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When Jordan Williams left a career in consumer marketing to manage finance, operations, and marketing at Westward Foundry—the Boulder interior design firm helmed by his wife, Lindy—he was shocked by the furniture industry’s inefficient and antiquated modi operandi. He watched Lindy struggle to obtain dimensions, pricing, and samples from showrooms; shook his head as he completed vendor account applications by hand; and heard clients complain as they waited three or four months to receive their orders. “In the consumer space, there are all sorts of companies spending inordinate amounts of energy solving these kinds of problems,” he says, but “no one was doing it in this industry.”
Enter Saltwolf, the direct-to-designer furniture company the couple launched in May to tackle those challenges head on. The model starts with a modern, e-commerce shopping experience, complete with online access to pricing, SketchUp models, CAD drawings, and free sample kits. Once an order is placed, it heads to Saltwolf’s production partner, a North Carolina furniture manufacturer that turns out heirloom-quality pieces—think: kiln-dried hardwood frames with eight-way, hand-tied, spring suspension systems—in four weeks or less.
Saltwolf’s sofas, sectionals, ottomans, and benches solve another persistent industry problem: “that simplicity is often the hardest thing to find,” Lindy says. “My goal was to create really simple, pretty silhouettes,” with materials to match. Designers can choose from three hardwoods, plus three fabric types (or opt to supply their own): soft Belgian linens, buttery leathers from an Italian tannery, and high-performance velvets in vibrant jewel tones—“because that everything-neutral look is reaching its peak,” Lindy says, “and with Saltwolf, I wanted to do something about what’s next.”
