What if the biggest friction point in your customer’s journey isn’t your checkout page, but the overwhelming paradox of choice you’ve intentionally created for them?
Agility requires not just reacting to consumer behavior, but proactively re-architecting the entire purchase journey based on what the data tells you they truly need, even before they know it themselves.
Today, we are here at eTail Palm Springs, and we’re going to talk about tackling one of the biggest challenges in e-commerce: the high-consideration purchase. We’ll explore how brands can move beyond simply offering endless options and instead use AI and behavioral data to create a guided, trust-based experience that actually simplifies decision-making and leads to conversion.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Dan Bennett, CMO at Furniture.com.
About Dan Bennett
Dan Bennett is Chief Marketing Officer and founding team member at Furniture.com, where he’s reshaping furniture retail through AI, data, and an open marketplace model. Since 2022, Dan has helped scale the company to 80+ employees across two offices, connecting millions of shoppers with hundreds of brands.
Before Furniture.com, he was CMO at Packable, a Carlyle-backed e-commerce platform that grew into Amazon’s largest third-party marketplace partner and reached a $2 billion valuation. Earlier, Dan spent over a decade leading digital and brand strategy at McCann and Grey, driving growth for global names like P&G, Facebook, Microsoft, and Nike.
Dan brings a focus on clear priorities, fast execution, and building teams that fuel sustainable growth.
Dan Bennett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennettdaniel/
Resources
Furniture.com: https://www.furniture.com
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Transcript
[0:48] Greg Kihlstrom: What if the biggest friction point in your customer’s journey isn’t the checkout page, but the overwhelming paradox of choice you’ve intentionally created for them? Agility requires not just reacting to consumer behavior, but proactively re-architecting the entire purchase journey based on what the data tells you they truly need, even before they know it themselves. Today we’re here at E-tail Palm Springs and we’re going to talk about tackling one of the biggest challenges in e-commerce, the high-consideration purchase. We’re going to explore how brands can move beyond simply offering endless options and instead use AI and behavioral data to create a guided, trust-based experience that actually simplifies decision-making and leads to conversion.
[1:29] Greg Kihlstrom: To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Dan Bennett, CMO at furniture.com. Dan, welcome to the show.
[1:34] Dan Bennett: Thanks for having me. Yeah, great, great intro, man. I love that.
[1:39] Greg Kihlstrom: It’s looking forward to diving in. But before we do though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself?
[1:43] Dan Bennett: Okay, well, yeah, I mean, I can, let me go back a little bit, not too far. So, I’ve been building technology brands for a little little north of 20 years now. And we stood, my myself and my two partners, uh, you know, we started furniture.com a little shy of four years ago. furniture.com has had a life before us. we we we we got hold of the domain a couple years before that and then, you know, decided along with our investors that we had an opportunity, we thought, to do right by the URL. It’s a powerful domain name.
[2:16] Dan Bennett: The URL says on the tin, and we thought we could develop a platform on there that candidly fixes a lot of problems that we see in the furniture shopping journey, as it were.
[2:27] Dan Bennett: And so that’s, you know, I I I built a technology brand before this, and then prior to that, I spent a while working in the, for some of the big ad agencies. So, I I I prefer building business. I think that’s a little bit more up my alley. And my job here at furniture.com, along with helping run the business, is I I lead the marketing side of it, so trying to make us famous.
[2:47] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, nice, love it. Well, yeah, let’s let’s dive in here. And so, I want to talk about your new platform launch and it it seems to be a direct assault on that paradox of choice that I set up in the intro, that seems to plague high-ticket e-commerce items. So, from a strategic level, what fundamental belief about consumer psychology in this category drove you to say, you know, we need to build something completely different?
[3:12] Dan Bennett: Yeah, uh, it it look, I’ll give you a couple, I’ll give you a couple statistics to back this thinking up.
[3:19] Dan Bennett: There are a few elements as it relates to, as you said, high consideration, which furniture definitely is. Behind a house and a car, it’s the third most expensive thing most people will ever buy, especially larger items like a sofa, et cetera. The journey to do that for most people is a difficult one. 13 hours plus in terms of time to find a piece, often visiting north of 15 sites, utilizing, you know, maybe a Google spreadsheet to track it, and social media to be inspired, and SMS for screenshots. It’s kind of messy.
