How AI & Robotics Are Transforming Furniture to Eliminate Waste

Hello and welcome to the Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I turn product ideas into sustainable 7-figure businesses. Join me for another episode where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy. Today I'm really excited to have Evelina. She's the founder of Zucchini, a manufacturing tech company, and Reforest Design, where the designer produces sustainable, high-quality furniture. And we'll dive into that a bit more, but welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so let's start with where you guys are at now. We talked briefly, you guys are a technology company and you have this brand facing forward to customers. Could you dive into what are you doing with this?

Yeah, for sure. So although we are— our pilot is a furniture company, furniture brand, we have furniture. What we are in essence is a tech company. We have this grand mission to eliminate global furniture waste, and we're using AI-driven blockchain technology. We're using circular manufacturing systems. We have all on-demand partners, which some of these include robotics, and we do this all to deliver high-quality custom-made furniture, and our main goal is to deliver that furniture or furniture parts and assemblies in only 3 days. So as a tech model, we really are a parts manufacturing as a service model, which allows our consumers to upgrade and replace furniture parts, kind of like building with Lego.

Okay. I've worked with furniture design before. That would be amazing. It would make it so much easier.

Yeah, for sure. So it's kind of like, it's hard to describe in the way that, I mean, furniture, what it really is, if you take it apart, is just an assembly of different parts. So we're really focusing on that aspect to see it as, hey, we're just a parts company instead of, hey, we make furniture. The parts can make furniture assemblies, but it can make other things as well.

Right. So kind of like how People do things like cars where they have many different components and it's a large supply chain, and you can make a lot of things with it, but you can make all different kinds of cars with those same parts.

Exactly. So right now in the furniture industry, as we both know, fast furniture is a big problem, as it is with clothing and other industries, but not a lot of people are talking about fast furniture. So this is where we're coming in to really address these problems that are happening within the industry. So with this So with the parts idea, not only is it a parts company, but it's all on demand. So this makes a big difference because a lot of the furniture that exists today is pre-made, pre-assembled with the hope that it will get sold in the future. So how we are different is everything is in real time on demand. So the parts that come in or the orders or the assemblies of furniture that come in, they get made in real time and they get sent directly to the customer.

Okay.

And with that concept in mind, they can also replace their parts. So let's say they have a coffee table and their dog chewed up a leg. At any point in time, 100 years from now even, they can replace that same part. So because we are creating these systems to be on demand, they will be on demand at any point in the future to recreate these parts.

So you're looking at a word. Things are really easy and you're able to do it one-off. Even down the road, you might not be producing that at all, but you write that exact coffee table, but you can go back and produce that component, which is a huge problem in the car industry. People stop supporting it, but you would actually be able to continue to support somebody's product down the road.

Yeah. So our focus is in order to actually make this work, we're focusing on the materials, the actual stock that we make the furniture out of. So we're focused 100% on sheet good material, high quality sheet good material. And right now there's not that much that exists. There's bamboo, which is what we're focusing on. It's one of the highest quality materials. So I don't know if you know anything about bamboo, but It's a grass, it's not a wood, and it grows up to 3 feet a day and reaches maturity within 1 to 5 years. Not only that, it has a compressive strength of concrete and tensile strength of steel. And there's over 14,000 species of bamboo. So the pandas aren't going to be affected by it, even though we use it. And just like a grass, it really does come back when you cut it. So because it has all these properties, we can put it into a sheet material, kind of like a plywood. And take that essence, that quality of that bamboo, and create a very durable product. And because we have this base model and sheet material that we can use, all our furniture is then in essence high quality. So what happens with typical furniture manufacturing, it's either made of solid wood, which is rare and kind of like luxury standard, or it's made out of some kind of plywood or particle board that is then covered up. So the edges are covered up or it's veneered on top and on the sides to kind of present this idea of it looking a certain way, maybe looking like wood, even though it's not really solid wood. So by having this already start with quality material, we get to really represent it and display it. So we don't have to cover up the edges. We don't have to cover up the top. It is already solid and beautiful. So that's the trouble with this. We have this sheet material, but there aren't that many options available at this point in time. So we're hoping to introduce hempwood. Hempwood is actually a little bit denser than bamboo. It's even stronger than bamboo. So hempwood products, and what has happened actually within the past 10 years is all these material products have come up into the industry. There have been corn alternative sheet materials, there have been Coconut sheet material alternatives, but they all have fallen out of the game because there hasn't been any application that served well enough to grow that market. So we're coming back into the game as an avenue, as a venue for these sheet materials. So I'm hoping that they will come back so that we can benefit from them and use them within the furniture industry. So by starting with quality sheet materials, we have the quality products. And by focusing on these, we can have these parts made at any point in time. And yes, they might vary in material over the years. Maybe 100 years from now, the local material might be some kind of rose flower or something that they make a sheet out of, you know, but you can still have that design made, but just in a different sheet material that is available maybe to the local region or to the time. So it doesn't limit or eliminate the designs at any point in time.

