From the same factory turning out high end furniture for Herman Miller and Living Edge comes a new design-your-own flatpack range with grand designs on taking a chunk of Ikea’s market.
Young entrepreneur Priyanka Rao has furniture in her blood. Her dad Sudhindra owns furniture manufacturer…
(Source: interiorsaddict)
Not too long till it’s Christmas and the start of the New Year! Hooray!
There have been quite a few ‘Design Your Own’ fashion start ups launch in the past few months and they all have a similar way of doing things - design via an app or configure on product page, get it made in China/HK at a similar price point to each other. The jewellery start up Stylerocks (our local version of Gemvara) is different as they get their goods made in Australia, like us! They launched pretty much the same day as us.
Bleuflamme is the latest in the ‘design your own shirt’ space and when I read the Techcrunch article I thought ‘How is this one going to be different to Blank Label or Joe Button?’ I really like both websites so not sure how you’d top ‘em.
And then I read the customer testimonial page and gasped. They’ve smartly sent their shirts to key corporate executives and thus positioned themselves extremely well - a custom designed shirt for the very man who would be likely to get one tailored so would understand the savings received by designing online via Blueflamme. Now this is a business team that will go the distance!
So often a business markets itself on the press or awards it receives, and not enough on it’s customers. It’s amazing to see this one receive positive words from the people their target customer would aspire to be like - not film stars but ‘business stars’.
Shoes Of Prey, an established company in this online ‘Design Your Own’ space regularly markets through the positive testimonials from it’s customers received on their facebook page and via email, and features examples of typical customers on their blog. I’m particularly excited about Shoes of Prey as I’ve met the Founders at 2 of their Friends and Family sales and getting the shoes I’ve designed for Christmas!
We’re still figuring out who the stars are for our target customers. Who are the ‘stars’ your customers would aspire to be like?
Except from a brilliant article on Salon.com - http://www.salon.com/2011/12/13/how_to_sell_furniture_to_celebrities/
Peter Mountford spent the first eight months of 2004 in Los Angeles selling expensive furniture to rich people. In the center of the store sat a colossal white sofa, extremely uncomfortable, which could be purchased for $8,000. No one bought it. A full set of silverware would set you back something like $15,000. No takers. A mink throw – $7,500 – also did not sell. Another mink throw, available for $5,000, actually did sell. In fact, I sold it. My single biggest commission. A frosty rich lady once bought an entire set of handcrafted Italian dishes: my second biggest commission. On the whole, though, I wasn’t a very good salesman. I sold lots of tablecloths. Glasses, too. I sold a lot of glasses.
One thing I learned: Rich people like a little pushback. They enter a store acutely aware of their wealth and what it means in this context, and this knowledge, by definition, is tied up with their sense of self-worth, for better or worse. They want you to be serious and professional with them, but they also want you to be able to slap their hand when they go astray. Mostly, they want you to care, even if they’re talking about decorative pillows. They want you, in short, to be like Jeeves, or Bruce Wayne’s Alfred. They’re the boss, sure, but if you’re not in control, they’ll eat you alive.
THANK YOU SETH GODIN for below words of wisdom.
The secret of good reviews and positive word of mouth is simple: if people get the joke, feel like insiders, finish the book, grow, learn, and are part of what you make, you win.
If they don’t, if your product or service makes them feel dumb or poor or excluded, they won’t talk about you the same way.
You don’t need everyone to talk about you. But obsessing about making a target group feel smart and successful is a great way to make those conversations happen.
The flip side: if someone outside of the target group doesn’t get the joke, don’t worry. That’s not why you made your art in the first place.
——-
Now for the most difficult point - how do you embody the people in your target group with the feeling of being ‘smart and successful’ so that they feel empowered to talk about you?
A great article on the Wall Street Journal about how ‘One Kings Lane’, an online flash sales retailer for the homewares and furniture market actually convinces people to buy.
Read it here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204443404577052822968336142.html
We know from our consumer research that the purchasing cycle for furniture is longer than say consumer goods or apparel.
You’re more likely to buy a $60-70 worth of alcohol in one night out than one of our $60 storage cubes because furniture lasts a lot longer and the number of people you need to consult in that decision may be 1-2. You probably don’t go from pub to pub comparing prices of beer, but people generally would compare prices, read reviews and shop around to get the best deal on furniture.
