“It's highly competitive and no one's really innovating in that space”
The post Tapping uni students to drive innovation: Temple & Webster’s plan to hit $1bn appeared first on Inside Retail Australia.
Australian online furniture retailer Temple & Webster is tapping into the next generation of industrial designers to ensure it remains at the forefront of product innovation.
Recently, seven Industrial Design Honours Program students from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) joined Temple & Webster’s newly formed design and product development team for a four-week collaboration.
Students were tasked with reimagining bedroom furniture to elevate sleep quality, nurture wellbeing and adapt to Australians’ evolving needs, giving them practical experience in the field of industrial design and Temple & Webster a creative way to place the customer’s needs at the heart of its business.
The partnership offered a win-win for both parties and the head of the UNSW Industrial Design program, Dr Mariano Ramirez, has already committed to extending the program to a full semester next year.
Temple and Webster’s design and product development team was established in February, as part of the retailer’s overarching strategy to become a billion-dollar business within the next three to five years.
Roger Wei, the head of design and product development at Temple & Webster, has been focused on building his team internally and hiring trained industrial designers who are willing to embrace design thinking. The collaboration with UNSW is one way he aims to do so.
“It’s important we’re research-orientated, embracing design thinking and have a user-centric approach where customers come first,” Wei told Inside Retail.
The students presented their ideas after being briefed, mentored and guided by Wei’s team in a whirlwind four-week period.
The original brief was developed with a commercial business objective, based on the growth opportunity of the bedroom furniture category.
To help get the business to $1 billion in annual revenue, Wei believes that developing exclusive products and leading in AI and technology will be key.
“This collaboration with the students helps get us to that point,” he said.
Instead of outsourcing research and development, Temple & Webster can “tap into these incredible students’ talent and vision”, Wei said, and at the same time, they gain an invaluable corporate learning experience.
“As a student, you don’t often think commercially and I made it very clear from the initial presentation that we are a business, here to improve people’s lives, but in the end, we have a bottom line and we’ve got to make money,” Wei said.
“Not only were the students getting feedback from the design team they were getting feedback from somebody in marketing, a senior buyer, the chief commercial officer, and that was pretty incredible for them to get all of that in one meeting,” he added.
As a result of the partnership, two of the students are now interns at Temple & Webster. “The internships evolved naturally and were never the intent of this collaboration,” Wei said.
“Because it was such a fast-paced collaboration halfway through, we realised the students’ incredible work and we were really vibing in that sense.”
Interns Matthew Rajchert and Hongjun Qian will join Wei’s team for a total of 120 hours in the second term of their final year.
Wei believes that there’s a lack of innovation in bedroom furniture, which is one of the biggest product categories from a commercial aspect.
“It’s highly competitive and no one’s really innovating in that space,” Wei said.
“There are some key players out there, Koala is doing quite well with the sofa beds and you have companies like Sleeping Duck, but is it really changing the way we sleep?”
Wei sees an opportunity for Temple & Webster to add value by putting customers and their changing needs at the centre of the product design process.
“I know the bedroom category is a very price-sensitive one,” he said. “How can we as Temple & Webster evolve that and push further?
“Whether we do that in-house or with students. I want to design more than just a pretty product, it has to serve the customer. The students embraced this and I was really proud of that.”
But while the collaboration with UNSW has been a success, it took “a lot of time” to conceptualise and facilitate the program, and Wei noted that these types of partnerships don’t always result in a product that can be sold.
“It’s too early to say what will come out of it, but right now within just the first two weeks of this internship, we’ve already gone through sketch reviews, and they’ve done a lot more extensive research on materials,” Wei said.
Australia’s bedroom furniture market is expected to generate US$2 billion in revenue this year and has a projected compound annual growth rate of 5.31 per cent between 2024 and 2029, allowing for ample commercial growth opportunity for Temple & Webster.
Wei sees several opportunities to use technology and innovative design to improve the user experience of bedroom furniture and capture a bigger slice of the market.
For example, using light to promote well-being and understanding the link between storage and organisation products and mental health.
“If you have a messy bedroom, it’s hard to unwind in a place like that,” Wei said.
A flow-on effect of the partnership could be that Temple & Webster can increase its brand awareness with Gen Z and millennials, the largest and fastest-growing demographic in the retailer’s customer base.
“The faculty knew of Temple & Webster, the students not so much. I think the problem is they’re younger and not necessarily investing in furniture for many reasons,” Wei said.
He said the business is always looking to bring in new customers and go on a lifelong journey with them, and he expects that people will start talking about Temple & Webster when they see the exciting research it’s doing with institutions.
“Innovative products will help drive our exclusivity, through product that nobody else is offering. It goes hand in hand, it’s a great partnership,” Wei finished.
The post Tapping uni students to drive innovation: Temple & Webster’s plan to hit $1bn appeared first on Inside Retail Australia.
