Framebridge brought custom framing into the 21st century. Now it's courting designers

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking to leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is Susan Tynan, the founder of Framebridge. Like a lot of direct-to-consumer companies, Framebridge raised tens of millions of dollars to disrupt a stagged-in industry, in this case, custom framing. Unlike many of its peers, Framebridge has managed to last. Susan's company now has a sizable manufacturing operation, dozens of retail locations, and thousands of customers who frame everything from art to diplomas to matchbooks. I spoke with Susan about a new collaboration with Farrow & Ball, why she wants to open a lot of very small stores, and why she wants to reach the trade.

1:02This podcast is sponsored by Rowe Furniture and Krypton, where performance meets design. As your domestic custom upholstery specialist, Rowe's trade program offers beautiful Krypton fabrics, complimentary samples, concierge service, and freight-included delivery. Order custom pieces online anytime. It's Rowe on your schedule. Join today at rowfurniture.com slash join. This podcast is sponsored by Lalloy, maker of rugs, pillows, and wall art for the thoughtfully layered home. Lalloy is headed to High Point Market with new collections from Amber Lewis, Bridget Romanek, and the launch of a new partner.

1:45They'll also have new Lalloy collections, plus one-of-a-kind vintage rugs and accessories. Make an in-person or virtual appointment to see it all at laloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I rugs.com. And don't forget to follow at Laloy Rugs on Instagram and TikTok. And now on with the show. Before we dive into the frame part of the conversation, I want to get a sense of early days for you and where you grew up. And an interesting fact about your early family life was a lot of moving around, if I recall. Well, you tell us about what your dad did. Yes. So moved around a little as a kid because my dad was in the Navy and then had a career in the maritime industry and shipping.

2:38And when I was a little kid, elementary school, he got a job in Cleveland running a tugboat business. And so the family moved to Cleveland. And I very much consider myself a Midwestern kid having grown up there. And I got to see a lot about what work looks like through my dad's experience. The tugboat business is challenging operationally. And you're really only called in an emergency situation. And so I remember my mom being nervous about what we heard on the answering machine at home, because there's a lot of swearing when things go wrong. And even the requires a tug is not plan A. That was really interesting.

3:21And I also just learned a lot from my dad's leadership style, which was really all in. And we really just sort of almost worshiped his work, knew that that was what he took pride in and what he was really focused on. And he really was focused on the people in his organization. And so I just saw that. I saw that. And I think I could have been scared away from sort of how much it took to run a business like that. But I think I just always knew one day I'd want to do something like that. And were you, as a young person, were you coming up with lots of ideas for things that you might do? Yes. I don't know that any of them were the one, but I always had ideas.

3:58I really, as a kid, really stuck for a while with this pancake delivery business, truly looking at when the patents would wear off for the cases that hold pizzas for pizza delivery, thinking like, oh, great, that'll be an important part of the delivery system for pancakes. But yeah, I just, I think I always had ideas and I always, I guess I just saw what it looked like to run a business and thought that would be for me. So then with that in mind, and you talked about being a young woman of Cleveland and thinking of yourself very much as a Midwesterner, what are sort of, we always hear this reference to Midwestern values or what that culture is like.

4:40What did that mean for you? Yes. So it's interesting because it's truly my own. My sister was older when we moved to Cleveland and my mom is from New Orleans. And so a lot of sort of hospitality and style comes from my mom. And my dad was from New York. So like they were not Clevelanders, but I am a Clevelander. And I think that is about being honest and straightforward. I have no other way to be. And I think that has, it wasn't always the path I think that leads to success in raising venture funds and scaling a business. But I think for investors who have stuck by me, I'm sure they were grateful for that.

5:21Like I'm going to tell you the truth. And we're also going to do what we say we're going to do. Let's talk a little bit about the path that got you here because you went to business school, did some consulting, spent some time with the Obama administration, if I recall. Tell me a little bit about that path. Yes. So I think actually the path does pick up in high school where I worked in the Gap in high school and in college. And I really think looking back, I think a love of retail was sparked there. I loved working with customers and I loved being great at it, knowing like if you walked in, I knew which jeans would look great on you.

6:01But then I went on, I did work in consulting. I went to Harvard Business School. I came out and worked for what I call other people's startups, really interesting businesses and fintech and taxis and, you know, health IT in email promotion. I worked in other people's startups, and I learned so much and really got a bug for working that fast with smart young people. I took a break and worked, as you mentioned, in the Obama administration in the budget office, where I learned a lot. It felt like a huge privilege to work there, but I worked mainly on technology projects. But I think what I saw working at startups was that it was just invigorating to be working at a pace and in an environment where anything was possible.

