Small Business: Rotate founder on taking quality resale furniture online

What inspired you to start the business?

This has taken us five years to develop, but good things take time. About six years ago my co-founder Charlotte (Lottie) Logan and I were lucky enough to buy our first home. That was all great and exciting, until we realised that we couldn’t furnish it due to spending all of our money on the deposit.

We wanted to furnish the home with unique character pieces, but also good design. It didn’t have to be vintage or antique, we just wanted quality items. The problem was we didn’t have the time to go up and down the country looking through antique stores, and online marketplaces that existed were becoming increasingly overcrowded.

We thought there was a solution we could solve there, so in between working our day jobs we built this up.

Rotate is a curated online platform for connecting like-minded buyers and sellers to trade second-hand quality furniture and interior items.

Why choose to launch now when big brands such as Ikea have opened?

I think with something like Ikea coming here it’s a good time for us to launch, because it means we can help these smaller retailers. At its surface, we’re giving them a digital storefront, and then the hope is that it can give them national reach and awareness.

Two examples would be David Kirkland, who is a Wellington cabinet and furniture maker, and Function in Form, which is an Auckland vintage and restoration store. They’ve been really great to work with and Function in Form has already listed about 50 items.

For some it’s not that hard to create a basic website, but for others it can be really challenging. It’s a whole other beast to brand yourself and be seen in the market. I’ve worked extensively on what the marketing rollout will look like for us, but for antique and vintage dealers, we’re meeting them where they’re ready to be met.

Who is the business’ target market?

Everyone has their own unique style, right? If I think about myself, I love modern pieces, but I mix it with those old antique pieces. We don’t want to be so exclusive that we’re dictating people’s taste. I think through our own brand platform and our criteria for listing and things like that, we want people to go there and they can filter to see what they are after.

When it comes to the mass market, I think the two can coincide. There’s no reason that you can’t have a beautiful handmade coffee table with your Ikea storage rack or whatever it is. I guess it’s just how you think about value.

Maxine Glogau (left) and Charlotte Logan had the idea for the business after struggling to furnish their newly bought home.

Where would you like to see the business in five years?

We’ve got quite ambitious growth plans, but it’s just making sure we get that experience right. We’re doing things like engaging with national freight providers to help give people broader, reliable freight options. That will help to broaden the sales reach for some of these furniture providers as well.

Then it’s doing things like on-board upholstery so that we can help uplift the older items a bit more and go more into that design advisory space. There are plenty of opportunities, but it is just about getting out to those providers and getting as many listings as possible.

What would be your advice to a budding entrepreneur wanting to start a business?

I think make sure you’re actually helping to address a problem. There are lots of people who want to start a business for the sake of starting a business, but they haven’t defined the problem that they’re hoping to solve, and I think we were very clear on that.

I also think a huge learning, and something that we’re now all across, is actually staying across all of the detail when it comes to things like our website. Because we know what’s going on, we can control our risk and act if things go wrong.

Do you have a small business story you want to share? Send your pitches to tom.raynel@nzme.co.nz.

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.