Problem: Most people have experienced the sensation of walking into an empty apartment or house for the first time. After countless hours searching catalogues or design websites for style ideas, you walk into the space with a head full of ideas...only to have the shape of the room, the lighting and angles suck those ideas right back out into the empty void. Expressed poignantly by Austin Rief with a “if you know you know” tweet: there are no easy ways to design and furnish an apartment.
And if you happen to lack the “interior designer” trait, what could be a fun creative experience is almost guaranteed to become an overwhelming chore.
Solution: With the introduction of AR technology, including recent advancements with LiDAR being integrated in the next iPhone, placing objects in a room isn’t a new idea. Ikea began using AR within its app to help users see how a particular piece of furniture fits their room, placing it in on the screen in the correct position to be viewed by the user. However, it is limited to Ikea’s furniture, and even then a limited catalog of options. The app is somewhat clunky to use, despite recent upgrades, with placing multiple objects still taxing on the system or being difficult to manipulate.
However, the issue is not solely envisioning a single piece of furniture. Designing an entire room, if you are not a designer, is painstaking, and it would be much easier if you could just select “ALL MODERN STYLE - Norwegian” and have it populate a room model with potential furniture and links to purchase.
In the 2018 Census Bureau’s survey of American Household, nearly 10% of Americans move each year. Among the top listed reasons: desire for a better/new apartment or house, establishing a family, familial reasons, or employment. Of the 32 million Americans, 47% are moving by car. Unless they are transporting furniture and not reporting it, this means that 16 million people are likely to be furnishing at least one room in their new living space. That is a lot of potential buyers who are likely to be spending an average of $8,176 on furniture.
Globally, the furniture market is valued well over $1 trillion dollars, with global chains competing with Mom & Pop furniture shops to varying degrees. Small time furniture makers are looking to Etsy for new reach into the market with over 500,000 pieces available to browse through. Offering a platform to connect both large manufacturers and artisanal pieces could simplify the customer experience in selecting furniture while providing a new avenue for advertising for a staple industry and empowering the burgeoning artisan community even further by offering the ability to filter for specific tags like “sustainable” or “handmade.”
Such a business would simply stitch together photos taken of the barren room or use the LiDAR functionality in the camera to take measurements to create a 3D representation of a room quickly. Then, the user could begin populating the room with pieces fitting style parameters selected they set. Further capabilities could include an export function back to AR, so that you could view everything from the 3D model immediately in the current room.
This would expedite the design process for many who have a sense of the style they want, but lack the knowledge or time to find furniture they like and where to buy it. Theoretically, you could add all items to cart and either purchase directly from the app or link back out to the manufacturer’s store.
To establish and maintain a user base, the app would need to be free (as most users would be on demand and in the process of moving), but could function as a new type of “pay per click” model where companies paid to have their furniture listed as a top option for a limited amount of times, plus a 1-3% commission is the user purchases the item. With the potential market base in the US, the business would be looking at over $1 billion on average if everyone used the app to purchase with a 1% commission. While it is unlikely to capture that extensive of a user base initially, the potential cap for the business is lucrative.
Monetization: Sponsorship/Advertising of furniture on platform, 1-3% of furniture sale.
Contributed by: Alex Kessel (Intern at Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)