Furniture.com’s CMO Daniel Bennett on building trust, AI-powered discovery, and the one-cart future of furniture ecommerce
.png)
Get the full episode here
Guest: Daniel Bennett, CMO & Head of Ecommerce at Furniture.com
Host: Kailin Noivo, Co-Founder at Noibu
🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube
A new chapter for Furniture.com
When Daniel Bennett and his co-founders took on the challenge of relaunching Furniture.com, they didn’t just want to build another online retailer—they wanted to redefine what “furniture shopping” means in a digital world.
On The Ecommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives, Daniel sat down with Noibu Co-founder Kailin Noivo to unpack how his team built every AI capability in-house, turned messy retail data into structured intelligence, and created a marketplace that lets customers buy from multiple furniture retailers in a single checkout.
1. Why Furniture.com exists: Simplifying a complex purchase
Furniture is a $200B+ industry, yet its online experience remains fragmented.
Shoppers browse multiple sites, save links to spreadsheets or Pinterest boards, and rarely have a single source of truth for discovery, comparison, and checkout.
“We describe ourselves as a technology business in the service of furniture. We’re here to find and generate high-value customers for our partners—we don’t hold inventory; we create confidence.”
— Daniel Bennett, CMO & Head of Ecommerce at Furniture.com
.png)
Furniture.com’s solution?
A unified, multi-retailer platform that standardizes data, enables semantic search, and offers a single-cart checkout—bridging discovery, personalization, and fulfillment across 70+ partner retailers.
2. Building AI from the ground up
Rather than licensing third-party AI tools, Bennett’s team took the long road: they built everything in-house.
“We actually haven’t bought any AI technologies—we built them all ourselves. The first thing we had to do was standardize the data we consume from our partners. None of the feeds are the same.”
— Daniel Bennett, CMO & Head of Ecommerce at Furniture.com
Over the first twelve months, Furniture.com created AI models to:
- Normalize 2M+ SKUs across retailers.
- Unify product attributes (colors, materials, categories).
- Enable natural language search that interprets human intent (“blue velvet tufted sofa”).
- Feed trust signals into every step of the buyer journey.
This foundation allows the platform to return hyper-relevant results and maintain consistency across product experiences, no matter which retailer the item originates from.
3. Trust as the currency of conversion
Buying furniture online is a high-consideration decision. Delivery risk, mismatched colors, or poor fit erode confidence quickly. Bennett calls trust the “make-or-break” factor.
Furniture.com’s trust stack includes:
- Data precision → Consistent naming, accurate dimensions, true-to-color photography.
- Transparency → Real-time pricing and promotion updates.
- Physical verification → Store locator options for shoppers who want to “sit before they click.”
- Post-purchase feedback loops → A team calling customers directly to gather experience insights.
Every design decision ladders back to confidence: if a shopper can trust the product, the data, and the delivery promise—they’ll convert.
4. From CPC to CPA: The big pivot
Furniture.com originally planned to monetize via cost-per-click traffic. But as organic search evolved and ad economics shifted, the model no longer made sense.
“We realized we had to go beyond sending high-intent traffic. Shoppers wanted to discover and check out in one place.”
— Daniel Bennett, CMO & Head of Ecommerce at Furniture.com
.png)
The team pivoted to a CPA (cost-per-acquisition) model—offering direct ecommerce transactions instead of traffic referral.The result: higher control over experience, clearer attribution, and more aligned incentives with partner retailers.
5. Financing, fulfillment, and the unified cart
Furniture purchases are expensive—and increasingly financed. Furniture.com’s technology stack aggregates multiple retailers into one seamless transaction, even if items come from different brands.
Their system handles checkout orchestration while deferring fulfillment, delivery, and financing to each retailer.
This ensures customers interact directly with trusted brands, maintaining transparency while benefiting from a single-cart flow.
Looking ahead: Becoming the “kayak of furniture”
Daniel’s vision goes beyond transactions. He wants Furniture.com to become the center of gravity for furniture discovery, just as Kayak, Airbnb, and Spotify have become synonymous with their categories.
“When you’re looking for your next sofa or mattress, the first place you go should be Furniture.com.”
— Daniel Bennett, CMO & Head of Ecommerce at Furniture.com
As they prepare for their 2.0 launch, expect advanced semantic search, AR room visualization, and deeper personalization—all built atop the standardized data core.
The executive takeaway
For ecommerce leaders, Furniture.com’s story is a masterclass in data discipline and brand trust.
AI isn’t a silver bullet; it’s only as good as the data foundation beneath it. Bennett’s in-house approach shows how aligning data structure, customer psychology, and partner collaboration creates durable competitive advantage.
“Build trust before you build traffic. When customers feel confident clicking ‘buy now,’ you win twice—once in conversion, and again in lifetime value.”
— Daniel Bennett, CMO & Head of Ecommerce at Furniture.com
.png)
Key insights for ecommerce executives
- Data integrity fuels AI success — standardization must come before automation.
- Trust > Traffic — sustainable growth depends on consumer confidence, not paid clicks.
- Own the experience — even in a multi-partner model, UX and CX consistency define brand equity.
- Pivot fast when the market shifts — evolving from CPC to CPA let Furniture.com own its destiny.
- Invest in long-term memory — lifetime value compounds when shoppers return to a platform they trust.
Listen to the full episode now
.png)
.png)
.png)