[3:50] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
[3:51] Dan Bennett: and to that extent, it’s not as enjoyable as we think it should be. I think furniture is an emotional purchase and I I believe there should be some joy in the search for it. The the second big important part is trust. Online furniture shopping on on some of the big marketplaces, has a historically low trust score. And we think, you know, we’re trying to overcome both of those things. An experience that is comprehensive, but that also shoppers feel like they can trust enough to click buy on a, you know, couple thousand dollars worth of a sofa. So that that’s the hill we’re trying to climb.
[4:25] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, as as you mentioned, you know, building trust is paramount. And also, it’s a multi-brand ecosystem. Maybe, you know, for those a little less familiar with furniture.com, let’s do it.
[4:38] Dan Bennett: So furniture.com is a it’s an AI-powered furniture shopping platform. it it essentially allows users to search, compare, decide, and then now buy in one cart. Now, unlike some other marketplaces, we only partner with regional and national trusted furniture brands, so existing known furniture partners. we partner directly with them, direct relationships with north of 70 partners now in the US. And then from a shopper point of view, it means that you can show up. We have an amazing AI site interface that helps you semantically sort and find what you’re looking for. So you can be as honest as you want. You could tell it that, you know, you have parents moving in and you need to redo a spare room, and it’ll help you curate that experience. So we try and truncate the the journey, build trust along the way, and then we encourage people to shop multiple retailers and check out from one cart. So, furniture.com, I think, is finally living up to to the domain.
[5:34] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, love it. Yeah, and your I mean, your background building technology companies.
[5:39] Greg Kihlstrom: You know, one might think, you know, furniture, you know, how does furniture and technology kind of…?
[5:44] Dan Bennett: Yeah, yeah, the way I describe it is, candidly, we are a technology business.
[5:49] Dan Bennett: In service of furniture. So so we have, you know, 80-plus people working at furniture.com now. Uh, I would say about 60, 65% of those folks are, uh, engineers, developers, data scientists. So, yeah, we’re a technology business fundamentally.
[6:03] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. I think another maybe challenge is, you know, you have the furniture.com brand, but you also have the furniture brand, you know, and you know, you spend it sounds like you spend a lot of effort picking the right brands to sell.
[6:17] Dan Bennett: Correct.
[6:18] Greg Kihlstrom: So you’re not only building the furniture.com brand, but also preserving the, you know, integrity of those brands.
[6:25] Dan Bennett: We take that very seriously.
[6:25] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. How does that work?
[6:27] Dan Bennett: Yeah, it’s it’s one of the first things that we knew we had to address when it came to bringing partner brands onto our site. You know, they’ve in many cases spent years building those brands. So the first thing we did was develop a platform that made sure every brand and critically their products showed up beautifully. In fact, we’ve had some brands ask us to to give back the images that we have refined for them so that they can put them on their own site because we we take that very seriously. So, every brand has their own brand page that allows them to have their own copy and content on there. but every product from that brand looks equally as good as product from other brands because we have an AI tool internally, that standardized that data. Furniture data, uh, a furniture feed data, it’s slightly chaotic. Every feed is different. They all speak a slightly different language. So we knew we had to synthesize that into one feed so that when we presented, you know, whether it’s Bloomingdale’s or Tolv or One King’s Lane or whatever it might be, they all look beautiful. And and we take it very seriously. How how those how those brands show up is the definition of how successful our business can be.
[7:31] Greg Kihlstrom: And you know, as as we mentioned, it’s a it’s a technology company that sells furniture. Right. So it’s a so that that tech-first component, you know, you’re using AI, you’re using proprietary research, you’re using behavioral data. Can you walk us through how, you know, AI, proprietary research, and behavioral data really work together to reduce friction and, you know, for instance, does research inform the AI model?
[7:59] Greg Kihlstrom: How how do how do humans, without giving away the secret sauce.
[8:02] Dan Bennett: Yeah, how do humans make AI better and vice versa?
[8:05] Dan Bennett: So, one of the things we do a lot is consumer research.
[8:09] Dan Bennett: Shopper research. Yeah. we have a couple folks internally that that manage that whole process for us. I will tell you that we recently retooled the site quite substantially, over the last eight months, in fact, based on a lot of consumer research we had done. Yeah. and one example of that would be after speaking with shoppers, you know, we realized pretty quickly they really don’t want to see 2,300 sectionals.
[8:34] Greg Kihlstrom: Right, right.
