Brian Carroll — Furniture Today,
Company hopes to hook up with bricks-and-mortar retailer

SOUTH BEND, Mich. — Online furniture retailer FurnitureFind.com is up for sale, and also is looking for retail partners to form a national bricks-and-clicks sales network.


Declining sales and the challenges of order fulfillment have forced the 11-year-old e-commerce company to look at other business models and to reduce its workforce, said Mary Hunt, chief operating officer.

She would not quantify the cuts, but said that jobs eliminated were in the areas of content development, software engineering, online advertising and other Web site-related positions.

“We are fulfilling orders,” she said, crediting STI Home Express for “doing a wonderful job with white glove delivery. … We just aren’t enhancing the Web site.”

Two years ago, the company employed as many as 84 people, according to the U.S. Business Directory database. The company, owned by HQ Venture Capital, made the staffing cuts two weeks ago.

“Due to declining sales we have significantly cut back on our operations,” Hunt said. “We believe that selling furniture on the Internet only is not a viable business model. We are currently seeking a multi-location retail store organization with which we can form a multi-channel sales organization.”

Possible buyers for FurnitureFind include furniture chains with a national presence and regional chains that do not yet have an Internet presence, according to Hunt.

“We are looking for other partnerships or to sell the company,” she said. “We are in the beginning stages, so we are locating brokers.”

Hunt took over day-to-day responsibilities at the company when President Ken Kwit left in March. Kwit had been president since 2004, when he replaced Pamela Durkin. Kwit had worked in the wine business for six years and earlier was CEO of Expressions, a manufacturer-retailer of custom upholstery sold to CV Inds. in 1998.

FurnitureFind.com is offered for sale as a package with its URL, Endeca search technology, integrated telephone marketing system with e-mail and chat, shopping cart technology, and Icovia room planning software. The company is not selling real estate or other hard assets.

“The industry has moved to multi-channel delivery systems,” Hunt said, explaining the erosion in sales and referring to marriages of online sales sites with physical stores at retail. “We’re online only, and in the last five to 10 years we’ve seen so many more competitors with multi-channel move in (and compete) with us.”

Original company co-founder Steve Antisdel, who now co-owns with his brother an e-commerce consulting company, said FurnitureFind was always envisioned as a complement to or partner with brick-and-mortar stores. FurnitureFind.com ideally is “a tool to empower retailers,” he said. “How to roll that out as a national network was always the challenge.”

HQ Venture Capital acquired a majority stake in FurnitureFind.com in 2003, buying it from brothers Steve and Jeff Antisdel. A year later, HQ moved FurnitureFind operations to rented offices in South Bend, Ind., from Buchanan, Mich., and invested $1 million in a Web site overhaul. Several million more were plowed into search technology, an integrated telephone marketing system and room planning software.

Steve and Jeff Antisdel, who recently founded AVID Commerce, an e-commerce consulting company, launched FurnitureFind.com in 1996 as the online catalog division of the Niles, Mich.-based Bookout Furniture store. They grew the company into a $15 million-plus e-commerce enterprise before selling to HQ.

AVID Commerce helps retailers optimize Web site usability, functionality, visibility, technical performance and sales conversion.

Hunt declined to disclose FurnitureFind.com’s sales or Internet traffic metrics. She also would not state an asking price for the company.

FurnitureFind.com’s Internet address alone could be worth quite a bit. Creditcheck.com, for example, recently sold its URL — and only its URL — for $3 million. When searching with the term “furniture,” FurnitureFind.com is the eighth hit on Google and fourth on Yahoo’s search findings.