I love that. Funny that you mentioned that. There's a ton of materials coming out and they just disappeared. Anybody I talked to was very much, there's no commercially viable way to produce it. Nobody wants to buy it, a real use, a good use for it at the time. And so, like you were saying, there's no customers, business can't survive. And so they ended the business, right? That's how it works. And I feel like they were a little bit too early. in the market. And so hopefully they will be able to come back and be able to work. And I've even been on the hemp side of things, and there's a lot of interesting uses, but there hasn't been huge uses yet for it. So it's great to see that you are going to be able to utilize those kinds of materials.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, and the furniture industry is huge. What's the size of it? Let me think. I think it was about $300 billion in size within just North America. So it's a huge industry and it's growing. So the application is immense. And not that we're going to start to be a product material company in itself, but I'm just opening it up to other companies who are kind of struggling in that market to make those sales and to really try to— they're trying to push that, the materials into the housing industry because that's where a lot of the materials are being used. But— The housing industry already has its kind of own products that they're working with. So furniture is a great use of it. But to add to that, for quality is a big factor as well, and how we kind of view and perceive quality. And everyone kind of has their own idea of what quality is, right? I don't know if you've read the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

I have not.

Okay. It's amazing. It's a whole inquiry into values, and his whole main focus is the concept of quality. And he goes and dissects it in every way, looks into all these fields of study that are kind of touching on it, but they're not really examining it too deeply. They're kind of seeing the surface of subjective kind of idea of quality, but he kind of gets to the conclusion that Quality is something fundamental, but it's elusive. It's at the heart of all experience, of all knowledge, but nobody actually can define it. It's an undefinable concept. So because it's so, it's seen as a very subjective idea, it's really hard to really talk about it.

Yeah, that's so interesting. I feel like as designers and consumers, we think of quality at like It's a very engineered scale of 0 to 10. And it's like, I agree. I think it's definitely a variable, but socially it's not. It seems like a set in stone thing. And you know, there's bad quality, good quality. There's a difference. And you know, of course quality is good. Bad quality is bad. But it's something that most people don't even start to question or think about. It creates challenges because when it's not understood, it's a hurdle to get through and really talk about because it's not a set-in-stone thing. So I love that you brought it up because it is one of those things that we don't really think about, but probably should think a little bit more about.

