With the advent of fast fashion, clothing became on-trend, affordable—and ultimately disposable. Now, a new breed of quick-ship ventures is using that same model to upend the furniture industry.

Fast furniture is a relatively recent phenomenon—a late-20th-century exercise in encouraging consumers to buy more goods, more frequently, and at a lower price point. By speeding up production and delivery, trends can travel from the catwalk to the racks of stores like Zara and H&M in record time, sometimes in as little as 15 days. With such rapid turnaround, seasons dictated by runway brands become almost irrelevant. Instead, each cycle of new styles is abbreviated, allowing more rounds of clothing to hit stores each season, resulting in increased sales and profits for retailers. Aided by more efficient production technologies, a host of online-only brands are now using a similar strategy to sell furniture, delivering speed and savings in the process. 

Chair from Cloth & Company.

Largely selling directly to consumers via online storefronts, few of these young businesses carry stock. Instead, most have opted for made-to-order goods that carry the cachet of “custom” while sparing the company the cost of warehousing. Turnaround times vary from a mere four days up to three weeks—much more immediate than the six- to 12-week model of many traditional furniture showrooms. Unlike other retailers with relatively quick shipping times, fast furniture brands either don’t require assembly or assembly has been drastically simplified and requires no tools. And by and large, they forego conventional (and expensive) print and television advertising in favor of digital channels and targeted social media posts.