UPDATED 09:02 EDT / OCTOBER 22 2014

Role reversal for custom furniture software births Things of the Internet

Massuni custom furniture software design shelf home decorThings of the Internet. That’s a new phrase coined by Jeff Wilson, the man behind the custom furniture startup Massuni, a branch of Verso Furniture, Inc. Looking at the flipside of  The Internet of Things movement, Massuni creates real-world objects that aren’t embedded with technology, but are carved from its invisible matrix and the imaginations of its users. Unlike the basic software offering a handful of pre-determined size and color options from manufacturers like hem, Fab.com’s high-end subsidiary, Massuni lets users customize furniture pieces from start to finish.

Launching its campaign today on Kickstarter, Massuni’s founder set out to democratize furniture design. Wilson’s vision, however, took years to complete and was far more challenging than he’d expected.

“It’s been an enormous undertaking, but we’ve been determined to build a scalable platform to offer every piece of furniture in the known universe,” Wilson said in an interview. Among his biggest challenge was the algorithm underlying the Massuni system, which calculates the price of each furniture piece as it’s being designed by the buyer in the web-based program. That real-time data exchange is extended to the user, so they’re able to re-design furniture according to their own budgetary needs.

Wilson had to flip the traditional furniture-making process on its head to defy the mass-production mentality in exchange for one-off pieces, designing a factory floor with 27 work stations. Simplifying all furniture creations to a program that works with this factory layout, Massuni can accommodate over a million-trillion combinations of furniture sizes, finishes, cuts and trims – and that’s before you even consider additional variables such as furniture hardware (cabinet knobs and drawer pulls).

With 15 years of experience in cabinetry, Wilson had to re-think the way furniture is made in order to create a baseline for setting up the Massuni factory. The core process is patent-pending, and barely mentions furniture at all. Primarily the patent addresses the way Massuni organizes and prescribes objects in a 3-dimensional space, essentially reskinning an object from a basic box to something ornate.

“We had to invent a new way of defining the shape and position of how these objects relate to each other…basing the position of the equipment for intersection points,” Wilson explained.

While Wilson crafted a new standard for his furniture factory to operate as efficiently as a mass-production facility, interestingly enough, Massuni’s factory doesn’t host a single 3D printer. This, he said, would actually raise costs instead of keeping them low. As the size of a 3D-printed piece increases, the cost grows exponentially. And when it comes to creating furniture, 3D printers are still too limited in printable material options for the showcase pieces in a home. Moving forward, however, Wilson anticipates that 3D printing may come in handy for creating hardware pieces, like door handles.

Massuni’s launch begins as a social effort, seeking crowdfunding success on Kickstarter. But Wilson hopes the social love won’t stop there. Given the software-centric nature of Massuni, he plans to keep things as open as possible to incorporate furniture designs from users.


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