Using AI To Create And Sell Your Own Collections On Your Own Websites
Designing your own bespoke collections with AI and then selling them on your own websites is an idea whose time has come.
Recently, while scrolling through LinkedIn, I saw a beautiful image that I thought had been created with AI, but I wasn’t sure. It had been created by someone I know.
I asked Steve, privately, if it had been created using AI, and he said, YES. I also asked him if I could have his permission to use it as my inspiration image to train my AI to create a modern bed for me. He said, YES, again.
Below is what my text prompt to Chat GPT created, using Steve’s AI image as inspiration.
I posted this in my private Facebook Group for interior and kitchen and bath designers, Design Wealth, and got many nice comments about it. It’s amazing how using AI to create an image that looks like it has been hand sketched with a watercolor effect can capture people’s attention - it sure captured mine.
Beautiful images make a difference when you’re marketing your own collections on your own websites.
Steve, by the way, could easily have hand rendered this, as could most interior and kitchen and bath designers I know, but with the limited time everyone has available these days, AI makes it very easy to create visually compelling images that stop the scroll.
But…..
…what was really interesting is that one interior designer in my Group, a past client of mine, saw my post about this and immediately posted an image of a bed design she had text prompted using AI, and that her clients loved immediately and purchased and that is now being custom made for them.
Her inspiration for it was her own bed, and the design style the clients had told her they love.
This brought back memories for me of when I was first invited to collaborate with Thompson Traders to text prompt Midjourney for what became my real world AILA sink for them, shown below, introduced by them in their exhibition space at KBIS in 2024.
To the left is my Midjourney AI image, and to the right is the real AILA sink, a feat of technical genius. Notice the one of a kind drain.
And that brings me to the point of this post: any of you who are designers [ or creatives of any stripe ] can text prompt AI to design your own collections, get a price from your manufacturers who offer complete customization, like Thompson does through their TAILOR MADE program, and put those items on your own websites for sale.
For instance, imagine if the past client who designed that bed for her client using AI also designed nightstands, a beautiful upholstered bench, a dresser or two, etc., and then put that up as a collection for sale on her website? It could easily be done, right?
She could call it, “The Benediction Collection*, designed by _______.”
Sales won’t come automatically. It will take some time and some money to market your collections, but it can be done. Each item can be one of a kind. Once that particular style sells, you remove it from your website, design another and add it to your collection.
For instance, I asked Chat GPT to design a bathtub, using my AILA sink as its inspiration. I uploaded my AILA sink as the image, here’s the text prompt and below [ and in the opening image to this post ] is the resulting image.
I imagine if asked Thompson if their coppersmithing artisans could make this bathtub, the answer would be YES.
Would it be exorbitantly expensive? Definitely. Would it be one of a kind for a client that wants what noone else will ever have again? Yes. Would it support artisans who are still using the same tools and techniques for coppersmithing handed down to them through the generations since the 16th century? Yes.
Could I design variations on it for my shop, when this one sells?
Yes.
Using AI to offer your clients truly bespoke products, using AI in new ways to support the manufacturers who are offering you genuine customization, using AI in new ways to support the employees of those manufacturers, using AI to create gorgeous, emotionally evocative marketing images, and then using AI in new ways to drive your own revenue is one way I see the industry using AI to productively and powerfully move everyone’s businesses - forward.
The one caveat, designers? Don’t do this until you know your manufacturing partner has confirmed they can actually make the item and you have all the details, specs and pricing in writing.
What are your thoughts on this? Let me know in the comments, or over in my Facebook Group community if you’re a member: https://www.facebook.com/groups/designwealth.
Leslie Carothers
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