[00:00:00] Phillip: Hello, and welcome to the Future Commerce podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

[00:00:04] Brian: I'm Brian.

[00:00:05] Phillip: And I'm trying not to get blown away in this, like, mini hurricane we're having here down in Florida. I don't know what is going on.

[00:00:11] Brian: I swear it is sunnier in Seattle than in Florida. Florida— South Florida gets so much rain. You're always like, "Oh, it's cloudy and rainy." It is, every—

[00:00:23] Phillip: Every day.

[00:00:24] Brian: I know. You have it every day. Why do I have the reputation of, like, the gray one? It's actually sunny and beautiful here.

[00:00:33] Phillip: I mean, it's earned. That's definitely— I mean, you can see it here, on, like, the YouTube— it's gray over here in my window. But, you know, it's not gray every day. But we do get the rain every day. We did have some weather, and I hope the weather holds a little bit. We have an amazing event coming up here in just a few weeks. So, before we get into the show, I just want to remind everybody that our newest book is out. It's called Strata. This is the 10 aesthetics of commerce. These are the things that are going to shape the future this year. And so if you are wondering why people act the way they do, why they talk about the things they talk about online, why people go bananas once again for something like a Labubu— it's like, "Didn't we do Beanie Babies already?"— Strata talks about the cultural layers that build up over time that cause people to behave the way that they do. And Strata is 80 pages. We're releasing it at POSSIBLE in Miami. And so, hopefully, the weather holds for the next few weeks— I think it'll be beautiful. Come join us. And if you want to find out how to join us at the Strata release party with our friends over at Fluent, go to futurecommerce.com/events, sign up for the event.

[00:01:41] Phillip: We'd love to see you there. And if you don't have a copy of Strata, you can sign up to go get your copy right now— futurecommerce.com/strata. And— maybe we won't see any— what are the names of the clouds that have "strata" in them? I feel like there's a cloud named "strata" somewhere in there. I should have looked that up before I even started this whole thing. We should GPT that. Anyway— without further ado, here's a segue for you. Speaking of GPT— you can GPT furniture these days. Our next guest is somebody who we've had a fantastic partnership with over the last year or so. And she is somebody whose work has spanned collaborations with Airbnb, HGTV, IKEA, Domio, and— she has, I think, worked very close to my own heart— she is translating art and emotion, but she does it through interiors and digital experiences. And today she's talking about her role at Furniture.com. So she is the AVP of Brand and Creative at Furniture.com, where she's leading brand and experience design for this platform that's redefining how Americans are shopping for furniture. And Furniture.com has been a partner of ours over the last year or so in many of the activations that we've been doing in the world. Welcome to the show, Olivia Hnatyshin.

[00:03:01] Olivia Hnatyshin: Hi. So, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I loved meeting you guys in real life at eTail, so it's great to reconnect again. So— at Furniture.com, I lead brand and creative, partnering closely with leadership to shape both the consumer experience and how it comes to life across all of our marketing platforms. We're at a really exciting inflection point right now. Our product— the platform— is really ready to show off to the world. And so we're expanding our paid efforts, introducing influencer strategy, and continuing to build our brand from launch back in February.

[00:03:39] Brian: Well, congrats. So cool. Yeah, we're loving the site and all the partnerships and everything that you've been working on, Olivia, and your work in particular. I think this is so cool. You must be inspired by furniture and design. And so I'd love to hear more about the category that keeps motivating you and pulling you forward.

[00:04:04] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah— so, where to start? I'm a homebody at heart. My mom was an interior designer. And so when I graduated from interior design school, I was sort of always drawn to media and storytelling. A lot of people around me were going and working at interior design firms, and my North Star was always working on renovation shows. And so that's exactly where I landed— producing and designing on probably a lot of TV shows that you've seen. And much like startups, it was high energy, tight timelines, real budgets, real people— and you'd be designing a space knowing someone was gonna live in it the next day. So from there, I started building relationships with on-screen talent, especially across brand licensing, furniture lines, and PR. And that's really where I got exposure to the full ecosystem— from product design to brand marketing— right as design and fashion blogs were evolving into social. So, taking my background in HGTV land, I really wanted to go closer to brand strategy, which led me to New York, and I went to Parsons for strategic design and management, and have been working at DTC and tech platforms ever since.

