Quick Pitch: Fashion4Home.com is an online-only retailer delivering high-end designer furniture at 50-70% less than traditional retail prices.
Genius Idea: Furniture is generally not a hot market for online retail, but the founders of Fashion4Home.com see opportunity where others see, well, not much of anything.
The key here is tapping into the social power of a website to produce furniture designs you won't find anywhere else. The German company has been operational in Europe since November, but it just launched its U.S. store today.
The site currently sells 80 models of contemporary furniture, but future designs are brought to fruition in an unusual way. A section of Fashion4Home.com called "Vote" lets customers examine designs in progress and leave comments on them or vote for them to be moved into a production phase. Designers can join in the discussion, too.
Once an item has moved out of the design phase, customers may continue to follow the manufacturing and logistics process until they can purchase the item they voted for shortly afterwards.
This community involvement strategy is meant to spur innovation, generate products unique to Fashion4Home.com, and engage customers, who are more likely to purchase something if they had a hand in designing it. In fact, if your vote contributed to an item going to the manufacturing stage, you'll get a 10% discount if you choose to buy it. Manufacturing is on-demand.
Fashion4Home.com also claims that "by eliminating all of the associated costs of inventory and compressing the entire supply chain" it can sell designer furniture to customers for 50-70% less than it would cost at retail. Delivery is free, believe it or not, but it will take up to 12 weeks from the moment you place the order.
A Bonus Just For Mashable Readers
If you'd like to try this service out, Fashion4Home is offering Mashable readers an exclusive 10% discount code that's good through the end of February: MASHABLE-F4H. Enjoy.
Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark
BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.