Evolvex lets you customize the size, color, and shape of its modern furniture modules.
Ikea is popular for a reason. The furniture is cheap, the minimalist aesthetic goes with just about anything, and it’s extremely customizable. Despite recent strides in adding augmented reality to their catalogue, when it comes time to order, their website can devolve into a confusing selection of parts. Surely there is a better way.
Enter Evolvex, an Australian design studio that has created a tool that allows you to design your own furniture online. Once you’ve worked out your dream shelving, they ship you the flatpack results, including customized assembly instructions unique to the configuration you created.
“Evolvex came from a bad furniture shopping experience,” says founder Priyanka Rao. Her sister had bought some flatpack necessities after an interstate move and found that each box had a part that was damaged in transit. “Because my father has a furniture manufacturing company we whisked the furniture to his factory and in the process she made some customizations.” Knowing that not everyone has the luxury of a family-run factory, the pair decided to launch a business around custom furniture.
Design is about seeing a problem and solving it. Evolvex grew out of a bad furniture shopping experience.
The company’s marquee feature is Evolvex Designer, a web-based tool meant to make customizing cabinetry as simple as building a house in The Sims. Given a palette of modular parts, customers can click and fiddle to their hearts’ content. Once they’re happy, the logistics chain springs into action and puts the parts together for shipping.
“We see our design tool as the easiest way for our customers to communicate what it is they are looking for,” says Rao. Some customers order directly from the tool, while others might prefer to have a phone or e-mail conversation before buying. If they do, there is a shared object to have a conversation about.
It’s yet another example of how digital tools can unlock the opportunities of mass-customization for consumers. The parts for your particular item get added to the production schedule only after you place your order. That manufacturing-on-demand model helps control costs and means there’s little to warehouse. “We’re in total control of the supply chain,” says Rao.
But can Evolvex compete with the immediate gratification of taking home a Billy Bookcase from the IKEA showroom? “The whole process currently takes two to three weeks,” Rao says, “but we are looking to get this down to one week as volume picks up.”
A quick walkthrough of the Evolvex Designer.
Images courtesy of Evolvex.
Source: www.wired.com
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