I find shopping for furniture to be a mostly frustrating process. Yes, it’s great to be getting a new couch or bed, but once you’ve found something you like, you have to make sure it’ll fit in the space you saved for it, figure out if it’ll go well with your other furniture and general décor, and on more than one occasion, even after measuring carefully and making a final decision, I found myself either not liking the final look of the room or realizing that I didn’t measure that carefully after all. In short, shopping for furniture is a pain that doesn’t always leads to good or satisfying results.
This is why I’m glad to hear that Target has taken some of the hassle out of furniture shopping by introducing an app that allows shoppers to take a picture of a room in their home and drag pieces of the retailer’s furniture to see how they would look in any space. The app also allows users to move and rotate furniture to their heart’s content, making it easy to see 1) if the furniture will fit in the space and 2) if it will go well with the rest of the house. Brilliant.
This new app comes on the heels of other high-tech new features for Target, who recently introduced, in collaboration with Pinterest, an app that allows users to take a picture of an object they like and see what similar objects are available at Target. It is perhaps important to mention that this new app is only available through mobile web as, according to a Target spokesperson, “…by using mobile web, it’s a simple experience — guests can easily snap pictures using their phone, they don’t have to use any additional hardware or apps. We just felt like it was a really straightforward experience.”
There are currently only 200 pieces of furniture to choose from at the moment, but Target is confident that there will be many, many more added to the app by 2018. The app also allows customers to add whatever piece of furniture to their cart, making the whole process fast and easy. The only downside to shopping virtually is that one would have no idea how comfortable their new couch or chair might be, but I suppose one could make their way to the store to try them on after they’ve ascertained that the piece will be a welcome addition to their home.