December 30, 2024

IKEA Kreativ vs ZOLAK Showroom: Different Targets, One Vision of Innovation

Anastasiya Talochka · 6 minute read

In the evolving landscape of furniture retail, digital tools like IKEA Kreativ and ZOLAK Showroom are revolutionizing how customers interact with products. Both platforms offer unique features designed to enhance the shopping experience, yet they cater to different aspects of the market.

Overview: IKEA Kreativ vs ZOLAK Showroom

IKEA Kreativ is a cutting-edge tool that allows customers to visualize furniture in virtual showrooms or plan their living spaces with IKEA products. Accessible via the IKEA website and app, it offers features designed to enhance the interior design experience:

Room Scanning. Users can create a realistic, scale-accurate 3D scan of their rooms, allowing for precise placement of new furniture and decor, providing inspiration and fun.

Virtual Showrooms. Empty or furnished virtual showrooms where customers can explore different design ideas and product combinations.

Ikea Kreativ Virtual Showrooms

Zolak Showroom is an immersive 3D showroom designed specifically for furniture businesses, offering an inspiring and interactive way for shoppers to visualize, configure, and purchase furniture sets.

Tailored for both B2B and B2C businesses, the platform enhances online and in-store experiences. It provides advanced 3D visualization and interactive tools to boost product presentation, customer engagement, sales, and marketing strategies. Key features:

AI-based Showrooms. Zolak allows customers to design and customize their spaces with a wide range of furniture pieces. The platform transforms customer-uploaded photos into accurate 3D showrooms, giving users an interactive experience to visualize how different products will fit and look in their homes.

Virtual Showrooms. For those who prefer not to scan their own space, customers can explore products in realistic, immersive environments. The virtual showroom enables customers to engage with products while allowing businesses to dynamically showcase their furniture collections.

Zolak Virtual Showrooms

Product Configurator. The configurator allows shoppers to personalize their furniture selections with real-time customization options, effortlessly showcasing every material variation to suit individual preferences.

IKEA Kreativ vs ZOLAK Showroom: Side-by-Side Comparison

	Ikea Kreativ	Zolak Showroom
Target Users:	IKEA customers seeking to visualize IKEA products.	Furniture retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and designers aiming to enhance their digital presence, customer engagement, and sales.
Platform Integration:	Integrated within the IKEA Kreativ app and website, focusing exclusively on IKEA's product range.	Designed to seamlessly integrate into the existing websites of various furniture businesses, without requiring additional software or hardware.
Room Visualization:	Allows users to capture photos of their rooms and remove existing furniture to visualize how IKEA items would fit and look in real life.	Uses AI object detection and space digitization to scan customer-uploaded photos, creating accurate room layouts with customizable furniture. Unwanted objects can be removed, making it easy to experiment with furniture placement in the user's own room.
Product Display Quantity:	IKEA Kreativ does not specify a maximum number of items that can be included in a showroom. However, to maintain a realistic and functional design, it's advisable to consider the room's size and layout when selecting the number of products to visualize.	Zolak does not impose a strict limit on the number of products that can be visualized in a single showroom. Similar to IKEA Kreativ, the effective number of items to include should be guided by the room's dimensions and the desired aesthetic.
Product Customization:	Limited to customization options available for IKEA products, such as predefined material variations.	Offers advanced personalization features, enabling modifications to finishes, materials, and designs. It also includes 360° HD spins and full-screen material swatches for a fully immersive experience.
Visualization Quality:	Offers high-quality 3D models of IKEA products with realistic textures and materials, enhancing the visualization experience.	Delivers high-poly digital twins, capturing true-to-life textures, materials, and colors for an immersive and accurate representation.
Interactivity:	Users can interact with virtual furniture by placing, moving, and rotating items within their room photos or showrooms to see how products fit and look.	Users can interact with virtual furniture by placing, moving, swapping, hiding, rotating, and customizing items within their room photos or showrooms to see how products fit and look.
Save Designs:	Users must log in or sign up to save room designs. Afterward, they can click the Save icon, name the design, and find it under "My designs" on the main IKEA Kreativ page. The platform does not provide an option to export designs.	Users can create and save virtual design projects within the platform in PNG format.
Content Management System (CMS):	Not applicable, as the platform is designed for end-user interaction with IKEA's product catalog.	Equipped with a robust self-managed CMS, businesses can seamlessly manage and organize their digital assets.This includes adding new models, materials, and products, as well as setting up interior backgrounds. The system enables streamlined content management and real-time updates.
Omnichannel Experience:	Enhances the shopping experience within IKEA's physical and digital stores, allowing users to visualize products at home before purchasing online or in-store.	Ensures a seamless experience from online browsing to in-store consultations, providing digital tools for consistent customer interactions across multiple channels, from social media to advertising.
Pricing and Accessibility:	Free to use for all IKEA customers. They can get access through their phone using IKEA app or IKEA website.	Offers a flexible subscription model starting at €390 per month for the Visual Commerce Suite. Scalable to suit businesses of all sizes, it makes advanced visualization technology accessible to both B2B and B2C companies through websites or apps.
Sustainability and Scalability:	Aims to reduce the need for physical catalogs and IKEA's store displays by providing digital visualization tools, aligning with IKEA's sustainability goals.	Supports sustainability by reducing the need for physical showrooms, photography, and printed materials. It is designed to scale with a business's growth, accommodating increasing product ranges and customer bases.
Ease of Use:	User-friendly interface designed for consumers to easily visualize IKEA products without requiring technical expertise.	User-friendly interface for both businesses and end-users, ensuring seamless integration, easy management, and smooth interaction.
Support and Resources:	Backed by IKEA's customer service and support resources, including online guides and assistance.	Provides comprehensive support through the demos and Zolak Help Center, offering detailed guides, user manuals, and technical documentation to assist businesses in maximizing the platform's capabilities.

