The Story of Evlumba

What is the story of Evlumba?

The idea for the Evlumba project was born out of the difficulties that one of our founding partners, Can, had during his marriage preparations while moving to a new house and designing this house in accordance with their budget and purchasing his belongings. The fact that the household goods sector is not sufficiently digitized, the inability to offer personalized designs to customers online and the inability to fully integrate AR support into the shopping experience enabled Evlumba to determine its target customer group not only as couples to get married, but also as end customers who want to renovate their house or seek inspiration.

How do you differentiate Evlumba when it comes to competition?

The fact that Evlumba creates visual commerce thanks to the technologies it will use, the labeling function in concept designs and the listing of these designs in a personalized flow distinguish it from its counterparts. Evlumba will support the sales of the companies it cooperates with in the sector it will be in. The Evlumba Virtual Architecture structure, which is formed by the combination of the augmented reality kit with the Evlumba value stream, is designed in order to decide how the products will stand in the living spaces of the people with their real dimensions. In addition, with the professionals module, it is aimed that professionals can present their work by labeling the products in Evlumba with themselves or similar ones, thus finding job opportunities and providing additional income in case of sales from the tagged product. Unlike its counterparts, all these value propositions make Evlumba an architectural platform.

What are the ways to successfully bring the product to market?

Evlumba aims to cooperate with companies that sell the product directly online. In addition, there are marketplace platforms that are getting stronger in terms of traffic and campaigns in the sector. Evlumba will also provide product price comparison service in order to cooperate with the marketplaces, and users will be able to easily access the product price comparisons of the companies it works with from the labels.

In order to create organic traffic correctly and quickly, social media channels and performance marketing must be strong. Evlumba created the EvlumbaTV social media channel with the architects, interior architects and designers it included, and the main purpose is to accurately convey Evlumba value propositions, to carry out branding studies, to create rich content and to ensure brand access and product sales transformation with the help of micro-influencer and digital content platforms.

There are many SMEs that do not have online sales in the sector. In order to provide digital transformation of these SMEs, fast e-commerce site solutions will be created under the name Evlumba Express, where they can set up their own websites with evlumba infrastructure and domain extension.

In which markets and geographies are you located and where are the markets you foresee to open?

The furniture, home textile and decoration sector has a market volume of 200 billion US Dollars worldwide. This sector has a volume of 7 billion USD only for Turkey. The share of 7 billion USD in online sales is 1.1 billion USD. With the effect of the pandemic, its online share is increasing rapidly. After being positioned in this market, which Evlumba first targeted, it is aimed to expand to Japan, where the number of architects per person is the highest.

How do you gain the users/customers using Evlumba?

Evlumba has not yet entered the “paying customer” stage, and thanks to the vision set forth on the prototype site created and the activities carried out online, nearly 200+ architects rapidly growing and interior designers have signed up and become members of the platform. It is aimed to increase this number with website and application live transitions. In addition, with the content platform agreements to be made locally and globally with Evlumba TV, it is aimed to further enlarge its target audience.

How do you develop your revenue channels?

The basis of the Evlumba income model is the commission fee to be obtained from affiliates. Along with this income from sales partnerships, product promotion income and product labeling income for a sustainable model are the strategies kept in Evlumba’s profitability items.

Product labeling revenues: Labels will be valued depending on the likelihood that the designs to be found on the website will be sold, and this is the cost to be incurred by sellers who want to be on valuable labels. Accordingly, when sellers create combinations with best-selling products, the probability of selling their own products will increase.

Product promotion income: Since the products to be included in the designs will be taken from the archive on the site, sellers will be able to promote more of their products in order to be included in the designs.

How many co-founders and employees does your team currently consist of? In which areas, which talents and by what method do you plan to add to the team today and in the future?

Evlumba team has 2 founding partners. The founding partners, Can Özdoğan on the product management side, Gökhan Özfirat on the operations and marketing side, respectively. Thanks to the webinars held on the architectural side and the live broadcasts of LinkedIn, architect applications are received, evaluated according to their competencies, and the idea is constantly developed through feedback.

Have you received investment before?

Evlumba is a start-up that seeks investment, although it has not received any investment yet.

How do you foresee the development and growth of the sector you are in?

The sector in which Evlumba is located has a strong production infrastructure that is very open to digitalization. We foresee that the online muscle of the sector will develop further with the pandemic. In addition, the sector has potential points to improve in terms of logistics capability, product availability and payment methods.

Do you have an “exit” strategy planned? Where do you want to see yourself?

As Evlumba, our short-term plan is to develop the architect ecosystem and reach 16 million active users in Turkey, thanks to the professionals module. In the medium term, it is to discover potential points abroad and make expansions with the design, data and technology experiences gained.

If you could give yourself one piece of advice on the first day you started entrepreneurship, what would it be?

Team building has a very important place in entrepreneurial experience. Technical infrastructure and financial opportunities cannot prevent the motivation of the team to connect to the project and to each other. The important thing is to act harmoniously and energetically with the team while maturing and scaling the project.

What is the global strategy of Evlumba?

Evlumba team works hard to expand this idea to a broader audience and new demographics. After investigating customers requirements, we decided to start from Dubai and create our services in Dubai.