Norwalk to offer 360 Design Tool on soon-to-debut new website

NORWALK, Ohio — Custom upholstery manufacturer Norwalk Furniture has partnered with tech company Intiaro to offer the new Norwalk 360 Design Tool on the company’s new website, which will debut later this month.

Norwalk test launched the design tool on a free app for iPhone and Android earlier this year and has received what it calls an incredibly positive response.

“Our goal is to make the customer upholstery process fun, fast and foolproof,” said Caroline Hipple, Norwalk Furniture president. “Never has it been easier to help the customer visualize their upholstery choices, change those choices — the arms, the backs, the finishes, nail treatments, welts, fabrics and on and on — and then visualize them. The fabric draping tool is top-notch. And, what’s more, it summarizes and makes order writing easy.”

Hipple said custom upholstery is the ultimate in personalization and the new visualization process reduces the fear of making the wrong decision. After the sectional has been customized in the program, Norwalk 360 creates a spec sheet that gives the interior designer or salesperson a detailed breakdown of the pieces and the custom options for ordering.

Norwalk plans to continue to partner with Intiaro as the company develops new projects and technologies. Intiaro will be automating a process that was manual passing moving forward.

“Since we are a cloud-based platform, our clients all have access to upgrades and new features,” said Richard Sexton, Intiaro general manager, USA. “Norwalk’s configurator is also an important brand for our new designer platform. Rolling out as a general release in Q1 2021, the new platform solves the COM (customer’s own material) challenge for the interior design trade.”

Hipple said adding technology tools to Norwalk’s website is job one for Norwalk as it heads into 2021.

“In today’s world, especially post- COVID, we are all interested in using technology as much as possible to speed our decision making. And we want our furniture our way,” Hipple added. “The new configurator makes the complex appear simple. I call it like paper-dolls for furniture.”