[00:05:21] Brian: Wow. That's so cool.

[00:05:23] Phillip: Yeah. And I think having that lens on the world— having the design background, the hands-on experience in entertainment and media, and bringing that to DTC— right, that is a background I think is very rare in our industry. And so it gives you a vantage point in the world that very few have, and probably a different priority system in the way that you approach brand and creative, which is your new role. So maybe we could talk a little bit about that as we get into it a bit. Psychology, I think, plays a lot into the way that people shop for furniture, and I think psychology is at the core and the center of brand and creative. Talk to us a little bit about the exploration of how the consumer's changing and how you all are positioning the brand right now.

[00:06:14] Olivia Hnatyshin: Sure, yeah. So— buying furniture is the third most expensive purchase someone makes, after a car or a home. And so that means it requires a huge amount of trust, confidence, and reassurance. And right now people are feeling very overwhelmed, right? They're sifting through tons of SKUs across multiple retailers, in different tabs, with inconsistent data. They're looking at measurements, reviews, availability, pricing. You're nodding because you're like, "I've done it." We've done tons of research in the past year or so, and have really sat with people— and I've seen it with my own eyes, someone having a spreadsheet, and 10 to 12 tabs deep, and comparing sofas across retailers, and they're still not confident in what they're buying. And so once they do, the next question is then, "Okay, what goes with this?" So I feel like it's not really a discovery problem, it's a systems problem. The industry hasn't caught up to how people are actually shopping. We've seen 80% of people love to mix affordable and luxury brands in their home, and yet it's nearly impossible to see it all together in one place— until now. And so when I think about working with design clients in the past, one thing is always true: people know what they like when they see it, but I think it's a matter of, "Okay, how do I articulate that, or build around it?" And so the brand— like, everything we've built— really starts there: your taste, your needs. And we're helping to build a platform that helps you create a decision that feels grounded and confident.

[00:07:55] Brian: "Grounded and confident." I think this is a long buying cycle. It's been kind of a brutal process, which makes it longer. I would imagine, like, emotions are a big part of this. Mhmm. People are buying based off of how they feel. It's a very personal decision. And so, as we look at shopping becoming more AI-mediated, and it feels a little more transactional— it's still very research-focused— how is Furniture.com helping maintain the emotional connection, or even the one-to-one rapport, in that world we're going into with your customers?

[00:08:41] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah. I mean, I think it does feel deeply personal, but I actually think we're entering a new phase where, in branding, digital products can create emotional connection in a different way. When something is really well-personalized, you feel it, right? Like, it's the same feeling as opening Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year and immediately wanting to share it. That's what we're building towards when it comes to the product's emotional connection. You feel surprised and delighted when you interact with Dottie, our chat, because it was built on 3 million SKUs and only furniture data. You feel understood when your search actually reflects your taste. I think it's one thing to search, it's another thing to actually find the thing you were searching for. And then you feel inspired and guided through the content that we're creating. And, ultimately, you're feeling relief and confidence when you finally get to that right decision. So I think the shift there is from an emotional connection from a person to an emotional connection coming from how well a system understands you— that is what's going to make this journey so much more enjoyable. Some of the big, shiny data points that we have are that 83% of shoppers are starting online, which means that emotional connection has to be brought in in a different way, or at least creatively thought of in a different way.

