Sustainable Australian furniture brand Crafted Funiture last month launched The Sofa Project, which is their very first charity initiative and an effort to give back to the community, as well as stand against fast furniture. The project allows Crafted customers the opportunity to donate their old lounge settings to families and individuals who are rebuilding their lives and homes after having left unsafe accommodation. We chatted with the crafted team to find out more about this amazing initiative and how they brand came to life.
Working with local charities and community groups, including Heartful Home (self-funded charity helping people have homes they can be proud of when leaving crisis or unsafe accommodation), the Crafted team hopes that this initiative will not only help contribute to the reduction of landfill, but will help those in need.
1. Let’s start at the beginning, where and how was Crafted Furniture born?
Crafted Furniture was established by business partners, Justin Burden, Rahul Raja and Paul Deuk. Having discovered a gap in the market for Australian-made furniture that is well-designed using sustainably high-quality materials, but without astronomical price points, Raja and Deuk launched Crafted Furniture in 2015 as a B2B furniture enterprise for small commercial projects and began developing a consumer range in 2018. Burden joined the duo in 2019 with the goal of setting up a retail network of stores in Sydney. Burden manages all aspects of Crafted Furniture’s retail experience, which includes an online retail site and two Sydney showrooms – Rushcutters Bay (opened July 2019) and Crows Nest (opened January 2020).
Challenging the retail furniture industry to change its stance on ‘fast furniture’, Burden, along with business partners Raja and Deuk, have created a business that is environmentally sustainable and supports the Australian economy. At its core, Crafted Furniture is about bringing back a more traditional method of retailing furniture, to help protect the environment and give customers a more thoughtfully curated experience.
2. What 5 words would describe the Crafted Furniture aesthetic ?
Simple, comfort, customised, relaxed, contemporary.
3. From Crafted how did you get inspired to start the Sofa Project?
We saw the impact of fast furniture and felt that we should lead by example and offer a re-homing service to our clients. We were connected to Heartful Home by TV personality and journalist Jo Casamento (who already works with the charity) as she had met with us and we had expressed to her that we were starting this initiative. We wanted to help people in need, and the organisation Heartful Home works closely with women and kids leaving domestic violent relationship.
4. What do you hope the Sofa Project will do for the people it helps?
We hope it fills a place in the lives / hearts of people who are dealing with emotional stress – the last thing they want to think about is furnishing a new home, plus the flip side is our clients can also know they are contributing to a really good cause and passing on help and support, along with keeping the sofa out of land fill.
5. What can people do to help or be a part of this amazing project?
It is an initiative driven in the showrooms, we work one on one with clients on a new sofa and then re-homing their existing sofa to Heartful Home, we are also of course open to non-clients of Crafted to reach out to us to discuss re-homing their sofa if they have purchased one elsewhere. There is a vetting process involved to ensure the quality of the sofa is in line with the requirements.
https://crafted.furniture/
Words by Arrnott Olssen
