Wayfair Launches Generative AI Room Designer: Decorify

You knew it was coming soon. Furniture retailers have been on the cutting edge of other technologies like Augmented Reality to picture your couch, chair, or artwork in your space. Now AI is back to help with another pain point:

"Redesign my room."

Will it's B2B customers (many of which are designers) embrace it? I think so. The reality is, inspiration can come from magazines, friends, and now AI. But the hard work of getting a home or room redesign done takes a lot of people, work, and materials.

All those things ring the cash register for people in some part the retail ecosystem. Brands, designers, contractors, and supply chain.

Frankly, this kind of functionality points the way for other vendors who are trying to figure out generative AI. Ask yourself these questions:

* Could AI provide inspiration for my customers?

* Could AI provide guidance for my customers?

* Could AI lead to new projects or sales for ourselves or our partners, and what does that workflow look like?

* Does the customer want this type of guidance from us, or from one of our partners? If not us, can we enable our partners to provide this kind of guidance?

The measurement is then key, how is it helping? What's the conversion rate? Is it better than the alternative? At what point in the funnel do we want a human to intervene to assist?

If you've ever worked with a design agency of any kind, one of the first questions any ask you is this:

"What inspires you? Do you have any pictures of what aesthetic you are looking for?"

This could make this question easier to answer, and if that's the case it could accelerate the sales process in the top of the funnel.

How much is the question, and while consumers will view it as a novelty initially, but in the future you may not be able to remember not having this, if that's where you are in your journey.

Some people might use generative AI to get inspired according to aesthetic: "How could I make my bedroom look like the Kardashians? and then show me inexpensive products to realize this design more cheaply?"

If you are in many cateogries like luxury, fashion, home, or even CPG you know that inspiring a customer can generate sales.

Again, this functionality won't save Wayfair's business model, but it could generate improvements at the margins. The content and usage of this tool then could become user-generated content to show others -- which then reinforces the flywheel on blogs, in social media, etc.