[00:10:07] Phillip: I think so often folks— they remove the emotion in the buying process, and they think of it in terms of friction and frictionless purchases, right? And it comes down to the value of the purchase, and they shift the responsibility of the emotion of the purchase to a CX role. Mhmm. So the CX team has to deal with the emotion of the purchase, right? So all of the UX— which is the fun part of the experience, it's how we get people to actually buy— which, by the way, congratulations, you've done a phenomenal job on the actual site experience and the UX of the site experience— it is very much geared towards making it slippery. Like, "How do we get people to purchase without thinking?" It seems like you've struck a real balance here in getting people to spend a lot of time in a considered purchase. And in that— how do you work in that world also, where you have so much choice, so many SKUs? How do you surface it? How do you curate it? And how do you bring that to the fore, especially in a very trend-heavy environment? These all feel like they're things that may compete at odds with each other. And then we still have to recognize— but there is a value-based consumer. They do want the best price. They're shopping around. They're gonna leave the site, probably. Many may not buy on the first purchase. You probably have to compete in performance marketing. I would love to understand all of those things that have to come into play for Furniture.com to win at the end of the day.

[00:11:47] Olivia Hnatyshin: I mean, I think I'd start with, sort of, like, our research insights as the moment of how we unlocked all of this and really got to understand the consumer. And then maybe we can talk about the content side of things, and how I've been working with the data team. I mentioned the furniture shoppers starting online. The other thing that's happening is, 73% of searches are non-branded. So things like "mid-century green sofa" or "quick-ship nursery glider." But the real unlock for us was really understanding how much time and energy is wasted in this process. On average, shoppers are spending fifteen-plus hours. They're looking at at least four retailers, using multiple tools across social media and spreadsheets and room planners, before they actually make this purchase. And what's interesting is, like, none of these tools are actually designed to work together. And so people are stitching together this system. And then, on top of that, they're juggling this interpersonal part of it, right? They're texting their mom, showing their roommates, asking their husband or wife, sharing in the group chat. Totally. Everyone is a part of this long "decision engine" that goes into this one big purchase. And so when we started to show concepts of Furniture.com after they described this experience, the reaction was always, "Okay, like, where was this when I was shopping?" So that's when we realized that we were onto something with the way we designed it.

[00:13:11] Olivia Hnatyshin: And we were replacing a fragmented workflow that so many people were left to build for themselves. When I started at Furniture.com— okay, like, "what is it?" It sounds pretty self-explanatory. And then when I started to meet with our tech teams and machine learning and data scientists— one of the biggest and most important initiatives that Furniture.com has been working on since day one has been data standardization. So, as I said, this industry is incredibly fragmented, and what people don't realize is, even something as simple as dimensions, materials, or color naming varies widely across retailers. I'm sure you've run into this— one man's "hunter green" is another's "forest green," and then you're questioning, like, "What is green?" So even if you wanna compare the products, you actually can't do it cleanly. And when you're making a high-stakes purchase, you need clarity. You think about buying a home or a car— platforms like Autotrader or Zillow, they de-risk those decisions by making data transparent, consistent, and comparable. So we're really doing the same thing for furniture. We're at a much more fragmented starting point, and that's where a lot of the complexity comes in. But, thankfully, we've got a stacked product team that comes from the likes of Apartments.com and 1stDibs. So I feel like we're in good hands. But this is, sort of, like, the unlock too of how it resonates with the retail partners.

[00:14:44] Brian: That's wild. Yeah. And you have such a huge catalog— it must be really, really difficult to do that synchronization across so many different brands and types. I would imagine you're applying some AI at this point to help with that, or, like, some sort of in-house technical solution. But— not only is that overwhelming in terms of, like, standardizing the attributes and the data— like, I think that that many SKUs could be pretty overwhelming in general for people to just address, let alone with all of the disparate naming conventions, like, literally, "what is green." And so how do you help customers— like, once you've standardized things and kind of given people comps, and given them, like, the way to balance all the options— how do you help them narrow that down? Because, all of a sudden, they're looking at a catalog that is gigantic. Like, it almost feels like that would make things take longer. So how do you make it faster?

