When Amanda Bear moved to New York, she was struck by the amount of furniture she saw being put on the side of the road for collection. She was shocked to learn that Americans throw out about 12 million tons of furniture each year. “It just seemed like there was a better solution to avoid all of this waste,” she says.
Her choice: Retroloop, a newly launched DTC furniture brand targeted at a new generation. With no experience in the home building industry, Baer might seem the least well-suited person to tackle the issue of furniture waste, and furniture production. more Making furniture may seem like an odd way to start a business, but there were a few factors that led her down this path. When she came up with the idea for Retroloop, she was a graduate student at Columbia Business School, where entrepreneurship was all the rage. Having grown up in North Carolina, she was familiar with the national furniture trade and had a strong appreciation for good quality furniture. Plus, her previous career in finance involved investing in renewable energy. “I'd always been interested in furniture design, and I wanted to pursue a career with a sense of purpose after grad school,” she says. “It was a combination of two of my aspirations and passions.”
Baer envisioned a brand that sold direct to consumers and built on demand, in a closed-loop model, made from “recycled, reclaimed, non-toxic and natural” materials. But to realize these principles, he needed to find a new supply chain and rethink how his furniture business worked.
“Really [take on] “It's been a steep learning curve in terms of understanding what those materials are, what they look like, and whether they can be applied to the pieces I want to design,” she says. The entrepreneur took Parsons School of Design's online certificate program in sustainable building materials to learn about the materials she sources for her brand. She also attended a furniture manufacturing expo in Hickory, North Carolina, last summer to meet with suppliers and learn about their products and materials.
The results of her research are evident in the brand's first furniture assortment, which is manufactured in High Point, less than 100 miles away. The furniture frames are made from FSC-certified plywood, not the industry-standard particleboard. Baer wanted to use natural latex foam, but settled on CertiPUR-US, which is petroleum-based but tested for flame retardants and formaldehyde and manufactured domestically. Instead of a typical seat deck, Retroloop's products use Cocolok, a bio-based material she learned about at Parsons Institute for Health Materials. Instead of traditional polyester batting, she chose Responsible Wool Standard-certified wool, also sourced domestically. For the upholstery, she went with a polyester velvet made from 100 percent recycled post-consumer plastic. (She hopes to one day find a way to economically use natural-fiber textiles.) It's not a perfect example of sustainability, but it's a particularly brave effort, considering the price tag: $900 for the chair and $2,600 for the three-seater sofa.
Baer also wanted her furniture designs to be sustainable, working with students from Pratt University to develop a RetroLoop look inspired by 1970s common rooms. More important than a specific aesthetic, Baer wanted the furniture to be modular so it could evolve with the younger customer demographic she wanted to target. “If you need to downsize or upsize, you can just add more units. You don't have to get rid of the furniture completely,” she explains. Optional slipcovers and replacement parts will also help extend the furniture's lifespan.
In addition to rigorous material sourcing, Baer has realized his dream of closed-loop manufacturing by designing the furniture to use staples and nails rather than glue so that it can be disassembled and recycled in the future (though currently there is no system in place to recover and recycle the materials at the end of the sofa's life).
After raising funding from “friends and family,” Retroloop officially debuted on May 21. Though it's still early days, Baer is full of ideas to make the company more sustainable, including a future buyback program, fiber recycling, BIFMA emissions testing and B Corp certification, which Baer says is already in the works. “We want to be as transparent as possible and ask for feedback from our customers,” she adds. “We know we're not perfect, but we want to do our best.”
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Laura Fenton She is a writer with a particular interest in the intersection of housing and sustainability. Living Small A newsletter and two interior design books, A small book for living small and Bunk bed books. She has been writing about home and design for nearly 20 years and her work has appeared in many media outlets. Better Homes & Gardens, House Beautiful, Real Simple, and Washington Post, We also feature online publications and regional design magazines.
