Visual upholstery furniture configurator

From Costly Mistakes, To Seamless Sales

How do you make sure your company stands out from the competition in both physical as well as online stores where multiple brands and concepts are sold? How can you assist sales reps to better sell and even prefer to sell your products? How do you reduce chances of mistakes? How do you get ready for the new age of visual commerce which will take hold in the next 2-3 years? How do you delight the end-customer? With more than a thousand models between the brands Xooon and Henders & Hazel, these market leaders needed a scalable solution to visualize and configure upholstery furniture, storage, tables and accessoiries to put them in pole position for the metaverse era.

READ THE SUCCESS STORY

Challenge

As is common in furniture, the products of H&H and Xooon were sold the traditional way: a few physical models in showrooms accompanied by brochures depicting the product’s options and 200+ fabric samples in various carts throughout the stores. Additionally, catalogs were available to show other product models which were not physically present in the showrooms.

Naturally, for most customers it was very hard to understand the product options and imagine the effect of fabric types and colors beyond what was physically present in the showroom. This led to hesitations and doubts which subsequently led to long lead times before decisions were made or, not uncommonly, complete cancellation. Obviously, a lot of potential turnover remained untapped.

Moreover, order mistakes were an inescapable part of the process due to misunderstandings between what customers wanted and what stores delivered 8-12 weeks later. And regardless who’s mistake it actually was, we all know who had to pay for them. In some stores the cost of order mistakes ran up to 5% of annual turnover. So stores doing 10 million a year, alone had up to 500K in mistake related costs!

Obviously, there was a lot to gain when mistakes could be reduced and if customers could be aided in their journey by having the right visuals and product information available to them.

BRAND PROFILES

Manufacturer of mid-segment furniture for wide audience with over 260 dealers throughout Europe.

Trendy, affordable design furniture for young adults with over 160 dealers throughout Europe.

Resolution

The iONE360 visual product configurator combines excellent handling of product configuration data with high performance product visualization. By enabling sales reps and consumers alike to configure products in an intuitive guided selling process, mistakes averted due to (a) there is visual confirmation of the effect of choices made and (b) the configuration engine prevents invalid configurations with use of business rules.

Functional requirements:

Result

With one single engine behind them, the two brand websites have the iONE360 product configurator embedded for a wide range of products: chairs, sofa’s, tables and storage boards alike. Running smoothly on any device and browser combination, the tool is loved by both (online) consumers and sales reps in stores. As a result, customer engagement and loyalty increased as well as the conversion rates and average order value.

For sales reps and stores it was a double win: they were able to convert more customers ánd they had a far smaller change of order mistakes. In some stores the mistakes dropped from 5% to below 1% which alone had financed the whole project multiple times over.

Especially in multi-concept stores, this technology really sets H&H and Xooon apart from the crowd, and sales reps develop a real preference to lead consumers towards the screens where these products can be visualized and configured in ways other brands cannot offer.

“Compared to other providers, iONE360 offers the most advanced solutions.”

F. Herman, Commercial Director

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