 DECEMBER 12 • 2019 | 49

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I

n 2013, the city of Detroit filed for the 
largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. 
history. It was the same week Kyle 
Hoff decided to move to the Motor City 
to launch a new business.
After studying architecture and entre-
preneurship at the University of Miami, 
Ohio, then earning a master’
s at the 
University of Michigan, he had been bid-
ing his time at a low-rung position at an 
architectural firm in Chicago.
“I’
ve wanted to pursue architecture 
since I was a kid, when my parents 
took me to see Frank Lloyd Wright’
s 
Fallingwater, which was not far from 
where I grew up,” says Hoff, 32, a 
Youngstown, Ohio, native. 
“When I got out of school, I found 
the profession of architecture was pretty 
marginalized at that time. It was hard to 
see projects through from concept to the 
finish line. I started becoming interested 
in the idea of building furniture that was 
affordable, transportable, adaptable and 
lasting.”
Having furnished a handful of various 
apartments as a student at two schools 
and then living in Chicago, he says, “there 
wasn’
t a lot of well-designed furniture 
for people like me, living a somewhat 

nomadic lifestyle and moving several 
times — and having to deal with dispos-
ing of cheap furniture or dealing with 
Craigslist. 
“There has been a cultural shift in the 
last 25 years, with places like Ikea and 
Target becoming the go-to,” Hoff says. 
“I wanted to change how people were 
consuming and enjoying furniture. When 

I was living in Chicago, I found myself 
going to the suburbs to buy furniture. 
And the thoughtfulness wasn’
t there.”
Soon after, a friend was launching a 
start-up (now defunct) in Detroit, and 
he convinced Hoff to move to the city to 
help him, along with another friend, Alex 
O’
Dell. Hoff and O’
Dell, who lived in the 
same Corktown building as Hoff, became 
fast friends.
“The state of Michigan is steeped in 
furniture history,” Hoff says. “La-Z-Boy 
[whose founding brothers pioneered the 
design of the reclining wood-slat chair 
in 1927], Charles and Ray Eames [the 
husband-and-wife team that created the 
predecessor to their history-changing 
bent plywood chairs to carry injured 
soldiers during WWII], Herman Miller, 
Eliel Saarinen [who designed Cranbrook’
s 
Saarinen House]. The Eames Fiberglass-
shell chair has been selling for 60 years. 
You can find it being taught in a school 
and the same day see it in a modern 
home in Los Angeles. It’
s a very versatile 
product.”
O’
Dell, a filmmaker who studied public 
policy at U-M, and Hoff set to creating a 
product that might have a similar design 
ethos — innovative yet functional and 
good-looking and well-made enough to 
last, possibly for decades. They dreamed 
up what would become the Floyd Leg. 
The laser-cut, formed, welded and pow-
der-coated furniture leg was named 
after Hoff’
s father, grandfather and 
great-grandfather, all metal workers in 
Ohio and all named Floyd. 
Their friends loved it. So, the pair 
launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund 
a market testing of the leg, which could 
easily be turned into a table with any flat 
surface. Their funding goal of $18,000 
was surpassed in a few days, and Hoff 
and O’
Dell received a total of $256,273 
over the month it was live. They delivered 
on the product two months later.

CORE PRODUCTS
The pair launched Floyd (floydhome.
com) the same year, 2013, with a small 
showroom in Detroit’
s Eastern Market, 
with the company designing, manufac-
turing and selling furniture itself under 

Floyd furnished an Airbnb in Leland, 
part of its Stay Floyd partnership.

COURTESY OF FLOYD

A desk at the 
Floyd showroom

BRETT MOUNTAIN

Designers’
 approach to furniture means creating 
well-made, functional, long-lasting pieces destined 
to be a household name. 

LYNNE KONSTANTIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“It’
s A Floyd!”