[8:34] Dan Bennett: They want to they want us to be able to say to them, hey, here are the here’s a short list of the ones that make sense for your reality. Yeah. And that goes back to our ability to build semantic tools so I can search semantically. So, the the human need informs what we build, and then the, uh, the ongoing experience with that technology continues to be checked, you know, do people like this? Are are they staying? Are they spending time? Are they checking out? But our AI interface, which we call Dottie, she learns continually. So she candidly, we we launched her this week at E-tail. It’s why we’re here. And she will continue to get better over the the the coming months as she learns and understands how people behave. So it’s a bit of both. Yeah. But it’s always gut-checked by our shoppers.
[9:21] Greg Kihlstrom: So, uh, you recently started a partnership with Firmly to create a single checkout across multiple brands. From a tactical standpoint, what was the biggest hurdle in unifying that customer experience and what advice would you have for other leaders considering similar?
[9:37] Dan Bennett: Okay. Firmly Firmly are an interest amazing partner. Firmly were one of the first partners to do a gentic agentic checkout with, uh, I believe Facebook and Apecsity potentially. So they were very great pedigree.
[9:54] Dan Bennett: so when we when we started working with Firmly, you know, we we made quite clear the challenges, you know, we thought we would face as a platform. In other words, you know, three and a half million SKUs, multiple partners, and they were pretty they worked with us pretty seamlessly on helping understand how that backend infrastructure needed to work. We spent a lot of time testing it. Uh, in fact, we’re here launching the the new version of the site at E-tail, but it’s actually been running in a soft sense for about the last four weeks, so we could make sure those pipes were working effectively. I think in terms of advice, I would say, you know, if you’re thinking about going down the agentic checkout route, which we have seen so far to be working very well, I just make sure that you’re clear on how you’re messaging it messaging it to shoppers. You know, as far as shoppers are concerned on furniture.com, when they check out with us, it’s a seamless checkout experience. But we will let them know in their confirmation email that, hey, you know, we know that you checked out with multiple brands. Here are the brands you bought from us. And then you’re going to receive communication now from those individual retailers. And the benefit to the shopper there is that they then get the great customer service. They get the, you know, the loyalty or the financing or whatever it might be with those individual folks. So I think making sure that you’re clear on that communication to the shopper so there’s nothing lost in translation. But otherwise, we’ve found it to be super, you know, super smooth.
[11:12] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, that’s great. And so, you know, along those lines, you know, with with a system that’s really designed to reduce friction and and improve that decision-making we talked about, you know, metrics like, you know, talking about measurement, you know, conversion rate is an obvious metric. But what are maybe some of the less obvious leading indicators that you’re tracking to prove that the model is working?
[11:35] Dan Bennett: Yeah, the one thing we, you know, if our argument is compressing the journey, yeah, time to cart’s important.
[11:43] Dan Bennett: How quickly, uh, and how efficiently are we getting people to check out.
[11:48] Dan Bennett: And I know that’s that’s, you know, that’s a not necessarily a a new point of view on this, but for us, it it, you know, it’s proof that if you can come in, build a cart, build a room, maybe you’re consuming some of our content as you go, and what are those touch points? What does that journey look like? But is it does it feel accretive to their experience, right? Is it quick? That that’s valuable. Now, not we don’t expect people to always be shopping, right? It’s a 28-day cycle roughly for most most furniture.
[12:13] Greg Kihlstrom: Oh.
[12:13] Dan Bennett: So, are they coming back multiple times? Are they spending time in our content section being inspired? Are they building favorites? Are they opening accounts? Are they do they seem like they’re engaged in our platform? They’re big indicators for us. And they’re actually the indicators we look at as we think about scaling our media spend. I don’t want to have to go and rebuy every visit. So, are they coming back on their own within a certain period of time and that that helps us see that the site is proving efficient. And then finally, there is the sort of litmus test of friends and family. You know, I I we did a lot of testing with friends and family as well as our research group and do people like it? Are they reacting well to it?
[12:51] Greg Kihlstrom: And so how do you think about something like customer lifetime value? I mean, you know, a lot of e-commerce sites where, you know, the average order value is 50 bucks or something like that. Yeah, it’s a whole different play, but you know, with with larger purchase considerations, with, you know, some of the things you’re talking about, how does how does CLV come into play?
