fast-paced startups create a workspace that is customizable and stylishly furnished. It offers a variety of contemporary office furnishings and a simplified dashboard to experiment with colors and styles.

Customers need to provide the number of employees and office square footage, then upload a floor plan to the web application. Swivelfly then produces the space plans, which includes the right furniture that fits your space. A future release will have an upload feature that will read and digitize a plan for the client to use for space planning.

If you’re thinking of drawing out the floor plan directly in the app, Swivelfly has ruled out this option as not only is it time consuming, but could result in scaling or measuring mistakes.

What’s included

At the moment, Swivelfly only offers furniture, not artwork. This includes furniture for employee work spaces such as desks, chairs and screen mounts, as well as furnishings for break rooms, conference rooms, collaboration rooms, waiting areas and reception spaces.

How much it costs

This depends on the company’s needs including break/collaboration room and reception area furniture, and the duration of their service contract. A typical Swivelfly example pricing plan is $50 to $80 for workstations only, or $80 to $120 for complete offices. All pricing is per person/per month and is inclusive of all services listed above.

The subscription cost includes furniture, space planning, design, project management, delivery, installation and removal. Swivelfly also offers an optional damage waiver so companies don’t need to worry about unforeseen costs at end of use.

Availability

The service is currently available in a handful of major metropolitan cities including the San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, Denver, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle.

Swivelfly’s service is an interesting spin on the services model, squarely focused on the enterprise with no plans to extend offerings to the consumer market. If you’re looking to update the interior of your home, there is a similar service that matches consumers with designers called Havenly, Inc. Fees for designing any room start at $75. The startup recently raised $7.5 million in Series A funding round led by Foundry Group.

FaaS

ScalingAs serial entrepreneurs, the founders of Swivelfly understand the pressure that fast-growth startups face every day. They’re looking to transcend traditional furnishing models that require big investments for furniture that can quickly become outdated. The FaaS model offers companies the ability to be flexible, revamp style on a regular basis, style and count in a simple and proven process. This ensures that as businesses evolve, their workspaces do as well.

Though FaaS may be new stateside, a similar service is already available in New Zealand. Haworth by Europlan Ltd. offers furniture lease options that allow customers to spread costs over a 36 or 48 month periods. This enables customers to configure floor plans as business grows without having to spend too much cash on furniture by paying for the cost upfront.

Image via Swivelfly

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