This Taiwanese startup wants to help you decorate your real-life home using AR

Trying to figure out what sort of furniture is going to look best in that corner? Sure, you could take some photos and then go to a furniture store or hop online and try to puzzle it out. But now, a Taiwanese startup is offering another option: drop a virtual model of real furniture into the space to see exactly what different styles look like in real time.

The company, which is called iStaging, uses augmented reality tech in its mobile app to allow you to try furniture in your space virtually before you buy it. It works like this:

Eventually, you’ll be able to buy furniture you like directly from the app, although that feature isn’t available yet.

But the iStaging team wasn’t always focused on augmented reality. In fact, co-founder Kevin Basset told Tech in Asia, the company’s origins aren’t in tech at all. “We were basically an interior design/home staging company,” he said. “We thought it would be really cool if we could do the same [work] virtually.” Around that same time in 2014, they bumped into some engineers who had been working on augmented reality, and iStaging was born.

“We work with Sinyi Realty, the largest real estate agency in Taiwan,” Basset said, “[so] at first we created a home staging app for them.” But they’ve since moved beyond Taiwan. The app is now globally available, and in addition to AR the startup has added some VR features and is looking to add more on both fronts as time goes on. “We have a really good engineering team, so we have a lot of really cool things in the pipeline,” said Basset.

Starting small, but going global

Make no mistake: iStaging is still definitely an early-stage startup. Basset wouldn’t share any specific numbers with Tech in Asia, but the app’s Google Play page indicates that it has been downloaded less than 5,000 times via that platform (it is also available on iOS, to be fair). The startup is currently raising what Basset called “a sizeable series A” that he says will be used to fuel the company’s global expansion. He himself was in Paris this past weekend exploring the possibility of opening a European office.

iStaging already has offices in China and the US in addition to Taiwan. “Taiwan is not Silicon Valley and it’s a lot harder to grow fast here than there (although recently the Taiwan government has been doing a lot to help Taiwanese startups),” said Basset. “Moreover, Taiwan is very good at hardware, but not necessarily at software/apps. Basically how we overcame this was by adopting a global mindset from day one.” The team has PhDs from six different countries and communicates in the (relatively) global language of English.

But Basset says there are still advantages to basing iStaging in Taiwan. It’s a pleasant place to live, of course, and the plethora of local hardware companies can be really convenient for a tech startup. But it’s also a great location for a globally-focused startup in one way: “Taiwan is the ‘heart of Asia,’ literally,” said Basset. “Perfect access door to Southeast Asia and China.”

Future challenges

iStaging’s biggest challenge is likely to be building a global brand in a market with numerous competitors. It will have to compete with other startups that are doing similar things such as Decolabs and Adornably. But it will also have to compete with big global brands like Ikea and Home Depot that have apps with AR-style furniture visualization features.

It’s clear that iStaging app has a pretty small user base right now, but it has garnered mostly positive reviews on Google Play, and my own experience fiddling around with the app was mainly positive as well. Its AR features definitely aren’t perfect – the couches I virtually inserted into my home seemed to float around a bit as my camera moved – but I could see it being good enough to be helpful when trying to visualize decoration. Will “good enough” be good enough for it to compete with other apps in this space? That’s an open question.

iStaging helping me figure out that this couch is way too big for the space in my kitchen.