[13:09] Dan Bennett: It’s really important. It might be the it might be one of the most important components of how economically how economically successful we can make this thing. Yeah. And I’ll give you the the the way we think about that. You know, we as a technology fundamentally, we take a percentage of each sale. Yeah. Right? It’s a low percentage, but we take a percentage of each sale and we pass that sale fully through to the the retailer. Yeah. So our economics don’t look the same as a furniture retailer. That’s why I say we’re not a furniture retailer in that regard because, you know, furniture retailers, a healthy furniture retailer margin is 30, 40%, right? You know, if they’re running a good business. Yeah. So, the media economics of that are different for us. We’re taking a percentage. So we have to think about customer acquisition cost and, you know, real lifetime value. Yeah. And that has to come down to an amazing product. Right? I have to be able to show it to you and then you say, hey, I, you know, this thing’s great and I’m going to show it to my friends and family and that old-fashioned approach of building something really really impressive. Yeah. I don’t think you can overcome that. And it’s really important for us that we operate as a decision layer in our category. A little bit like say Zillow does in housing. When you want furniture, we want to bite we we want to disintermediate the Googles of the world because we want you to come straight to furniture.com and that’s the job we have to do.
[14:25] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, and like you said, you have the right domain for it.
[14:28] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, so yeah, definitely, yeah. So, think about, uh, the future a little bit, certainly, you know, at E-tail here, we’re surrounded by lots of talk and, you know, let’s say a little bit of hype, but you know, lots of lots of talk and lots of real case studies as well. you know, based on what you’ve learned building this new platform, what’s the what’s the maybe the single most important capability that a retail brand needs to build today to remain relevant for years?
[14:59] Greg Kihlstrom: No pressure.
[15:00] Dan Bennett: No, I I I mean, I think I think I I think it’s you said it’s, you know, there’s a bit of hype. I think there’s a lot of hype. Yeah. and I I’m happy that there is hype. You know, hype hype gives us all momentum and wind in our sails. I I suspect that the fact of the matter is that especially in as you opened the conversation with high-consideration purchases, the the reality is you have to be able to instill trust. Yeah. And I think the the one thing that we don’t, you know, we we we love Open AI. We work a lot with Open AI and I think we look at what they’re doing and find it fascinating, but I don’t think they’re in a place yet where, just because they can return recommendations based on your semantic queries, I don’t know they’re in a place yet where people have enough trust. Yeah. Uh, and I think one of the jobs we have to do over the next 12 months or so is really build a brand that people feel and a product that people feel they can unequivocally trust Yeah. to buy a piece of furniture. Right. and I don’t think that’s tech or I think I think that’s purely quality product related.
[16:03] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Love it. Well, Dan, thanks so much for
[16:05] Dan Bennett: It’s my pleasure.
[16:06] Greg Kihlstrom: joining today. Two two last things before we wrap up. so we’re, you know, at the end of day two-ish, of of the show. What’s what’s either been a highlight or something you’re most looking forward to?
[16:16] Dan Bennett: The highlight’s probably the weather.
[16:19] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, definitely better than the East Coast right now.
[16:20] Dan Bennett: Yeah, coming from New York, yeah, the highlight’s probably the weather. I think the programming’s probably the highlight. There’s been there’s been some, uh, there’s been some good programming here. Yeah. what am I looking forward to? I I think you can’t see it but you can hear it. We have a furniture.com lounge here in the middle of the conference and I think what I’m looking forward to is welcoming more people into this. We’ve we’ve
[16:40] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, like we’re sitting here.
[16:41] Dan Bennett: Yeah, we’ve had some great folks just come and hang out and both partners and potential partners and vendors and it’s been lovely to have a living room where people can just come and spend time with us. So Yeah. I’m looking forward to more of that.
[16:51] Greg Kihlstrom: Well, I mean, I want to I want to live here.
[16:53] Dan Bennett: You’re very welcome. Move on in.
[16:54] Greg Kihlstrom: Right, right, nice. Well, last question for you. what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[17:02] Dan Bennett: I think the the simple answer is probably I just we suck knowledge in. You know, I suppose it’s education, but we are constantly, me and my two partners, are fiends for new news. And then and then like you said, that that BS filter, you got to have that in there. Right. But if you can suck it all in and then make sure you’re adopting the most recent tools, don’t have to you don’t have to use them all the time, but I I think that helps us stay massively agile. And it’s helped us scale a business without having to grow the the human capital too big. so I I think we’re striking that balance has been agility is what’s fundamentally driven that.