[00:16:03] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah. On the consumer side, we're not gonna lead with, "Hey, come search 3 million SKUs." No— we're doing that for you. I think the secret sauce is really the personalization that we're working on. We have been working diligently on the data-science side to make sure that all these attributes, and the enriched data that you're getting across descriptions and photography and everything else, are categorized, so that people can really shop with whatever intent, right? If you were to go on Furniture.com right now— I like to play with it on the social media side of things— so I'll type in something really abstract, like "lemon girl summer," and you'll see the best matches based on your intent. And I think that's where this whole industry, and how shopping and retail is really leading— into the idea that personalization is key, and making sure that both semantic search, but then also chat, starts to really understand what the intent is behind it. "What were you looking at last? Where are you leaving off? What room are you looking for? What was your personal style?" All of these nodes to your personal way of shopping— even down to your location— that will help in sifting through what feels like an overwhelming amount of things. And then we have really cool tools like Shop Similar, where you just click this little icon and the whole feed becomes all of the same things that you can compare all at the same time. We're completing "Complete the Room" right now. So there's a lot of things that just sort of decode this all for you.

[00:17:49] Phillip: Wow. And that's, I think, how people actually are trying to pull together solutions of their own, right? So when you look at the DIY— back in December, early January, we put out our annual predictions, and one of the predictions that we put out this year was called the sovereign individual. And the age of sovereignty that we're living in right now is that the individual is now responsible to be every trade discipline and every corporation unto themselves. They are solving medical problems for themselves. They're becoming their own accountants, and now they're also their own interior designers. And all they have to do is— they're also their own real estate agents and all the rest— but they take pictures, they throw it in. You know? But there's only so much that ChatGPT can accomplish, and these aren't purpose-built tools. But, as we saw earlier this year, when it's not economically viable to turn those into shoppable solutions and shoppable systems— or when you stop trusting the system and its recommendations, because the system and its recommendations are going to be guided by advertising— you stop believing that there's a real curation that's based on your tastes and your needs and your wants. That's our take. And I think this definitely fits into our take. But I'm curious— as you're building out these solutions, what are your insights and your data telling you about the consumer and their desire, beyond just the feature set? Is there a psychology behind it? Is there any insight that you have into how the consumer is thinking, and how they're wanting to maybe use more purpose-built tools rather than these tools like a ChatGPT? And I think that's where you're guiding them into your— how do you facilitate that within Furniture.com?

[00:19:44] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah— I think at Furniture.com, what's special about the domain too is, we're doing one thing and we wanna do it really, really well, right? Like, we wanna be that unlock in the first place that people go to when they think about furniture— and whether that's designing the space themselves, or simply just checking out with a piece of office furniture that they just, like, need tomorrow. And so I think that gives us the advantage, because we're not trying to build for a bunch of other retail streams. We're just building towards the specialty of furniture. And I think when we look at the consumer and we see the resemblance of this framework that they're trying to do— what sucks for them is, they have to do it over and over and over. They still repeat the same behavior. So I think, regardless of what they're looking for— like, our data standardization, the intent behind their search— they're gonna find stuff that matches to them. And then I think the real value is then being able to repeat that: being able to build out rooms on your own, being able to check out across all the brands in one place, which is something that you can't do anywhere else. That's really the value there at Furniture.com.

[00:20:58] Brian: Yeah. It feels like— you know, as people use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever to go and kind of, like you said, Philip, be their own designer, be their own boss— that there's gonna be some roadblocks to being able to actually, like, visualize it all. And I think that's where I really see, like— we talked about this in a couple of episodes ago— verticalized AI solutions are really, really gonna shine. And combining that in a native shopping experience, and having a shopping experience be sort of the wrapper for that, actually makes a lot of sense. Because I think there's a lot of this happening, but it's, like, sort of these weird standalone tools, and it's really hard for people to actually understand how it all connects back. Having their product integrated in a way that's, like, really easy for both the model to digest, but also for the consumer to be able to, like, play with and shop in ways they're familiar with— you know, we kind of have to live in the rearview mirror, as Marshall McLuhan said. And so I think it's really essential for people to understand how to leverage the power of generative AI in a form that makes sense for how they like to shop and browse— and, like, it's a fun process. And that fun process is getting a lot less frustrating as a result.

