Barbora Samieian Left the UN and Started Buzzy Furniture Brand Sundays
Many entrepreneurs will inform you that what they’re doing now just isn’t what they initially got down to do. Making main skilled modifications—even mid- to late-career—can typically result in extra fulfilling and profitable outcomes. That’s what our collection The Pivot is all about. Each month, we converse to founders, business leaders and entrepreneurs about how—and why—they modified course and located success in a completely totally different business. Here, we converse to Barbora Samieian, the co-founder of Vancouver-based furnishings model Sundays.
For three years, Barbora Samieian labored her “dream job” as an affiliate analysis officer on the United Nations in New York City, doing all the things from conducting program assessments of worldwide initiatives to gathering information and drafting experiences. But after having her first youngster, she and her husband Moe returned to their house of Vancouver in 2016 so that they could possibly be nearer to their households. Knowing that the town was not a hub for worldwide organizations and NGOs (most are in Toronto or Ottawa), Samieian thought-about what she might do as an alternative.
Having observed the ubiquitousness of salad bars in Manhattan, she noticed a niche within the native market: Vancouver—a health-obsessed metropolis—didn’t but have the identical choices. So she partnered with an outdated highschool buddy, a restaurant proprietor, to launch Field & Social, an eatery centered on full-sized, vibrant and strong salads within the downtown space.
Within three years of opening the primary spot, Samieian opened just a few further areas within the metropolis’s monetary district and Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. The expertise of operating a small business was a studying curve for Samieian, who instantly needed to provide you with seasonal menus, domesticate crew tradition to enhance employees retention and be taught the ins-and-outs of promoting. After 4 years, she not needed to be the day by day operator of Field & Social, and was in search of a brand new business enterprise. While chatting along with her husband Moe, whose household was within the wholesale furnishings business, they got here up with an concept: a furnishings model that had a really slim, high-quality product providing, much like a capsule assortment in trend. This idea resonated with Samieian who had at all times discovered furnishings purchasing overwhelming. She needed to curate items that work nicely collectively—not overwhelm shoppers with alternative.
“I had no shame in messaging everybody on LinkedIn”
They introduced on two others—Moe’s sister Sarah, who had expertise within the business, and Noel, Samieian’s buddy from highschool who had a design background—and began assembly on Sundays to speak business, as a result of all of them had different full-time jobs on the time. When it got here time to launch the model, the phrase “Sundays” caught. “It also felt like that’s the day when you feel most at home,” Samieian says.
Moe and Sarah dealt with sourcing, Noel led product improvement, and Samieian had the drive to construct a model from the bottom up. They launched Sundays on-line in November 2019 with front room furnishings like sofas, sideboards and low tables. Because they didn’t know a lot about digital promoting, selling Sundays was finished largely by phrase of mouth at first. “It was very gritty,” says Samieian. “I had no shame in messaging everybody on LinkedIn.” Then Covid hit.
The pandemic introduced many challenges for the younger firm, reminiscent of costly freight prices, closed factories and provide chain points. Initially, Sundays’ mannequin was to promote in-stock objects from its warehouse, which was one in all its aggressive benefits, says Samieian. “We had to let go of that idea quite quickly and start accepting pre-orders within short timelines.” After about eight months, and with entry to an empty house from Field & Social (it was leased as a brand new location however the opening was delayed because of the pandemic), they staged a Sundays pop-up within the Yaletown neighbourhood. “We learned that when customers are buying a $5,000 sofa, they appreciate the opportunity to sit on it and see its sturdiness,” Samieian says. That’s when the founders’ mindset shifted; they knew they couldn’t simply be an e-commerce model. “We pride ourselves on our quality, and that’s hard to communicate on a website alone.”
By September 2020, after concentrating on particular markets reminiscent of Vancouver and Toronto with a “triple threat” of pop-ups, digital promoting and partnerships with native influencers to achieve model recognition, Samieian began to see a constant improve in gross sales month-over-month. That development paired with the success of that 12 months’s Black Friday sale meant they may lastly develop and rent extra employees. Sundays now has two showrooms, one in Vancouver and one in Toronto, and plans to open one in Calgary this 12 months.
With business primarily in Canada, there are plans to push into the U.S.—Sundays staged pop-ups in New York and Los Angeles final 12 months—with a showroom in a type of key markets. And whereas the corporate imaginative and prescient is about offering items that “are beautiful, comfortable and livable,” the final word purpose is to carry a contemporary take to the furnishings purchasing expertise and make the method seamless. Delivery is free irrespective of how a lot a buyer spends, and for giant objects like beds and eating tables (classes Sundays has since expanded into), the piece is assembled within the buyer’s house at no additional price. “We want to make it easy and enjoyable to create a space you love,” says Samieian.
