Venture-Backed FilterEasy Corners the Subscription Home Air Filter Market

You have subscriptions set up for your razors, contact lenses and groceries. Why not let them take over the tedious portions of home care, as well?

Air filter subscription service FilterEasy has closed a $6.9 million Series B1 funding round led by Raleigh-based One Better Ventures with participation from Lead Edge Capital. The capital will be used to expand warehouse and fulfillment capabilities, grow customer acquisition, and invest in product innovation and development, co-founder and COO Kevin Barry shares with Hypepotamus.

With this latest round, the Raleigh-based startup has raised over $18 million from outside investors. “Historically, many entrepreneurs have underestimated the Southeast when it comes to investing. We’ve found incredible support locally from a community of investors that are hungry for innovation,” says CEO Thad Tarkington.

FilterEasy automates an aspect of homeownership that many forget about. Changing air filters on a regular basis can extend the life of your HVAC system and reduce maintenance costs, as well as reduce your heating and cooling costs by up to 15 percent a month, according to FilterEasy.

Once a consumer signs up for FilterEasy, they receive deliveries of high-quality air filters to their home every three months (the recommended rate at which they should be changed).

The co-founders met while students at North Carolina State University. “Intuitively, we knew most people forget to replace their air filters when they need to. We recently conducted a large-scale consumer research study that makes it super clear: homeowners by and large forget about air filters and are changing far less than they should throughout the year,” says Barry.

FilterEasy has slowly cornered the home air filter subscription sector through the acquisition of three other companies. The last acquisition was one of their largest competitors, CleanerFilters.com (a subsidiary of Renew Co.), this past January for an undisclosed amount.

As the startup scales through those acquisitions, the leadership has prioritized its company culture and evolving core values to keep the team engaged. “We always place enormous importance with hiring the right people. We employ people whom we know can engage and connect with our mission from the get-go,” says Barry.

“Everybody at FilterEasy, from the C-suite to specialists, and everyone in between, we all lead by example to help keep each other not only excited about what we’re doing but also actively engaged and connected with the mission.” One of those initiatives was donating air filters to those affected by wildfires on the West Coast this fall.

As FilterEasy prepares to accelerate growth in the next year, Turkington and the team say they will maintain a laser focus on customer satisfaction and commitment to better air quality.

“[Since our inception in 2014,] we’ve grown from ten employees to over 110, have three offices, and have customers who see great value in our service and continue to subscribe as a result,” says Tarkington. “We have a lot of exciting things in the works for 2019 and beyond.”

Photos courtesy of FilterEasy