[00:22:40] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah. That reminds me of this big project that we launched alongside the new experience in February, which is this in-feed content experience. When we think about bringing things that people are familiar with back into the one-stop-shop experience— like, what does that mean? And so our team had seen a lot of really great behavior from the content that we were creating in, sort of, V1 of Furniture.com, which was traditional SEO-style content. And we would see upwards of 32% click-through rates to product pages. So people were showing us, like, "We don't just wanna read this, we wanna act on it." And, at the same time, we were seeing how social platforms were evolving, and their role in the shopper's journey— of visual search on video and static posts, and shoppable feeds, and discovering inside content. So we knew that this was part of how people were shopping anyway— it just wasn't all in one place. So imagine Furniture.com's homepage now as this personal feed, with product tiles tailored to your style, your budget, the room you're shopping for. And every 10 to 12 tiles, we have a piece of content— video, static, carousel— that are connected to the decision you're making. So before, you'd see a piece of furniture that you liked, you'd screenshot it, you'd open five tabs, you'd reverse-image search, find it, find it on sale. Now that loop is closed, and you can discover and act on all of it in the same environment.

[00:24:20] Phillip: We were, I think, talking as we were putting together the prep for this conversation— about how design, I think, has become very democratized. And we'd talked many years ago about why that is, and you probably have some thesis on it, having worked for some of the design media. I think the design media has a lot to do with it. There was this incredible— I wanted— it was, like, a paint chip that went viral, this realtor.com piece of research that went viral a few months ago, and I did a piece about it. Basically, it's, like, how interior paint colors have homogenized over the last forty years. Like, we're in the beige apocalypse now. We can surmise why that is— but I think it's our views into other people's homes, and our media, that tells us how to resell, and our just general awareness, as consumers, of best practices and all these things. But it's also about trends. But I think you also have a bit of a perspective on what is good design, and who should have access to good design. So give me a little bit about your thought process on all of that, because I believe that this kind of resets the bar to some degree.

[00:25:46] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah. I think, knowing my background— the thing that always sort of sat with me, since having an interior-designer mom and being inspired by art and design and culture— I would just look at magazines and be so inspired. And I'd go to show homes with my mom and antique fairs and all these things. And everything that I've done in my career— whether it was in TV, or a brand deal, or D2C home-goods companies— it all had sort of the same line of mission, which was bringing quality goods and good design to people, regardless of budget, regardless of where you were. And I think Furniture.com's brand is built on that as well. I think we're trying to be that puzzle piece that you can just rely on that will help you sort of get there, and feel confident about it. And good design, to me— I'd love to say the "style" part of it is the subjective part. Good design is like, "Does it fit? Is it the right scale? Is it the right proportion? Does it feel like you?" I did my son's room when he was born, and I'll never forget bringing him home and putting him in that room that I worked so hard on. And, like, everyone deserves to feel like that— like, that your home is your safe space, and it reflects your personality. And so I don't ever want AI to take that away. And so the way that I see it is, AI can personalize based on intent. Like, you could say, "What's the best sofa for my space?" and it pulls the attributes of measurements and color and whatever. But the goal isn't to make everything look the same— it's to help people arrive at decisions that feel right for them. I think we're just sort of surfacing what's available and what's right for them. And each chat or search will arrive at items and answer what they're looking for. So we can make it as personalized and easy as you want, through content and the way that we're inspiring people— or you could go off and do it yourself.

