An E-Commerce Site for Intuit by Softrend

About

Intuit is a brand by Softrend, a company where experienced carpenters have been making custom furniture since 1997.

Initially, their goal with Intuit was to offer revolutionary and modern office interior solutions for businesses as a pdf document on Softrend’s e-commerce site. Since Intuit’s product range has grown rather wide and the furniture is customizable in many different ways, it seemed easier and more comfortable for the customers to shop on a completely separate webpage. Now, 10 months later, Intuit has its own e-commerce site where you can customize many details and the functionality of your desired office furniture. All their products are handmade right here in Estonia and the masters have made sure everything meets Softrend’s sustainability and quality standards. 

As a side note, Softrend’s online store was also developed and designed by us in cooperation with Miltton. Read more about Softrend’s project here .

The process

A brief analysis revealed which new functionalities need to be implemented, and it was decided which of Softrend’s already existing functions could be carried over to Intuit. 

Due to the tight timeline, the page’s development and design process happened in parallel – usually it’s design and user-testing first, and then off to the development. This definitely put the teamwork and agility between the developers and the designers to the test. In the end, everything worked out great – you could even say it brought the developers and designers closer together. 

The MVP was launched in May 2022 – customers couldn’t buy any products in this version. Instead, they were able to browse them as a catalog. The ability to purchase and configure the furniture was added in the second stage of developing the online store. The fully functional e-commerce site was launched in February 2023.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges in this project was the timeline – the MVP (Minimal Viable Product) of the e-commerce site had to be designed, developed, and launched in just a month. To do that, the project was divided into two stages. In the first version, the customers weren’t able to buy the products. Instead, the products were showcased as a catalog. The ability to purchase and configure the furniture was added in the second stage of the project. 

When the client turned to us, they had lots of ideas and a clear vision had to be achieved through collaboration. This was another big challenge in this project. Usually, we take the time to advise the client and find the best solutions together, but this time we decided it would be best to follow Softrend’s example and make changes where necessary. At one point we realized that Softrend’s product configuration wasn’t exactly ideal for Intuit, so a new one had to be made. This created an interesting challenge for us, especially as it coincided with our and the client’s vacation times.

From the technical side, the biggest challenge in this project was the development of product configuration and the modular page structure – now you can rearrange all the modules and change the page structure. The customer can choose between multiple fabric types from different price groups, the shape and size of the furniture, and even the leg types. In order to achieve this we needed to connect the e-commerce site to a much more complex manufacturing software – just like we did with Softrend’s page. 

Results