Building the world's most interactive furniture buying experience with Abacus
Abacus and Cocoon joined forces to build and engineer an industry-leading furniture buying experience to make an impact. Manufacturers of bespoke luxury dining tables, Abacus approached us to develop a custom website & configurator solution that would serve to amplify their highly personalized customer experience.
Client
Abacus Tables
Timelines
Ongoing
Implementation
Augmented Reality Development
3D Textures & Modelling
Headless Web DevelopmentHeadless CommerceCustom API Development
Services provided
Experience Design
Software Engineering
Database Architecture
API Development
Systems Integration
3D & AR Development
About The Project
Abacus Tables is a UK-based manufacturer of bespoke, made-to-order luxury furniture. After a lengthy struggle to identify an ideal development partner, Abacus approached us to embark on a complex project that would see their entire online sales approach radically reinvented.
With an ambition to introduce an interactive, customer-driven sales approach, Abacus sought to engineer a bespoke 3D product configurator with integrated augmented reality capabilities. Frustrated with the limitations of existing solutions, the furniture company engaged Cocoon to develop a heavily custom solution that would deliver on all of their requirements.
Besides the configurator, an entirely redeveloped website was required to support an extensive rebrand—and to maximize the impact of the configurator on the customer journey.
Problems
Abacus had embarked on several failed attempts to deploy a 3D product configurator and AR solution. Regrettably, previous vendors had been unable to deliver on the company's complex technical & implementation requirements, not least due to the fact that their product line is infinitely customizable. The company had limited internal resources, and therefore required a partner that could deliver end-to-end, including both visual development and engineering.
Challenges
Abacus had a large amount of data, given that their furniture line is so configurable. However, the company lacked many of the assets required for implementation of a 3D configurator, such as well-developed textures and a complete 3D model library. The nature of their products meant that there were also many inter-dependencies between configurable parts and components.
Furthermore, their aged WordPress website was not built to support the rich, integrated experience that the company envisioned; where the configurator would play a central part in the customer journey and shopping experience.
As a luxury brand, Abacus also had high expectations for both visual quality and intuitiveness of the user experience, in order to satisfy their target consumer.
Solutions
Excited by the complexity of the project requirements, Cocoon designed and engineered a custom 3D product configurator for Abacus, in combination with a new website, to allow each to augment the other in terms of delivering the best possible user experience.
The existing WordPress website was replaced with a custom headless solution, utilizing Next.js and Sanity to deliver a modern, performant, and scalable frontend.
Process
DesignMarket Research & Problem Identification
In a crowded and expanding market, Abacus strived to radically differentiate its brand from fierce competition. With deep collaboration, Cocoon worked with Abacus to identify key consumer pain points that hadn't yet been solved.
Rapid, Solution Oriented Prototyping
With a strict deadline, our multi-disciplinary team began an intensive agile prototyping phase to develop strong proof-of-concept and work through data-related challenges unique to Abacus' heavily customizable product line.
Fluid, Transparent Development Process
With a total build time of 6 months – including both the headless Sanity<>Next.js website and custom 3D product configurator, Cocoon maintained a transparent development process that ensured openness of communication and collaboration.
Continuous Iterative Innovation
Post-launch, Cocoon continues to work with Abacus with a commitment to continually improve customer experience through the company's online offering. Our data-driven approach & continual user behavior analysis ensures we're always ahead.
Market Research & Problem Identification
In a crowded and expanding market, Abacus strived to radically differentiate its brand from fierce competition. With deep collaboration, Cocoon worked with Abacus to identify key consumer pain points that hadn't yet been solved.
Rapid, Solution Oriented Prototyping
With a strict deadline, our multi-disciplinary team began an intensive agile prototyping phase to develop strong proof-of-concept and work through data-related challenges unique to Abacus' heavily customizable product line.
Fluid, Transparent Development Process
With a total build time of 6 months – including both the headless Sanity<>Next.js website and custom 3D product configurator, Cocoon maintained a transparent development process that ensured openness of communication and collaboration.
Continuous Iterative Innovation
Post-launch, Cocoon continues to work with Abacus with a commitment to continually improve customer experience through the company's online offering. Our data-driven approach & continual user behavior analysis ensures we're always ahead.
3D Product Configurator
The product configurator was developed directly within the Next frontend, in order to achieve the best possible integration with the remainder of the site. Utilizing Three.js and a custom Node.js/Express backend, the configurator provides real-time visualization whilst supporting the client's complex business logic.
The configurator build included complex functionality such as AR implementation, programmatic geometry generation, and complex dependency resolution with dynamic pricing. In order to reduce the number of 3D models required, Cocoon developed functions to generate 3D geometry programmatically, based on user selections. This achieved a significant reduction in the number of 3D models required, whilst saving time and cost for the client.
Cocoon additionally implemented dynamic pricing functionality, including relative pricing based on the user's current selections, with integrated financing options based on the price of the user's active configuration.
Augmented Reality
In order to support AR on both iOS and Android devices, USDZ and GLB models were generated on-the-fly, based on the combination of 3D models and programmatically-generated geometries present in the user's 3D scene.
Headless Website
Cocoon recommended a headless website implementation, in order to deliver on Abacus' nuanced requirements and digital transformation goals. Sanity was chosen as the CMS, to support ease of content management for the client's internal team. Coupled with Next.js, the new site delivers on both performance and functionality.
Our unique value proposition
Our unique value proposition
Achieving success through our culture
Achieving success through our culture
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