When potential home buyers enter a model, they explore the floor plan, ask about details and finishes, and try to figure out if the various spaces will fit their needs. Furniture and décor staging is key to help buyers picture the possibilities, but some new-home sales specialists get tasked with questions such as, “where’s this piece from?” and “can I buy it for my new home?”
For some builders in the past, those questions could be tough to answer, as furniture is typically sourced through warehouse vendors opposed to front-facing retailers, and distracts the potential buyer from the true selling point, the home.
Eoin Harrington, former senior vice president of innovation at Restoration Hardware, saw an opportunity to connect the residential building industry, the furniture industry, and the typical everyday consumer by developing an online interior design company called MINE.
“Sometimes in a model home you might have products from 20 different vendors represented; even if you knew where those products were from, recreating that look would be a nightmare,” says Harrington, CEO at MINE. “We want to make the customer's experience that much more easy, convenient, and delightful so that the post-home purchase experience is truly a joyful one.”
Since February 2019, MINE has offered its free interior design services directly to consumers online, whether they were furnishing a new home or refreshing an existing one, but the company also has partnered with public and private builders to turn their models into shoppable showrooms for customers.
PulteGroup, in particular, has worked with MINE since the beginning. In 2019, the builder started with a smaller pilot program across three of its markets, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, and employed the service in a handful of models in those divisions. Pulte also conducted some of its own consumer research to see how people would react to the platform and the partnership.
“We slowly got our toes wet,” says Angela Nuessle, PulteGroup’s national vice president of interior design. “From there, we heard nothing but positive feedback in response to all of the questions, not only from consumers but also our sales consultants on-site.”
Today, 235 of PulteGroup’s models have activated the MINE relationship, including model homes at select Pulte Homes, Del Webb, and John Wieland communities across the country. From contemporary desert homes in Arizona and modern farmhouse designs in Texas to breezy coastal-inspired décor in Florida, the in-house interior design team at PulteGroup selects pieces inspired by the lives of their buyers, combining functionality, comfort, and today’s latest trends.
In those models, Nuessle reports roughly 95% of the furniture and décor are available to consumers, including big-ticket items like seating, tables, dining room sets, bedroom furniture, kid’s furniture, storage, lighting, textiles, window treatments, rugs, and wall art, and even small things like vases, tableware, throw blankets, pillows, artificial plants, and so much more. Many of the items offered through MINE are priced much lower than retail prices, says the builder.
When visiting a PulteGroup model, buyers can simply scan a QR code with their smartphone that will direct them to the MINE website, where they can purchase the same or similar products. As they explore the home, details for each of the featured furniture and décor items will be right at their fingertips to easily "add to cart." Buyers can also virtually experience and shop Pulte models across the country on the MINE website.
“With this service, our buyers can now easily replicate the inspired spaces we create for our models in their own home, without the expense of hiring an interior designer,” says Nuessle. “We're thrilled to be able to provide our future home buyers or consumers walking our models with an elevated experience that really does address all of their questions and complements the process that we provide as Pulte.”
Harrington reports other builders, such as Ashton Woods, Taylor Morrison, Stanley Martin Homes, and David Weekley Homes, among others, have also begun a relationship with MINE as well. The company will work with either a builder’s internal interior design team or external design firm to make any model shoppable and service more buyers across the country.
“It's about helping the home buyer complete the experience and turn that new house into a beautifully furnished home that looks as good as the model,” he adds. “And builders share the profits of every single sale. So it's a customer experience upside, revenue generation upside, and alleviation of distraction for the sales staff, so they can focus on selling the house.”
Looking ahead, MINE hopes to expand its offering to more U.S. builders and is working on different tools to improve the customer experience from a design perspective and gather insightful data for its builder partners.
“We're starting to analyze the data to provide meaningful insights to builders about what their customers are doing, what they're liking, what they're interested in, what models are doing well, what rooms are getting more attention, and what styles are working in a given region,” continues Harrington. “We want to help our builder partners by creating more engaging experiences for the home buyers, not just for buying furniture, but for buying homes.”
