China Furniture: which look do we go with?

Three directions, each a clickable phone mockup: the home page and the Cognac Sofa product page, built on the same sample data. Best viewed on a phone. When you’re done, reply with a single letter: A, B or C.

Factory spec sheet

Picked by the roll

Every piece shown the way the factory sees it: measured, numbered, with its carton and delivery route. Instead of a catalogue photo you get a photo with dimension lines drawn on it.

Home page, full screenProduct page
Mockup A, home pageHome page Mockup A, product pageProduct page
What sticks
The sofa with a huge “210 cm” drawn on like a technical drawing. A red button like the seal on an order. Delivery time drawn as a dimension: 21–32 days from the factory next to 4–7 days from the EU warehouse.
Why it could work
It’s the most open about China and factory pricing, with no pretending to be a local workshop. Dimensions, cartons and delivery are the first questions anyone asks about furniture, and here they’re up front, e.g. “Will the carton fit through your door?”. It looks like nothing else in online furniture retail.
Risk
Too many lines and it turns cold, like documentation. The warmth has to come from the photos and the copy.
Colours

Floor plan

Top of my ranking

You buy furniture on the floor plan of your own home. Footprints sit to scale on a living-room plan, and the “Your wall” field shows straight away whether the sofa fits.

Home page, full screenProduct page
Mockup B, home pageHome page Mockup B, product pageProduct page
What sticks
A living-room floor plan like the one from the developer or estate agent, with the shop’s furniture standing on it at true scale.
Why it could work
It meets people at the exact moment they’re furnishing a new place with a floor plan in hand, and answers “will it fit?” before they ask.
Risk
The architect’s-plan look is a familiar trick, and on its own it says nothing about China or factory prices. The copy has to carry that.
Colours

Category standard

Safe classic

The shop customers expect: a full-screen living-room photo, category tiles, a product grid. Done properly, at the level of Westwing or Kave Home, with no tricks.

Home page, full screenProduct page
Mockup C, home pageHome page Mockup C, product pageProduct page
What sticks
Nice interior photos. Not much else, and that’s by design.
Why it could work
Zero learning curve: everyone knows where to tap. The lowest risk to start with.
Risk
It’s exactly the IKEA/Westwing clone you wanted to avoid, and it’s hard to stand out when plenty of others sell from the same factories.
Colours

How to reply

  • One letter: A, B or C.
  • Or with a note, e.g. “A, but warmer” or “C, with the dimension drawing from A”.
  • Or “roll again”, adding “safer” or “bolder” if none of them fits.

Once you choose, I build the whole shop in that direction: categories with filters, search, basket, checkout, order confirmation, plus Delivery & returns and Contact pages.

Directions rejected in the roll, and what A took from them
  • Demoscene cracktroNobody furnishing a flat sees themselves in a demoscene screen. A kept its rule that hierarchy is a single variable: line weight.
  • Nixie tube counterA lab panel drowns out the furniture photos. A kept fixed digit slots: a changed delivery time rolls digit by digit.
  • Civic bureau prospectusIt turns into a bank or a SaaS site. A kept its colour economy: red only on the main action.
  • BLAST manifestoYou can’t buy furniture without photos of it. A kept the nerve to set a number at poster scale.
  • Multiplane animationA fairy tale instead of a product. A kept two planes, photo and drawing, switched like a focus pull.
  • Tensegrity columnEngineering abstraction. A kept states written as line types: solid, dashed, red.