Brandstar Interview | When Home Furnishing Brands Begin to "Explore Inward"

Brandstar first came into contact with the home furnishing brand "Chapter Home" in August 2022. At that time, the brand was established only a few months ago, with only a few products launched and the mini program e-commerce just launched. Now a year has passed, and the development speed of Chapter Home is somewhat surprising to us - the SKU has increased by dozens of times, and the offline layout has been opened. The first store with a space of 1,000 square meters was opened in Changning Raffles City, displaying more than 650 SKUs.

In the view of Brandstar, for a new home furnishing brand, being able to maintain such a fast pace of development is closely related to the team behind it.

Angela, the founder of Zhang Hui, was employee No. 001 of IKEA China and the first Chinese CEO of IKEA. She was later promoted to IKEA Global Business President in 2022 and has more than 20 years of experience in the home furnishing industry.

In the founding team of Zhang Hui, many business leaders have been deeply involved in the home furnishing field for nearly 20 years. They have participated in the development and transformation of the industry and led the team to achieve business breakthroughs.

Taking the opportunity of the opening of the first store, we talked with Angela about the process of store and brand building, and in an environment where the market concentration is dispersed and channels are king, what new value and experience does Zhang Hui want to bring to consumers?

Bring your home into the spiritual world

When we first saw ChapterHome, its natural green style was just beginning to emerge, but it was not yet mature. This time when the new store opened, our impression of ChapterHome was that the brand had already taken shape and had a differentiated image.

The green in ChapterHome's brand color has become richer and more layered - extending to three different levels of light green, dark green and brighter green. When paired with the soft, low-saturation color scheme of the product, it is natural and does not dominate.

"Nature" is actually one of the keywords of ChapterHome's brand style. In addition to natural color matching, ChapterHome also pays great attention to expressing "natural texture". For example, the brand will use linen, marble and wood materials in its products to show the relaxation and breathing of nature itself.

In ChapterHome's understanding, nature is "gentle", which is why sharp edges are rarely seen in the design of brand products, but gentle and rounded arcs are chosen instead.

In ChapterHome's stores, natural green, natural texture, and natural curves can all be fully presented. When all the elements blend together, we can feel not only the simple and modern atmosphere of returning to nature, but also the vigorous, simple and pure power of nature itself. Natural power and vitality naturally have healing properties.

In the eyes of Brand Planet, such a complete and differentiated image is closely related to ChapterHome's brand philosophy and concept - "moving home into the spiritual world", which is one of ChapterHome's descriptions of his own concept.

Therefore, how to design home products and scenes that are relaxing, healing, and resonate with the spirit of consumers is the core of ChapterHome's concern. This is also the brand's thinking based on current insights into consumers - from focusing on the outside to paying more attention to inner feelings, especially in the post-epidemic era. Consumers pay more attention to inner experience in all aspects of life, and the existence of "home" itself is a concentration of the inner spirit.

Brandstar: We see that you describe yourselves as "moving home into the spiritual world". Why do you link home and the spiritual world together? What is your thinking here?

Angela: "Bringing home into the spiritual world" comes from the consumption trends we have observed.

We found that people used to pay more attention to external things, such as houses and cars. At that time, people's concept might be "expensive is good".

But now, people care more about their own feelings. When choosing brands and products they like, they will "look inward" more - considering whether the brand fits the lifestyle they advocate, whether it has unique aesthetics and values, and whether they can feel deeper resonance and connection from the brand content.

We also found that under the influence of the general environment, everyone will be more or less less confident, anxious and confused, and will calm down and start thinking about what they want, what the next step should be, what should be done, and what should not be done - this is a process of "inner exploration".

So home has become a special place - a space where people can be quiet, alone, think, relax, and heal. Every corner of the home can be arranged according to our own spiritual world. Through the connection with the space and furniture in the home, people can listen to the true voice of their hearts and find their true inner strength.

What ChapterHome wants to do is to awaken and inspire everyone's imagination of home. Furniture is not very similar to fast-moving consumer goods. Some things need to be "awakened" and "inspired".

I hope that when everyone sees our products, there will be a moment when they will think: "Aha! This is it! This product can be stacked and used, and it can also be used for storage!", so the characteristics of our products are multifunctional and multi-scenario.

And this "Aha! moment" not only stays on a single product, but also creates a new life scene for users through the combination of multiple products, opening up their beautiful imagination of life.

