Tastemaker (YC S12) is an online interior decorating service for everyone
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Another route they can go down is making the service very cheap and instead making money on partnerships with furnishing manufacturers. It would be awesome to just upload your floor plans and be able to "visualize" how products will actually look in your living room.
The only issue I can think of is that it relies on information supplied by the customer. This is always tricky since they might not take the best photos and all that. Also competing only on price might not be the best business strategy. Are there any other benefits to using this service besides price?
Anyway congrats on the launch. Lots of other launches received negative comments on HN but personally I think this one has potential :).
That said, that involves her coming out and taking measurements, looking at the house, and really spending quite a bit of time with the customer. As stuff arrives she'll show back up and actually make sure it is installed correctly and make necessary adjustments.
This process is a bit less hands-on, and as such it can ONLY compete on price. You're paying less because you're getting less really.
Our decorators typically charge between $600 and $2250 per room, vs $5,000 - $10,000 for traditional decorators. We do want to offer affordable prices to our users, but we're not trying to compete only on price. We also give users the ability to work with top decorators from all over the country (and soon, the world). We've talked to a lot of users who want to work with great decorators outside their local area and don't have an easy way to do that. So while users will get less time with our decorators, they still get fantastic results.
Regardless, this is pretty genius. I can see this working really well with the bachelor crowd. They may have a little extra money, but don't necessarily care for high end and expensive interior design. Additionally, they are more than capable of painting some walls and moving some furniture, they just need advice on how it should look.