Disrupting In Style: Italian Startup Takes Interior Design To The Crowd

Italian architecture and interior design is as famous for its style as it is for its price tag, but alas, for Italys homeowners who require the services of an architect or property designer, it is a profession that has literally priced itself out of its own market.

Until recently, those looking renovate their homes or offices had only two options; do it themselves or hire an interior designer, at huge cost. Now they have a third; CoContest, an innovative crowdsourcing platform for interior design that puts customers in direct contact with interior designers all over the world.

By applying a public tender mechanism to the private user experience, CoContest allows the end-user to set the price and the deadline and invite members of an international community of interior designers to compete with proposals for ideas to renovate their spaces.

Since its launch in 2011 the platform has hosted hundreds of these contests, and attracted around 20,000 designers from over 100 countries.

The business was started in Rome by the Schiano di Pepe brothers; architect Filippo, and law graduate Federico, who says: After working as an interior designer and architect in Europe for a few years, my brother recognised the problems and inefficiencies of a market where young, skilled designers work hard but fail to build a professional life simply because there are fewer customers willing to hire an interior designer.

And it was Filippo who came up with the idea of offering homeowners the chance of launching their own interior design competition by adapting the system typically used by large companies and local administrations to find the best project for museums and other large public and private sector buildings.

What created the opportunity for the start-up was the decline of the Italian domestic market for interior design. People simply couldnt afford their fees.

This had a massive impact on the Italian architectural profession, which represents around 10% of the global profession, as unemployment rates among newly graduated designers began to soar.

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Disrupting In Style: Italian Startup Takes Interior Design To The Crowd