- Remote work is here to stay, but there’s a snag: physically kitting out a home office for your team is costly and time-consuming.
- Enter Hofy, a platform that provides and manages physical equipment for home-based employees anywhere in the world.
- From laptop repairs to ergonomic chairs, Allwork.Space finds out how Hofy is capitalizing on current trends and helping to make hybrid work, work.
Remote work is here to stay. Employees across the globe have made their preferences pretty clear, with many threatening to quit if they are forced back into the office full-time.
The permanent shift to remote work hasn’t come without its challenges; companies and employees alike are still working on figuring out issues like taxes, hiring, onboarding, home office setups, and worker rights.
This has opened a new market of opportunity. Companies that are making the shift to remote work easier on employees and employers are experiencing tremendous growth (I.e. Zoom, Remote.com, Deskpass).
There’s a new kid on the block that is capitalizing on the shift to remote work:
Hofy.
Hofy is a platform that enables companies to provide and manage physical equipment for remote employees anywhere in the world. The company is backed by $15.2 million in funding and appears to have filled a much-needed gap in the remote work world.
Hofy has grown its revenue by 10x in the past six months, its customer base has grown by over 300%, and it has not seen a single customer churn.
Allwork.Space spoke with Sami Bouremoum, CEO and cofounder of Hofy to learn more about the company and its plans for the future of work.
Allwork.Space: Tell us about Hofy. How did you identify this particular need in the market?
Sami Bouremoum: In early 2020 we were watching companies go fully remote in response to the lockdowns around the world. So, we asked ourselves: with such an immediate shift, what breaks and what doesn’t break when you turn into a remote company overnight?
Software obviously doesn’t break; in fact, it works even better remotely. But we did realize that what was going to break for business were the physical aspects of remote work, like repairing a laptop or getting everyone an ergonomic chair while everyone worked from home.
This is what inspired Hofy. We conceived something that would plug the physical hole in companies’ operating systems. We built a landing page describing the idea for Hofy’s all-in-one service to equip remote teams, bought the domain, and started selling.
We were pretty successful early on and started serving our first major customer within 6 weeks.
Allwork.Space: That’s amazing. Based on how quickly you started serving major clients, you clearly identified a need that needed to be filled ASAP. Based on your clients and their orders, can you tell us a bit about the equipment most companies/workers are currently looking for?
Our customers want consistent, high quality remote working experiences for their team members, wherever they are in the world. Popular product categories include laptops, monitors, headsets, webcams, ergonomic chairs, sit-stand desks, and monitor arms.
Allwork.Space: What does a basic home office setup look like for Hofy clients?
A basic setup looks like a laptop, monitor, headset and ergonomic chair. Most customers also go for an electric sit-stand desk.
Allwork.Space: I can see how Hofy is an attractive solution for companies embracing a remote-first model. But what about companies that opt for hybrid work arrangements, does Hofy make sense for these organizations financially?
Workers who go back to the office will still spend several days per week working from home. At which point, employers are required to provide ergonomic home office setups. Even in a hybrid model, Hofy remains the best financial solution for a company when you factor in time saved for the internal People and IT teams.
Handling compliance, logistics, and admin for a portfolio of thousands of pieces of equipment becomes really time consuming really fast – at Hofy, we’re set up to do this around the world, so companies should make use of the infrastructure we’re building.
Allwork.Space: You’re operating in over 50+ countries. How does Hofy deliver equipment across countries? Is Hofy partnering with local vendors or using international shipping companies?
We have a network of Hofy distribution centers as well as local suppliers and partners in every region we serve. We also rely on our internal logistics team’s expertise to get international shipments to our customers as quickly as possible, without our customers’ employees receiving import bills. That’d be an awful customer experience!
Allwork.Space: I understand you recently raised $15.2 million in funding. How will the funds be used? What are Hofy’s plans for the future?
We will use the funds to make more countries available to our customers, as well as expanding the breadth of services available in each country. Hofy doesn’t just get products to our end customers – we also handle repairs, collections, and IT support – the whole product lifecycle. We have some really exciting product announcement coming up soon, including integrations with other HR services, which will save even more time for our customers.
