Arts&Life
at home
continued from page 49
one brand. Six years
later, Floyd has grown to
a 30-person team with
four core products for
the home — the shelf,
the sofa, the bed and the
tables, all grown from the
original product — the
leg — plus hardware,
accessories and lighting
with plans for much
more.
“We like to go deep
on one product per cat-
egory,” Hoff says. “We’
ve
grown every year on the
initial product, and there’
s a lot more that
we want to do applying the same design
principles.”
Adds O’
Dell, “
A tenet of our design ethos
is that every product we put out into the
world needs to be long lasting.
“We began Floyd out of a reaction to
disposable furniture and the 9.9 million
tons of furniture that end up in landfills
in the U.S. every year. Designed to last for
us means high-quality materials, modular
designs that can evolve with your needs
over time, easy assembly and disassembly,
and timeless design that doesn’
t follow
fashion trends.”
In addition, Floyd, primarily an online
seller, has showrooms in major cities across
the country. Putting his entrepreneurial
degree to work, Hoff has Floyd partnering
with Airbnb, furnishing rooms and homes
in some of their favorite structures, all
with stunning architecture, great design
and incredible locations — Portland, Ore.,
Montauk, N.Y., and Leland, Mich., among
them.
Just last month, Floyd partnered with
West Elm, with store-in-store displays
and sales in key stores across the country,
including its Birmingham location.
Floyd has grown as Detroit’
s economy
has begun to bounce back, and Hoff is
very happy to be witnessing its ever-chang-
ing climb. Today, he lives in a classically
minimalist home designed by modernist
architect Mies van der Rohe in Detroit’
s
Lafayette Park with his wife, Brooke — who
he began dating in high
school back in Youngstown
— and their 5-month-old
daughter, Henni (named
after Brooke’
s late grand-
father Henry Kinast, a
Holocaust survivor.)
“We go to services at the
Downtown Synagogue,
sometimes the Chabad
House,” Hoff says. “But we’
re
still shopping for a home.”
Ever-busy with Floyd,
Hoff says the company is
building out a new research
and development lab in its
Eastern Market location and says sales have
grown by 100 percent year-over-year with-
in the last three years.
“We’
re a customer-centric furniture
brand,” O’
Dell says. “Before we kick off the
design of any new product, we send a sur-
vey out to customers and receive thousands
of responses in the first few days. People
love participating, and it allows us to bring
products into the world that will connect
with real customer needs.”
Adds Hoff, “Furniture should be made
for the home, not the landfill. Floyd furni-
ture is furniture for keeping.”
“Furniture
should be made
for the home,
not the landfi
ll.
Floyd furniture
is furniture for
keeping.”
— KYLE HOFF
COURTESY OF FLOYD
COURTESY OF FLOYD
BRETT MOUNTAIN
50 | DECEMBER 12 • 2019
FROM TOP: The Floyd
shop-in-shop with
West Elm. A Stay Floyd
Airbnb in Portland, Ore.,
featuring the Floyd bed
with headboard and
underbed drawer caddy
attached. The Floyd
Sofa and Floyd Tables