On being online: The Future Perfect

One article from our new issue, COVER 75, looks at how rug retail has evolved for the digital world

As the nature of human behaviour shifts to adapt to technological advances, companies that track and predict consumer demands and expectations are on target to deliver the shopping experiences of the future. In COVER 75, we caught up with the directors of two forward- thinking brands that sell rugs online, to ask about the nature of their internet presence. Our interview with one of these brands, The Future Perfect, is featured below.

The Future Perfect

This North American design gallery’s three locations—in Manhattan’s West Village, Los Angeles’s Hollywood Hills and San Francisco—present three unique tailored experiences inspired by their locale. At each, collectors are offered the time and space to explore the curated studio-crafted pieces that define The Future Perfect aesthetic, alongside one-of-a-kind and limited-edition works.

Founded by David Alhade in 2003, The Future Perfect ‘shifts the borders between gallerist, dealer, and merchant, opening new pathways for artists and collectors alike’. The way that it uses its online presence to complement its IRL activities is evolving.

Shoppable items on The Future Perfect website include mirrors, wall coverings, textiles, objects, lighting and furniture. There are also rugs from Orior, Nilufar, Shore Studios, Kvadrat, Kasthall, Balmaceda, Claudy Jongstra and Atelier Février, with whom it has just launched an exclusive collaborative collection of three rugs— Bisso na Bisso, Collage and Transparencia—tailored to clients’ demands. Laura Young, gallery director, explains: ‘For Collage, we leaned into historical references with floral Persians combined with Scandinavian elements in the simplicity of the flowers, and somehow the outcome perfectly combines the two.’

When did you start in online retail, and what did the landscape for online selling look like then?

The Future Perfect is, at its core, a brick-and-mortar operation. As we’re a collectable design gallery, it’s important for customers to be able to see and feel the pieces. However the founder, David Alhade , has always been an online guru. Before he founded TFP, he had a successful e-commerce clothing company, so there was no question that The Future Perfect would have an online presence. He built the website as shoppable in 2006, three years after the company launched but, back then, people were not shopping for collectable design online. Despite this, he was able to get significant activity to the site, and found that the traction grew steadily. Pre-Covid, the usefulness of the web store was as a digital showroom.

How did this change over the pandemic and post-pandemic?

There was a major uptick in people shopping online during Covid. The company benefited from the surge in people revamping their spaces and needing to do so digitally. The in-gallery experience is still where the larger pieces sell the best— furniture and the like—but there is a big demand for smaller collectable items that are easily shipped. And lighting is consistently the largest category of sales online.

What is important for your brand in the curation of your collections online and in your showrooms?

We are very focused on our customers’ experience at our gallery spaces, and creating an immersive environment where they can interact with the pieces and envision them in their homes or in a project they are designing. We see our online store as the comprehensive catalogue of our o erings and the in-gallery experience as an ever-changing space where we create movements surrounding the exhibitions of new works. The Future Perfect is not your typical gallery experience, and not your typical e-commerce, either. We have never followed a traditional model but prefer to set the trends and pioneer new ways for people to experience design.

Are there products or prices customers are not willing to engage with online?

Higher-priced pieces are always easier for customers to engage with in person. Larger furniture pieces, textiles and furniture are easier for people to spend more money on when they can interact with them in a tactile way.

How do you see the future of your online retail story?

We are ever evolving in the way we curate shows and programming in our gallery spaces, with events, shows and activations that excite our customers and draw in new people. We will continue to use our website as a catalogue for people who may not live in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco, to let them peruse and find the most interesting and thought-provoking artists and designers working today.

Laura Young, gallery director at The Future Perfect.