6:52And so that I loved. I think not until I started Framebridge did I realize that working for someone's startup in a startup and doing your own startup are different levels of play. Different levels. Very different. Yeah. You know, it's funny. In the startup world, I was 37. when I started Framebridge, which is like old, which is funny. Well, it's interesting. And I was just recently talking to Alex Shuford, who has a huge family furniture business. And he was talking about how important it is to work in retail and how much you learn there. And I wish for everyone that they would have the opportunity to both work in retail.

7:33And then, as you were just saying, to work for a startup and to experience the excitement of we're going to make the most minute change on the website tomorrow, and we've all been working on it. And wait till you see what a difference this is going to make, the speed at which our customer is going to be able to go through the order process. Or we've updated, again, just often it's some little tiny thing that you've all been working 24-7 to improve on the list of things that you identified as the most important thing to do right now. And I hope everyone gets that experience. It's exhilarating. Both, actually, both of those experiences are exhilarating.

8:14Working with customers directly, hearing from customers directly is very exciting. And then also on the startup side, I think being with a young team trying to figure it out, you know, where you're like the pivoting is like nonstop. That's really, that's really fun. Yeah. No, no, it is. But you also ended up at Living Social, which was a huge deal. So tell me about that. And let's tell people what Living, let's remind people who might not remember the Groupon Living Social days. Exactly. Both of those companies were out at the same time. Living Social was a, it was really an email marketing company, but it was local marketing.

8:56And it helped small businesses find new customers. and it helped email subscribers, just consumers, discover the exciting parts of their city. And so there was a time when everybody couldn't wait to look in their inbox to see what the living social deal of the day was. Also, some people are familiar with Groupon. That was the big competitor. And so it was fun. I learned from every aspect of it. Super high growth, a technology business, very good at acquiring customers. So that was really fun. And it was actually so fun. I saw it from afar. Our colleagues I had worked with before had started it and were running it.

9:32And I was working in government at the time. And as I said, that was such a privilege. I knew how important it was to be in government. But I was looking at what they were doing. And it just looked so exciting and fun. And so they called me up and said, would you ever join? And I was like, great. I'll see you soon. And so that was... I'm on my way. I was like packing up my laptop bag. No, it was very exciting. And so actually several of my early team members came from Living Social and now like, you know, zoom out a decade. And Freebridge is actually owned by a holding company run by the old CEO of Living Social.

10:11So it all ties together. Well, and it sounds, and as you say, people couldn't wait to open their inbox and discover this often quite generous coupon for some service or some place that you could go in the city and have an experience or do something. And some of them were framing. Yes. The direct connection here was I was managing the category of deals related to home services. And so I got to know that category and why people were excited for discounts in certain services. And there were things like, you know, air duct cleaning or whatever that people wanted. But then there were things, you know, there were categories that always did well.

10:51And that was framing, custom framing. And as I unpacked why are people grabbing these deals for custom framing, it was really one that customer had been conditioned to know that, frankly, it was, they felt it was a ripoff. So they were like, you know, I'm going to wait for a deal. They felt that framing was really expensive. And so I got to wait for a deal. You never buy that at, you know, you never buy. unless you have a deal. And then frame stores themselves, there was just such a range that I felt like we could, you know, people were trying to figure out which was a high quality store and which was not.

11:23And so I think that was hard to sort through. And so I started looking more into the business and sort of reflecting on my own experiences with the category. And then I also had a personal experience, actually a set of personal experiences. But the first one was, I went to a local frame store with four National Parks posters. And these were posters that I had collected on annual hiking trips with my sister. But the experience in the frame store was bad. And they cost$400 each for metal frames that did not look good. And it took weeks to get them back. And more than anything, the man working at the store was kind of a jerk.

12:02He was sort of like, you know, like, this is not fine art. I don't know what you've brought me here. Oh, he sort of implied this was beneath him to even frame your national park bus? Yes. And so I thought like that was bad. And so I dreaded picking them up. One, because I didn't want to pay for them. Yes, one, because it was quite a financial transaction. I know. And I say at the time, definitely they cost more than my couch did at the time. And so I just thought like that is weird. And I just gained more and more conviction that this thing should exist and it should exist in a way that delights people.

12:37And take me from feeling so strongly and excited that you've got this this idea. Now what? So I had been at Living Social. I got an opportunity to move to a taxi app. It was called Taxi Magic. And it was at the time of earlier days of Uber and Lyft. But still, they were clearly the front runners. And so I was there. And I already had the idea for Framebridge. But I think in my head, I thought, well, that's pretty risky. I bet I'll get the same feeling just having a leadership role at another company. And I didn't. I couldn't drop it. I really kept thinking about Framebridge just every second of every day.

