Pitch
Investment Opportunity · Fresh Start Furniture Co. · Austin, TX
There is
no other
Fresh Start.
Fresh Start is a resale and furnishing company built on two proven, scaling revenue engines — a retail showfloor doing $30k/month with $50/day in ads and an incomplete system, and a corporate housing furnishing service already running at 1 house every 2 weeks. The investment completes the infrastructure that removes every constraint on both.
$30k/mo
Retail store · growing fast
+$19k/mo
Closing gap from 1/2wk to 1/wk
$2,670/mo
Recurring rental income · 3 projects
$0
Ad spend to generate inbound supply
The business model
Two proven revenue engines.
Both scaling. Both self-reinforcing.
Fresh Start isn't seeking capital because it needs to survive. It's seeking capital because it doesn't need to wait. We are one operational step away from consistent profitability, operating an incomplete system on a minimal budget — and the results already speak for themselves. The question isn't whether this works. It's why wait months for what capital can accomplish in weeks, when the return comes back even sooner?
Engine 1 · Retail store
The showfloor
$30k/mo
And growing — on $50/day in ads
A curated resale showfloor at 1915 Kramer Ln selling quality used furniture at prices that undercut Amazon, Wayfair, and new retail — with same-day availability and a personal buying experience no online platform can match.
- Unbeatable pricing on quality brands — Herman Miller, Steelcase, Juniper
- Physical showfloor creates a buying experience online cannot replicate
- Word-of-mouth is generating more Sell My Furniture submissions than we can currently process — inbound supply at our pricing terms
- Sellers even drop furniture off at our store, eliminating acquisition logistics entirely
- 287 perfect 5-star Google reviews — one of the fastest-growing review profiles for a furniture store in Austin
- ~10,000 Instagram followers — #2 furniture store brand in Austin, ahead of Austin Couch Potatoes, built in under a year
- All of this at $50/day in ads. An unleashed marketing budget changes everything.
Engine 2 · MTR / corporate housing furnishing
The furnishing service
$20k/mo today
~1 house/2wks · target is 1/wk = +$38,970/mo
Full-home furnishing for mid-term rentals, Airbnb operators, and corporate housing providers. Better quality than Cort. Lower cost than Amazon. Delivered and installed anywhere in Texas within one week.
- ~12 completed properties with outstanding results — word of mouth now spreading rapidly
- Unbeatable on price and quality vs. Cort Furniture Rental, the primary competitor
- 1-week installation dispatch anywhere in Texas — a logistical capability most competitors cannot match
- Recurring rental projects now generating $2,670/mo from 3 completed properties
- Tyler Smolens dedicated full-time to locking consistent weekly pipeline
The supply flywheel
"We are effectively a sneeze away from becoming profitable — and everything we need is already in place."
Two more house projects per week is not a stretch goal. Given our unbeatable edge in the Texas market — better quality than Cort, faster deployment than anyone, pricing that undercuts Amazon, and word-of-mouth that is already overwhelming our current capacity — it is an inevitability. We have the team, the reputation, the supply flywheel, and the sales motion. The only thing standing between where we are and meteoric success is the completion of the infrastructure that lets us operate at full potential. Not getting there is the only waste.
The supply advantage
Inventory finds us.
We acquire on our terms.
The supply side of the business is as important as the demand side — and Fresh Start has built an inbound supply position that most resale businesses spend years and millions trying to create artificially.
Channel 1
Sell My Furniture submissions
Word-of-mouth is generating a growing volume of inbound submissions through the website. Individuals with quality furniture contact us proactively. We review, approve, set terms, and they deliver — often to our door.
Channel 2
Direct drop-offs
Sellers increasingly choose to drop furniture at the store rather than coordinate pickup. Zero logistics cost, zero scheduling friction. The store becomes a self-populating inventory hub as our reputation grows.
Channel 3 · upside
B2B office acquisitions
Four organic deals — Action Point, Cotality, Natera, iEnergizer — have generated $340k in resale value from $50k in acquisition cost at zero marketing spend. This channel becomes fully systematic once the facility is complete.
The upside · B2B office acquisitions
Four deals. $340k in resale value.
$50k spent. Zero marketing.
Context — this is what the investment unlocks further
These four deals arrived organically while the business was still in its early footprint. They required no outreach, no advertising, and no dedicated effort beyond being the only company in Austin willing and able to receive a full office's worth of quality furniture in a single transaction. The completed facility — with expanded bays, processing capacity, and dedicated B2B infrastructure — turns this from a happy accident into a repeatable channel that Philip Ozorkiewicz and Tyler Smolens can actively develop.
Deal 1 · July 2025
Action Point
Resale value
~$80k
Acquired for
$15k
Multiple
5.3×
Juniper office furniture. A relocating company with quality inventory they needed removed professionally and quickly. They found us through word of mouth.