Yeah, it's really hard to even talk about. So we've been doing a lot of surveys and talking to our customers of Well, how do you see quality? What does that mean to you? What does that mean to you in regards to furniture? What does it mean in other places in your life? And in having these deep discussions, a lot of people at this point in time see it as just the end product, the end product in relation to other products, which is what you said. But when other people— there's some people who do think deeply about it, and when they think quality, they actually think the entire process. So that's very interesting. And we found that a lot of the products that are now coming out, the ones that are successful, are seen as more sustainable, more ethical. They do analyze and share the whole process and the whole journey of where does it start, how is it made, and then where does it go when I'm done with this product. So that circular economy aspect, we actually find that is kind of more of what's Honing into the definition, even though it can't be defined, but it's like kind of what people are seeing as what quality can be to them. So I think a big part of what we're doing is really talking about that circular economy aspect with our furniture of, hey, there's these furniture parts. And for reference, IKEA's $33 billion worth of furniture from last year. Will be in the landfill in 7 years, right? So on average, furniture lasts 7 to 20 years, and IKEA is obviously kind of the bottom of the barrel, but it's a big statistic. And that's a lot of wasted energy, a lot of wasted input, a lot of wasted resources, machinery, and time that goes into making these products that then go and end up in the landfill because that model is based on planned obsolescence, right? It's based on the concept that you want that furniture to end up in the landfill in a short period of time so that it is repurchased. And this model is very successful. It's awesome. People are really into it and it's working. And the reason why it's working is because there's not enough products out there that are defining what quality is, kind of breaking the transparency of what quality is defined as. And the high-quality products that exist are unaffordable. They're only accessible to 4% of luxury consumers. That's pretty much the stat that's out there. So what we are doing is trying to transform that culture, transform that model of, hey, okay, consumers need an alternative to IKEA. They need an alternative to pre-made cheap products. And we find that our customers are very creative. They want to design, they want to have products made for them, and they are interested in quality. A lot of them just don't know what it is, but they will talk about it and say, oh, this is high quality, this is high quality, but they don't know why they said it. So we're trying to learn from them and we're trying to see kind of where that barrier is breaking. And we find that our products that we're selling, we might have slightly higher price. So in comparison, maybe an IKEA coffee table is $400. Our coffee table might be $1,000, but we offer them that investment security of, hey, you can invest a little bit more into something and then know that you can repair and replace and upgrade all your furniture parts. And at the end of its lifecycle, we actually take back Every single part, and at the very end, transform it into biochar, which is a soil amendment to kind of to complete the cycle. So I guess that's one thing I didn't mention. Every part is serialized and unique. So it's kind of like recycling, like a pop can. A pop can is worth 10 cents. So in the same way, each part, let's say a table leg, is worth $40 at any point in time. Even if it's in 3 parts or pieces, it'll come back to us, to the company, and we take ownership of every single part that we create so that it never goes into the landfill. So by taking ownership, it comes back to us and we process it, we deal with it. So that means we can either refinish it, resell it again, sell it as is, or if it's non-repairable, then we turn it into biochar. So We're really trying to think and work about, think about the whole cycle, not only the furniture, but how it benefits the customer. Because obviously the consumer problem is the most important problem. And why are they going to IKEA? Why are they not spending more? And the consumer problem is because it's too expensive to buy custom-made, high-quality furniture right now at this point in time. There's not really any options available. In the past, Your grandparents would invest, I don't know, $10,000 in a dining table, right? They'd invest $10,000 with the investment security of, hey, this is gonna go to my kids. This is gonna pass on. My investment will carry on. I will invest all this money into it and I feel good and secure about it. So right now, investing, I don't know, $4,000 even in a coffee table is not an option. It's not even a possibility. Because they think or know that that investment of $4,000 will now go into the landfill or go into a storage container at the end of its life. And no one wants to be secure in, oh, I'm going to invest $4,000 in this coffee table and then I want to change my mind in 3 years. And now what? It has no value. Furniture has no value. A car often retains value. Boats often retain value, but That value economy for furniture has disappeared completely. So there's just no security in, hey, what if I spend a little extra in my furniture? There's no security in, hey, this investment will carry on in some way, shape, or form. So that is another challenge that we're solving. I guess I call it the investment security problem of, okay, we need to change these cultural attitudes around furniture. Of, hey, now we can have these new options where people can invest into their furniture. They can spend 75% more than IKEA and have that investment security of, hey, I can replace these parts. I can give that whole furniture piece assembly back to Zucchetti, back to the company, and get money back for it. And I can have a whole new creative design whenever I want. Or I can even pass on that credit to my kids and they can be creative in any way, shape, or form that they want without needing to be stuck in the original owner's design idea or creation. So we're really thinking about the whole thing to make it all happen.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on Conscious Design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Well, I love that. I think it ties into what you mentioned earlier, fast furniture, like fast fashion, and That I can say in any room now, and pretty much people immediately know what I'm talking about. They read it, they know something about it, they understand it's a big problem, and it's talked about. It's around. Everyone can talk about that. Fast fashion's known. But fast furniture is something that people just haven't really thought about. It's almost like it's snuck in. It's here. We all do it. We kind of all accepted it. But it's not getting the same attention as fast fashion is. Not as people talking about it. There's nobody saying really outside of you saying, hey, we should be addressing this. We just think of, oh, it's cheap furniture. And then that's what we do now. And it's something I noticed. If you just look on Facebook or Craigslist or something like that for used furniture, it's all very, very cheap. Like what you said.

