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Helping Furniture Get a Second Chance

RETAIL: Kaiyo Finds Newest Home in San Diego

Jason Saft is a home stager in New York, charged with preparing homes to sell on the market. Saft’s Staged To Sell Home boutique staging firm cleans, decorates, rearranges furniture and uses other aesthetic means to make homes being sold as appealing to potential buyers as possible.

Jason Saft
Kaiyo customer
New York City

He also buys unique pieces of furniture to create the look and feel that he thinks will present each home he stages in the best possible light.

Saft, the Real Estate Staging Association’s 2022 Professional Home Stager of the Year for Luxury Vacant Staging in the USA, says he purchases much of his gently used furniture online. And while many sites have let him down, the online marketplace Kaiyo has become his trusted go-to spot.

East Coast-headquartered Kaiyo buys and sells quality secondhand furniture, from top name brands to those companies that are high quality but maybe a little less elite.

Seven years after it launched in New York, the company expanded to the West Coast, opening in Los Angeles in July, adding Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties later, and finally landing in San Diego in September.

Saving Up to 90%

Kaiyo says that San Diego furniture buyers can save up to 90% on pieces from names such as Restoration Hardware, Design Within Reach, West Elm, Room & Board and CB2.

“Kaiyo has an affordable price range of quality furniture where things are well documented and detailed,” Saft said. “They understand the information people need to know to make the best decision. It removes the hassle and flakiness that can come with buying online. They make scheduling easy and then have it delivered to you. It’s a great timesaver.”

Alpay Koralturk
CEO
Kaiyo

Kaiyo founder and CEO Alpay Koralturk, a native of Turkey who attended college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, started the company when he was 28 years old in 2015 after frustration with his own personal furniture needs while moving in New York as a newlywed with his wife.

“We wanted to buy second hand, we wanted to save money and feel good about being sustainable, but what happened was we wasted money and time and we ended up buying new furniture, which is exactly the opposite of what we wanted to achieve,” Koralturk recalled. “I was looking on Craigslist and started becoming intrigued about this space. It struck me as a massive category. Everyone has furniture.”

From Computer Science and Economics to Desks and Couches

Koralturk hadn’t intended on starting a furniture company. He studied math, computer science and economics at Wesleyan, and had stints during and after college with JP Morgan and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in New York.

He moved back to Turkey in 2012 when his mother was diagnosed with cancer, stayed there to help his father after his mother passed away, and while in Istanbul, founded a mobile gaming company called Gram Games that was eventually scooped up by Zynga for $250 million.

But after moving back to the U.S. two years later, he said he became increasingly concerned about the amount of furniture being put into landfills. That concern contributed to the start of a company called Furnishare, which eventually evolved into Kaiyo, with Koralturk seeking what he says was “a fresh take on a very old problem.”

While the problem is still there – according to the Environmental Protection Agency, furniture is one of the largest urban waste categories in America, and in 2018, the EPA estimated that more than 12 million tons of furniture was thrown away, and more than 80% ended up in landfills – Kaiyo is doing its part.

Sustainability continues to be a core part of Kaiyo’s mission. Kaiyo has helped keep more than 3 million pounds of furniture out of landfills since its inception. The company also partners with the National Forest Foundation and pledges to plant a tree for every order completed on its site

Koralturk said that he hopes to continue to expand Kaiyo and bring its mission to a wider audience.

(The company name, by the way, is a take on the word “kaya”  − a common word across many cultures which can mean a resting place or a home, feeling good or comfortable, or a rock or stone.)

Kaiyo has two sides to its business model, one for buyers, the other for sellers.

Those looking to buy furniture can browse the Kaiyo site for discounts on top furniture brands. Kaiyo guarantees that every piece they have for sale has been inspected, cleaned and is ready for delivery. Ordering is done through a secure checkout, with a delivery date chosen. Once a date is confirmed by Kaiyo staff, an email appointment window is set up and within days, the chosen furniture is delivered and set up by Kaiyo.

On the seller side, those looking to put an item on the market submit the item and choose a date for free pickup; items must be reviewed and confirmed by Kaiyo staff. Once an item is approved, Kaiyo cleans, stores and delivers the item when it sells.

Sellers are given the opportunity to take an instant offer on the item right after pickup, and if they accept, they can cash out immediately. If not, they can wait for the piece to sell and will get cash once it has been delivered to the buyer.

Circumventing Supply Chain Issues

Similar to consignment, sellers earn revenue shares determined by the final sale price of the piece. The Kaiyo team sets prices for each piece based on its brand and condition, and also looks at customer demand for similar pieces.

Kaiyo offers delivery starting at $19. Koralturk said the company also helps customers circumvent the current supply-chain issues that typically accompany buying brand new and allows the scheduling of delivery in just a couple of weeks. Customers can also pick up online orders from Kaiyo’s new 78,418-square-foot warehouse in Chino.

Koralturk said California has always been an attractive market but that because Kaiyo’s home base is on the other end of the country, it has taken some time to head west. He said the company announced in March that it was able to raise a $36 million Series B in equity and debt financing. The funding, led by Edison Partners, brings Kaiyo’s total raised to $50 million.

Once the capital funding raise was over, he said the time was right to head to California. Koralturk said that bringing blue-collar jobs to the state is an additional bonus.

“There’s a massive market in population terms in California,” he said. “But also, our values align with California, where people care a lot about working people and protecting them. We also care about the environment and climate, and for all of that, California is a great place for us to be. We’re very excited about expanding there.”

Kaiyo
FOUNDED: 2015
CEO: Alpay Koralturk
HEADQUARTERS: New York
BUSINESS: Furniture
EMPLOYEES: 286
WEBSITE: kaiyo.com
CONTACT: 609-970-2534 or marketing@kaiyo.com
SOCIAL IMPACT: Kaiyo says it has helped keep more than 3 million pounds of furniture out of landfills since its inception.
NOTABLE: In partnership with the National Forest Foundation, Kaiyo plants a tree for every order completed on its site.

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