What inspired the birth of Qeeple?
During my marketing and communications stint with the Interior Design Confederation (Singapore) in 2009, we regularly received calls from homeowners asking for design service recommendations. It got me thinking about how we could create something to guide homeowners to design solutions based on the merits of the interior design firm and not just because somebody knows somebody who can do the job.
What do you offer online that the industry traditionally didn’t?
Our research revealed that homeowners want ideas in a visual format. As a result, we’re very image-focused; you’re presented with relevant images in Qeeple’s search results rather than words. We’ve also got the biggest image library bank of interior ideas in Singapore (and probably Southeast Asia) and provide a platform for homeowners to meaningfully interact with these resources.
Any challenges to getting the site going?
The interior design industry is still a rather traditional one, so we needed to convince local design firms to adopt the idea of sharing in a Web 2.0 environment and that the advantage of getting more clients from Internet exposure overrides the risk of their design concepts being copied. It took over a year to cajole and beg for the number of interior portfolios you see on Qeeple right now.
How about future plans for the site?
We’re focused on further developing our library, providing more features for our users and making further improvements to our user interface to better support new homeowners who are either embarking on a major interior design project and existing house-proud owners looking to refurbish their homes with unique elements.