Yeah.

The value, the resale value is just not there unless it is something that's, you know, really solid wood, really high-end, something like that. Uh, it otherwise it's, it's barely worth even selling something on one of those platforms. So it's, you're not even close to breaking even or some, anything like that. If you invest in furniture, it is No one would consider it an investment option because it doesn't retain any value.

Totally. Yeah. So one other thing that we're kind of— we're working towards in making all this happen, how— or how we even came up with these concepts, is really designing for technology. So designing for what technology already exists at this point in time. So typically with furniture, it's the other way around. You come up with your own design in a CAD program, you tinker with it, it's very beautiful and intricate, and then you find ways to then manufacture it. You have your design and then you go to figure out all the steps and processes to make it. What we're doing is a little bit backwards. So we're kind of taking the machinery that exists in this time and seeing what is the most efficient way to still maintain quality and eliminate as many processes as possible? And what would be the end product and how would that furniture look by taking just these simple processes and still making it beautiful, still keeping design in mind at the very end? But how do we eliminate all the processes that are no longer needed? So for instance, to create anything made out of wood, You need thickness sander, a planer, you need a table saw, you need a jointer, you need all these tools and machines. And the biggest one actually of all is an edge bander to cover up the edges, cover up the edges of all the things that aren't pretty. Those are the, not all the machines that are being used in the furniture industry. So we came up with a process to really streamline and eliminate as many processes as possible as our kind of main goal, our milestone of how do we do the most with as little as possible within the manufacturing end. And this is where we've come across to CNC machinery. So CNC is kind of like a robot arm that cuts all the parts out. Also robotics for tasks, doing tasks, which we're still not using robotics, but it's In our design. And like I said, sticking to strictly 100% quality sheet material goods. So the sheet material goods are already pre-made to a certain thickness, to a certain depth, to a certain stock. So that's something we don't— won't have to process in our facility. And because all our processes are so streamlined and focused on sheet material goods, we're able to make our furniture a lot faster. faster and still maintain the quality and offer a price that's a lot lower for the quality that we have. So by designing and thinking about efficiency as our number one kind of mission in the backend for manufacturing, we're able to really define the smallest processes that are possible. So number one, a lot of glue is used in furniture, right? A lot of glue in lots of setups, and that's time-consuming. You need the drying, you need all of that. So we're eliminating glue altogether, just focusing on hardware, developing the best hardware to put all our parts together instead. And that way, everything can also be flat-packed and packaged in a very small container and shipped to the customer. So by designing for the machinery that we know exists, even taking into consideration the robotics partners that we want to use, We're really— the output of our furniture might be slightly different than your typical kind of, I don't know, like Art Deco, you know, very intricate. Some designs are very unique. So it is limiting in some way, but this is all for the goal of quality and efficiency and to lower the price for our customer. So it's not that we can't get creative with it. It's just that—

Yeah.

