Amazon unveiled Showroom, or why we will soon be buying all the furniture online.

Amazon has long been transformed not only into a seller, but also into a manufacturer. Under the wing of the company - about hundreds of brands offering cheap things, similar in quality to expensive branded goods. Thanks to the algorithms in its store, the company determines which items are successfully sold, makes them several times cheaper, and begins to actively promote, so as not to lose an extra penny of profit. The most famous of these is Amazon Basics , thousands of simple products that the company learned to produce independently (now it is the third most popular brand on Amazon, with $ 250 million in sales annually).

And just over a year ago, Amazon launched its first furniture brands, Rivet and Stone & Beam .This is furniture of average (or slightly higher than average) prices, with an emphasis on decor and “cozy atmosphere”. According to One Click Retail, these brands are doing great right now. When you have the largest online store behind you, and you are often at the top of the search, it’s hard to be unprofitable. In one year, the monthly sales of two furniture brands increased by 300%, they bring Amazon an additional about $ 35- $ 50 million (a trifle, but nice).

Now the company is ready to bring these proposals to a new level. This fall, she began experimenting with a new, simpler and more visual method of buying furniture, by running the Scout AI recommendation service . He selects for you the perfect fittings, and you just need to like or dizlikat what he offers. Over time, among the recommendations will be completely what you are interested in, and you don’t even have to fiddle with filters or stuff something in the search field.

A couple of days ago, the company went even further - by launching its new service, Amazon Showroom . Instead of trying to imagine how all this furniture will look in your bedroom or in the kitchen, Amazon suggests creating a virtual room, setting everything in it the way you want, choosing a decor. And then there will be only to issue a purchase. If you have specified everything correctly, the company promises that it will not be necessary to even pick up the sizes of objects, they will automatically be as needed. And, of course, the created rooms can be “saved”, so next time it will be even more convenient to change the furniture. The number of rooms is not limited - even if you live in a castle, the service will remember every room.

Of course, there are lots of tools, including free ones, that allow you to paint the interior of your room. But for the first time, Amazon is sharpening all this for purchases Any object in the house can be clicked to replace it with something that sells the store. From chair and carpet to lamps and paintings on the wall. Those solutions that develop brands of the Amazon itself are often presented in the top of the list.

Furniture line

The sale of interior items remains one of the last problem areas for online retail - along with the sale of clothing. Many people prefer to see these things live before making a purchase. In addition, the furniture, as a rule, is quite heavy, and its delivery can cost a lot of money. In order to conquer this market, large online stores in the United States use the full range of opportunities available to them.

Prior to this, in 2017, Amazon introduced augmented reality into its mobile app. So that people can see how this or that item, which they think to buy, will look in their interior. It is enough to direct the camera of the smartphone to the place where it is supposed to be put, and on the screen it will sit there as if it were alive. Prior to this, similar opportunities began to offer Target, Wayfair and IKEA. But such a system is suitable only for the purchase of one particular item. If people want to purchase a whole room design from you, buy a pair of armchairs / chairs or wall paint, such an AR-offer will not help here. The new Amazon Showroom will fill this niche.

Like a lion in a cage with Amazon, Walmart beats for customers, responding with a blow to the blow. Last year, a couple of weeks after the release of a competitor's AR application, she launched a new section of the site for convenient purchases of furniture and decor, focusing on sales and the lowest possible price.

And now, according to rumors, in response to Showroom, the supermarket chain is preparing to release its own visual search system (based on the Hayneedle it bought). The idea is that people can take pictures of furniture that they liked from someone at home or in a store, and quickly find it on the Walmart website. Alphabet has such a system in Google Shopping, but for the time being the service cannot collect a critical quantity of goods offered, like Walmart (19 million) and especially Amazon (580 million).

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