Comfort Works' husband-and-wife team Rachel Yeng and Henry Chandra's custom sofa slipcovers are a sustainable alternative to disposing of good sofas
Henry Chandra and Rachel Yeng's business success started over 10 years ago with an old, shabby sofa.
A young married couple in Melbourne, Indonesian-born Chandra and Malaysian-born Yeng were big believers in a hands-on DIY approach when it came to home improvement—even when grappling with the decision of whether to ditch or restore a tattered old sofa that Yeng's cat had a field's day with.
For the sake of their budget, the couple was forced to salvage the unfortunate couch with a lot of hard work and improvisation. Little did they know, of course, that their bespoke sofa slipcover would spark a flow of requests from friends for more covers, which soon led them to found Comfort Works.
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Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Comfort Works has saved over 100,000 sofas around the world from being thrown into landfills, especially when recycling isn't often an option. The success of Comfort Works in countries like the US, Canada, UK, Australia (where they first started) and also in Southeast Asia demonstrates a glaring pain point that many homeowners today face with big-ticket furniture items like sofas.
If your sofa is still in good condition structurally, should you spend on costly upholstering to improve its appearance? Or should you live with the mess if a new sofa isn't on the cards?
"The truth is, a lot of people are living with ugly, old sofas," muses Chandra, who worked at M&C Saatchi before starting Comfort Works. "Most of the time, it’s the skin of the sofa that’s an issue: the fabric on top is old, dirty, discoloured or torn. And if that particular sofa is discontinued and sofa covers are no longer available, there’s no other option besides upholstery or getting a new sofa. All of a sudden, you're restricted to this 'buy and throw' culture," he adds.
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