It has specific boundaries and limits. So we have— we're calling it the Armbox because we can— we're imagining all these robots in the future doing most of the work for us. So we're calling it the Armbox. And this Armbox is kind of our final product. In essence, it's our final product that we're working on to make all these concepts work of all these parts and all these services for the customers to be able to bring them back, all the services to turn it into biochar. There's a lot of tracking technology that is involved to, to keep track of all these billions of parts that we're going to be creating in order to create these services to be used. So in order to make this all happen, we have this ARM Box. If you can imagine the size of McDonald's, that's about 6,000 square feet. And it's going to be our package that creates all the furniture from start to finish in only 3 days. So we have the sheet material, we have all our goods, we have our hardware, and in comes an order. The parts are made, 3 days robots and CNC machines are making the products, and then it goes straight directly to our customer. So there's no warehouse storage, and this is the biggest factor. One of the biggest expenses for furniture manufacturer, furniture retailer is actually just storage of the furniture and hoping that it will get purchased. So we're eliminating all these processes in order to make these circular systems beneficial and profitable, to make furniture longevity profitable. Because a lot of people think there's no other way. The only way to profit is Planned obsolescence, right? So we're remodeling that concept and putting— because we have all this extra energy and because we're being so efficient about it, we can directly put that right into the circular economy and into the services for our customers. So there's a lot happening in our plans to rework this box, but we have our basic model for it, and it's already proven to be extremely successful. Customers are loving our product. So now we just have to advance in how do we make this more efficient? How do we measure the time it takes to walk from here to here? And how do we eliminate this one step and make it even more efficient? How do we eventually get a robot to do this one step walking from here to here? And really thinking about the future of the technology that is involved in order to achieve all the goals that we have. So yeah, that's where it came from, I guess. I'm like, why, why, how did I start talking about this? Designing for technology. This is all our whole premise of we already know what's out there, we know what's coming, we know what's going to be a possibility even in the next 10 years. So with the plans that we have in manufacturing, let's consider all those advancements. And what's making this happen is just curating what's already out there instead of us having the need to design it. So for example, furniture company needs an upholstery segment, right? We need to have some kind of upholstery at some point in time. So there's already a company, they're called Lectra, and they make on-demand fabric cutting. So they have already developed the CNC machinery and the software that goes along with it to make on-demand fabric. So what we would be doing is just plucking them into our segment instead of having to redesign the whole upholstery segment and technology and software ourselves. We're just curating all the partners that exist in real time, putting them into the Arm box. So that's, that's how we're achieving our goals.

We're seeing what's out there, curating the best of the advancements that are there, putting it all into this box so that we can create a circular economy that's Yeah, I think it's one of those things that circular economy, I've spent a few years now diving into that and coming with conscious design as our approach to circular economy and seeing how far we still have to go in order to do something like that. But people are starting to figure out that you can be sustainable and circular and that it is actually profitable. And one of the things that I talk about with people and clients is, I feel like I talked about being sustainable, circular economy, having those things can be a huge, huge thing for growing your business. And people like you are introducing these concepts and it's proving to be successful. And if you look at it, your sustainability really is efficiency. You should be creating, you should be building things that are circular. You should be reducing waste. If waste exists, then you're not perfectly efficient. And that is, you know, worst case, just at the bare minimum, that's extra money, that's cost that you're losing. And that's really when you break it down for people like that, then people start to understand the value there. And I love that you're talking about biochar is turning, you're taking the last pieces if it actually has to be garbage and turn it into a product that is super useful. It's something you can actually, you know, you're going to turn around and actually be able to sell that biochar for somebody because they're going to be able to use it. So it's great to see that it really turns into this zero-waste process.

Thanks. Yeah, the biochar is— it's actually a huge market now. There's— I don't know if you've seen any documentaries, but there's a lot of documentaries on soil, how our soil is depleting, and one of the biggest ways to enhance it, to help it thrive, and to create more soil is to use biochar. So it's a big amendment that is essential to, I feel like, our planet's health to actually grow and put back what's being taken out of the soil right now.

It's one of those areas that I've worked with a few people in the biochar space now, and I keep learning new things about it. How it's used, how it can help with asphalt, making roads better, dyes. You can make carbon black as a color with it. They can use just— there's so many, so many uses for it, and there seems to keep being more and more uses for it that, you know, creates benefits. And it's something that you can do, you know, you can do things like what you're doing where you use something that could have been a waste and actually turn it into biochar. I'd really love for you to dive into, right, because you guys are a technology company. We've talked about And introduced you as, you know, this forward-facing brand that people would be familiar with, but you're building this out from more than just your own, and you've been using the forward-facing brand as a pilot program basically. So how have people reacted? How has this work been proving out for you? And is this something, how is this developing as a technology, getting that data, using your pilot program? How do you dive into how has that been? How's the pilot program going? And what is next? You know, now that this is working, are you going to continue that moving forward or where is this going?

