Selling for Interior Design in the New Normal
The Interior design scene has been working the same way for years.
Using physical products which need to be placed and touched and viewed in a real setting in order to make a purchasing decision. These products cost money in a variety of ways, from the outright cost of the goods to the cost of labor to operate the showrooms.
The process would be based on visits to the showroom – in the city center or on the outskirts – and seeing all the magnificent options they have in person. You would have to block out half a day for the important decision. Right… Either for furniture or for the floor…. Or when buying a new house, or just making changes…
It’s not the most user-friendly of selling methods, even in the best of times.
Corona changed all that in just a month. Showrooms are now mostly closed. Consumers prefer to buy online (or not buy at all). The transition to digital is inevitable, and is happening everywhere, in a variety of professions. Doctors, psychologists and Yoga instructors that stood on the fence and never agreed to work without the personal touch are now doing their work remotely and distributing their services to further reaches. Restaurants opened their doors to virtual orders and delivery in places they normally wouldn’t. Everything changed, and the showroom scene was no exception.
The tile and flooring industry is in a challenging spot. All of their sales to distributers, home-designers and end consumers rely on the fact that people come to their showrooms. Remote visualizers exist, and have started to grow more in the past few years, but the adoption was limited as the achieved quality didn’t match up to what consumers expected.
Today though, due to technological advancements and consumers maturing – the visualization level and granularity improved a lot. It has enabling us to create a real, life-like model of the home while keeping its dynamic nature… Customers can see them as if they were in real-life, from anywhere in the world.
More over since having now 3D models of the carpets or any relevant furniture piece – can complete the user journey and close the loop by visualizing the product in their home environment (through Augmented Reality)
Retailers – either distributors, manufacturers, wholesalers, or the rest – can now start to present their catalog virtually – either to their buyers – or directly to the end-consumers (or even both). The buying process is going through a complete shake-up and revolution now.
The journey is now completely different – utilizing all the benefits of the digital, including the ability to search, to remember what you’ve seen already, to provide analytics and, most importantly, to see everything there is in stock. Items are never out of stock for display and are always just one click away for a detailed inspection. The entire process is streamlined and efficient, with less costs and the potential for greater reach.
The preferences of buyers have continued to shift towards digital, with more people buying furniture and making home décor decisions online than ever before. A fascinating article from Forbes in June 2020 shows that US shopping for home-décor in Q2 increased by 16% when compared year to year! In certain weeks/categories the numbers went even higher.
So there’s more interior design buying than ever before, and with less showrooms to operate out there! That’s exactly the gap that we’re filling with the Showroom Visualizer.
Want to see how it works? Contact us (through the form below) and we’ll give you a taste of the future.
