THE CONCEPT
Everyone should be able to afford a space they can call home.
INSPIRATION
After moving multiple times, I needed to find a way to make the furnishing process easier and more affordable. Every home, place, and space is different, and moving pieces from one place to another was costly. Clothing is something you can try on to see if it fits, with furniture it’s a bit more difficult, returns can be very expensive, and very few people can afford an interior designer.
The company first started buying and selling at auction houses and from second-hand sources so clients could have a designer look without the designer price tag, originally called MAD Solutions (Modern Affordable Design). With increasing demand and multiple projects running concurrently, it became a lot more difficult to source second-hand pieces fast enough to meet quality expectations and demand. A new company was then established which moved away from shop fronts and second-hand buying called Avenue Spaces.
We also learned after the first 100 projects that there were many similarities between clients that fit within particular demographics (ie. single male or female, young couple, couple with young kids, retired couple, etc…) When we added cultural backgrounds, hobbies & interests, and lifestyle questions into our online assessment process, we discovered that many past projects could be replicated. Essentially, we started to build an online dating platform matching new clients to pre-curated furniture spaces based on information collected online and stored in our database. The more automated the business become, the more we could lower costs and continue delivering a designer space that anyone could afford.
DESIGNER SPACES ANYONE CAN AFFORD
E-COMMERCE
We tried to find an off-the-shelf e-commerce platform that would enable the company to create and sell curated furniture packages After exploring a number of different software options, we started working with Magento.
The screenshot to the left was designed in Magento to show curated packages to clients with corresponding items.
The challenge we had was that all these packages had to be manually created and curated. and when furnishing entire spaces with multiple rooms and many items, it became very labor-intensive and costly. E-commerce platforms were not designed for multi-item purchases and eventually designed our own using RUBY ONRAILS
DATA MANAGEMENT
The biggest challenge we faced was inputting and managing data. Items were initially manually entered into the system which included descriptions (color, size, fabric, and price) and standardized (ie. metric & currency conversions), so designers could search and select across suppliers in a single database. Managing stock & delivery timeframes was also challenging as this information changed frequently and APIs were too expensive.
Creating curated furniture packages added another layer of complexity. The spreadsheet on the left illustrates the process.
Eventually, the company developed a code that was able to pull product data from various websites and automatically standardize and format information.
AI
As part of our design process, clients would have to complete an online questionnaire that provided basic information on their preferred style, budget, size of the room(s), occupation, demographic, location, etc….
This data was added (tagged) to any images selected and rooms curated which enabled us to build algorithms that matched people to pre-curated furniture packages based on others with similar profiles - similar to an online dating application.
Sales & Marketing.
Video content is a useful tool when it comes to helping potential buyers. Approximately 94 percent of marketers say using video content has helped increase user understanding of a product or service and influenced purchasing decisions. This was the strategy for Avenue Spaces. We created a series of films and short videos with our clients who shared their stories and spaces to inspire other homeowners with ideas and the benefits of working with Avenue Spaces.