'This year you won't be buying DTC suitcases': The Inside founder Christiane Lemieux on why home brands are seeing a boom

Retail stores are slowly reopening, but Christiane Lemieux, founder of the DTC furniture brand The Inside, still thinks people will want to invest most in the place they're spending most of their time: the home. "What you will be doing is focusing your time and disposable spend on making your home into everything it should be -- not only for now, but for what the future of our lives is going to look like," Lemieux said on the Modern Retail Podcast (people are spending so much time in doors, in fact, that Lemieux thinks a baby boom will hit in January). The Inside meets its demand through a "made to order" model -- a piece of furniture isn't built until a customer buys it online. "I think 'made on demand' is the manufacturing of the future," said Lemieux. "It's so much better for the environment. There's no warehouses full of imported product just sitting there." In her case, it's also made the company more resistant to the supply chain disruptions roiling the world. "Having a domestic manufacturing base has allowed us to continue to produce even during this particular and very challenging situation." "We don't make anything until you place your order. There's people in my cohort who do the same thing with shampoo and vitamins. It's in every category at this point," Lemieux said. One or two of The Inside's factories still had to shut down -- one on the U.S.-Mexico border, the other in Illinois -- until the national policy that deemed manufacturers to be an essential service allowed them to operate again, according to Lemieux.