One Kings Lane is contradictory to consumer behaviour because their sales last 72 hours, so what it did to gain consumer confidence was add really styled up photos. This way the consumer feels like they are buying into a designer lifestyle, rather than one piece of furniture.
We’ve started to do this and will increase our efforts our merchandising definitely needs work.
Huge thanks for these online publications for their support.
Reblogged via the Evolvex blog
Evolvex is a new, Australian-made flat pack alternative to the obvious flat pack solutions we all know. But this offering is certified environmentally sound, and is customizable, interchangeable, and delivered straight to your door. Bonus. Lost At E Minor
“I LOVED finding EVOLVEX FURNITURE the other day. This simplistic, stylish and super affordable range of self-assemble furniture is a BREEZE to put together.” Sydney On A Shoestring
There are plenty of good reasons to buy Evolvex: it’s family-run, Australian-owned and better for the environment. But despite the altruism, we’ve discovered our interest in Evolvex is embarrassingly superficial –it looks nice and we want. The Agenda Daily
Besides being of a high enough quality to withstand my shenanigans, Evolvex furniture is also aesthetically pleasing; the panels and cushions come in a variety of colours and because each part is meant to be interchangeable, the design is sleek and minimalist. A Caucus Race
Evolvex furniture is modular and minimal and they probably have something very practical that you need in your house right now. The Thousands
LOVE LOVE LOVE! Thank you to all our supporters on Facebook and Twitter.
This is going to change the way we order food. Wow. How inspiring to see a big company like Dominos translate the mass customised design trend in such a user friendly, delicious way. In the words of Veruca Salt ‘Don’t care how, I want it now!’.
What a week! We’ve gone live, had a launch party, did a professional photoshoot, and held a pop up shop for people to touch and feel our product.
We’ve had heaps of people designing on our Evolvex Designer which is really exciting to watch!!
What I am going to do over the next day or two is relax and recharge the batteries. The team did a great job pulling it all together for the launch. We should all be giving ourselves a pat on the back.
Things that went really well:
1. Everyone had an amazing time at our launch party and we had a great turn out! The event was put together by the talented team at Publissimo PR and Events, who handled all the details perfectly. We were very lucky to receive alcohol sponsorship from Taylors Wines, Corona and Smirnoff which made for an especially excellent party.
2. We got great coverage of our pop up shop in the Missy Confidential, Two Thousand and Daily Agenda newsletters, which definitely assisted the traffic at the shop and we think the website too.
3. The product on display was met with a lot of praise which gave us a LOT of hope as it’s one thing to know you’re working with a fantastic product but a completely different thing to have others like it too (speaking of like, please like our page on facebook). The furniture was artistically laid out and styled up which really helped. We will need to put better product descriptions and more prominent prices on the product for the next retail event.
4. We had flyers at the event with our URL and 90% of visitors took a flyer for future reference. We also had people sign up to our mailing list umprompted.
Things to improve on for next time we do a pop up shop
1. Pick a more prominent venue for a pop up store. We picked a really cool space called District01 which was perfect for a party but not so great for a pop up shop. The lights in the space looked cool but were too bright and would have been better to have some natural light on our furniture. The Oxford Street entrance involved going down stairs which wasn’t inviting for street traffc and the Foley Street entrance was not easy to find. We think we may have lost people as our venue was so hidden away.
2. Make a giant colourful sign in front of the venue of the pop up shop - we got more passersby when we increased the signage around the venue pointing to our store. The signs were informative and I think gave better signals to what we were about. That said I think using bring colours to catch the eye would work better next time.
3. Manage our expectations - the purchasing cycle for buying furniture is a lot longer than items like clothing which lend themselves to impulse purchases. Furniture involves consulting a few people (like partners, parents or housemates) and because of the size it is something you think about a lot. A pop up shop is a temporary retail event hence we received a sharp reality check that lots of people will browse and say positive things but the conversions to sales will not be high because consumers do take longer to make their decisons when it comes to furniture.
4. Focus on getting coverage on online newsletters and blogs and don’t spend so much on things like flyers in cafes and pole posters. We should have really just put up good old fashioned black and white posters on poles nearby rather than invest our hard earned marketing dollars into cafe flyers and posters. Our visitors were a mix of walk ins, people who had read about us in the newsletters we got covered in, my friends and family and people on our database.
I learned SO MUCH from this week. It feels like a month. I also managed to get a pro photographer in to take some amazing shots of the furniture we had on display which is great timing because media are starting to ask for them.
And so the rollercoaster ride begins!!
