Meet Branch: Announcing Our New Brand And Seed Raise

About a year ago, my co-founders and I quit our jobs to build better office furniture. We didn’t have much (any) experience in the furniture world, but our time in commercial real estate and startups had exposed us to some problems that needed fixing. We were convinced that growing companies deserved an end-to-end furnishing option that inspired their teams and adapted to their needs, without breaking the bank.

Over the past year, we’ve accomplished a lot, but we’re just getting started. To that end, we're excited to announce our $2.4M seed round, as well as a new brand for our company: Branch. As we look to the future, we wanted to take a few moments to reflect on how we got here.

We launched Bureau in beta back in March to make premium office furniture more accessible, affordable and flexible for teams of all sizes. In the nine months since then, we’ve hit some noteworthy milestones:

• Launched a comprehensive line of office essentials with employee wellness top of mind, including ergonomic seating, standing desks and open office benching, collaboration furniture, accessories and more
• Furnished offices across eight U.S. cities, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville and our hometown of NYC
• Became the furnishing option of choice for high growth startups like Overtime, Squarefoot, Cargo and Universal Standard, as well as a partner for flexible real estate providers like Breather
• And saw over one thousand employees putting our furniture to good use in their unique office spaces

It’s been an exciting ride—one that’s opened our eyes to where Branch can and will go.

Meet Branch

When we decided to rename the company, Branch stood out from the start. Our new name aligns with our mission to serve growing teams with flexible, high quality furniture that adapts to their changing needs.

We worked with the great team at Simplistic to update our website and visual identity—forest green with vivid blue accents, and structural serif paired with a playful sans font—to evoke our vision of making it easy for companies of all sizes and budgets to create beautiful, dynamic office environments that feel like home.

Branch captures our commitment to companies, teams and the environment—with our trade-in program, we hope to reduce some of the 17 billion pounds of office furniture that go to landfill every year—and we can’t wait to bring a Branch office to more teams around the country.

Furnishing The Future With Great Partners

Our seed round was led by Nine Four Ventures, with participation from Alate Partners, RRE, Dolik Ventures, Rough Draft and a group of fantastic angels active in the proptech and D2C spaces. We couldn’t be more thrilled with the proptech and brand expertise our investors bring to the table, and are glad to have them along for the ride. 

Office furniture is one of those infrequent but critical decisions that make a real difference in how a company builds its culture and team for the long-term. Fundraising is a great milestone, but what it really means is that we have tons of work to do: we’re in the earliest innings of realizing our vision for making furniture work harder for you. Stay tuned for exciting news with regards to our furniture lineup, national (and international) presence, and technology platform coming soon.

Until then, visit our new website or stop by the Branch showroom in Manhattan—we’d love to help you build a beautiful office!