On October 8, 2019, ACT | The App Association visited Upslope Brewing Company, a Boulder, Colorado based brewery, to engage with developers about the local tech community, Colorado’s app economy, and general trends and opportunities for tech businesses. Through this event we met Andrea Orrego of Atelier Home Design. Below, Andrea discusses the relationships between her company and a variety of platforms including software platforms, app stores, and online platforms, and the role that each played in her overall business development strategy and eventual launch of her app.
I’m Andrea Orrego, founder and CEO of Atelier Home Design. At Atelier, we provide a space for furniture designers, artisans, and consumers to connect and benefit from each other using our app. I’m a trained architect with the dream of making interior design accessible to anyone, anywhere. And just a few years ago, my dream became a reality when we officially launched the Atelier app.
At its core, Atelier Home Design is an app that connects consumers with makers and designers through an augmented reality (AR) marketplace. Our app allows users to design their homes by seeing how ethically fabricated, high-quality products fit in with their design ideas; combining furniture, finishes, and decor room by room. Most AR platforms use AR by making elements interactive utilizing the users’ phone cameras. This is great for product sampling but not a true design solution. We use AR in a smarter way. We’re able to collect accurate data about the rooms the user wants to design through our AR features. Through this model, our users can build out their ideal design, without needing to be in it and see how products look and fit in their space. Most importantly, our app allows users to calculate the total cost of their project and adapt it to their budget before placing any orders. This allows for a more seamless customer experience and a more sustainable delivery process for Atelier.
My chief technology officer and I are originally from Lima, Peru, and that’s where we started our operations. We currently have a team of six people, and, like many small teams, each of us does a little bit of everything. But our team’s path wasn’t always clear. When I first started the process of building an app, I knew we needed a developer, but I didn’t know who to turn to or really even where to look. I had no knowledge or background experience building technology or developing apps, so Craigslist became the first place I looked to find help. Luckily, I met my current CTO through a mutual connection, but I was so desperate that I was not far from hiring someone I didn’t know through a platform that doesn’t have the most glowing consumer trust reputation.
After my initial hiring experience, it became clear that one of the many challenges that come with starting a small business is trying to prove your value. Just as my almost-Craigslist hire attempted to do, I knew Atelier Home Design would need to prove its worth to consumers – but how?
The answer is twofold. First, platforms, like Apple’s App Store, leveled the playing field when it comes to consumer trust. Through intuitive, trustworthy spaces like the App Store, we accessed our target pool of potential consumers and built out our business and our brand. Without these platforms, Atelier—or any small business for that matter—couldn’t even dream of going toe-to-toe with a much larger, multi-billion-dollar giant in the same industry. We could now reach out to people who were interested in design and provide them with valuable content. We gave them real tips and advice — the same material I would personally give my paying clients in my architecture practice. This is something we realize is a privilege for small companies today and recognize that 15 years ago building such a robust connection with our customers would’ve cost a fortune.
Second, for us, creating a presence online was the key to connecting with as many potential customers as possible. Since we are a small company, social media became the cheapest and most integrated solution we could use. We already know that a lot of our target users are on social media, so we tapped into those existing networks where people were talking about design, or used paid options offered through social media platforms to expand our reach. By joining groups and being creative with our ad and outreach campaigns, Atelier reached 3,000 potential customers before we even launched our finished product. A company our size couldn’t have done that without tapping into existing tools and benefits provided by those social media platforms.
The interplay between the trust built into app stores matched with the low-cost customer acquisition opportunities we get through social media, we were ahead of the game when it was time to finally launch Atelier. Thanks to platforms, small businesses can compete with large corporations, and during a time where consumers are increasingly conscious about how they spend their money, I could even argue that this gives small businesses a leg up on the bigger guys. We see more and more consumers voting with their dollar and caring about the impact they make. As a brand that is proud to invest in helping community makers and to empower our consumers, we highly value this trend. We are grateful for the level playing field that online platforms have given the Atelier Home Design app and millions of other small teams on the App Store and look forward to continuing to use these platforms to contribute to our community and the broader app economy.