Laurel & Wolf Gets $4.4M Cash Infusion

February 18, 2015  by in Designer Weekly   

The funding came from Charles River Ventures, Karlin Ventures, Upside Partnership and Draper & Associates.

Proceeds from the funding will be used to expand the Laurel & Wolf team and to unveil new features to users and designers.

"We are absolutely thrilled to partner with Leura and her team at Laurel & Wolf," said Annie Kadavy, partner, Charles River Ventures. "As a former interior designer herself, she has a deep understanding of her market, there are many macro trends that led us to invest and we felt her and her team to be a great fit for us personally. Traditional interior design services, a $50B+ market in the US, require a lot of time and money, often still not resulting in satisfactory results for the less than 1 percent of people who can afford it. Historically, only interior designers had access to premium inventory and it was a one-to-one relationship between designer and client. However, in the past few years furniture has outpaced all other categories to move online and today many major retailers already sell nearly 50 percent online. The number of options is now paralyzing to consumers and having an accessible expert to guide them is invaluable."

Laurel & Wolf is an online platform where users can create a room profile, pay a one-time fee and receive designs from multiple interior designers. Once a client selects the designer they like best, they begin a revision period with the designer to customize the space. Designs are created using the client’s budget, style, needs and how the space should function.

Once revisions are finalized, clients have a style board, furniture plan, instructions from the designer and a shopping list.

Founders Leura Fine and Brandon Kleinman began creating Laurel & Wolf a year ago and launched six months later.

“As a designer myself, working with a variety of budgets and spaces, I saw technology had drastically shifted the way people were approaching designing their homes and businesses,” Fine said. “Pinterest and Houzz were often used for inspiration and e-commerce had made better looking products accessible to customers at a wide array of price points, so it seemed that everything around interior design was moving into the future, except for design services.”