Yeah. So I actually started the company as a sole proprietor. I was inspired really by furniture garbage. So I went to university at OCAD right downtown Toronto. And on my commute, I would literally stumble over furniture garbage. every single day. And it was terrible. And it really got into my core. And at the same time, I was studying architecture. And I was so enraged, I ended up doing a furniture minor on top of the architecture. And it was just kind of a passion that carried on of, why isn't anyone doing this? Anything that I tried to look up, no one was thinking about it, talking about it. The term fast furniture didn't even exist. I mean, it still barely exists, but it was not even seen there before. So I started at first making high-quality wood furniture for luxury clients. And so I obviously had to use all the processes, all the tools. And I saw this as such a drag. I'm like, oh my gosh, why does it take me so long? I have to do all of these things in order to just make one piece. Why is there, why are there so many processes? This is so much work. And then I was looking into the bigger companies of, hey, well, how are they doing it? Or is it any easier than what I'm doing in my little workshop? And they were doing the same thing just at a larger scale.

Yeah.

With more people and more machines. And of course, CNC technology has come along and helped speed things up a little bit, make things a little more efficient. But all of the other machines are still a part of the process. It hasn't eliminated much labor. And I think a big part is because of the designs. The designs themselves demand specific machinery and tools. And also working with wood is really difficult because you have to go through all these steps in order to make it happen. So I started out of all this passion. I started to, I decided to cut out wood entirely. It was really frustrating. It was just too much, especially for one person and one little workshop. And that's kind of where I started all my tinkering with efficiency of how do I eliminate this machine? How do I eliminate this machine? How do I get rid of this thing? So on my own, I kind of just came up with designs that were 100% based on bamboo. I found this material to be just beautiful, and no furniture or products existed at the time when I first started out of bamboo. They were only small, used for small products, maybe cutting boards, some kind of kitchen items.

Bathroom items.

Yeah. Yeah. Furniture didn't exist with this material before, and it's so beautiful. And I think that was one of the biggest differentiators by just putting out this sheet material that was an alternative to wood. And it was very captivating. It was really captivating to the customers that I had. And I was able to lower my prices by almost 75% because I started using a sheet material good that was non-wood, that was high quality. So that's where I decided to explore and see, okay, how can I scale this? How can I make this more accessible to the greater community of the furniture world, which is 96%, most people? And yeah, I decided to take the tiny steps to kind of, to find a team. We have co-founder Peter who joined, and he was one of the earlier co-founders, and he was Initially, a cabinetmaker, and he had 16 years of experience. So he's actually worked directly with CNC machinery, and he which CNC machinery is also on demand. So it's all kind of made in real time on made in real time to order. So that was great to have him on the team, and together we we decided to really take this further and tackle this big mission and. Make it grow. And so since then, we have there's now four of us and a part-time contractor. So there's five of us altogether. And I feel like this mission just carries us forward of hey, we want to eliminate global furniture waste. We want to eliminate fast furniture. We want to really get absorbed into the new tech and advancements that are out there because a lot of the bigger companies. They're already so into the development and using all these old machinery that it's really hard for them to go backwards. So let's start with a clean slate. Let's be the first ones to kind of go forward by taking in everything that's new, everything that's out there. And one of our biggest challenges that we kind of like didn't really even think about was packaging, furniture packaging. It took us 3 or 4 times as long to package the furniture than it was to make it.

Wow. That's a lot of time.

A lot of time. And we didn't even know this. Once you kind of scale product, once the products get really big, once you need to address your need for a big box, those minimums for any of the companies that make packaging, their minimums are so large that we couldn't even afford it. We couldn't even afford a small batch of large boxes. It kind of gets cut off at this kind of mid-range. You know, it's nothing for nothing of the scale that we needed. And on top of that, because our furniture is such high quality, it's extremely heavy. So like a coffee table set weighs close to 90 pounds.

Wow.

