Bob Stec works in a company town. A furniture town. A town so tightly tied to the business of making tables and chairs and sofas and beds that they share the same name. But Bob Stec is an importer.

Stephen Kuhl and Kabeer Chopra didn’t arrive at business school planning to start a sofa company. Kuhl was a former Accenture consultant; Chopra, a former analytics manager at Michael Kors. They first ...