How 2Modern Curates Beautiful Designs Through Connections

When Greg Finney founded 2Modern in 2003, the pioneering company was one of the first online purveyors of fine furnishings.

Even though buying furniture online is commonplace now, more than 20 years later, the 2Modern team is still offering a unique experience to its customers. When someone buys a piece from 2Modern, they aren’t getting a mass-produced chair picked out of a warehouse and placed on a shelf in 2,000 locations. Instead, they’re getting a new heirloom piece that was hand-curated by creatives who are truly passionate about design.

A Close-Knit Team of Creative Minds

“We source the most beautiful designs from around the world,” said Bay Bertea, Chief Brand Officer at 2Modern. “We form relationships with designers and makers — it’s dynamic when we’re sourcing from our partners.”

Bertea has been a part of the 2Modern team for over a decade, guiding the company’s voice, tone, and overall editorial curation. She, along with the company’s 40 employees, lives and breathes design — resulting in a shopping experience unlike anything a customer will find at big-box furniture stores.

This is partially due to the fact that 2Modern is an independent, self-funded company without investment from any private equity stakeholders who could influence its direction.

“Independence allows us creative freedom to align with our core values and do what we do best,” Bertea said. “But it also relies on a lot of grit, hard work, and curiosity. We have to stay focused on our core mission and values.”

The entire 40-person team is focused on bringing intentionality and originality to its design catalog — and this passion can be felt across all aspects of the business.

“Everyone here is design and audience obsessed, not to mention smart and creative. We even have screenwriters and musicians in our operations department,” Bertea said. “We’re a bunch of creative people very thoughtfully engaged to pair our audience with beautiful designs from around the world. The passion of our team is really unrivaled.”

But while every member of the 2Modern team has their own favorite design aesthetic and pieces, they aren’t curating a catalog based on their personal tastes alone. Instead, the 2Modern team analyzes an array of signals to figure out what their customers will want next.

A Multifacted Approach to Trend Discovery

Bertea describes 2Modern’s curation process as both an art and a science, requiring attention to trend details as well as an understanding of what will look good in someone’s space.

“We have to have an intuition of what’s great, timeless, artful, and thoughtful in terms of our manufacturing partners,” Bertea said. “And then we have to marry that with data from our partners, information from our product categories, and the signals we read in the market.”

There are several places Bertea looks for those market signals.

1. International Design Shows

“Our team, myself included, goes to trade shows all over the world,” said Bertea. “And we’re not just looking at the showrooms — we’re meeting with designers and founders and makers firsthand.”

During their global scouting missions, the 2Modern team is focused not just on good craftsmanship, but a good story behind each piece of furniture that they source. These stories and relationships shine through in the team’s intentional curation of select design pieces.

“We don’t want to have hundreds of pages of lounge chairs that aren’t doing anyone a service,” Bertea said. “People are busy. They’re trusting us to find something special and bring it to the surface.”

2. Fashion Houses

While wearable fashion and design trends are not one and the same, Bertea has a keen eye for spotting overlapping themes and signals that indicate consumers’ overall design preferences are shifting.

“I really do stay close to fashion,” Bertea said. “For example, a few years ago, a forward-trending brand, Libertine, had a head-to-toe toile de nantes suit. I took note of that because we were doing toile wallpaper. I watched that trend before we really dove in and curated around it, because of these types of forward signals.”

Bertea notes that today, toile and other historic patterns like damask and chinoiserie are increasingly popular as part of a trend she calls “the new traditionalist.” 2Modern was ready for this aesthetic design shift thanks to the team’s attention to changes in wearable fashion trends.

“It’s all a balance of trying to determine among these signals, what has lasting appeal, allure, and a timeless element to it,” Bertea said.

3. Online Conversations

When the 2Modern team isn’t traveling the globe, they’re paying close attention to what the world is saying online.

“I really like using Exploding Topics to connect the dots, to look at trend lines and see what’s happening outside of furniture and design, and what that says about our customer as a whole,” Bertea said. “For example, there was a boneless couch concept that came up as a trend … that tells me that people are seeking comfort, places of refuge — there’s a desire for relaxed silhouettes that aren’t so upfront.”

Bertea explained that while something like a ‘boneless couch” might sound very modern and not inline with other trend signals that point to popular “new traditionalism”, there are actually overlaps between the two.

“The boneless couch coincides with the idea of a flop sofa. If you look at the feminine silhouettes of popular sofas that have a thin arm, perhaps a flutter skirt, many of them are very new traditional, — and layered with pillows for the flop sofa kind of look,” Bertea said.

“These sofas also directionally connect to what we’re seeing in a rise in demand for reclining seats … seeing this trend line was yet another indicator that we’re on the right track and reading signals correctly,” Bertea said. “We might have intuition toward something in the market, but seeing it showing up in Exploding Topics’ data is yet another confirmation.”

2Modern keeps an open line of communication with their brand partners, too, so any new trend discoveries can benefit all parties involved in the 2Modern curation process.

“We meet with the makers of the pieces we sell, we know them, and provide information both ways,” Bertea said. “If we see a trend on the uptick, we’ll share that with them for their innovation. It’s a really symbiotic relationship.”

A Focus on the Future

This symbiotic approach — and Bertea’s ability to keep an eye on future trend lines — is incredibly important to the company’s success. A business like 2Modern can’t take a “fast fashion” approach to production. They need to spot trends far enough in advance that there’s time for curation, manufacturing, promotion, sales, and shipping.

And to make matters even more complex, these timelines vary based on who 2Modern is selling to.

“We have a B2C business and a B2B business. A majority of our B2B customers are interior designers, and it’s really important for us to signal to them that we’re aligned with their projects,” Bertea said. “Their projects are planned pretty far out — I have some friends in the business doing mood boards for 2028.”

While 2Modern’s B2C customers operate on a shorter buying cycle, Bertea still has to think about what people will want up to 18 months from now.

“Our 2026 trend report at 2Modern has a lot of what we’re calling ‘into the woods’,” Bertea said. “People are getting back into 1960s and 1970s style wood, with textured reeds and ribbed cabinetry.”

But 2Modern isn’t only paying attention to design trends. They’re also looking at how the ways people find and buy furniture are changing, too.

“We’re exploring the AI and SEO piece of our marketing as well,” Bertea said. “I do think that — as long as our data is very sharp, which I think it is — it’s possible to sell directly through AI, which would be a great unlock.

A Commitment to Curation

Ultimately, whether customers wind up buying a 2Modern-curated piece from the company’s website or, one day, via AI, they’ll still be receiving an item that’s been hand-picked by Bertea and her team.

“When someone shops with 2Modern, they’re really working with a team of design enthusiasts who have handpicked their item with a particular story in mind. We see ourselves in the design and relationship business. I love our brand partners and I love our customers,” Bertea said. “We have a lot of design stories to tell.”

While honing your own creative and analytical eye is essential for building success in any industry, you can take a page out of Bertea's playbook and use Exploding Topics to spot emerging trends in design, technology, business, food, health, and other industries. Grab your free seven day trial of Exploding Topics Pro to start exploring your industry now … and be ready for what's coming around the corner next.