IKEA Kreativ: The Technologies Behind It

IKEA Kreativ employs a suite of advanced technologies to deliver an immersive and user-friendly room design experience:

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The platform utilizes AI neural networks trained to recognize objects and the geometry of indoor spaces, enabling accurate room analysis and customization.
Computer vision. Similar to technologies used in self-driving cars, computer vision algorithms interpret and process images of users' spaces, facilitating precise spatial understanding.
Stereo vision algorithms. These algorithms enable 3D perception by analyzing images from multiple viewpoints, allowing the system to understand depth and spatial relationships within a room.
Computational photography. Advanced computational photography techniques are used to create detailed and expansive images of users' rooms, enhancing the realism and accuracy of virtual designs.
Mixed reality technologies. The platform incorporates mixed reality graphics to seamlessly blend virtual furniture models with real-world room images, providing a lifelike visualization experience.
Spatial computing. IKEA Kreativ leverages spatial computing to understand and manipulate the physical environment digitally, allowing for accurate placement and interaction with virtual furniture in a user's space.

ZOLAK Showroom: The Technologies Behind It

Zolak's solution uses an advanced process to create immersive and precise virtual room designs. Here's an overview of Zolak's approach:

Object masking and depth mapping:

Anonymous object identification. Utilizing advanced neural networks, Zolak identifies objects within a user's photo without assigning specific labels focusing on spatial accuracy.
Depth map construction. The system generates a depth map of the room, accurately capturing spatial relationships and dimensions. This depth information is crucial for the correct placement and scaling of 3D objects within the virtual environment.

Background restoration:

Object masking and removal. Identified objects are precisely masked and removed from the image, leaving behind the room's structural elements—floors and walls—with intentional gaps where objects once were.
Background inpainting with Stable Diffusion. Employing advanced inpainting techniques, such as Stable Diffusion, the system restores the background seamlessly, filling in the gaps to recreate a coherent and realistic scene.

Reintegration and finalization:

Mask reintegration. The original object masks are reapplied over the restored background to conceal any imperfections, ensuring a flawless and high-quality reconstructed image.
User presentation. The finalized, reconstructed interior is presented to the user, providing a realistic and interactive virtual environment for room design.

The Advantages of ZOLAK Showroom Technology Over IKEA Kreativ

Enhanced object masking precision. Zolak uses an advanced neural network for more accurate object contour detection. This precision ensures cleaner object removal and background restoration. As a result, the images maintain higher quality, free from blurring or unwanted details often seen with less accurate masking techniques.

object masking of ikea kreativ app and zolak showroom

Superior background restoration. The combination of precise object masking and advanced inpainting algorithms makes the restored backgrounds in Zolak Showroom more seamless and realistic than those in IKEA Kreativ.

background restoration of ikea kreative vs zolak showroom

Accurate 3D object placement. The integration of detailed depth maps enables Zolak to place 3D objects within the virtual room with exceptional accuracy, enhancing the realism and user experience.

3D object placement of kreativ ikea and zolak showroom

By refining each stage of the virtual room creation process, Zolak delivers a more immersive and higher-quality experience, setting a new standard in the industry.

What Zolak Can Deliver for Your Furniture Business Growth

Zolak stands out by offering a comprehensive suite of tools designed to elevate your furniture business.

Zolak benefits for the furniture industry

Enhance сustomer experience:
Provide immersive 3D visualizations that allow customers to explore and customize furniture in virtual showrooms, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction.

Boost sales and reduce returns:
Help customers visualize products in their own spaces, enabling them to make informed purchasing decisions and resulting in higher conversion rates and fewer returns.

Cost-effective content creation:
Generate photorealistic visuals without the need for expensive photoshoots, cutting down on marketing costs.

Scalable solutions:
Adapt Zolak’s flexible subscription model, offering both monthly and yearly plans, to suit businesses of all sizes.

Seamless integration:
Integrate Zolak's interactive showrooms as a pop-up into your existing website, no matter the platform. Add Zolak to product listing pages (PLP), product detail pages (PDP), banners, menus, or all at once, enhancing the online shopping experience without disrupting your current setup.

Stay ahead of competitors:
Leverage Zolak’s innovative technology to position your furniture business at the forefront of industry trends, attracting tech-savvy customers and standing out from the competition.

Try Zolak's interactive showroom free for 1 month. Access the Zolak Showroom with a built-in Configurator to explore 3D environments and customization tools on your website.