13:22And so I decided to keep sort of moving with it. I had a friend, actually a friend from Living Social, who helped me consider the idea. I laughed because at one point she sent me an email that was like, you're on your own. My husband and I have decided to travel the world for a year. So she was like, it's a good idea for you. Great. You go run with it. Yeah. I don't need this. We'll see you in a year. But, you know, that was really helpful. I had a lot of conversations with her. And then I just was incubating this idea. And then I realized I just had to do it full time. And I think by that time, I had had a few conversations with people who would be potential investors.

14:05And it was clear to me that for an idea like this, one, that hadn't been developed, and two, had a lot of work that had to be done, that the way I was going to attract investors was by showing them I was all in. And I had to do that by quitting my job. And at the time, what did you imagine were the complexities of this business? I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., working on the first model, the first financial model for the business that went with the pitch materials. And I remember dragging out the row that would have the number of people required to do this business with some assumptions on how much labor goes into a frame.

14:51And I thought, ooh, wow, this is going to take a lot of people. And there's sort of no way around that. And so I thought, wow. And I think that was me starting to understand what it would take years to build. But then we were actually building a manufacturing business because I think I was pitching an e-commerce business. Right. Right. But in order to in order to supply or in order to facilitate the e-commerce business, you needed the manufacturing business. Both economically, we needed to be vertically integrated. We had to build the the whole the whole reason for this thing was that we you know, we could offer high quality custom framing at a more approachable, more affordable price if we did it ourselves and did it centrally.

15:39And so that was the thesis and that has borne out. But in doing so, we would have to be manufacturers. And so the other piece and the piece we realized right out of the gates, too, is that is and continues to be how we can be great and be defensible and have a fast turnaround time and be very knowledgeable about framing. You know, nobody has framed more matchbooks than we have. I feel I can say that declaratively. Well, so I wonder, and I can't remember timing wise, if Warby Parker was in people's heads or Dollar Shave Club or some of these brands that were looking to disrupt, right? All of it.

16:20By saying, oh, okay. And I would say that Warby Parker continues to be, you know, a role model for us. They were ahead of us. And so certainly we watched even as they pivoted into retail and became a retailer. Yeah, which was interesting and something that I mean, I don't think they had imagined early on. But with the notion that here's something that seems like it's really expensive and there's this big monopoly, this big Italian company or whatever it was that's making most of the frames and we can make it for so much less and here we go. And did you sort of have this same notion? Was it all of these components from overseas that were causing framing to your posters to be$400 for your National Park posters?

17:11It's really just the nature of how framing is delivered. It's, you know, in order to have that really large assortment of frames, frame stores don't have inventory. So when you walk into a frame store, you select from the assortment and the frame store purchases materials from a distributor and the distributor purchases from someone who's making the components. And so that leads to long turnaround times and higher prices. And so we said, one, we didn't believe that an overwhelming assortment was an advantage. We really thought like having a beautiful curated assortment was an advantage. That is what the consumer was looking for.

17:55So we would have a tighter assortment and that we could go deep on them. We could buy them in very large quantities because of the volume of framing we were doing. And we could also use our materials much more wisely, right? Because of the, again, the volume of framing we're doing, we had much less waste. And so that was the thesis and that's what we're executing on.

18:24We're taking a quick break to remind you about Lalloy. This October at High Point Market, Lalloy is hosting special events in their showroom you don't want to miss. On Saturday the 25th, they'll start a keynote conversation with Amber Lewis, Julia Markham, Anna Bond, and Lalloy's newest partner, who we can't reveal just yet. They're also hosting a book signing and a meet and greet with Amy Astley, the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest and the author of AD at Home. Learn more about those events and book your appointment at lalloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I rugs dot com. And don't forget to follow at Lalloy Rugs on Instagram and TikTok.

19:08And now back to the show.

19:15So early on, it was an online business. You were going around with your pitch. And how was the venture capital community receiving this pitch at the time, Susan? Because I know that's an exhausting process. It's like on the one hand and on the other hand. On the one hand, we were very successful. At some point, we were breaking records in terms of how much money we were raising. I was trying to think of what the record was. It was literally, I think, female entrepreneur and then mid-Atlantic. So not an Olympic gold, but it was a record. And so we were able to successfully raise money, I think, for one reason.

19:53In the beginning, it was like it was kind of a novel idea. It was a category that nobody was looking at. And I didn't tie the thread together. I think one of the reasons I left the taxi business was like that was an exciting business, right? But there were huge competitors who had a lead. And I saw this opportunity for something that nobody else was interested in, frankly. And I was interested. And so I think that story was interesting to people in the beginning in terms of raising venture money. But what allowed us to continue to raise venture money was proving through customer data, through data, that we got people to do it more often than they ever had.

