The story of how the ready-to-assemble
sofa was invented.

     The Internet seemed like a silly idea back in the mid ‘90's. The first time I tried to log on, the only thing that appeared on the screen was the “back” button. I assumed the fad would pass. My dismissal of the web was one of those lessons that put a little humility in my back pocket.

     By 1998 cyber-space was going crazy, and the only thing people were talking about was their internet stocks. They were driving the rest of us crazy with their stories of doubling money within weeks. Every one was a great stock market analyst. Back then even monkeys were randomly picking winners by pointing with their bananas.

     I felt like I was missing out, but I was in the furniture business and that isn't usually ground zero when it comes to new e-commerce ideas. My company was making sofas and loveseats for hospital waiting rooms. We'd gotten our start when a local hospital asked us to make some couches with fabrics that could be taken off, cleaned and then put back on. That way they could keep their furniture a lot longer. The idea had taken off, and we had even earned a spot on the Inc 500 list as one of the fastest growing private companies in America .

     Looking at the world through furniture eyes in the late ‘90's, I started to dream about a way to make our sofas internet-friendly. The problem was that shipping a single sofa across the country after you get an order is crazy expensive.

     A sofa is too big to ship by UPS because of package size limitations, so that sofa has to travel by eighteen wheeler. Now along with a big rig, a hefty price, and scheduling difficulty comes other inconvenience. A big, dirty truck tears up your lawn and a grouchy driver tells you, “My job is just to bring the sofa to the back of the truck.”

     Then, if someone wants to return the sofa it all gets even more harried and unworkable. No, I realized, the only e-commerce that made sense on a large scale, and could offer folks startling price advantages, was if products were small enough to be shipped by UPS or Fedex ground. That wasn't possible with a sofa–or was it?

     What if we actually could make a sofa fit inside one of those tiny little UPS boxes? Wow, wouldn't that be cool? We'd be like Amazon and ship everything in convenient little packages! We could blow big, gapping holes in the conventional way people had to buy couches and loveseats, and whack big slices off the prices they were forced to pay. We could liberate furniture shoppers! We began to imagine ourselves a tiny band of revolutionaries.

     All right, but what size would that box have to be, anyway? We called UPS, got the details, and then hand-built some boxes to their size specifications. Standing back, we said, "OK, there it is! If we were to design something, it would have to fit in there.”

(Have you ever had the feeling of knowing your goose is cooked? Of realizing that a bunch of work is looming up large on the horizon but you are so starry-eyed by imagining a successful result that you just can't hold yourself back, and you know you're going to go for it? We had that feeling.)

     Where do we start? “I don't know. But if we're going to attempt this, we don't want to end up with some ugly, uncomfortable sofa monstrosity.” To make sure we avoided that dismal end we toured a bunch of furniture stores and brought back the most popular sofa styles to our laboratory. The target was clear. The sofa that resulted from our attempts at a sofa in a box must not stand out from those retail store models. No one must be able to tell which one it was.

     Day after day, month after month, stretching out to years, our trail of trial and error began to unfold. We built and destroyed thousands and thousands of frames and parts. Our first attempts were a complete disaster. They were absolutely dreadful-looking, flimsy, difficult-to-assemble sofa ruins. (It's funny to think of them now, but it wasn't funny then!) And it went on forever–well not forever, but for a very long time. Slowly…slowly…leaving behind a trail of debris and discarded couch parts, we started to isolate little areas of the frame that worked.

     Our first breakthrough was a small little plastic connector that Dad created to hold parts together tightly, and could be reused over and over without loosening. (My father is 82 and has been a furniture engineer all his life. As was his father before him.) Then we found automated wood working equipment that would produce the wood sections to exact detail. The complexity of the early trials eventually gave way to simpler forms that worked better. Someone told us, “Hey, you must be getting there, because creativity is in making the complex simple!”

     My brother Blair kept insisting that we add built-in storage spaces under the seat cushions. It drove us nuts. (Brother Blair is an industrial designer out of Notre Dame-go Irish!) Many times we came close to throwing out the stupid storage space idea because of the obstacles it presented. It required more parts, an opening lid, and bottom shelves to keep items in the storage compartment off the floor. These were all things that seemed overwhelming when we didn't even have the basic concept completed. But every time we'd show the idea to people they'd say, “Hey, that storage space is a good idea!” Rats. We couldn't take it out. We had to find a way to do it. We knew they were right.

     By this time we were so involved with the idea of our sofa in a box that we sold our hospital furniture company and dedicated ourselves completely to this obsession of ready-to-assemble sofas, loveseats, lounge chairs and ottomans that came in boxes. The sale gave us time and some money to continue the quest.

     What was becoming as challenging as crafting the frame out of small parts that fit in a box was figuring out how in the world to get all the foam for a sofa into a small package. There is a lot of foam in a couch, piles of it. We experimented with heavy hydraulic rams to push all the cushions into a box. That was scary. Foam wants to push back! Then we tried shrink-wrapping the foam and various machines to roll up the foam into a bundle. (All bad ideas. Don't try it at home.)

