Sep 14, 2019

Homepolish CEO told designers the company owes “millions” to the bank. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer Back in 2016, home design start-up Homepolish raised $20 million in funding . This week, CEO Noa Santos told designers it’s all gone. “We frankly don’t have the funding left to run the business on an ongoing basis,” Santos said in a video conference call on Wednesday with the company’s remaining employees, according to a recording provided to Intelligencer. “The bank has the legal right to all money it is owed, which is in the millions, before any potential creditor would receive any money owed to them, that includes me.” The company laid off most of its staff and abandoned its Manhattan lease in August, the design trade publication Business of Home reported last month. In June, remaining staff were placed on an “unpaid leave of absence.” “Many were then asked to sign contracts indicating no formal promise of backpay or a bonus,” BOH also reported. (Santos told BOH he intended to offer those things, despite the contracts, if he was able to secure more funding.) On the call Wednesday, Santos said that designers will not be paid any owed earnings and customers will not be receiving refunds. Santos urged the more than 200 people on the call to “think intelligently … as opposed to jumping to legal action which could work very much against all of us.” Founded in 2012 by Santos and partner Will Nathan — Nathan, a former investment banker and early BuzzFeed employee, was an early design client of Santos’s — Homepolish was supposed to make for a seamless and trustworthy interior-design experience at a slightly more affordable price point than your typical design service. (Designers charged a flat $130 per hour, plus furniture commission, Santos explained to Forbes in an interview for a 2016 “30 under 30” list. Santos was 27 at the time.) The idea was Homepolish would act as a middleman, connecting clients with pre-vetted designers and contractors, for an undisclosed cut . Homepolish also offered clients discounts on furniture brands, including West Elm. Notable clientele, according to the Homepolish website, included Karlie Kloss , Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine Cohen , and billionaire heiress Hannah Bronfman . (Bronfman and her husband are described as “DJ influencers.”) On Instagram, where the company now has nearly 2 million followers, Homepolish drew attention thanks to a perfectly curated feed of aesthetic #goals. In lieu of payments designers are owed, Santos said they could cobble together a “resolution” from a list of three options. One: allowing designers to keep working with any clients and referrals they’ve gained through Homepolish. Two: continuing to assign new clients to designers. The Homepolish website is still operating normally and Santos has not disclosed its financial state. “We get clients coming to us everyday,” Santos said, telling designers they could keep “100 percent of what you charge, compensating you in exchange for any financial shortfall.” And three: Santos said he could promote designer’s work on Homepolish’s social-media channels, “so you can continue to build your personal brands.” Santos did not respond to requests for comment. The Homepolish name was tarnished in recent months, notably after Ilana Wiles, an Instagram influencer known as @MommyShorts , started posting to her 160,000 followers about her “absolutely awful home renovation experience” with the company earlier in 2019. (Melanie Elturk, CEO of Haute Hijab, also shared a similar story on Instagram about using Homepolish to renovate her company’s office. “We had a TERRIBLE experience with @homepolish (DO NOT USE THEM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES) and had to find a completely new designer (not to mention all the time and money wasted