Designers
Designers
Designers
The Warehouse Open
See it. Love it. Trust it. Find the furniture, and fill it.
Key Words
Designers
Fiona Chen
Odelyn Nethania
Ariel (Shihua) Wang
SUMMARY
Modern Outlet sells authenticated luxury furniture at 25–65% below retail. The product is real, the price is right, but buyers don't trust it. We spent the semester researching that trust gap, prototyping interventions, and testing them with real participants. What we found was consistent: skepticism dissolves the moment someone can touch the piece and understand exactly why it's discounted. Our recommendation, an experiential warehouse event called Open Inventory, turns Modern Outlet's sourcing process into its most compelling marketing asset. Transparency isn't a disclaimer. It's the pitch.
challenge
The conversion problem wasn't a marketing problem — it was a trust problem. Buyers arrive skeptical; the resale market has trained them to distrust discounts, and brand names alone don't fix that online. The grading system is rigorous but lives in fine print nobody reads, and urgency mechanics without trust accelerate abandonment, not conversion. The operation sets hard limits: two people, part-time, no slack. Any solution had to generate trust assets, not consume capacity. The core gap was this: Modern Outlet's most compelling proof of legitimacy is its warehouse and its process, and almost no customer ever sees either.
Outcome
We designed The Warehouse Open: a physical warehouse event where buyers enter the operation itself, interact with inventory, and watch the grading process live. The format answers each gap directly. Skepticism dissolves through contact with the product and the people behind it. The grading system that was invisible online becomes the centerpiece. The sourcing logic that reads as a liability on a product page reads as a differentiator when you're standing in the warehouse watching it happen. Because the event generates its own documentation and social proof, it produces trust assets that outlast the day without adding to the team's workload.
MEET THE Designers:
Fiona Chen
Odelyn Nethania
Ariel (Shihua) Wang