Furniture prototype creation is a burning topic for manufacturers. For competition is such that to stay afloat, a company needs to be in constant search for improvements. Consumers are always looking for more advanced solutions to meet their needs, so new products are constantly emerging. Every detail can play a decisive role in a purchase. And when your competitor is the first to think of a particular feature, he basically steals your clients.
So, furniture prototypes are a must. But launching a new product on the market is a responsible process comprising quite a few stages. Its exact unfolding depends on your workflow. And other important factors, such as:
- What kind of furniture prototypes does the company use – virtual or physical?
- If physical, whom does it work with – private artisans or a big specialized company?
- Are all the participants of design elaboration process in the same office or they are scattered across the globe?
No matter how complicated it is, one cannot deny that furniture prototype creation is worthwhile. It allows to track and neutralise the mistakes before the product goes into mass production. Besides, it allows to research the potential success of a new furniture piece. However, there are some points that make prototypes inconvenient and even unreliable:
- It’s expensive. The product doesn’t exist yet, and its destiny is still unknown, and the company has to invest considerable sums into furniture prototyping.
- It’s time-consuming. One prototype can take a month – depending on details. And one is far from enough! After all corrections one needs to make a new one. Thus, Barber & Osgerby spent 2,5 years on their amazing Tip Ton chairs. In the process, they needed 10 prototypes! And what is your record?
- It’s counter-productive. For if the discussing of test versions takes place in one single room, the process may go smoothly. But what if we are speaking about an online conference? How can all the participant take a look at the furniture prototype?
- It’s unreliable. For finding a good artisan who can read sketches, invest thoroughly into design and work for reasonable prices is incredibly hard. Of course, there are big specialized studios, but they charge elevated prices.
- It doesn’t guarantee the viability of the end result. It certainly is as close as the guarantees can go, but there’s still room for improvements. Take the fact that the furniture prototypes are usually made of a material cheaper than the future item. As a result, the outcome cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy. For how are you expected to know what the velvet will look like on this sofa without actually seeing it?
And what if you learned that there’s a way to get all the advantages of the physical furniture prototypes, but without their disadvantages?
For there’s a more flexible way – 3D Product Visualization and Virtual prototypes. It reduces risks, minimizes the need for efforts for manufacturer and gives additional options for improving business workflow and increasing the sales. Read on and see for yourself!
9 Advantages of a Virtual Furniture Prototype Over The Physical One
Here’s what you get with a Virtual Prototype:
#1. Better Control Options For Getting a Perfect Result
Artisans who deal with production are co-creators. Who knows how yours will interpret the sketch – you learn it from the result, and have to pay in any case. And you are probably aware that the work of an arisan is paid per hour, not by result.
When you choose a Virtual Furniture Prototype, you can give as specific an assignment as you wish. The 3D Modeller shall do exactly as you say, as his work is evaluated based on your satisfaction and conformity to the Technical Assignment.
#2. Easy Correction System
When working with physical prototypes, one can make corrections only after receiving a ready sample. Then, you formulate your wishes and give a new order to the artisan. If something goes wrong, everything has to start over again. And you’ll spend precious time and expensive materials on the artisan trying to figure out what you meant.
With Virtual Furniture Prototype, you are in control at each stage of the process. You can ask for preliminary results of your design visualization and check for inconveniences. And they’ll be done within a reasonable amount of time – from a few hours to 2 days, depending on the scale of a particular correction.
#3. Considerable Money-Saving
As we’ve already mentioned, the services of an artisan are costly, and they charge per hour. Moreover, it takes far more than one physical furniture prototype to create a design. 3 at least! Getting a good prototype for less than 5000$ is a challenge.
As a result, prototyping process costs far more than the resulting model itself. And that for one model only! While most of the time, manufacturers prefer to launch an entire line at once.
Now take a look at the Chair 3D Visualization above. Do you know how much the work costed? 135$. And that including creation of 3D model plus visualization. Isn’t this a bargain? And the money you saved can go to many other worthy causes. Such as an impactful promotional campaign. As for the advertising… Wait. Spoilers! For we’ll talk about this in the next paragraph.
#4. More Value For Money – With 3 Products In 1
3D Virtual Prototype is a multi-functional product. With 3D Virtual Prototype, you get:
- Prototyping services for design creation and quality material to pitch to investors.
