Very cool! Smart to automate part of the rendering service. That can take a ton of time manually. What's the experience been like for users to upload floor plan and photos? Any best practices or lessons learned you could share?
Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
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Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#42Have you thought about trying to sell this to new build developers/people buying new builds? Or even just people buying houses. I would happily pay more than what you're charging for someone to just sort my whole house out (including finding a decent decorator).
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#43Very interesting, and something I'd be interested in at the moment. But I am hesitant on the price point. At ~$4,800 / year as with the sample proposal, it might be a tough sell (or "rent", in this case). The other options are to hire a designer and buy the furniture. High upfront cost but you still own the furniture and can always re-sell it to recoup some costs. Yes, this is a hassle. But how much is the hassle wor…
> At ~$4,800 / year as with the sample proposal, it might be a tough sell (or "rent", in this case). Thanks for the feedback, I agree that it's not extremely affordable yet, and we're trying hard to get the price down. We currently work with a retail partner but plan on going direct-to-consumer soon, which should make our package more affordable. Since we currently only serve the Swiss market, it's common for unfurni…
As someone who owns a 2 bedroom condo and plans to stay for awhile but is still mostly furnished with Ikea, I would absolutely be interested in a buyout option!
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#44Have you thought about trying to sell this to new build developers/people buying new builds? Or even just people buying houses. I would happily pay more than what you're charging for someone to just sort my whole house out (including finding a decent decorator).
Yes! We've been focused on B2C, but we already worked with our first B2B housing complex in Bern, but that's it. This is an avenue that we still have to explore, but you're right, this could be a great channel for us.
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's funny and implies that they don't take themselves too seriously?
A lot of workers are suffering from PTSD from abusive managers who were "uncool" and micromanaging the living hell out of them. I wouldn't call that funny. Not saying that's what's happening at Pabio but that was the first thought in my mind.
You won't find any abusive managers at Pabio... I'm just not very cool, that's it, I promise!
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#46Very cool! Smart to automate part of the rendering service. That can take a ton of time manually. What's the experience been like for users to upload floor plan and photos? Any best practices or lessons learned you could share?
Great question, this has been something we're thinking about for a while now. We can do a much better/more realistic render if people upload floor plans, but not everyone does that (maybe they don't have one and don't know how to use those floor plan apps), which is why we are currently exploring ways to generating proposals without the strict need of a floor plan.
People usually drop out of the funnel when we request a floor plan. This has been the main reason we're unable to convert some customers. For now, if you upload a few photos from different angles and the dimensions, we can probably work with that too, but we need more data before we're sure!
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#47Very interesting, and something I'd be interested in at the moment. But I am hesitant on the price point. At ~$4,800 / year as with the sample proposal, it might be a tough sell (or "rent", in this case). The other options are to hire a designer and buy the furniture. High upfront cost but you still own the furniture and can always re-sell it to recoup some costs. Yes, this is a hassle. But how much is the hassle wor…
I paid an extra $500/month with an 11 month commitment for a furnished place over a non furnished. Maybe a little steep, I think I overpaid, but the one thing I will say to anyone reading this: The benefits of living in a nicely arranged and furnished home can not be overstated. I work from home and my productivity ... and income ... and my peace of mind ... went up dramatically.
> The benefits of living in a nicely arranged and furnished home can not be overstated
Same! Even though we're based in and only service Switzerland for now, I live in Groningen, the Netherlands (we're a fully remote team), and I got a fully furnished apartment. A comparable unfurnished apartment is ~€800 and I pay €1400, but damn -- it's just so much nicer! And that combined with having a cleaning service [1] so you don't have to think about much at all, it's almost like living in a hotel!
[1] Pabio optionally offers a bi-weekly cleaning service (2.5 hours every other week for ~$100/m) through a partnership.
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#48Very interesting, and something I'd be interested in at the moment. But I am hesitant on the price point. At ~$4,800 / year as with the sample proposal, it might be a tough sell (or "rent", in this case). The other options are to hire a designer and buy the furniture. High upfront cost but you still own the furniture and can always re-sell it to recoup some costs. Yes, this is a hassle. But how much is the hassle wor…
I second the price question. I might not be the target customer in this case. But I'm not sure how a professionally designed interior is a good option for saving money. I'm cheap, so my first choice is looking for quality used furniture off of places like craigslist. I've gotten some pieces I'm happy with. But the issue with furnishing an empty apartment that way is that it takes longer to find pieces, especially if…
> I'm not sure how a professionally designed interior is a good option for saving money
If you have to manually hire and pay a professional interior design, it's not very affordable, I agree. At Pabio, we have several in-house designers from eastern Europe so it costs us (and therefore, you) a very small (bundled) amount. This is also because they don't need to spend too much time on each apartment (each designer does multiple apartments per day) as they are aided by our technology, for example our drag-and-drop floor plan design tool and automated rendering engine.
> My assumption is prices would be more than retail at a minimum
You'd think so, but this is excitingly not the case. You never pay more than retail. This is possible because we get a discount from our retail partners much larger than customers would get because of our volume. Also, furniture has huge margins, so we're planning on going direct-to-consumer later this year, which means even more savings for the customer. Either way, our offering is more affordable than buying all your furniture upfront from a retailer, especially when you think of the bundled services, e.g., fully insured furniture (don't be afraid of dropping coffee!), free delivery and installation, and optional paid addons like electricians and cleaning services.
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#49An alternative approach might be to let subscribers browse a warehouse of inventory and select items for you to move into their apartment. That might broaden the appeal of what you are offering to a larger audience, especially families.
I really like the idea of having a company take away all of my furniture when moving out, and if even one third of it didn't get trashed that would be a win.
Finally, a lot of people only buy new furniture because they are afraid of pests hitching a ride. At some point you will need to address that from a quality assurance and liability perspective.
Re: Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) – Interior design and furniture rental as a service
#50An alternative approach might be to let subscribers browse a warehouse of inventory and select items for you to move into their apartment. That might broaden the appeal of what you are offering to a larger audience, especially families. I really like the idea of having a company take away all of my furniture when moving out, and if even one third of it didn't get trashed that would be a win. Finally, a lot of people…
> An alternative approach might be to let subscribers browse a warehouse of inventory
This is closer to Feather (YC S17) which is ecommerce + rental furniture. For us, the interior design aspect is a large part of our offering because you don't have to imagine what your apartment will look like with all of these items. Plus, we can offer better prices and spend more on acquisition since we have a large ticket (an apartment or at least a room worth of furniture rather than renting a single chair).
> Finally, a lot of people only buy new furniture because they are afraid of pests hitching a ride
You're right, this is food for thought. We already fully insure all items in the customer's apartment, so day-to-day wear-and-tear and some pest control can be fixed for free. But yes, we'll definitely need to think about this more when we refurbish furniture and put it in another apartment.