Deal 2 · 2025
Cotality
Resale value
~$60k
Acquired for
$2k
Multiple
30×
Herman Miller and Steelcase inventory. A 30× return because the alternative for them was paying someone to haul it away. We paid them instead.
Deal 3 · December 2025
Natera
Resale value
~$150k
Acquired for
$32k
Multiple
4.7×
The largest single acquisition to date. $150k in Herman Miller. This single deal added more inventory value than many months of normal retail operations.
Deal 4 · June 2026
iEnergizer
Resale value
~$50k
Acquired for
$1k
Multiple
50×
Our neighbor office. They needed a convenient solution. We walked next door and acquired $50k in resale inventory for $1,000 — because we were there and ready to say yes.
The competitive position
There is no other Fresh Start.
We've looked.
The combination of physical capacity, cash acquisition model, furnishing service logistics, and the reputation built around all of it — there is no equivalent in Austin and, to our knowledge, no direct equivalent anywhere. This position was earned, not invented.
Advantage 1
Pricing no one can match
Quality used furniture at prices below Amazon, below Wayfair, and far below new retail — because we acquire at 25 cents on the dollar. Customers feel it the moment they walk in.
Advantage 2
1-week Texas deployment
For the furnishing service — full-home installation anywhere in Texas within a week. Cort Furniture Rental, our closest competitor, cannot match this speed or price point.
Advantage 3
Cash acquisition model
We pay cash for furniture that would otherwise cost companies money to dispose of. That asymmetry — we see value, they see a liability — is structural and self-reinforcing.
Advantage 4
Inbound supply flywheel
Word-of-mouth is generating more Sell My Furniture submissions than the current facility can process. The investment unlocks the capacity to say yes to more of what's already coming.
Advantage 5
Physical infrastructure
25,000 SF at 1915 Kramer Ln — showfloor, processing bays, cleaning stations, detailing workshop, shipping lane, and HQ. No competitor has built this for the resale market.
Advantage 6
Dual revenue flywheel
Retail and furnishing reinforce each other — retail funds operations, furnishing projects source and deploy inventory, and recurring rental revenue stacks on top of both.
The financial picture
Grounded in five months
of verified bank statements.
Every figure below is derived from five months of verified bank statement data (Frost Bank, Jan–May 2026) and confirmed weekly payroll. Current revenue is $52,670/month: $30k retail + $20k MTR projects (1 house every 2 weeks) + $2,670 in recurring rentals.
Revenue scenario
Monthly revenue
Monthly costs
Net / mo
Retail ($30k) + MTR 1/2wk ($20k) + rentals today
$52,670
$58,068
–$5,398
Retail ($30k) + MTR 1/wk ($39k) + rentals target
$71,640
$62,810
+$8,830
2× retail ($60k) + MTR 1/wk + rentals · post-buildout
$101,640
$70,310
+$31,330
2× retail ($60k) + MTR 2/wk ($78k) + rentals · full capacity
$140,610
$80,052
+$60,558
The current deficit of –$5,398/mo closes entirely by closing one extra house project every two weeks — the gap from today's cadence (1 every 2 weeks) to Tyler's target (1 every week). That single operational step is worth a $14,228/month net improvement. The retail growth and B2B channel add further upside not modeled above.
Use of funds
$250,000 to remove every
constraint on throughput.
The bottleneck today is not supply, not demand, and not the team. It is physical capacity — how much inventory we can receive, process, and turn around at one time. Every dollar of this investment goes toward removing that constraint.
$71.5k
Physical buildout
Processing bays, electric pallet jack, showfloor fixtures and lighting, box truck wrap, Phase 3 offices, war room, and partner meeting room. All directly increase throughput.
$30k
Operating runway
A 4–6 week cash buffer that eliminates the overdraft cycle and gives the team clean, uninterrupted runway during the revenue ramp to 1 house/week.
$25.1k
Debt clearance
Shopify Credit ($18k) + misc obligations ($3.5k) + pending dev bill ($3.6k) cleared at close. Shopify Capital ($46k) continues auto-repaying from daily revenue.
$23k
Media & content
Full-time media hire, production equipment, and streaming setup. Produces the 6-episode personal brand series documenting the 0→$1M journey — marketing that compounds over time.
$20k
Growth & marketing
$2k/mo store ads, $1k/mo house-per-week campaign, and B2B outreach and events over 10 weeks — the first time ad spend is applied to channels that are already working organically.
$70.4k
Unallocated flex
Held deliberately for Phase 3 rent variability, buildout overruns, and extended runway if needed. This is optionality the deal structure requires — not waste.
The thesis
A proven business on the edge of its breakthrough moment. Capital doesn't make it work — it makes it happen now.
We are not a startup looking for validation. We are a company with a proven model, a growing brand, an inbound supply flywheel, unbeatable market positioning, and a team that has already built something remarkable from nothing — in under two years, on minimal capital, with no outside investment.
