We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lotta Lundaas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lotta below.
Hi Lotta, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
I have a passion for furniture built into my DNA with a grandfather who was a carpenter and I grew up in a family that lived by a DIY ethos. When I moved to the U.S. from Sweden in 2013, I was frustrated with the cookie-cutter styles I saw in big-name furniture stores, but anything unique and high-quality was far out of my price range. I returned to the familiar: IKEA. It was affordable and durable, and I knew I could redesign its simple pieces with new hardware or accents.
The idea of Norse Interiors, specializing in customizing IKEA furniture, came as I worked as a business developer at a telecom startup. I was asked to decorate our new office, and we didn’t have a big budget, so I did what I had always done; I went to IKEA and tried to hack it to make it on-brand. That’s when I had the idea of Norse. I wanted to liberate people from cookie-cutter styles and make custom furniture available for everyone – and not just people with deep pockets.
Each year we throw away 12 million tons of furniture, and starter furniture like IKEA is a big part of that. The Scandinavian design ethos is to be in harmony with the environment and make things last rather than replace them. That’s done by sourcing material that is durable and with a low carbon footprint. So that’s where our focus is at. At Norse Interiors, you’ll find luxurious, custom-made replacement pieces to turn IKEA furniture storage into bespoke works of art. We stand true to the Scandinavia ethos and only use SFI-certified MDF wood and our wood collection consists of walnut and white oak, which grows locally in the US. We don’t chemically alter or stain it, because you can’t beat the nature of nature. We produce everything in Kentucky to minimize our carbon footprint.
Finally, we also believe that if people get to be their own furniture designer, they can create perfect pieces and you don’t want a perfect piece to end up in a landfill, so you keep it longer. Retrofitting an IKEA system with Norse means you upcycle durable, inexpensive foundations to create personalized furniture that’s stunning, sustainable, and just plain smart. DIY has never looked better.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Lotta Lundaas, and I’m the founder of Norse Interiors, and we’re experts in “IKEA hacking” (customizing IKEA furniture). I’m Swedish-born but have lived in the US since 2013 and after leading several companies, from startups to larger companies, in different executive roles, I launched Norse in 2018 (one week before my first out of two boys was born).
Norse is revolutionizing the luxury furniture shopping experience by letting customers design bespoke pieces from sturdy, American-manufactured fronts and panels to fit over existing IKEA frames for storage cabinets, TV stands, dressers and nighstands. The virtual design tool on our site allows each customer to seamlessly design and customize an IKEA piece, and customers can see how Norse’s different components and colorways instantly transform the piece.
I’ve always loved IKEA; it’s super modular, and affordable, and I find their commitment to sustainability admirable. I’ve used IKEA in many different stages of my life, and I have always tried making them more personal and less cookie-cutter, so one day I thought why not turn it into a business? My grandfather was a carpenter, and my father is a serial entrepreneur, so I feel like launching my own furniture business and disrupting the industry is in my blood.
The real starting point for Norse was when I volunteered to decorate the office space at a telecom startup I was working for at the time. I resorted to IKEA again, as it was one of the few affordable options, but I wished I could make it more “on brand.” I realized there was an opportunity to work with American manufacturers and bring timeless, Scandinavian design to the furniture market at an affordable price point.
The brand rests on three pillars: customization, Scandinavian design, and sustainability (with IKEA hacking at its core).
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I considered myself very lucky when I decided to start Norse in terms of how easy it was for me to raise the initial capital. At some point in my earlier life, I worked as a business analyst, so I started off by doing extensive market research, then building business models plotting out different scenarios, and finally creating a longer deck with all the marketing and product ideas I had. I’ve spent the bigger part of my career in marketing, so I knew that bit very well. Then, both my father and husband are serial entrepreneurs and I’ve worked at a few startups, so I understood the startup concept. The only missing piece was that I had never made, or even worked with furniture before. However, with a deck in hand, I reached out to family and friends and closed my one and only round within a week, and I’ve been able to grow the business from that initial capital.
I have to add, that even if the capital part was very smooth, there have been many times when I’ve wanted to give up. For instance, a few days before I was supposed to launch, my manufacturer went bankrupt, and I just couldn’t find anyone who wanted to bother with my small volumes, so I was very close to not even launching (I was also pregnant with my first child at the time, which didn’t help matters).
Being an entrepreneur has been the most challenging but also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, and I don’t think you’re able to learn what you learn as a startup founder as an employee. It’s not for everyone, but I encourage everyone who can and want, to try it.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I’ve spent the largest part of my career working within online marketing, but that doesn’t mean I have a magic formula for building a strong social presence. Right now, Norse has about 100k followers across all platforms, and it’s taken a lot of hard work the last couple of years to achieve that.
Here are my advice to create a strong following:
1) Be consistent and genuine. Don’t deviate from your brand’s core values. You need to put out the same message in all channels, including your website, or if you get a chance to do interviews.
2) Select the right social media channels. Choose which social media platforms you want to focus on depending on the content you’ll share. I would recommend only focusing on two unless you’re a bigger team, but make sure you register your brand name across “all” social media channels to protect your name and select 2-3 more channels to “look alive on.” For me, making furniture, Instagram has been pivotal for both paid and organic content. I used to have Pinterest as my second social media channel, but Tiktok has replaced that. My additional channels are Facebook and Linkedin, where I post about once a month.
3) Utilize tools. Don’t settle with manual work when there are great tools to plan out and schedule posts – it helps to be more efficient (which allows you to post more frequently), shows you analytics of when the best time to post, and lets you preview how your grid will look like. I use Later, but there are plenty of tools to choose from. You can also use tools to find the best hashtags, and don’t forget smart editing tools for both photos and videos.
4) Get people engaged. The algorithm will show content that people interact with (it shouldn’t be a one-way communication where you just push out content – it needs to be a dialog). Encourage your followers and customers to share your brand – give incentives if needed, but if you’re having a genuine dialog, they will more likely be willing to share. Also, work with influencers if that’s a possibility. An influencer collaboration doesn’t have to be expensive, and sometimes just a product swap. Find someone who already follows you with a big social media following or someone within your niche. They don’t have to have a huge following – I’ve personally had more success with influencers with 15-15k followers.
5) Know the trends. We’re all at the mercy of each platform’s algorithm, and it’s constantly changing, so you need to as well. Listen to webinars, read up, and look at what other successful brands are doing (they probably have larger teams who can analyze the trends to a greater extent than you have time for). Right now, reels are front and center and pairing them with trending audio tracks, but that might not be the thing in a few months, so keep track of the trends.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://norseinteriors.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/norseinteriors/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NorseInteriors/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/norse-interiors/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NorseInteriors
- Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@norseinteriors
Image Credits
Norse Interiors