Austin’s Couch Potatoes is a furniture store with three Texas locations where you can outfit your home from the living room to the bedroom. But, things looked a lot different in 2009, the year before brothers Travis and Brian Morgan and college friend Daniel Anthony started the company. Then, Brian, who originally wanted to be a pastor, and Daniel, who wanted to be a stockbroker, were buying and selling unsold, returned or slightly damaged department store merchandise – that ranged from furniture to lingerie- on eBay and Craigslist. When Travis joined them and they decided to expand and get a warehouse, they each had stints where they were living in the warehouse.
Today, the company has its own line of designs and is focused on three main brand initiatives: Love People, Bring Comfort and Fair Trade. They also have a strong thread of giving back and making the world better weaved throughout the company. They partner with The Texas Transitional Center to employ people exiting the prison system, and share, “Our roots have always been in the salvage business and our strong family faith taught us to look past the situation that was dealt to a person and see the potential when given the opportunity to thrive. Salvaging stuff proved time and time again that products still have value even if they’re out of season, or slightly imperfect. How much more is a human being, that has God-given breath in their lungs, “salvageable” - or a better word is beautiful and full of potential that just needs to be discovered or given the opportunity.”
And those comfy bean bags (available in 50 different fabrics!) – they’re essentially made from trash and they’re helping save the environment. “They were birthed out of necessity,” says Dan. “Foam scraps were piling up and we couldn’t bear to throw them in the garbage. So, we saved them for months. Finally, we jokingly saw an opportunity to turn this waste into something useable - bean bags. But the foam was all different size remnant pieces. We also had tons of Styrofoam filling up 2-3 dumpsters a week after unpacking the packing trash from the manufacturers. How wasteful is that? Just to think everyone in our industry is doing the same thing - filling our landfills with stuff that takes 500 years to break down...So we sought out a unique milling process and equipment from Eastern Asia to grind down this waste into a mix of amazing comfort! It’s truly breathtaking every time you sit on one of these bags!” Find them and more at https://austincouches.com/