It’s something of a rite of passage for college freshmen. You arrive at your new dorm room and, after a few moments of excitement, come to the unsettling conclusion that you have either A) brought so much junk that your room will soon resemble a rummage sale or B) brought so little that even Steve Jobs would be uncomfortable in your spartan abode. Not exactly the best way to kick off your college career.
A new startup called DesignYourDorm might just hold the answer. The site has built 3D virtual models of common dorm room layouts, allowing new students to figure out what they’ll have room for long before they ever set foot in their dorms. To help figure out the exact room configuration, DesignYourDorm currently has a few hundred 3D models of various common dorm room items, including electronics like TV sets, furniture like beds and desks, and storage containers that you can freely drag and drop into the room. There’s also a selection of bedding, posters, and plenty of things that you might find at Bed Bath & Beyond. And because most people wind up rooming with someone, the site has a collaboration feature that lets two roommates edit their room at the same time.
Of course, virtual decorating is one thing, but that still leaves students with the task of actually going out and buying each item they place. But DesignYourDorm has that figured out too: each of the items you can place in your room is a real product taken from Amazon.com, and the site builds a virtual shopping cart as you go. When you’re done, you can have everything shipped to your university so it’s there the day you arrive. DesignYourDorm generates revenue through Amazon’s affiliate program, but it eventually hopes to work with big-box stores instead.
But the system comes with a few snags. While the site does a good job with its generic floor plans, they only get you so far — you still won’t know how large each cabinet and desk will be, the height of the beds, placement of any windows, and so on.
Fortunately, the startup is hoping to team up with universities across the country to get detailed floor plans for every single room at a given school. It’s currently running a pilot test with the University of Pennsylvania, where it has taken measurements for all room layouts in one of the school’s housing buildings. As part of the partnership, Penn will be promoting the site to incoming students as they get their room assignments, and will in turn get a small cut of the revenue generated by any sales. Interesting sidenote: the startup has a mirrored domain at CollegeRoomCreator.com for its university partnerships, because schools apparently don’t like referring to their housing facilities as “dorms”. Seriously.
All in all, the site seems to have a solid idea and a large market. That said, it still needs to work on its execution. The site’s UI is clunky at times, and sometimes the 3D objects don’t behave as you’d expect (I’m allowed to place a small storage container on top of a bed but not beneath it, even though it explicitly says that it’s meant to fit underneath beds). Likewise, many of the site’s products don’t yet have 3D models, which means you can buy them but can’t place them into the room at all. Co-founder Taylor Robinson says that the company is working on fixing all of these issues (it recently hired a new developer), and that we can expect improvements soon.
That’s a pretty good business idea.
I have a friend that does 3D renderings of college dorm rooms. The renderings are much more realistic, but not interactive. I think his team may be working on something similar to this though. Site is here…
http://www.digitalwingman.com
The website looks great as does the idea but unfortunately I received an error when trying to register:
“Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
——————————————————————————–
Input string was not in a correct format. ”
Pretty disappointing.
Yup, me too.
They should be using Linux hosting, they are probably paying an exorbitant fee to Microsoft for all of the modules they need to power this thing.
Looks great! I’m going to set up my SEMO Dorm.
A large market for cinder blocks and 2×4s, maybe, but not a large financial market.
Unfortunately their marketing scheme is to infiltrate all facebook groups full of new students with fake people and post on the walls promoting the service. It’s pure spam.
It will cater to a decent market size. If executed well with the universities and allowing students to look at the actual room, this will definitely win!
No, it wont. It is crap, and will be gone in a few weeks.
Hard not to like the concept, but it sounds like performance issues are already happening. Is this a dorm room project? Recent grads?
Grossman: Are you involved with this? How many freshman are there in the US yearly
US college freshmen are 14M every year? That’s the best assumption I have. This company needs to ‘franchise’ before the imitators show up. Make it really easy for people (i.e. current freshman) at other campuses to set-up and get a piece of the action (x% of gross sales?).
