Fashion4Home Adds Fashion Executive Ralf Handschuch as Creative Director; Award-Winning Designer Reinhard Dienes Debuts Whimsical, Eco-Friendly Line of Cardboard Home Furniture


BERLIN--(Marketwire - February 17, 2010) - Fashion4Home, Inc., the first online-only furniture retailer in the US to offer high-end modern furniture at 50-70% less than traditional retail prices, today announced the addition of Ralf Handschuch to its team as well as an exclusive line of eco-friendly cardboard furniture from award-winning international designer Reinhard Dienes. Handschuch will join as creative director, effective immediately and the new exclusive line from Dienes is available for purchase at www.fashion4home.com as of today. Fashion4Home.com is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the German company of the same name, which launched in Europe in November 2009.

As creative director, Ralf Handschuch will be responsible for recruiting designers and shaping the creative vision of the Fashion4Home brand and product assortment. His experience spans both the business and design sides of the fashion industry, having been trained in furniture design but spending most of his time in the apparel industry. He most recently served as a board member at Austrian lingerie company Palmers, where he was responsible for product and marketing strategy. Handschuch founded the fashion label Ralf Handschuch Berlin in 1990, distributed in the US through Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman and Traffic, and he was a partner at fashion label Thome Schulz. He worked as the fashion director of international fashion and cosmetics company JOOP! and founded Wallstreet One Gallery in Berlin. Handschuch is also an advisor to a number of lifestyle brands.

Reinhard Dienes is partnering with Fashion4Home on an exclusive line of eco-friendly, lightweight cardboard home furniture. The line of bookshelves, sideboards and other modern home furnishings convey a sense of humor and whimsy, while being durable, sturdy and 100% recyclable. He has received wide acclaim from the international design community, being nominated as a young talent for the 2010 German National Design Award, placing second in the 2009 China Furniture Design Award and winning the 'Living' category at Interior 08, the annual international design fair held in Belgium. He will be exhibiting at the Milan Furniture Fair in April and has appeared this year in Germany at D3 Professionals, Foundry 2010 and Interior Trends.

"Design is absolutely essential to the concept of Fashion4Home," said Just Beyer, co-founder and managing director of Fashion4Home.com. "Fashion4Home is not about selling knock-offs of contemporary designer products at a discount, it's about a new style of retail business that leverages the Web and consumer involvement to make the real thing affordable. Dienes and Handschuch are the real thing."

Fashion4Home.com is the world's first hub for furniture designers and consumers to interact directly, making the design and purchasing process more engaging, fun and affordable. By eliminating all of the associated costs of inventory, and compressing the entire supply chain, Furniture4Home.com is able to give consumers the highest quality designer furniture at a fraction of the price.

About Fashion4Home.com

Fashion4Home.com is an online retailer focused on delivering high-end designer furniture at 50-70% less than traditional retail prices. Fashion4Home.com is the first US-based hub for the world's best designers to share their ideas and sketches directly with consumers to garner feedback and create new concepts. Fashion4Home.com is committed to providing an intensely rewarding customer experience by delivering the highest quality products at the lowest possible prices. The company was founded by experts from some of the world's largest retail, e-commerce and Internet companies in the world, including eBay Germany, Adidas and Yahoo!. The company is backed by Holtzbrinck Ventures and Rocket Internet. Fashion4Home, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the German company Fashion4Home GmbH.

Contact Information: Contact Information: LaunchSquad 415-625-8555 Fashion4Home(at)LaunchSquad(dot)com