This is why our store will describe "All the imaginations about home are here". We hope to inspire everyone's imagination and vision of life, and encourage everyone to come to ChapterHome's store to take a look, which may give some beautiful inspiration for life.

Brandstar: How is this "inward-looking" brand philosophy and concept reflected in your products?

Angela: We found that a consumption trend related to "inward exploration" is that home products gradually transition from satisfying the functional quadrant to providing emotional value. For example, Chinese people often say "light is friendly", and always leave a light on when they go home. I often turn on a small table lamp at home when I go out for a walk with my dog at night. So we developed a small side table series called "Reef", which is designed like a reef surfacing. The tabletop is made of translucent resin glass, which is sparkling in the sun. We will also give customers a small lamp that can be attached to the tabletop. When turned on, it becomes an atmosphere lamp, which is very atmospheric.

We will also bring outdoor life into our homes, or bring green plants home, to create a more healing and relaxing atmosphere, which is also an element in our stores.

Develop new inspiration corners ——

Provide practical and emotional value under scene innovation

As ChapterHome said, home is the spiritual core of human beings, so the design of products also takes into account the spiritual and emotional needs of contemporary people. But what makes us more curious is what is the main design line of ChapterHome products?

The home furnishing category is different from many fast-moving consumer goods. It is not based on the logic of hot-selling and single products. In the early days, ChapterHome did not take the route of focusing on a single category, but covered small household items such as fragrances and tableware to large furniture such as sofas and storage cabinets.

Scene-driven is the characteristic of ChapterHome's product system. Whether in stores or e-commerce pages, you can see scene-based matching: afternoon tea at home, tipsy in the living room, camping on the balcony, being alone at night...

The newly opened stores are also scene-centric, using different furniture combinations to create a sense of life. This may be why ChapterHome's stores make people feel comfortable and relaxed.

However, the scene that ChapterHome focuses on is not the traditional living room, living room and other spaces, but to develop new corners in the basic space.

In ChapterHome's words, it is to "open up the space pattern". This is why, when the brand cuts into the living room scene and changes the concept of the living room from "Living Room" to "Room For Life", ChapterHome wants to create a "different living room".

The function of the traditional living room has changed, and new scene needs are emerging. There can be a corner for pets to live in the living room, develop furniture shared by people and pets, or replace the study and dining room, and design an integrated office and dining table space, but it must not be the form of a large sofa with a large coffee table and TV in the past family.

Multifunctional and flexible furniture is based on the change of young people's lifestyle. In addition, ChapterHome, on the basis of practicality, pays more attention to exploring non-functional needs in the space, such as what kind of atmosphere is needed for flexible office? What is your own time alone at night? What is the most relaxing and healing corner at home? These are invisible but important life needs in the space.

Brandstar: For ChapterHome, what are the main features of your products?

Angela: We define it ourselves. The first characteristic is "multi-function", which means multi-function and multi-scenario use.

The second is to have design ingenuity. We will not declare ourselves as a "designer brand", but we hope that everyone will feel that we are a "brand with a sense of design". For example, our swing side table can free your hands while watching iPad, and you can also adjust the angle to suit your body height. There is a clever sense of design in the product.

I was chatting with a friend before, and she complained that she bought an Italian imported bed with an eye-catching design. There was a pair of huge wings next to the bed, but it was very inconvenient to use in daily life, and its functionality was relatively weak and not "practical" enough.

Because of my personal experience in furniture design, I was greatly influenced by the Nordic design concept. Nordic furniture puts function and practicality first. This concept is also reflected in the chapters. Our products are all designed for people's use and life with the principle of "people-oriented".

So based on practicality, we hope to take into account both appearance and design sense, so that I think it is a furniture product that can achieve a better "quality-price ratio".

Brandstar: Speaking of multi-functions, we see that ChapterHome's products have made a lot of micro-innovations. What is the logic behind your product innovation and differentiation?

Angela: In fact, it is still back to people-oriented. Since we are scene-driven, we will return to the subdivided scenes in life.

Today, many home furnishings do not necessarily need to change the entire home, but can develop new corners. For example, the "Morning C Evening A" furniture products we are currently developing are because today's consumers have the habit of drinking coffee in the morning and getting tipsy at night, so we can design a small side cabinet in a corner for this kind of living state and sense of ritual, which has the functions of placing a coffee machine and a wine cabinet.

Some people will say that I just like sofas to be used for lying down, not for sitting. For example, our Swiss roll folding sofa can satisfy the function of freely switching between sofas, reclining chairs and beds.

