Dive Brief:
- Building on its home visualization capabilities, furniture retailer Joybird (a La-Z-Boy Incorporated subsidiary) has introduced its free 3D Space Planner design experience for mobile devices, the company announced Tuesday.
- The tool’s augmented reality technology allows customers to visualize how furniture would look and fit in their own homes, while the Space Planner view lets customers access previous room designs and share them with Joybird associates or friends and family.
- Shoppers can also browse the company’s catalog of colors, materials and styles using their phones, per a company press release. Joybird Vice President and General Manager Gerardo Ornelas said in a statement that 70% of Joybird’s traffic comes from mobile devices.
Dive Insight:
Furniture and home improvement retailers know that as their customers browse furniture and remodeling options, seeing is believing. To help shoppers reimagine their spaces, retailers in those categories have been pouring resources into developing product visualization tools.
“Our mission was to make mobile furniture shopping as intuitive and rich as in our showrooms,” Ornelas said regarding the mobile expansion of Joybird’s design tools. “The goal is to meet our customers where they are and instill confidence in purchases. This mobile update is a pivotal first step in bringing full design functionality to mobile, allowing a dynamic, collaborative experience right at our customers’ fingertips.”
Ikea launched its own space visualization tool in 2022, enabling shoppers to swap out their existing furniture with new items on their computer or phone. Similarly, Wayfair debuted a home decorating tool, Decorify, in 2023 and integrated the app into the Apple Vision Pro virtual reality operating system last year.
While furniture retailers want shoppers to envision new furniture in their homes, home improvement retailers are using these product visualization tools to guide customers through their remodeling process. Last year, Lowe’s piloted its Style Studio app on the Apple Vision Pro device in a few stores, allowing shoppers to view preset kitchen styles and tailor the fixtures, appliances and materials to their taste.
For Joybird, the expansion of its 3D furniture visualization tool allows shoppers to stay more connected to its associates and engage with designs on the go. To attract younger, more digital-savvy shoppers, La-Z-Boy acquired Joybird in 2018, four years after the company was founded in 2014. In November 2021, after the pandemic rush that sent shoppers to home retailers, Joybird kicked off its first national TV campaign in a bid to reach new customers.