All-in-one furniture shopping

A new home decor website from the UK lets shoppers experiment with room planning and buy directly from a wide range of retailers. mydeco, founded by lastminute.com’s Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, aggregates products from over 500 retailers and combines this wide selection with 3D planning tools that let users view and share the rooms they create. The site is packed with bells and whistles, most of which seem very useful, but could be overwhelming for first-time users. Options include uploading a photo of a room and changing its colour schemes (walls, floors, etc) with the click of a button. Another handy feature lets browsers ‘buy the look for less’: going from a GBP 8,000 room to a GBP 800 room by using less expensive pieces, while sticking to a given style. Although shoppers can create lists on mydeco, the actual sale takes place through the company’s retail partners, who pay mydeco a commission on each item sold. The site lets members earn commissions, too. For each item purchased from one of the room designs they’ve created, users can earn 3% or more. Presenting products from a range of retailers isn’t new, of course. What brings this to a next level of e-commerce is the focus on making it easy for consumers to visualise potential purchases, trying them out online. Instead of having to schlep around countless individual stores, users can easily assemble pieces in a way they otherwise couldn’t, online or offline. One to copy to other industries? (Related: Social shopping meets interior design.) Spotted by: Cagla Pakel