Greycork closes $1M seed round, launches new website

THE GREYCORK TEAM, from left to right, Alec Babala, Jonah Willcox-Healey, Myung Chul (Bruce) Kim and John Humphrey. They run their easy-to-assemble furniture business out of downtown Providence. / PBN FILE PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
THE GREYCORK TEAM, from left to right, Alec Babala, Jonah Willcox-Healey, Myung Chul (Bruce) Kim and John Humphrey. They run their easy-to-assemble furniture business out of downtown Providence. / PBN FILE PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

PROVIDENCE – Greycork, a startup that sells easy-to-assemble furniture geared to urban millennials, recently closed a $1 million series seed funding round led by ff Venture Capital and others.
The company also announced this week that it has a new website for real-time orders, and also has a showroom in the city, at 286 Thayer St.
John B. Humphrey, founder and CEO of Greycork, said they got the idea for their business because they felt legacy furniture retailers were offering an “outdated” experience that failed to address the needs of today’s consumer. Their products are designed to be assembled in five minutes or less, without tools.
“We thought that the assembly process was complicated and stressful so we just simplified it,” Humphrey said Tuesday.
Humphrey said customers can also can request a free Home Try-Out kit, which gives them a way to visualize Greycork furniture in the home before purchasing. He explained that the kit comes in a small, envelope-sized package with five clear sheets and stickers of the desired products. Consumers can place the stickers on the sheets, and hold them in the direction of where the products will go, to get an idea of how they would look in a room, he said.
“It helps take the risk out of buying furniture,” Humphrey said.
Humphrey said the company has gone from four employees to 11 in recent months. Greycork also launched an Indiegogo campaign in September that raised more than $270,000.

John Frankel, partner at ff Venture Capital, said the “furniture industry is ripe for creative disruption.”
“Greycork is doing this through simple assembly and disassembly of beautifully designed, high-value pieces; all at a reasonable price. They remove middlemen, retail markup, delay and the generally unpleasant experience inherent in the traditional furniture shopping process. Greycork appeals to a millennial consumer base that has higher expectations, and as they operate a leaner business model they can deliver a superior product and experience at lower prices,” Frankel said in a statement.
Greycork’s products, all designed and manufactured in the U.S., include the Felix collection, featuring an entire living room set priced at $1,750, including sofa, chaise, coffee table, side table and bookshelf, to single pieces of furniture and tables starting at $200.
Each piece arrives in a flat-pack box. Customers receive free, 1-5 day shipping on all furniture products via UPS and free 30-day returns.

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