Alpacka
Furniture-as-a-service for the 21st century
Client: Personal/academic project
Role: Member of team of four design strategists and masters’ candidates at Parsons
Skills: Ethnographic analysis, landscape analysis, business case development, product strategy
CHALLENGE
To create a zero-waste home furnishing experience that is financially accessible and highly transportable.
My team was challenged to design a social enterprise addressing an ethical problem. We chose to focus on the furniture industry, where particularly among younger demographics, convenience often trumps sustainability — contributing to the 9.8 million tons of furniture waste created per year.
ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS
We focused on a demographic we were already familiar with: urban professionals in their mid-twenties to late thirties.
Each team member performed interviews with classmates and peers, and performed additional research to validate our assumptions. Key takeaways included:
Despite an almost universal disdain for the experience of moving, the average person moves 11.3 times in their life. This number tends to be higher for millennial urban dwellers who wait longer to purchase homes and move frequently in response to job changes and rising rental markets.
While young urbanites spend less time at home than their suburban counterparts, they want to experience their home as a sanctuary and invest in products to support that experience.
Millennial consumers frequently consider environmental sustainability when making a large purchase, particularly if it doesn’t require them to sacrifice convenience.
Many young professionals are still price-conscious when it comes to purchasing furnishings that may not fit into their next home.
LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS
We saw a clear gap in the market for a truly circular business model that catered to a younger demographic.
Despite a plethora of innovation in boutique rentals and e-commerce models catering to to sustainability-minded, convenience-oriented millennials, there was no truly circular model eliminating products from the waste stream entirely while remaining affordable to this demographic.
With plenty of room for growth in the online market for furniture, we saw a clear opportunity for a sustainability-focused direct-to-consumer delivery model to be successful.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
We sketched out a concept for a product made using 100% recyclable materials. Our most important design criteria was that every component of the furniture could either be reused at the end of the product’s life, or recycled into usable building materials to create a new product.
Key product features included affordability of shipping, ease of assembly/disassembly, ethical manufacturing practices, and a subscription revenue model that would facilitate end-to-end corporate accountability for all product components.
PROTOTYPE + TESTING PLAN
We designed a prototyping and testing plan for Alpacka to validate assumptions and market fit before seeking equity-based investments.
We proposed a couch for an initial product offering, with testing plans that included targeted digital ads to test concept and messaging, followed by a crowdfunding campaign to test market fit and fund a working prototype before the initial production run.
Key assumptions to test included:
A circular business model is important enough to our target market to differentiate us from our competition
Millennial consumers are more interested in sustainability and timeless design than a wide range of choices, and will choose Alpacka over boutique furniture rental model
Customers will purchase the product without seeing it first
Projected unit economics will hold true when design is prototyped
KEY TAKEAWAYS + NEXT STEPS
After pitching Alpacka to a small group of business advisors and investors, our team identified the following takeaways and next steps:
The logistics of furniture manufacturing and shipping is an expensive business — several companies identified in our landscape analysis had shuttered their operations despite being led by accomplished designers
Multiple iterations of 3D prototyping and testing would be critical to evaluate the logistical feasibility and unit economics of the business
Our overall concept and financial projections were well-received by a small audience of business advisors and investors, but needed to be tested with a broader audience