Chattanooga Bridge | Chattanooga Events & Entertainment

Description:

Smart Furniture: The Original Inspiration The Smart Furniture model was originally imagined at Stanford Law School in the mid 1990s by Stephen Culp, a Naval Reserve Officer, attorney, and former Peace Corps Volunteer. The idea came during a visit to Yahoo!, a startup at the time, where growth was creating space-management headaches. Culp quickly realized that it wasn't just Yahoo!, but all kinds of people, who needed to adapt spaces to their changing needs. So, in a small workshop in a professor's garage, he set out to bring custom, personalized design to a whole new market - everyone. Empowering Customers: Design on Demand® In the Peace Corps, Culp had learned the value of helping people to help themselves, and he applied the same principle to Smart Furniture. Since everyone's needs are different, he called the model ''Design on Demand®,'' and combined a tool-free, customizable product line with one of the first web-based design tools in history. Nearly everyone has a space they'd like to make more attractive, productive, or just more organized, if it were easy enough. The Smart Furniture Design on Demand model was created to empower customers, from homeowners to business owners, to design their own spaces, quickly and easily. Chattanooga: The Launching Pad Among many potential locations, including staying in Palo Alto, Chattanooga was an easy choice to launch and grow the company. On the personal front, Chattanooga is renowned for its quality of life, and Culp had spent much of his childhood there. Professionally, Chattanooga offered fertile ground for growing businesses - an entrepreneurial climate, business-savvy public officials, a motivated Chamber and Technology Council, the robust infrastructure of the Tennessee Valley Technology Corridor, and its status as a formidable transportation and manufacturing hub. In fact, it was in Chattanooga, not Silicon Valley, where Smart Furniture landed its first two rounds of venture capital to fund its growth. And the Smart Furniture flagship product is still 100% manufactured, warehoused, and shipped from Chattanooga and the local area. Design the Product: Simple, Versatile, Attractive and FAST In workshops from Silicon Valley to Chattanooga, the Smart Furniture product line was designed to fit within the web model - and let customers design and get what they want, when they want it - the essence of Design on Demand. The resulting product lines include patented, tool-free designs that lets customers create custom solutions faster, more conveniently, and more cost-effectively than ever before. And while design aesthetics are a key element of Smart Furniture, the ability to have fun and be creative is just as important - like ''Legos® for adults.'' Building the Platform: SmartFurniture.com The next step was to leverage the model with technology - technology that would personalize the customer experience by empowering them to design, order, and receive everything from individual units to interior layouts, quickly and easily. The result was a revolutionary front-to-back-end solution incorporating state-of-the-art design, ecommerce and fulfillment capabilities that can deliver orders from concept to customer within a week. Perfecting the Practice: Providing the Best Customer Service in the Industry Smart Furniture promises the best service in the industry by investing in its team, its technology, and its vision. Smart Furniture has successfully recruited the best and brightest locally and from out of state - people with integrity, intelligence and a world-class customer service ethic. And by investing in its vision of Design On Demand, Smart Furniture has been honored by the Better Business Bureau, the National Retail Federation, American Express, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the American Electronics Association, and Dell Computer (a list of awards and recognition is available upon request). Changing an Industry: Custom Solutions for Everyone True to the original intent, Smart Furniture is bringing custom design to a whole new market - everyone. Empowering individuals and businesses to design their own spaces, we don't expect them to put up with cookie-cutter offerings or lackluster customer service. Each one of our customers is unique, with unique needs, and to meet those needs, Smart Furniture relentlessly pursues innovative ways to personalize its products, technology, and service to the unique needs of its customers. From Silicon Valley to Chattanooga and Woodshop to Web: A Culture of Innovation What started as an idea in a professor's garage in Silicon Valley has become a small-town company with a global reach. Smart Furniture has nearly tripled in size in the past year, through a revolutionary model, distinctively innovative corporate culture, and the enthusiasm of thousands of customers. From coast to coast, from woodshop to web, from the ''Valley'' to the ''Corridor,'' Smart Furniture demonstrates that industry-changing innovation can take root, get funded, and thrive, in a small renaissance town like Chattanooga.