[00:27:49] Brian: I love that viewpoint. It feels like a lot of people that come to Furniture.com probably already have a pretty good sense of their taste or style— or maybe they're exploring for the first time— but what you're doing is, you're providing inspiration, or you're connecting with inspiration that they already have. And I think that's a super good way to go about it. A lot of people are inspired by things they find out there, and have been their whole lives. Like you said, you'd look at your magazines when you were a kid, and your mom brought you into that world. And a lot of people enter into the world of this well before they even have a space to fill out. And so I think that's really cool— you're giving them tools to connect the things that inspire them, or providing them inspiration for the first time. And if someone, like, doesn't care, and they're like, "I just need a couch"— I mean, that's valid—

[00:28:?] Olivia Hnatyshin: There's that too. There's that too.

[00:28:?] Brian: Yeah. They could just buy a couch. And there's a lot of options for those couches and price points. And I also love something you said, which is— I think that you can have great taste and you can have personal style no matter what your price point is. And there are ways to achieve what you're looking to do. And I think that's something else that Furniture .com does— it democratizes that angle. What you built democratizes it. I do think that there's some interesting things happening in the furniture industry right now. There are some challenges. We've seen some bankruptcies— with Sohomod, American Signature— there's even news coming out now. The furniture industry is kind of going through changes— Value City Furniture just closed their stores. It's a tough environment. Or is it? Like, how has it been, where companies are trying to embrace new tools, new ways of selling, new ways of connecting with customers, at the exact same time as facing pricing pressures and assortment pressures and all kinds of pressures?

[00:30:00] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah. Yep. I mean, I think there's obviously definitely turnover in the industry, but there's still so many strong retailers— many of whom we partner with. We have 80 of them, and continue to add more. So I think the reality is that consumers are always gonna continue to have better tools, more data, and faster ways to make those decisions. And I think the question becomes, "How clearly can you communicate why you are the right choice? Can you meet the consumer exactly where they are in their journey? Are you answering those questions with ease? Do you have the right assortment for that moment?" I think there's a lot to do with that. And I think retailers who invest in data clarity, real-time availability, and evolve with the experience and the assortment that the shopper is expecting— those are the ones that are gonna win. So relying on fragmented information, or the old way of doing things— that's probably the part that will struggle. But I think there's a lot of value in looking at Furniture.com too, as a partner, to kind of help them shepherd through some of the unknown of the industry right now.

[00:31:12] Phillip: This has been a great conversation. Thank you, Olivia. Before we get out of here— we have a closing question we always ask, which is, "What does the future look like?" But before we get there— you have been partnered in this ecosystem, specifically in the ecommerce and retail trade-show ecosystem. You've been activating at them. You basically took over at eTail. You had a fantastic eTail Palm Springs activation.

[00:32:40] Brian: Mhmm.

[00:31:41] Phillip: You owned it. What is that strategy looking like? How are you partnering, and what is the purpose behind that, and how is that paying off for you? Give me a little bit about— why are people seeing you there? I'm sure people have seen you at these shows. Why are people seeing you there? How is that working out for you, and what are you hoping to achieve?

[00:32:06] Olivia Hnatyshin: Yeah— I mean, I think our strategy so far— we wouldn't be anywhere as a brand without the retailers on our site. So it really has been B2B-first, to really build this out and understand what the rhythm is with them, and their priorities, and how we can make sure that we're showing up for them as that decision layer. And then, when it came to doing all of this research and really understanding the consumer on the other side, it was like, "Okay, how do we bring this all together?" So showing up at retail conferences and like-minded media conferences and stuff like that— it gives us a chance to— we're fairly new, so we're bringing the best of our team. We've got people from 1stDibs and Rooms To Go and Apartments.com and HGTV, and the list goes on and on. The chance to see that there's, sort of, technology builders, brand builders, and furniture experts all together creating this thing. But it also shows— I think what was so successful at eTail was seeing the mix of the retailers, and people kept stopping by and being like, "Oh, this is nice." Like, I think there's the word "Furniture.com," and then there's like, "Oh, this is on there." I don't know yet how this will sort of fold into the consumer side— we're doing so much on the consumer side. Influencer is a huge part of that. And, obviously, like, being able to see how creators put furniture from Furniture.com in their homes will be a huge unlock for us, and we can see, like, exactly what format works. But I wouldn't take it off the table that bringing together some sort of experience of different retailers in one place— even just to give a little sneak peek— because it does work so well. It's like a compliment to all the retailers that are on there, that people are just so jazzed to see it all together.

