Amazon Launches New AR Shopping Tool for Home Furnishings

Amazon announced this week that it is rolling out a new augmented reality (AR) shopping tool, called Room Decorator. This tool allows shoppers to view how furniture would look in their own homes before finalizing their purchase decision.

Room Decorator was designed to assist customers in styling their homes virtually, with furniture from Amazon and its third-party sellers. It allows shoppers to visualize multiple items simultaneously, and the customer’s virtual room can be saved for editing and deciding to buy later.

In addition to placing furniture around in their room, customers can also view product recommendations and add items to their cart without leaving the AR platform. Furniture items are shown in high-definition and are scaled to size, providing a premium viewing experience. 

The tool can be used on both mobile devices and desktops, so customers can switch between devices when editing their saved virtual room. They can also access their saved rooms when they are away from home.

The Room Decorator feature is now live for 50% of all Amazon U.S. iOS users. The remaining half will have access over the next few weeks and it will be available to Android users over the next few months, as the tool’s rollout continues. 

Home Décor and Furniture Categories See Explosive Growth

With many people confined to their homes during shelter-in-place orders, and non-essential brick-and-mortar businesses forced to close their doors, consumers have had no choice but to turn to digital shopping to meet their needs. 

For lots of shoppers, that included furniture and products needed to create a comfortable work-from-home space. For many families with children, it was setting up a productive space for homeschooling. Additionally, being at home all day made many consumers want to improve their home environments, including their indoor and outdoor living spaces. 

As a result, home furnishing retailers saw this impact in the form of significant sales growth. For example, Wayfair, the furniture and home décor e-retailer, saw a blowout second quarter, reporting a quarterly sales increase from $2.3 billion to $4.3 billion. Even more surprising, Wayfair earned a profit of $274 million, which was the first time the company turned a profit since it went public in 2014.

 According to the Feedvisor 2020 Q4 Trends and Projections report, Home and Kitchen sales on Amazon and Walmart’s digital marketplace were up 21% in March compared to February. By July, consumer impressions for the Home and Kitchen category had increased more than 150% since February. With category sales growing in July and July, ad spend also began to rise. For Home and Kitchen, it had more than doubled in July over May.