A handcrafted sofa for your living room

Background

The master craftsmen of Softrend have been making handmade sofas right here in Estonia for over 25 years, ensuring the highest possible quality.

In cooperation with NOPE design and in the beginning Impact 80/20 (now Miltton) as well, the challenge was to create a web page for Softrend that incorporates their high quality values and elegant design. The goal of the project was varied – the solution needed to not only be a sales channel for an e-store, but also support export all over the world, promote the sale of sofas with a large variety of fabrics and support direct sales within salons allowing the salespeople to also use the page.

Process

Together with the Softrend team we mapped out the main needs and requirements that the web page and the store had to meet. This was a very interesting process and Softrend was really easy to work with because they seemed to have great confidence in our work. They involved us in the decision making process not only from the technical side but also with some business decisions. We discussed the solutions and possibilities together and advised them on the best course of action.

With all the different configration options - size, shape and color - there are more than 500 different variations you can order from website. The filter helps you narrow down the choices based on your requirements.

Based on your configuration options you can see the photorealistic rendering results right away. From there, just fill in contact and payment details and your custom-tailored sofa will ready for manufacturing.

Wonder how fabric and colour combination will look in your home? No problem - you can order free samples right from the web store.

ChallengeS

There were a few big challenges to overcome in the course of this project.

On the technical side, we needed to connect the web page to a much more complex manufacturing software. Apparently it is possible to customize the sofas in much more detail than is relevant to the customers. In addition, the manufacturing software was being developed and expanded at the same time, so together with the client, we worked out what was the most important for customers to be able to choose and change about their sofas and what needed to be already decided for them. In the end, we made it possible to choose the type and tone of the fabric, the size and shape of the sofa, but also there’s a selection of legs and you can even choose how soft the seat part should be.

To find the optimal balance for managing the content of the page, we had to analyze how practical it would be to interpret data from the manufacturing software and how much the administrators of the page would need to enrich it with media and multilingual content.

When it came to the work process, the client had a lot of brilliant ideas and it was our job (and challenge) to somewhat limit them to the ones that were actually needed and to figure out where to draw the line in order to finish the project. This led us to the MVP that was launched in 2020. We have built quite a few new features on top of the original scope and this has taught us much more about the need and possibilities of refactoring.

KEY Features

Connection with manufacturing software helps to exchange information between different systems automatically. This speeds up the process and avoids human errors.

Pick your model, size and fabric to see a photorealistic render of your final product. This helps you get a better understanding how a particular color matches your wishes.

You can order up to 5 free samples of chosen fabrics. This will allow you to see how fabrics appear in your home’s specific lightning conditions.

The campaign builder allows administrators to create different kinds of sale campaigns. Everything from a simple price discount based on model or fabric to combined product purchase discounts and gift cards, all that with various business-related configuration aspects.

Choosing a Sofa is not only an important choice but can also be a big investment. Depending on the region and purchase details, you also have the possibility to order with pay later options. The process is automated and works similarly to a regular card payment process.

The platform supports not only different languages, but also multiple regions with different product catalogues and configurations. Currently available in Estonia and Finland.

Result

The original launch of the page and e-shop was in the spring of 2020 with the minimal viable product (MVP). Since then, there have been regular updates and additions to the system.

Check out the website