User:Jlc0605/Mydeco.com
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mydeco.com mydeco.com is the trading name of By Design UK Ltd, an online furniture and interior design website founded by travel website lastminute.comco-founder Brent Hoberman. The website aggregates furniture and home accessories from UK retailers into a single search engine. Currently the UK website includes over 3 million products from more than 1,500 UK retailers – from high street retailers such as John Lewis and Heal's to designer brands and independent crafts people. As well as providing a specialist search engine specifically built to find the most relevant results for furniture, mydeco.com offers a 3D design tool and an online mood board tool.
Company history
Launched in February 2008 [1], mydeco.com was founded by Brent Hoberman when he had trouble visualizing his interior designer wife's ideas for their new home, and he could not find a resource to help him on the Internet.
mydeco.com secured Europe’s largest ever seed funding round led by SPARK Ventures, and announced an additional £7.35M of second round of funding in September 2008. Sofinnova Partners, one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms, led the round in which other participants included SRPE, Amadeus Capital Partners and Burda Cross Media.[2] This investment takes total funding to date to over £12.5M.[3] In March 2010 mydeco formed a joint venture with Ning Li to found Made.com, with backing from PROFounders venture capital.
Geographies
mydeco.com is unusual among dotcom companies in that it launched in the UK and expanded into the United States. In April 2010 the company launched a US version of the website, with over 1,000 US home retailers included in the vertical search engine.
Business model
mydeco.com is an online marketplace , aggregating products from many retailers into one website and earning commission when items are purchased on the retailer’s site, or from web traffic sent to the retailer’s websites. The company also generates revenue from online advertising, and by licensing its proprietary technology to third parties.
Technology
Since launch, mydeco.com has developed proprietary technology in vertical search and 3D visualization.
Vertical search
The company developed a vertical search algorithm specifically designed for furniture and home wares, which allows consumers to search for items across thousands of retailers by keyword, or by using refines such as Price, Colour and Dimension. Some Internet commentators see vertical search as the future for online retail. [4]
3D room visualization
mydeco developed a 3D room planning application which enables consumers to design, decorate and furnish their own room with real furniture. It is the only free 3D design tool to include 3D models of real products. Originally developed in Flash, the tool was re-written in Javascript in 2009 to make it more accessible for computer users who do not have access to Flash software. Room designs can be created from a blank template, or by uploading a floorplan image. The company has created a library of 90,000 3D models of furniture, wallpaper, paint, artwork and flooring created from real products. High quality 3D renders are generated when the user publishes their room design to the website. Over 300,000 3D designs have been created to date.
The company licensed the 3D visualization tool to US retailer Design Within Reach in 2011.[5]
Design Board
The mydeco Design Board is a non-Executive board comprising Sir Terence Conran, Philippe Starck, Marc Newsom, Kirstie Allsopp, Tara Bernerd and Kelly Hoppen. The Design board meets several times a year, and advises the company on direction and developments within the industry. In the United States mydeco has established a Design Board comprising interior designer Brad Ford, journalist Mayer Rus (columnist for LA Times blog From Rus With Love, interior designer Alexa Hampton (daughter of celebrated American decorator Mark Hampton), Jonathan Adler and founder of Dwell Studio Christiane Lemieux.
References
- ^ Steve Hawkes,"There's an opportunity here - not even Google can tell me where I can buy a red leather sofa", The Times, 4 February 2008
- ^ "mydeco secures significant investment to fund international launch", Soffinova Partners, 3 September 2008
- ^ The Telegraph, 31 August 2008
- ^ Christer Holloman, “Google Outdated, Mydeco.com Holds Key To Future of Search”, Sky News Tech Talk, 1 February 2011
- ^ Lauren Indvik, "Design Within Reach Integrates 3D Room Planner Online, In Stores", Mashable, 29 March 2011.
External links
- “mydeco launches assault on the home front”, TechCrunch Europe, 4 February 2008
- “Can mydeco Democratize Design?”, BusinessWeek, 8 July 2008
- “When the virtual becomes real”, Wall Street Journal Europe edition, 5 November 2010