At A Glance

Ethnik Living sells home-furnishing goods that are ethically sourced and fashioned from the ethnic traditions found all over the world. The result: essentials that stand out. The design twists on traditional items and focus on customer satisfaction have been the twin engines powering the company’s growth. As you learn about Ethnik Living’s incredible growth, you’ll see why Mehmet believes there’s no ceiling in E-Commerce and understand the importance of using your team’s expertise to improve workflows.

Who is Mehmet?

Meet Mehmet Can Ilker, Co-Founder of Ethnik Living

About Ethnik Living

Ethnik Living is an e-commerce brand, which began in the depth of the pandemic. The timing created both a challenge and a unique opportunity. “On the one hand, all the factories were closed down,” Mehmet said. “On the other hand, people were doing a lot of online shopping.” With warehouses in California and New Jersey, Ethnik Living now ships worldwide and its items have been featured in Vogue magazine, the Chanel flagship store and (most importantly) the homes of its customers.New items are now being launched every two weeks or so.

Mehmet’s Journey

Mehmet studied engineering and has a passion for design and art. He co-founded Ethnik Living in 2021. He is also the co-founder of Roasberry, an analytics and attribution tool that makes MTA and pixel tracking available for brands of all sizes. Ethnik Living was bootstrapped, and for the first three years, the founders did not take a dime out of the business. That was a challenge when the company began to grow. It was also an essential step in building Ethnik Living into the brand  it is. In the fourth year the business stabilized and the founders were able to start drawing salaries. “You have to do this once in your lifetime,” Mehmet said, “and that is supposedly going to be like two or three years unless you’re an SaaS (software as a service) or software company.”

Ethnik Living’s team structure

A new creative headquarters opened in Southern California in December 2024, but it remains a truly global company. One close-knit team works out of the L.A. office, there is another team in Turkey and another group working remotely. Ethnik Living has customer-support agents in eight East Asian countries, and uses contractors in the U.S. to help with operations and marketing.

CX that exceeds expectation

Furniture is difficult to move. Much of it is fragile, requiring extra layers of packaging. The items can’t be handed over to FedEx or UPS. Damage and delay are looming dangers. Because of this, Ethnik Living has doubled down on making sure customers have a good experience. Customer support is provided through a number of channels: phone, SMS text messaging, email and live chat. There’s also a help center. “The key priority is to make sure the customer is really happy,” Mehmet said. There’s a 30-day return policy, free shipping and returns on items in the U.S. and lifetime warranty on items such as mirrors. “I don't think a lot of furniture companies are doing this on the market because it's really expensive,” Mehmet said. “But we really try to provide that because I always want to make sure the customers are really happy with their order.” One customer who’d recently purchased a new property was waiting on a few particular items for a house-warming party. Then the timeline for the party moved up. The result was a flurry of phone calls within Ethnik Living to alter the shipping schedule and get the items to their destination earlier than initially planned.

“They actually put out a really cool review and thanked me personally after this was resolved,” Mehmet said. “It's always fulfilling to see that your items, your products are actually used by people and they're quite happy with it.”

AI aids in constant improvement

Ethnik Living empowers its staff, setting up weekly meetings with the specific goal of identifying repetitive tasks and discussing ways to reduce them. to provide input on everything from design to production. Custom AI programs are used to help in this process as well as other software. “What I'm really focused on is two things,” Mehmet said. “One: Removing manual repetitive work, because that is prone to error by its nature. Two: Having a lean team of smart people that can actually take initiative and take ownership in what they do.

“If you have this kind of a culture in your business, you're going to thrive because you actually allow people to prove themselves.”

It pays to plan ahead

Inventory management is critical. Not only do home furnishings occupy a significant amount of physical space, but the variety of colors and sizes automatically doubles and even triples the number of SKUs. When it comes to big sales periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Mehmet said the company is preparing five, six months in advance. The best way to predict demand, however, has been to study how the projections from previous years compare to the actual results. “At this stage, we’re quite accurate with them,” Mehmet said. “So it’s really helpful.”

What’s next?

One of the top priorities for Ethnik Living moving forward is to make sure make sure that every  aspect of the customer experience reflects the brand’s identity. This entails everything from the messaging the company uses to its delivery procedures. From the packing materials that are used to the Instagram reels that are posted. From the design concepts that customers associate with Ethnik Living’s home furnishings to the confidence they have that they’ll be satisfied with their purchases. “We want to make sure that customers perceive us in the same way that we see ourselves,” Mehmet said.

Advice to other entrepreneurs

The thing that Mehmet loves most about E-Commerce is also one of the biggest challenges of working in this space. “The only thing that's going to limit you is going to be yourself,” he said. That means when you do encounter a problem, you may have to rethink a decision you’ve previously made. When that happens, Mehmet said it helps to try and look at yourself from a distance, to take a more clinical approach to evaluating what has gone wrong and what can be done to improve the situation. “There are always going to be bottlenecks,” he said. “What you have to do is identify the ones that can be solved in a scalable way.” It also helps to learn from the experiences of others. LinkedIn, Facebook and X are all populated by smart, successful business leaders who are sharing the insights they’ve gained. “You can actually stand on the shoulders of giants,” Mehmet said.

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