Youth Entrepreneur of the Year 2023: Harrison Gordon and Paige Sandher are scouting spots for CouchHaus

It would be pretty easy for a couple of burgeoning entrepreneurs to take a look at Canada’s furniture industry and decide that the market is too rife with competitors. You have the old-school brick-and-mortar retailers that can be found across the country, the plethora of online startups that have become household names (like Article and Sundays) and the Crate and Barrels of the world that dabble in both.

But that didn’t scare away Harrison Gordon and Paige Sandher, a pair of serial entrepreneurs who are engaged to be married next year. After not finding what they were looking for in the couch world, in 2021 the duo started CouchHaus, a direct-to-consumer couch-in-a-box brand that allows buyers to fully customize their sofas.

In just over two years of doing business, CouchHaus, which has a boutique showroom in Langley and manufactures its furniture in Shanghai, has brought in more than 1,000 orders and hit seven figures in revenue. But Gordon and Sandher aren’t done—they have plans in the works to elevate the brand when it comes to both sustainability and visibility. “Most of our deliveries are done with an electric fleet, and when they can’t be, we offset emissions,” says Sandher, who notes that the company has partnered with GoBolt for fulfillment, currently offers a furniture donation program, and plants 100 trees for every couch it builds.

“We are rethinking the fast-furniture industry and considering the impact of the entire couch-buying journey from start to finish, which I don’t think a lot of companies do right now.”

CouchHaus is also looking for permanent flagship retail stores, likely in Vancouver and Toronto. A recent Mount Pleasant pop-up was successful. “We’re trying to figure it out,” says Sandher, who knows that adding permanent employees (the pair currently contract out work) would be a big step for the company. “We do try to be that main point of contact for people, but I know that in the future that’s going to look a little different.”