[00:33:53] Phillip: Yeah. I think that's such a brilliant way to frame that strategy, where you are where they are, and it reinforces the value of the brand— especially in a thought-leadership capacity, where they are going to seek other solutions, and you're there alongside. You're able to engage them. And then you're also— it's a different level of engagement in a place that maybe otherwise you wouldn't be seen. And I don't see a lot of vendors and businesses like yourself activating at shows like that. And it's a real differentiator. So it really stands out, and you've done a great job of it. I said I'd get to it— if you're looking out, you know, the crystal ball, like Brian was saying— we like to think out into the future. Furniture shopping, quote-unquote— what does that look like in the next three to five years, when maybe all this stuff comes to pass that we've been talking about? AR, I don't know, very visual search, agentic— what does that look like? What are your priorities then?

[00:34:55] Olivia Hnatyshin: Furniture shopping becomes sort of this dream that we've had for Furniture.com for the past couple of years. It's integrated, it's intuitive. This nonlinear, all-over-the-place journey becomes actually one fluid experience. And people haven't been able to, at scale, see what Furniture.com can do— and now is the time. And I think you're going to be able to start with an idea— maybe a prompt or an image. You can see it in context in your space. It can recommend other pieces that reflect your taste and constraints in real time. You can build a budget based on the things that you're flipping through, share your final plan with your significant other or friend, and complete the purchase in one flow. Like, I think the unlock for us this year really has been being able to put checkout within this experience— because now people can build that cart and shop across brands, and not have all those tabs open. And content and commerce and utility all sort of become one system. So I think we're moving away from search entirely, and really— I know you've heard that many times— but it really is more about expressing intent, and having that intent met instantly and accurately. You asked about priority— for us, priority is earning trust at scale right now. This is, like, a high-stakes category, as we've talked about, with historically messy data and overwhelmed shoppers. So everything we're building really ladders up to: "Is the discovery intuitive? Is the comparison clear? And are those decisions that we keep saying we want you to feel confident about— do you feel confident?" So we're doing that across millions of SKUs and a growing partner network, and that's really the challenge and the opportunity. But if we get that right, then we're not just another place to shop— we really do become the place that people rely on to make one of those huge decisions for their home.

[00:37:00] Brian: Love that.

[00:37:00] Phillip: What a great place to leave it. Brian, any last thoughts?

[00:37:03] Brian: Sounds great. Thank you so much, Olivia, for coming on. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

[00:37:07] Olivia Hnatyshin: Thank you.

[00:37:08] Phillip: Olivia Hnatyshin— she is the AVP of Brand and Creative at Furniture.com. You should go check it out— Furniture.com. We'll link it up in the show notes as well. And maybe we'll catch you at another show pretty soon. Where are you gonna be? Are you coming to Miami? You're gonna be at POSSIBLE or anything anytime soon? We'd love to see you sometime soon.

[00:37:28] Olivia Hnatyshin: Not me— it's Colleen, our head of partnerships, who I'll plug— so go find her if you are interested in becoming a partner on Furniture.com.

[00:37:34] Phillip: That would be fantastic. Well, thank you all for listening. Thank you for checking out this episode of Future Commerce, and we would love to have other people join into this conversation. If this conversation sparks something for you— like, follow, subscribe. It's a fact that most people that subscribe to this podcast have not left a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. So go do that— it helps more people join in the conversation. And if you wanna bring more Future Commerce into your world— futurecommerce.com/strata. That's where you get our newest piece of print. I have a whole shelf behind me of all of our books. We have our big books— Lore, Archetypes, Muses— but this is our newest small format. This is $20, delivered, free shipping to your door. futurecommerce.com/strata. Remember, commerce shapes the future, because commerce is culture. We'll see you next time.