Concerns around a slowdown in the U.S. housing market haven’t offset business at Houzz, a rapidly growing online home improvement platform and CNBC Disruptor that helps consumers seek out products and professional designers.
In an exclusive interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Houzz co-founder and CEO Adi Tatarko said that the trends her company’s market research department have been tracking in the space were “actually unbelievable.”
On the homeowners’ side, “the level of consumer confidence is at a high since 2000, so everybody’s expecting this year to continue the trend of the last three years and they do plan massive renovations of their homes,” she said on “Mad Money.”
“On the trade side, it’s that level of confidence,” Tatarko continued. “They do think that the business will grow at least 10 percent this year and for small businesses, the construction and design, this is pretty meaningful, 10 percent. So, very optimistic.”
That optimism has led Houzz, a data-focused platform that Tatarko described as being technology-first, to bolster its now-global business.
“Just between North America and Europe alone, we’re talking about $1.2 trillion that lives offline but [is] gradually moving, probably, online,” the CEO said. “And we are leading this transformation with technology, so it’s a huge opportunity.”
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In May, Houzz hired Richard Wong, the former vice president of finance at Microsoft’s LinkedIn, to be its first-ever chief financial officer — a testament to the e-commerce player’s levels of growth.
Tatarko said that when she and her husband founded Houzz together during a nightmarish remodeling project, they noticed a glaring gap in the interior design and home decoration space. That gap turned into the $1.2 trillion industry Houzz is now trying to harness for its platform.
“When we started as the first homeowners, we realized we have a big problem and then we looked at the industry as a whole and oh, my god, this was such a fragmented, offline, but huge industry that was waiting for the right technology to come and bring it online,” she told Cramer.
The right technology could very well be Houzz’s, at least based on the privately-held company’s self-stated results.
“When we launched … our 3D tool, we had one million products available, which nobody can claim for that volume,” Tatarko said, addressing the competition in 3D from larger homefurnishing retailers like Williams-Sonoma.
“And you know what? We do see the consumer engagement with that,” Tatarko continued. “They are 11x – we talked about it last time – more likely to purchase. So, yes, technology is at the front of the company and we are leading the transformation across the board.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Microsoft.
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