The furniture-in-a-box fad continues to be quite popular, especially as designers have started getting away from the Ikea-tiny-wrench-divorce-your-spouse-during-construction discipline of design. A recently launched enterprise coming out of California’s Silicon Valley wants to add more versatility to that model for the furniture market with a triptych of furniture that offers a wider variety of applications than the typical college futon.
The company is called Gjemeni and it’s selling a line of furniture that includes a couch, a chair and an ottoman for pretty reasonable prices, given the quality of the material and its unique design. With features that include layered memory foam, bonded leather and temperature shield technology as well as options for power, these furniture options could be very attractive for millennial professionals and younger generations just starting to live on their own.
The couch alone has been engineered by a cross-disciplinary team of designers, engineers, and kinesiologists to adopt more than a dozen different positions to accommodate different applications and increase comfort and flexibility. The sides go up and down for lounging — one might imagine what older generations knew as a “courting couch,” or a “fainting couch” — while the back goes down, converting the entire piece of furniture into a comfortable bed. Apparently, the futurist Faith Popcorn calls it a “cocooning couch.”
“When you think about it — other than from a design standpoint — the couch hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades, if not a century,” Gjemeni CEO Sean Pathiratne said in a statement. “We are re-engineering the entire couch experience.”
Unlike the aforementioned Swedish furniture, the Gjemeni couch/bed does not require a single tool to set up: Four clicks and a flip and it’s ready to go, all for $999. Those of us with mobile device addictions will also appreciate the couch’s Netflix-and-chill features, which include four USB ports and two 110-volt sockets. Finally, users with aesthetics in mind can choose from four primary colors (black, red, white and mocha) and augment the couch with a matching chair for $599 or an ottoman for $299.
Users can also get up to $200 in discounts for signing up for email updates, and the company offers payments as low as $75 a month through financing through Affirm, a New Jersey-based commercial bank. Additionally, Gjemeni offers users “white glove” shipping for free, merrily sending new owners the couch in a single double-packed box. Users are also welcome to check out this versatile new couch or its accompanying furniture risk-free with a 120-day money-back guarantee.
