Collaborating with home décor brands is a strategic move in design industry that offers numerous opportunities and benefits. This merger of design firms and home décor businesses can provide for a wide array of advantages including better reach, increased brand advertisement and maximized product offerings. Collaboration with home décor brands allows a path of growth and competition to be paved. Some of the benefits of the collaboration are:

Collaborating with other home decor brands: Opportunities and benefits - Sheet1
Black owned collaboration_ ©Brands [online]

A Wider Audience

Collaborating with home décor brands enhances the market and audience reach of the product. An already established customer base of the brand could be utilized and explored to tap into new possibilities. The increased number of customers allows for better brand visibility and recognition, which invites new customers and promotes sales. The opportunity of cross promotion and joint marketing strengthens both the design firm and home décor brand. A larger target audience can be easily reached and the products get the opportunity to reach a diverse audience, ensuring stability of business.

Shared Resources and knowledge

An efficient collaboration invites for enhanced capabilities and possibilities in the business venture. The pooling of the resources and expertise helps to leverage each other’s strengths. The areas of budgeting, production and distribution networks provides a wider and reliable marketing venture. Reach of a wider audience is automatically ensured as investments in advanced technologies, research and development are further promoted. The cost of modern day survival can be counteracted by sharing resources and distributing the cost of expenses. Ultimately, a better product quality is innovated.

Unique Brand Products

The collaborative opportunities provides for a distinctive brand positioning that puts the partnering brands in a spotlight. One could always explore the possibilities of producing limited edition products that have qualities of both the brands. By merging the design and creative team, products that resonate with the customers can be created without a lot of hassle. The design aesthetics as a result of the collaboration is more novel and captivating. A sense of anticipation will be developed among the customers for a product with signature looks from both the firm and home décor brand.

Collaborations in Interior Design Industry

Although most of the collaborations that exist have come from fashion industry there are significant number of cross company collaborations that are being established in the interior design industry. The possibility of a designer creating a new piece of work that boldly embraces the manufacturer’s material is an exciting venture in itself.

One of such examples is Zara Home, which joined forces with Vincent Van Duysen and promoted an entire collection based on this collaboration with the Belgian designer. On his 60th birthday, Van dedicated a special collection to Zara reflecting his works from 50 years. The result of this collaboration was remarkable; the designer pieces were accessed by a larger audience and both the parties benefited with the reach of wider audience. Similarly, the capital invested on marketing had a bright return. 

Of such examples, IKEA often times comes up with unlikely brand collaborations. In 2018, the furniture company joined forces with US space authority, NASA, to showcase the problems of urban living in confined spaces. The venture produced a large collection of household appliance and furniture addressing to the mentioned problems.

Collaborating with other home decor brands: Opportunities and benefits - Sheet2
IKEA_NASA-collab_ ©IKEA [online]
 Another time, IKEA collaborated with a Swedish music group—Swedish House Mafia and brought together a total of 23 entirely black pieces of furniture. The merger had a high capital return and branding of both the parties.

Other Collaborations

Collaborations aren’t necessarily limited to home décor brands and designers. The possibility of merging modern AI and technology with the ideas of designer is on practice these days. META is one of such opportunities where cities are built artificially in a digital medium. Zaha Hadid Architects, have made quite a bit of buildings inside the META world. The interactive immersion in the world of META has allowed for the opportunities of virtual collaborations among various brands to be explored.

Barcelona Chair_ © designicons[online]
In the pages of history Mies Van Der Rohe is known for his minimal design alongside his famous furniture designs. In most cases his furniture sold more than his design. The mergers of interior home décor and architects enhances a reach for a wider audience. Similarly, the master architect Le Corbusier is appreciated both for his furniture design and residence design. Frank Lloyd Wright on the other hand extensively collaborated with home décor brands to bring in a lively environment to his interior designs. He also explored the possibilities of material collaborations by exploring new materials and techniques to complete his design.

Modern Context

The number of collaborations with home décor brands has been increasing on a daily basis. Renowned firms merge with small but creative firms to have a new diversified look on their pre-existing works. The small firms benefit from the wider audience reach while the larger brands benefit from the diversified creative inputs. Similarly, the customers are benefited by the collaborations, as prices often times drop down for more ambiguous design work. A limited edition collaboration promotes client-product relation and ensures sustainable growth of the brands. 

References

Brand collaboration| imm cologne magazine | imm cologne. (2022, November 9). Www.imm-Cologne.com. architecture [online] Available at: https://www.imm-cologne.com/magazine/articles/the-diverse-world-of-brand-collaborations.php

[Accessed May 24, 2023]

https://www.essentialhome.eu/blog/author/intern. (2019, March 27). High-End Furniture: A Collaboration Between Best Interior Designers. Essential Home | Mid Century Furniture. architecture [online] Available at: https://www.essentialhome.eu/blog/high-end-furniture-collaboration-best-interior-designers/

[Accessed May 24, 2023]

Redação. (2021, May 3). Fashion Designers are Betting on Home Decor in 2021. L’Officiel USA. architecture [online] Available at: https://www.lofficielusa.com/travel-living/fashion-designers-interior-design-collaborations-rodarte

[Accessed May 24, 2023]

Author

A passionate writer and an aspiring architect, Bibek Khanal is an architecture student from Nepal who finds comfort in making illustrations and writing poems. His heart is set on appreciating arts and architecture relics. Being a part of the architecture and the people around is a riveting experience for him.