Interview with Quirin Schwaighofer, Co-CEO of MadeComfy & Wheelhouse API

I enjoyed talking with Quirin on one of his standstill traffic commutes, so I had a captured audience (sorry, Quirin).

As most of you who read this have likely heard, MadeComfy has made quite the splash in Australia, so getting to spend time with their co-founder to hear some of the stories behind the company was an absolute pleasure. Best known for their hyper-growth, powerful brand, and customer affinity, they’ve become the brand for vacation rentals in Australia. To top it off, they were just named the Vacation Rental Company that “Most effectively Uses Social Media” by the Shortyz Awards (https://bit.ly/2RkDhms). 

To start with, Quirin and his partner, Sabrina, have weathered the Covid Storm relatively well given the extraordinary circumstances in Australia. They’ve had two massive country shut-downs, which, based on Quirin’s description of life in Australia, worked, and life has returned to “normal” there. That said, it had also slowed travel to a crawl. They’ve also accomplished a lot personally during Covid; they got married and had their first child (congratulations!), so having “some” downtime during Covid to focus on the family was a great thing. 

We talked about how Quirin got into the business. It was initially out of necessity to generate a little extra income to cover some personal expenses by listing their apartment in 2015 while he was pursuing another start-up. He had challenges with his Airbnb, and he wanted to find other management options, but they couldn’t find an acceptable alternative. So the next thing you know, they launched a website and started to do some Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and had a few customers sign-up, and they also had a few referrals, things began to grow. MadeComfy is a super-focused group for the service they deliver to their guests and owners. The brand they’ve built screams quality and comfort; what else can you ask for, and yes, in the best of locations. 

As MadeComfy grew and the team expanded, Quirin and his partner also strive to ensure their team thrives, allowing them to do what they’re on a mission to do. 

Quirin described how they discovered a way to scale and provide hyper-local services and relationship management with the property owners, which is genius and provides the springboard to grow, mostly without constraint. Think “real estate meets vacation rental management.” 

Once their brand and partnership structure was solidified, it was time to reconcile the technical infrastructure. 

Quirin mentioned that Revenue Management is a clear differentiator from others. After some soul searching of building it or buy it, and after some iterations of solution use, it was clear that Wheelhouse was the solution that delivered the pricing and data capabilities that enabled MadeComfy to deliver best-in-class results, while providing the most intuitive user interface.

Quirin further mentioned, “We’re all learning constantly, and it’s nice to have a partner that learns with us, who spends the time to understand how we’re approaching our market to ensure the solution delivers what we need it to deliver.” 

I asked Quirin what it meant to have Wheelhouse as a partner and solution for his business. He was quick to say, “It allowed us to build the tech stack that we wanted, and it allows us to mold it to what we need versus a very ridged platform that you have to change your business to fit the solution. It also allows us to provide cutting-edge, effective capabilities under the MadeComfy brand at the end of the day, enabling our effectiveness”.

On the pricing front, many believe that their hands-on approach is best to capitalize on market opportunities. I saw this in the early days when we deployed the first pricing solution; those that leveraged it to its greatest extent thrived while those that took a traditional hands-on approached missed significant opportunities. 

Through this “Story Journey,” I’m so relieved to find those that I’ve had the privilege to speak with and how are change agents for the short-term rentals industry are down-to-earth, intelligent, kind, and passionate about what they are doing. In short, very refreshing.