The lack of scale is probably cooling people's interest in investing in this - realistically it's not going to escalate into something that produces returns by a factor of N. It doesn't mean it's a bad idea - but this is basically hobby / small business / home business territory.

Meanwhile, if you have good ideas, have you considered working on the design side, getting together with a few people and moving towards small scale mass production for your gear?

edit: sorry, mass production as in finding a manufacturer somewhere who can make bulk quantities of your furniture, wood or otherwise.