Final opinion: Wal-Mart and Target might be interested in a revenue sharing opportunity with either a pallet pick-up or delivery possible. Rugs and beds would seem the most costly to transport.
I believe most dorms typically come with beds and desks (please correct me if I’m wrong).
Now you’re messing with my head
I’ll look at this tomorrow.
Could be a really good business. I like the idea.
However – it looks like it was built poorly, I think in .net – and it doesn’t work on any level (not even registration) They have lots of heavy lifting to do. It’s a startup – so that is not surprising – but this one is exceptionally unfinished.
The thing that *does* surprise me though – the almighty TechCrunch “reviews” online services that don’t have much finished when you check under the skirt.
It’s a review of a concept only, not an actual product.
its because techcrunch is, in the end, a business, and more news sites that show up means more people visiting which drives up their ad impressions.
How do you not know how this works?
If one too-frequently reviews vapor, one may run the risk of audience drop.
Content *is* the business. That’s how this works.
Kincaid: Good point, though the rest of my commentary stands, which is the majority (half of 1 out of 3 = 15%). You are the last person I’d thought I’d ever point out the ‘reply’ function to, yet here we are.
Beds would have better been described as mattresses, though I wish I’d have been advosed to just buy a queen futon in the first place.
Well, you can edit, I can’t. Good show. Carry on.
To be honest, this is a pretty lame implementation of a 3D room planner. There are way better websites out there including http://www.floorplanner.com, http://www.navigram.com and (my personal favorite) http://www.scenecaster.com. All of these let users set the exact dimensions of their rooms, drag and drop furniture and other objects and offer a much better 3D experience.
SceneCaster, for example, includes access to Google’s 3D Warehouse which lets you access millions of 3D models and place them in your room. Here’s an example of a couple of dorm rooms created on SceneCaster: http://bit.ly/xIPt8 and http://bit.ly/DO3dj. You get the idea.
Jason you should really do your research before promoting an app that is second rate and well behind the market.
I don’t know which one of those three companies you work for, but clearly you are missing the value of a service that is targeted at college students and comes with the exact room dimensions of their soon to be dorms.
Great site and a unique concept!
Check out this place as well -
http://www.thessayist.com
Perfect place for students!
As a current college student, this is useless. Dorms/apartments are for the most part unknown until someone actually moves in. Also, how will they make (substantial) money?
Looks like they have exact dimensions for most of the schools dorms and room numbers.
I think that is the real value add of this service.
Great idea, wish I had this when I was at school.
I think they are pulling from Amazon, which means they are earning referral fees. A challenging business model no doubt.
But kudos to them. I checked out my old dorm room at USC and the dimensions and layout are exactly the same as I remember them.
Sweeeeeet. Do they have all schools or just a select few??
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When I went to school, we all built lofts to move the beds off the ground. A-Frames, Modified A-Frames, Platforms, single and double beds.
Only rule, no anchors attached to the walls. Some very creative ways to create a lofted sleeping area.
Building one solid enough for two roommates and their dates….some used the 1800’s naval theory of hammocks.
Man, I miss my room…..
Man what a tremendous job!
What a great way to provide a useful tool along with a great way to sell product!
Bravo!
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Thanks & Regards
Noel from nopun.com
a professional graphic design studio
wow, you have the creepiest website I’ve ever seen.
Talk about cool inventions. This has got to be one of em.
i like
Pretty neat, I guess it’s all about execution because I had considered something like this myself as a Facebook app. The problem is that you only get traffic for 2 or 3 months out of the year, when the new freshman are “planning their rooms.” Also, given that most rooms are fairly small and already contain the largest pieces of furniture, it would be difficult to think of any major appliances to put in the room that would require this type of application. Best of luck to the team, please prove me wrong!
I like your concept but i think you need to improve your 3D design. Everyone wants to purchase product which they themselves want to set up or decorate. Over-all, very appealing and intelligent idea!
Nice work and good luck!!!
Check out the Sears 3D Dorm Decorator which is also available as a Facebook app. http://www.sears.com/dorm.