- Product presentation for catalogs. You don’t need to order photo services which devours your time and money. And photoreal visualization looks just as spectacular as photos.
- Advertising company. Use Virtual Furniture Prototypes and Visualizations for outdoor advertising, website portfolio, online store, Facebook and Instagram promotion. No additional efforts, time and money investments! The sales are bound to increase with such exposure. Product Modeling leads to effective marketing.
Take your design presentation to a new level with interior rendering
#5. Average Check Increase
Virtual Prototype and 3D Visualization can help you increase the average check in following ways:
- With 3D Renders, you can showcase a few products – a table with chairs, plus accessories.
- Using Quality Visualizations, you can promote your most expensive merchandises. Based on the items the site visitors watched, use upselling strategy and get more money per purchase.
#6. Fast Product Launch
Time is of essence for product launch. Even if your designer came up with a revolutionary furniture model, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be the first to launch it. Right now, while you are still waiting for the furniture prototype, competitors might be producing something similar.
Don’t be on time – be ahead! Go for speedy Virtual Prototypes, polish your design to perfection and launch the product into mass-production. While your competition is still testing the Physical Furniture Prototype – you’ve already bitten the tastiest chunk of the market and are figuring out what kind of new improvement to implement.
#7. Customization – A Powerful Competitive Edge
You don’t have to wonder what color of chair the client will like more. It’s virtually useless anyway! No questionnaire will reveal the truth, for marketing researches have proven: what the client thinks he would do and what he actually does are two totally different things. Conditional mood doesn’t work in sales.
Test the demand well before production stage – with Virtual Prototypes. Get 3D Visualization of the product in a few variation and carefully start selling the item by pre-order through your website. You’ll get the exact statistics without losing a cent, let alone launching unpopular design into a production.
# 8. Additional Options For Marketing – At Reduced Prices
In order to get 3D Visualization of a product, you get a 3D Model of the design produced. Go further – get 3D Panorama of an interior design with your furniture prototype – for presentations, 360 view of the model for the site, and 3D Product animation – for Facebook and Youtube promotion. These are sales instruments of a powerful impact that’ll make you stand out and increase sales. For your furniture will be presented better than that of competitors, with its advantages well highlighted. Not to mention that the first interaction with your brand will be both informative and pleasant. As a result – clients will stay at your site and leave orders.
#9. Opportunity to Take Production Speed To That of a Lighting – With 3D Printing
It’s easy. Order 3D Model of a product with 3D Printing option – and you can create and produce cheap and instantaneous prototypes, as well as go as far as to produce a product.
More examples of how 3D Visualization presents furniture you can find in our 3D Visualization portfolio.
What Happens If You Choose Virtual Furniture Prototyping Over The Physical One?
To begin with, you speed up the design elaboration process and save money. Just imagine: while your competitors are still talking how to improve the model, your furniture is already available to customers. And the money saved let you organize a killer promotional campaign on the internet.
With sales dramatically increased, you have to order a new shipment – for this one have been sold out, along with all accessories and associated products that were featured on the visualization. And your site is bombarded with new orders!
Where Do I Get A Quality Virtual Furniture Prototype?
Contact ArchiCGI rendering company for 3D visualization products. We’ve been working with furniture prototypes for 5 years already. And over the last year only, we’ve completed more than 516 projects for furniture companies. Some of them you can see in our visualization portfolio and see the quality for yourself.
Further Uses Of Virtual Furniture Prototyping
Virtual Furniture prototype is a static picture, and it is only one of the ways to use a 3D Model. Having it created once, you can use it not only for design process, but for advertising as well – with animations, 360 degrees view, VR, AR. Not to mention that you can actually create an interactive catalog for your furniture!
Present your architectural project like a work of art with AI-powered CGI
Leave an order on the website, and our Manager will call you within 24 hours. He’ll gladly answer your questions and inform you on all options that suit your business model best.
Wishing you to see your sales skyrocket!
Irma Prus
Content Writer, Copywriter
Irma writes articles and marketing copy for ArchiCGI. Her dream is that more people discover the power of CGI for architecture. Irma is into neuromarketing, ruby chocolate and Doctor Who series.