Home decor is all about creativity, and Bent Chair (www.bentchair.com), an e-tailer home decor brand, is all about celebrating creativity. Visit their website and you will find a red double decker bus-shaped teapot, a cushion cover with SLR camera print, a table runner with attractive floral print. From what is trending to what is fashionable, artistic, contemporary, classic, quirky — they have it all.
Owned by Natasha Jain, an engineer from Stanford University, Bent Chair has its roots in Ambala and is touted to be the only company that offers plasma vapour deposition technology. Jain, who is quite meticulous when it comes to her living space, aesthetics and comfort, says, “Having lived in the US for years and witnessing the design around me, in furniture, I got inspired to bring something to India. It made sense, as there lies a deficiency of brands with high design, affordable price and catering to people between the age group of 25 and 45 years.
This is when the vision for Bent Chair struck, to create a go-to home decor and furnishing brand, manufactured in India with a global presence. At present, the customer has either boutique home decor brands or online aggregators, there is no in-between,” she elaborates.
Bent Chair conceptualises, designs and manufactures its own products, which includes furniture, decor items, dining essentials, quirky accessories and so on. But there are multiple brands dealing and specialising in furniture and home decor products. What makes Bent Chair stand out? Answers Jain, “It is one of the first Indian start-ups to not just create an online portal for selling furniture and home decor products but also an end-to-end supply chain, from designing to manufacturing to selling products. It follows an omni-channel approach which includes selling online, creating a marketplace, selling offline through pop-ups, through a Bent Chair studio and also entering into a franchise model.”
The core value of the brand is creativity and it aims to bring forth unique, customisable products for an individual’s need. Jain says, “We want our products to be a reflection of the owner.” She further adds that independent artisans have the right opportunity to showcase their craft as well.
The collections are curated through a cumulative approach that takes into consideration a number of things. “We closely study our customers’ feedback, their choices, and preferences along with the current and emerging trends. We are continually appealing to the modern population as we keep picking contemporary images from around us and turn them functional through our products,” says Jain.
Today, fashion and style is not just limited to clothes and accessories but also decor and furniture. Commenting on the same, Jain says that Bent Chair wants to integrate the concept of fashion with decor in two manners. “The first, taking inspiration from fashion labels who work on launching new looks for every season. We don’t want any sense of design fatigue where a user comes across one line a year. Just the way apparel is seasonal, we’re working on adding new decor products which will match every season such as the resin line for spring, the tropical line for monsoon, etc. The second is to collaborate with fashion designers to get the trends of one industry infused into another,” she explains.
Bent Chair works on optimising a lot of its design wherein if a customer wants, the entire product can be dismantled and refurbished. It also tries to minimise the wastage of wood in its products by figuring out creative ways to utilise scrap.
No startup works without challenges. Jain says that their major challenge is to make people believe in their product. “The biggest challenge is to sell your vision to the people. But the opportunity here, of course, is to build that trust in the market for the product and sell the vision to them,” she says.
Bent Chair provides customers with easy return policies. Jain has also entered the space of experiential dining by launching Bent Chair Cafe and is soon going to enter the hospitality industry. Besides, it is launching stores across India.