You know, it's really heavy. So even if we can find a company that, hey, oh yeah, we'll make a smaller minimum of boxes for you, they weren't able to make boxes that were heavy and durable enough for what we needed. So packaging somehow became our biggest and number one challenge. And we knew we can make the furniture, but— We never thought about the packaging. So we actually ended up finding a company. They're called Packsize. They've recently just actually re— they were acquired by another company called New Packaging. So now they're New Packaging. I think they just launched as their new name this month. So you might see them as New Packaging, N-U. And they kind of met this missing link for our company and for our vision. Yeah. They came up with their own on-demand, made-to-order packaging systems. So previously, packaging is just like furniture where like they pre-make it or make it large quantities, or they just have it in stock and you buy bulk of it. Same model as the furniture. That's kind of the packaging systems that existed. And until we had that packaging partner, we were literally buying these big rolls of corrugated cardboard And cutting them by hand in order to make these custom origami boxes for all the custom pieces that we had, because we were already a custom company, but we couldn't have 1,000 different kinds of sizes of boxes, right? And it needed to be heavy duty, and it needed to be— there couldn't be any air pockets for it to move around. So after all this, this whole defeat of, oh my gosh, takes us 4 times to To package this as it does to make our product. And we're literally doing origami here every single day. This is exhausting. Why doesn't a company exist that can do this for us? And then they came up and they're kind of our little savior and we plucked them into our, our box. And right now we just have a soft partnership and we're getting pre-made on-demand boxes for them from them. But once we scale enough, they would bring their I don't know, $10 million machine into our arm box, and then be our packaging segment. So every time a customer would order a part, let's say it's a leg that looks like this, they would create a package that looks like that right when the part is created at the same time. So that kind of filled our little missing link of, wow, okay, it's all about curating these partners and they exist. Let's bring them all together to make this happen. And that's kind of where, what really led us to, at this point, to kind of grow in scale of, hey, we already, now we're in the business of curating these partners that exist. Now we've already selected all these amazing tech businesses that are on the market. Now we can scale with them and bring them together in order to make all our visions and all our ideas and goals work. So by seeing that they exist, that we're not overwhelmed of like, wow, we have this big vision, we have to do this, we have to develop our own packaging systems, we have to develop our own upholstery, we have to develop this, you know, this overwhelm of, wow, we have this big vision and it includes all these segments and all these segments are so outdated, we're going to have to develop them all. Once we really saw that, hey, these, these companies already exist in real time, they're already doing their thing. We really just have to put them into the arm box together. That's what really motivated us to take on the leap and grow and scale and make it happen as a startup. So yeah, we were just at the Elevate Tech Conference down in Toronto, which was kind of our big pitch speaking event. And we had so much support and great feedback, and we were selected as the top 3.

Wow.

33 tech startups in the, in a Women+ incubator program. So it's been just overwhelming with all the support and motivation to go forward. And we're just, yeah, we're really excited to, to keep the vision going and really go forward with it all.

Amazing. That's a big achievement to get where you're at. I love what you're doing. It's really impressive. It's quite something big to take on and tackle. Especially, you know, something that people don't really talk about, but it is a big problem. So, you know, and people are looking for building those partnerships because I feel like a lot of times people and we're like, oh, I'm going to get this thing. And then we forget partnerships are there and it can really help us get through. And it's easier when you have a partner in that, that really work with you and support you. And I have to call that out every time somebody mentions it because We focus a lot on, I'm just going to do it all myself. And really you should be doing it with partners. It will make it easier. And you get in the top 33. That's amazing. Congrats on that. Yeah, this has been a really great conversation. Love hearing about everything you're getting done and doing, and I'm really excited to see you scale. And yeah, just wrapping up here. Where's the best place for people to reach out to you, learn more, connect?

Yeah, for sure. So right now you can visit our pilot website, which is reforestdesign.com. And we are operating as Zucchini, and that pilot website will turn into Zucchini eventually. So you'll be able to find the official website once it's launched as Zucchini, zucchini-furniture.com. You could also find us and learn about the tech end of our work at zucchinitech.com.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable 7-figure business, visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below. Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.