Heba El Gabaly, founder &amp; CEO of Efreshli, was NileFM's guest on "The Big Drive" with Marc Curtis, and she told us all about the concept of Efreshli, and the upcoming furniture exhibition "District 5 Home by Efreshli".
What is the concept of Efreshli and how does it work?
Efreshli is an online platform that makes interior design accessible, the idea is that anybody can have elevated and affordable designs, no matter what their style or budget. We created it about 5 years ago and it has grown now to have over 150 local brands, so it merges between technology and professional designers to have a much wider base of customers.
The idea of Efreshli is that people can see so many different brands on social media, but it&rsquo;s extremely fragmented, and there&rsquo;s still no solution for them to be able to do everything in one place, and Efreshli aggregates that as it showcases different brands on the platform, and it makes it much easier for the customer to go through a seamless process from beginning to end.
What we recognized was that not everybody has access to interior designers, so if you want to hire an interior designer, you probably have to spend a lot of money, so this - Efreshli - is for people who wouldn&rsquo;t normally go to an interior designer.
The packages are extremely affordable, so we have from the mini which is 2,000 pounds for a room, to the premium which is 12,000 pounds for a room, and what you have is a professional designer who helps you with their expertise, but also the technology which makes the whole process a lot more automated, you get the design online, a lot of the interactions are happening online, which make it a lot more seamless.
Tell us more about the upcoming furniture exhibition &ldquo;District 5 Home by Efreshli&rdquo;, and what makes it different than other furniture exhibitions?
The idea of "District 5 Home by Efreshli" is to have a place that is more intimate and curated, so when you go in you recognize those brands, we choose different brands big, small, and luxurious side by side to help customers furnish their homes.
The fair is extremely collaborative, so at the center of this exhibition, we have something called &ldquo;The Designers Playground&rdquo; where we invited four leading designers in Egypt to basically do an impromptu exhibit using the different products from the different brands in the fair.
We have curated spaces that recognize that the customer wants to furnish from many different places, and so we brought this all together for them in one place.
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How did the collaboration between Marakez and Efreshli come to be?
So Marakez, as you know, is a real state developer, they believed in us from the very beginning, they were a very early investor in Efreshli, so we had a business relationship with them.
what we&rsquo;ve seen is that they keep bringing on different players from different events, so they&rsquo;ve had a food event, they&rsquo;ve had a fashion event, and when they thought about home they came to us, and of course, we said yes.
We haven&rsquo;t done an event before, this is the first time but we are very excited for the opportunity.
The main theme of the exhibition centers around nature, can you tell us about the significance of that theme?
Nature, for fashion, and for home, has always been an underlying theme. We all love nature, I think nature helps ground us, it relaxes us, it takes us away from the everyday business and stress of life.
We wanted this exhibition to be curated, we didn&rsquo;t want it to just be scattered, so we thought what else better than nature?
What we did is that we added a twist, we made it the four elements of nature, which are air, water, earth, and fire, which is a wide enough range, to give brands creativity and create some contrast.
So with air, you&rsquo;re going to get very peaceful, light colors, with fire you&rsquo;re going to get the vibrant, bold expressions of nature, and we are looking forward to seeing the different brands having different interpretations and expressions of what they going to bring to this fair.
The upcoming exhibition will showcase 70 prominent Egyptian brands, what were the selection criteria and process for picking the brands that are going to take part in the event?
The criteria are the customers. so for us, at Efreshli we always bring the customer to the center. We have very different brands, but all of them are either innovators, or taste-makers, and we know that the customers like these brands.
We have the whole range, we have from the furniture makers, to the rugs, to the plants, to the accessories. We have small brands that started 2 years ago, and we have brands that started 20 years ago, and that&rsquo;s what we love about it, it&rsquo;s a very diverse crowd that we know our customers love, and when they shop for their home they don&rsquo;t go to one brand, they go to many of these brands.
What does the &ldquo;District 5 Home by Efreshli&rdquo; exhibition aim to achieve?
We have a short-term goal and a long-term goal.
The short-term goal of course is to be able to cater to customers before summer, so they can come to one place and they can see what&rsquo;s available, the new collections from a lot of different brands, summer offers, and they can finish their summer home and find that one missing piece. Also for many brands to have a location so they can showcase their craftsmanship.
The long-term goal is to create a market where designers are a lot more accessible, where brands are collaborating, where the customers are at the center, and where people are exchanging ideas, to keep growing this design community.
Are there any plans to make the exhibition an annual event, or it&rsquo;s just going to be a one-time event?
Because I&rsquo;m an entrepreneur you don&rsquo;t really think beyond the current exhibition, you think &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just going to do this because it&rsquo;s a great opportunity&rdquo;, but after we started getting into it, we got so many requests to do it twice a year, to do it annually, so I think it&rsquo;s going to be more than just one-time event for sure.
You can tell before doing the event from the amount of inquiries that have come in, that people really want this, so our expectation is that it will become an annual event.
What makes District 5 the most suitable place to host the upcoming exhibition?&nbsp;
District 5 is a big mall, it&rsquo;s beautiful and spacious, and it&rsquo;s aesthetically pleasing.
They approached us and they&rsquo;ve been innovators, they&rsquo;ve done several events, they&rsquo;re always doing events, and I think what they have in common with us is that they have the customer at the center, so I think it&rsquo;s great to do it there.
Who would benefit the most from attending the upcoming exhibition?
I think everybody would benefit, definitely people who are furnishing their summer homes, and looking for missing pieces or more inspiration, I think it&rsquo;s the perfect time for it, the exhibition will have offers and new collections. As well as interior designers who are always looking to finalize their clients&rsquo; homes, and who want to see some of the best brands, all in one place.
We also have a few talks on the opening night, about design and the merge between technology and design, so yeah I think anybody can come, anybody creative who wants to be inspired can come.
Since Efreshli is an online platform, why is it important to have an exhibition?
Online is great because you can widen your reach and it makes it so much easier for people to discover products, but what we&rsquo;ve seen with furniture because it&rsquo;s a high-value item, there&rsquo;s a good percentage of people who want to touch, feel, and see the product. So once in a while having this type of exhibition gives them this trust in the product.
We see that the hybrid model is much more effective than just having an online model.
Are there any plans for Efreshli to expand to the international market?
Of course, definitely in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, that&rsquo;s what we have our eyes on next, and then maybe shipping internationally.
But Egypt is such a big market with so many challenges to solve, so we&rsquo;ve been working on those first, but definitely, we are looking at geographical expansion.
When does the exhibition start?
It starts tomorrow morning, 11 am, and it will go on for 9 days, till June 14th.
Tomorrow night we have some talks scheduled with Sync school, they organized three very interesting talks for designers, customers, and creatives.
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