20:30So it was always, I think raising venture capital is tough. People were like, it's a craft business. I think that was tough. I think I had to really show people, no, we want to own the category that I had the ambition. We had the ambition to build a big business. But it was at the end of the day, it was sort of the data you can't fake, that customers come to us, they like us, and they come back that allowed us to continue raising money. So why did you sort of have this space largely to your, did people just not find this? sexy or fun, right? The framing. I think that's right. I think it's a really fragmented space.

21:07It is a big space, but not as big, obviously, as saying changing mobility, right? So I think that was one of the reasons. But I think there were some little competitors. There remain some competitors today. But I think what we got right is that we cared about design from out of the gates. And when I look at our initial team, it was three women I had worked with actually before. So they were part of the living social crowd. But two of the three were designers. And one is sort of exceptional product and customer experience. But for that small of a team to have put that much of emphasis on design, I think was really important.

21:47Because at the end of the day, why do people do this thing? They do this thing so their piece looks more beautiful and preserved and they do it so their space looks more beautiful. And so I do think that other folks who were approaching it just as a disruption story or technology story, but didn't really have the love of the product, the physical product, were not able to reach this scale. And tell me why you needed$80 million. Tell me what all of it, because I mean, if I recall, you were every year, you were getting another round and it was$80 million a year. Yes, we always said it would be two years and then it was always one year, which investors don't love, but is the reality, I think, of most people's businesses.

22:26So there are a lot of businesses that came and went in the direct to consumer era and they were just sort of marketing and brand on top of something that already existed. And so we certainly spent a lot of money on marketing, but mainly we spent it on building out manufacturing and the systems that support our manufacturing, the decision support tools that allow us to be great at custom picture framing and to get it right every time and to make sure that we know the difference between truly how to stitch an Hermes scarf or a Chanel scarf, the difference between, you know, a cycling jersey or a hockey jersey or a peewee hockey jersey.

23:09building that business at scale was the business. And so that was like the beginning of the journey. And then midway through building Freebridge, we realized the best way to grow was retail. That takes capital too. But I think has been just terrific for us. Like that is, that is our future and it's pretty exciting. And when you first had to have that conversation, Well, tell me when you first realized that that was the next step that had to happen, and then having to tell your investors, hey, guess what? Now I need more money to go do this and wait till you hear. It's not necessarily your favorite thing.

23:51That's right. We had several venture capital investors who I do think were clear-eyed from the beginning about the type of business we were building, that it was vertically integrated, and that their capital was going toward building out these capabilities. But we were e-commerce. It was online. So they were great and supportive. And we were five or so years in when we decided to test retail. You know, I think the board was probably split at that point about how they felt about it. And I think we probably got some advice from people in and outside of the business saying, you know, do it in a really lightweight way.

24:30And one thing I'm really grateful for is we did not. We opened. We did not take that advice. Well, the biggest secret of a startup is you've got to listen to all the advice, but you have to know what to filter out. Right. And so in this case, we really said, there are so many reasons to believe retail could work for us. And you mentioned Warby Parker. We saw that. We had an investor at the time who was in Warby, and he said, I see in your data, it's just a very similar story. And we knew our customers. Our customers were coming to our corporate office with art in hand, hoping to talk to someone.

25:05Well, that's what I was wondering because the e-commerce side of this actually sounds really complicated to me if people, to your point, are sending – I mean, if they're brave enough to be sending their Hermes scarf for their wedding invitation. Exactly. I mean, I would be nervous about the whole process. Right. We had a corporate office in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and we would have people drop in. And I would laugh because I would see, you know, like a member of our accounting team trying to give design advice to a customer who walked in. But we were just like, I get it. So there was enough to make us know this was going to work.

25:38And so our first two stores were in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Maryland. So D.C., where we're from. And we built them out like real stores. Like, we're going to do this and we're going to hire real store managers and we're not going to test this tepidly. I think part of that was because we knew people needed to feel comfortable dropping their art off. They needed to have a full experience. If we were going to figure out if retail worked, we had to do retail for real. And I think I'm also grateful that we didn't hold ourselves to an economic goal that was fuzzy. You know, I think a lot of brands do where they say, well, if you blur your eyes and you add in online sales, or if you blur your eyes and you say it's a marketing expense, it's really a billboard.

26:23Sure, we do see those benefits, but the stores are profitable. We find stores that can be profitable. We build them out to be profitable. And so I think that also makes the results of whether retail makes sense a lot more clear. As you say, I mean, many will say, oh, this is a great marketing tool for us if we have some locations in key markets and people can drive by, see us, or it'll lead to more online traffic. And I'm sure that it probably does help with that metric, but there's a lot more. The retail stores, to your point, have to be businesses on their own. Because to the point that led us in this conversation, right, they do take capital and build out.