So the most important answer to the scenario is still people. Our product matrix is to cut into the new life scenarios of consumers and put forward new lifestyle propositions about home. In these scenarios, new needs will be born, and we will understand the pain points of users in life.

For example, during the epidemic, we did an online discussion related to working from home, and wanted to understand the pain points of users in the scenario of working from home. We invited creators who have been working from home for a long time, freelancers, bloggers, writers who often write articles, entrepreneurial women, etc., to do online workshops together.

We found that some people like to work on the sofa, but there is actually no small table that can adapt to the height of the sofa-this happened to be the source of inspiration for our "swinging side table".

For many parents who work from home, the most headache is that they need to share space with their children. Interestingly, we found that the functional product at home that carries the children's homework, work and eating is actually the dining table.

So we made a liftable dining table to meet the needs of users of different heights. We also made a five-star foot and liftable office chair. You can choose according to the specific scenario when purchasing.

There are very few dining chairs on the market that have damping springs on the backrest. The reason for our design is that we found that people have the habit of sharing dining chairs and office chairs. Adding springs can make the chair back more supportive and not easy to feel tired after sitting for a long time.

You can see that we are now focusing on camping at home, working on the balcony, immersive movie watching, living with cats and other sub-scenes. These are very vivid scenes. We call them life activities, which means that it needs someone to live in it to make the picture vivid and full of associations.

When people hear these scene descriptions, they will naturally think about how to interact with this scene, and feel how these products are related to their lives.

Interestingly, this is actually the main purpose of our product development - we don't say that we make products first and then think about how to express content, but in the actual process of co-creating products with users, let the content expression flow naturally.

Brandstar: Camping at home, immersive movie watching, living with cats, etc. These segmented scenarios are in line with the living habits of young people today. We also saw that you have a "family library" scene design in your store. What is the insight behind this?

Angela: Our home library is actually a combination of office study and dining table, which is a multi-functional and multi-scenario experience.

In addition, the home library is also a portrayal of a spiritual territory. We found that many users want to stay with books, which is an important part of enjoying life at home and also represents the connection with the self-spiritual. And we also believe that today's travel does not necessarily mean traveling through mountains and rivers. Reading is a journey and a spiritual tour.

The "library" here is also a form. It can be a whole wall of books, or it can be souvenirs and artworks, trendy shoes or figurines brought back from all over the world. So we hope to build a spiritual corner for everyone, where everyone can read and create. The family library is an area for inspiration and creation, where everyone can create whatever they want in their hearts - this is the part we hope to empathize with users.

Final Thoughts

Just like the name of ChapterHome itself, home is a portrayal of different stages of life, just like a chapter of a person's growth. Home always accompanies some important moments of a person's growth: renting a new house in a new city, raising a pet to change the corner of life, buying new furniture for children after becoming a parent...

This understanding of home and furniture seems to be internalized into ChapterHome's  care for people in product design and brand proposition. You can also feel this kind of thinking in its stores, such as a space on the second floor called Homie Living Room.

Homie is the brand's name for friends. This space will be used to hold small-scale handcraft workshops and sharing sessions, providing cultural exchanges, social entertainment and other purposes for the brand's members and close friends. There is also a food space CINCIN Garden on the first floor to entertain guests and friends with delicious food.

ChapterHome told us that the City Living Room store is not intended to build a purposeful consumption, but to allow people to stay here and have a closer and more comfortable relationship with the space and furniture, and to allow users to feel the brand more intuitively and have a deeper connection with the brand.

For Angela, starting a business is like entering a new chapter for her. "When I was a CEO in China, I signed orders worth tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. Now I sign orders worth tens of thousands or even thousands of yuan. There is a need for cost control, but it is also a mental challenge for me."

From cost control to supply chain management, home furnishing itself is a long-chain and complex business, which requires extremely sophisticated industry experience. And for ChapterHome, this is just one of the problems. From the beginning of its establishment, the brand setting hopes to get rid of the supply chain and channel orientation, not to be a channel-based brand, but to drive growth with branded operations and user needs.

But now ChapterHome is not in a hurry to expand rapidly. ChapterHome said that the focus in 2023 will be on brand and content construction, while polishing the retail model of online and offline integration of channels.

"Old maps cannot lead to new lands, and old cognition cannot open a new chapter," Angela concluded when asked about her entrepreneurial experience at the end of the interview. "This is also a spur to myself. Although I have been in this industry for 20 years, if I want to start a business, I still need to sincerely accept it and truly open myself up."