I recently discovered Made.com and I have to hand it to them for coming up for an innovative way of selling furniture online. It’s based on the Collective buying power principle that by bulk buying you can negotiate a lower price for an order.
The solution is simple and elegant, the designers at made.com come up with a beautifully designed piece of furniture, they open up the shop for orders for a limited amount of time. At the end of the sales period all the orders are placed in bulk to their manufactures, who then manufacture to order and ship the products directly to you.
They have made excellent use of technology to allow you to track in detail the manufacturer and shipping process and follow it all up with a 7 day no quibble refund policy.
In addition to this they involve their customers in the product R&D process by posting the ideas and asking customers to vote on which products to take to market and what pricing the product should be sold at.
Overall a great idea that is well executed and I am sure we will see more and more of Made.com