The $250,000 investment completes the physical and operational infrastructure that removes the last constraint on our growth. Every week we operate at partial capacity is a week of revenue, reputation, and compounding brand equity left on the table. The return on completing this now — rather than waiting — is not just financial. It is everything.
The ask
$250,000
To complete the buildout of 1915 Kramer Ln as the first fully operational Fresh Start — a working proof of every branch of the business before we replicate it. Two options are available, described at right. Option 2 is designed specifically for an active partner who contributes directly to the growth of the company — not a passive investor collecting returns.
Investment amount
$250,000
Hybrid loan + equity warrant
Repayment source
$8,830/mo
Net surplus at 1 house/week target · growing from there
Full buildout deadline
Sep 15, 2026
10-week execution · building takeover Aug 15
Proposed terms
Option 1 — Standard loan
StructureLoan · 15% interest
Amount$250,000
Repayment window18–24 months
Total repayment (18 mo)~$306,250
Total repayment (24 mo)~$325,000
Option 2 — Active equity partnership
Equity offeredUp to 3%
Implied valuation~$5,000,000
Equity value at 3%~$150,000
Remainder as loan$100,000 · 15% · 18–24 mo
Partner requirementActive · lead generation
Partner benefitPriority + discount · all FSF services
Both options
Building takeoverAug 15, 2026
Buildout completeSep 15, 2026
EntityFresh Start Furniture Co. · TX C-Corp
Contacthello@freshstartfurniture.co
The team
Operators, not theorists.
Every leadership role at Fresh Start is held by someone doing the actual work. The business runs on execution — and the team is built around people who have proven they can execute.
CEO & Founder
Karl Schakel
Founded Fresh Start from scratch in Austin. Designed the business model, pricing matrix, SOP framework, and physical buildout. The operational architect of everything.
COO
Zachary Hazelett
Owns company operations. Ensures the store and processing systems run at the metrics HQ requires across every location.
Chief Creative Officer
Lauren Fogle
Chief Creative Officer. Leads the media team and produces the content series documenting the 0→$1M journey.
Director of Sales
Tyler Smolens
Full-time on locking consistent house-per-week pipeline. One weekly project is worth +$38,970/month to the top line.
Director of Business Development & Real Estate
Philip Ozorkiewicz
Cultivates the B2B relationships and real estate decisions that drive expansion. The four organic office acquisitions are the early proof of the pipeline his role is built to scale.
Technology & Advisory Partner
Business Scales Solution Inc.
Exclusive technology partner. Builds and maintains the Zoho Creator ERP and dashboards that run every operational function in the store.
Built to last — in every sense
Bulletproof by design.
The brand that the world needs more of.
Fresh Start isn't environmentally friendly because it's trendy. It's environmentally friendly because that's literally what the business does — it takes what would otherwise be discarded and gives it a second life. Every piece of furniture we receive gets a Fresh Start. That's not a tagline. It's an operating principle.
The environmental reality
Furniture is one of the largest contributors to landfill waste in America.
The EPA estimates that over 12 million tons of furniture end up in US landfills every year. The vast majority of it — Herman Miller, Steelcase, solid hardwood, quality upholstered pieces — still has years, sometimes decades, of useful life remaining. It ends up in a dumpster because the company that owns it has no efficient way to transfer it. We are that way.
The Fresh Start model
Every acquisition is an act of preservation.
Every piece we receive is cleaned, detailed, assessed, and returned to use — either through our showfloor, our furnishing service, or our rental program. Nothing that comes through our doors with remaining life in it goes to waste. The business model and the environmental mission are the same thing.
The long game
As we grow, we intend to become the authority on furniture refurbishment standards — both in processing systems and finished product quality.
There is no industry-wide standard for what it means to professionally refurbish a piece of furniture. We are building one — through our SOPs, our training systems, our quality benchmarks, and eventually through the scale that makes our approach the default.
Authority position
The go-to standard for professional furniture refurbishment — processing, grading, and quality — across the industry.
Brand resilience
Environmental purpose makes Fresh Start recession-resistant, regulation-friendly, and increasingly attractive to the ESG-conscious corporate clients we already serve.
The name says it all
Fresh Start. That's what we give to everything we receive. A second life, a new home, a renewed purpose. It is not a brand position — it is what we do.
The vision
This outsized success is already happening at our smallest, most underdeveloped state ever. What do you think happens when we actually have a fully built out system — and even a modicum of momentum as a brand with a growing reputation among the companies that could benefit most from what we do?
We have consciously, intentionally positioned Fresh Start so that every building — no, every unit in every building — is simultaneously both a seller and a buyer to us. Both supply and demand.
Furniture touches everything and everyone. It is in every home, every office, every school, every hotel, every hospital, every restaurant, every rental, every stage of every life. It will always be needed. It will always be replaced. And every time it moves — in or out — Fresh Start has a role to play.
Fresh Start has a place at every table, in every industry, everywhere, forever.
I mean, we literally provide the table.
This is our ambition.