Decentralized and on-demand custom furniture.

An in-depth look at the concept, prototyping, our manufacturing algorithm, and the vision for a better tomorrow.

What do you guys do?

So what is Birdhouce exactly?

For those looking from the outside in, they’d probably see a simple furniture brand with a fancy customization tool and that’s fine. All startups look mundane when you don't have insider information.

But if you’re interested, then here’s the two-sentence pitch:

“Birdhouce is an on-demand custom furniture company that uses a 3D configurator and Augmented Reality to give customers perfect-fit furniture. We use a network of global manufacturers to always manufacture locally and sustainably.”

The reply to that is usually “Ahh okay so you guys do furniture, like IKEA, so beds and chairs and tables”.

To which my reply is “Nope, not like IKEA and we don't do beds, or chairs or tables. We only do storage furniture actually”

A “VC-backed”, “innovative” and “tech-driven” furniture startup that only does storage? I don't get it.

Here’s my in-depth pitch:

Birdhouce is a furniture company that takes unique customer design input through an online robust and easy-to-use 3D configurator. Customers can see their custom designs in AR in their homes before they make a purchase. Our technology then takes this input and automatically converts it into custom manufacturing documents that are then sent to the manufacturer nearest to the customer.

1. The customer gets a tailored piece of furniture that perfectly fits their space.
2. The manufacturer receives detailed production documents and manufacturing files of this unique piece.
3. As a brand, we never build in 1 country and ship to another. Instead, we partner with local manufacturers and they fulfill the orders coming from their markets.

What you get, is a decentralized manufacturing facility that delivers on-demand, globally.

Why just storage

The aim is to make a MENA brand that delivers instantly without shipping or using cross-border trucking.

I wanted to make a furniture brand that delivered the exact same product replica globally as fast as possible, to an exact specification with exactly the same material and to the same quality standard, all by using only local manufacturing.

Chairs maybe?

Chairs are difficult to design, build, and distribute. They have to take into account ergonomics, and what might feel comfortable to one person might not feel comfortable to someone else.

Chairs are also difficult to prototype and they take long to build, test, and mass produce. And frankly, I didn't have the time or budget to run a design agency that’s seeking to design “the perfect” chair.

What about couches or sofas?

Well? They all require so much testing of the fabrics and material combinations. Ergonomics is also a problem since they need to accommodate different body shapes and sizes.

And what if I want a certain fabric that doesn't exist somewhere else? What if people in one market tend to like a certain fabric that is unlikely to sell in another market?

Also, if the goal is to create a mass-market brand that is affordable and efficient in manufacturing I needed whatever I was designing to come out of one workshop.

Tables?

This meant that it could not be a designer table for example where the legs are steel or aluminum that came from a metal shop while the top was this unique or exotic wood that was made by a skilled artisan at a woodshop.

In short, storage furniture is the most “scalable” furniture category.

Most storage furniture today is made out of standard 18mm MDF.

MDF is probably the most widely used raw material for furniture in MENA (excluding particle board) since it is very robust, easy to work with, and is among the cheapest.

Remember, I was looking for speed and efficiency in testing, prototyping, and building. I also had to make all the production files myself. The fabrication process needed to be fast, automated, and highly scalable.

So scalable in fact that the production files could be simply uploaded to a cloud storage system and then accessed by different partners around the world for quick industrial manufacturing. No intricate woodworking or artisanal craftsmanship.

Entre CNC manufacturing.

The Technology

CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) manufacturing is a manufacturing process that uses computer-controlled machines to produce precision parts and components.

It's kind of like 3D printing, but instead of having a head that melts material and then adds it to the print, instead, it's a steel router bit that removes material from a larger body (in this case large panels of MDF that sit flat on a large table).

What if we were to combine CNC manufacturing with an algorithm that everyday people can use to get perfect-fit furniture for their homes?

That’s what we did, we called it:

FEATHR - Furniture Engineering Algorithm for Tailored Home Requirements

Yes, the designer in me had to make the acronym on-brand. ??

What the algorithm does is simply genius.

Customers can select from any of our 14 standard furniture items on our website. These items range from small night tables, TV units, shoe storage units, tall bookcases, or wide wall storage.

They are then able to customize them up to centimeter accuracy to their own requirements using our 3D configurator. They click and drag sliders to change over 20 parameters including individual row heights, door options, and more.

What FEATHR is doing in real-time is updating the 3D model to show the customer their new design, recalculating material cost, and therefore updating the pricing and at the same time behind the scenes producing unique manufacturing documents for that custom order.

What my partner workshop needed to manufacture, assemble, and ship the order was a set of files and documents. PDFs, production documents for his CNC machine (remember that every furniture order is custom so it's impossible to do manually), and furniture component assembly instructions for after the pieces are cut.

It’s almost like drawing out the outline of a new jigsaw puzzle every order, then having to pull the pieces out and assemble them without a reference drawing.

It’s impossible without technology and an automated and streamlined process.

More in-depth stories about FEATHR in future posts.

Decentralized and On-demand

The idea of a powerful algorithm that’s plugged into different workshops around the world to produce furniture for one brand, in theory, should work.

All the furniture is made using 1 type of material, that’s 1 material thickness.

The entire piece of furniture is digitally fabricated using 1 file that’s used by 1 machine operated by 1 person and comes out of 1 workshop.

There should not be a need to import or export furniture if the manufacturing process is universal, and uses the same machines and same production techniques globally.

All we need is to find the right workshops that would be interested in being a part of an on-demand movement.

The problem with furniture workshops is that they prefer to produce batch quantities of furniture at a time, so convincing them to wait for orders to come in on-demand, and at reduced rates is a challenge.

But it's not impossible, today we’re already working with 2 partner workshops in Tunisia that believe in what we’re doing and are very supportive.

Moreover, we currently work closely with them to make sure we produce the right documentation to make expansion and new partnerships internationally easy and seamless.

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