     Then Dad came in one day and said, “Have you ever seen an ad for that machine that seals food in a vacuum bag?” Ding! And right there the seed of the solution was planted in our obtuse heads! Put all the foam in one big plastic bag and suck all the air out. Let the ambient air pressure of 14 pounds per square inch work its magic and watch the foam compress to perfect size. Every time I watch it happen the simplicity and beauty of the thing still gets to me. The patent office was impressed too. Our special foam compressing technique became the 1 st of four patents on the world's only ready-to-assemble sofa.

     All right now, the frame was starting to hold together and we had ideas on how to pack the foam. But what about the fabrics? Right from the start we knew we must incorporate replaceable covers. That was the idea we'd refined doing furniture for hospitals. They'd loved the idea of being able to take covers off to clean them or to replace them with new fabrics, and we figured homeowners would love the concept, too.

     The difficulty was in making sure that no one needed to be an upholstery expert in order to dress the sofas. We churned through miles of fabric and spent months on the drafting boards engineering the ideal patterns. Everything had to look wonderful and be secure without staples or clips or anything cumbersome. Every last detail was important. The customers would be putting this all together themselves, and it had to be fun. All of our efforts could easily be worthless if folks told their friends, “Don't buy that stuff it's too hard to do.”

     By 2001 we were getting excited. It may not have been a space odyssey, but it was finally the year we got the wood parts to fit in their box, the foam to package itself neatly, and the fabric to slide on and fit beautifully. Our journey on this crazy little frenetic path of product invention was yielding results.

     That same year the folks we enlisted to give a go at assembling the sofa said, “You did it. That was easy!” The couch was strong and looked wonderful. By way of a final challenge we took the frame to a testing program that Purdue University had developed for the Army–testing furniture for military bases–and ran it through their battery. Can you imagine our relief and excitement when it passed! Jump up and down, scream and shout!

     Onward, onward! Now we could finally get to the internet presentation. We had to build our store, pick out the best fabrics, write our little hearts out and share what we'd done with the world. We'd invented the world's first and only ready-to-assemble sofas, loveseats, lounge chairs and ottomans and had 4 patents hanging on the wall. Patents # 6,267,446 , # 6,568,058 , # 10/360,160 , and application #10/617,221.

     We were going to serve people with a brand new way to shop for their sofas, a company built from the ground up to be a pure and exclusive internet furniture company. Our products would serve by providing extra storage space, the simplicity of easily cleaned fabrics, the comfort of 8” thick seat cushions, the pleasure of keeping the house exciting with seasonal cover changes and peace of mind with a 5 year warranty. We would dazzle with styles, convenience, fabrics and ordering simplicity.

     And what's the best part of all this? We get to tell this story directly to you. It is our furniture, our factory, our web site and you are our guest. No one gets between us. Together we are going to push prices into a completely different shape and whack out huge chunks of mark-up. Together, we're going to liberate the furniture shopper from the bonds of oppressive pricing.

     People who find things out for themselves, go to the source and save time and money are the new breed of buyer. They are the internet vanguard. They are the best informed. From now on applying those skills to sofa shopping is going to be rewarded. If you are reading this, then you are one of those smart shoppers. Congratulations, and we are honored by your visit.

     One more thing left for us to do. You may want to cover the eyes of small children because we are going to metaphorically take something out back and beat it up behind the bushes. What I am referring to is that dratted, frustrating waiting period after you place an order for a sofa in a custom fabric. I've always hated that delay. What a backwards industry. My goodness you can order a car from Germany and get it faster than custom furniture. How ridiculous is that?

     Well it isn't going to be like that any longer. Not on our watch. We built our Home Reserve factory around the advice of Peter Drucker in his latest books on management, and on the example of the Japanese lean manufacturing lines. Delivery is going to be within days not months. If you are ever in the Fort Wayne , Indiana area, come by and see our factory. It's the key to happy customers who want things done quickly, organized and well.

     A flurry of memories come drifting over me as I finish writing down this flow of consciousness. Wait. What's that sound? Seems like I can even hear music. (Oh–it's just my son practicing piano.) What a perplexing, and ultimately fulfilling, experience it has been. And what a challenge and joy it still is as we build this dream, this imagining that became real.

     Now, we come to the part where your story takes over from our story. You're reading this because something is happening in your life. When people buy a sofa it represents some change in family, job, house, hopes and plans. That is exactly the point of our adventure. We've gone through the turmoil and invigoration of invention to have the chance to be a part of your life. We want to share our enthusiasm; our deep wish, that the warmth and excitement of the years we've spent in this idea, are able to sneak through the transaction and smile in your house–and on the next chapter of your story.

Just the beginning...