Case Study: ATTIC - Vintage Furniture Aggregation and Online Marketing Tool for Washington DC Stores

ATTIC is a search and discovery tool focused on vintage, antique, restored and artisan goods. The servce was originally launched to serve Washington DC, Maryland (including Baltimore) and Virginia. It has since expanded to a total of 14 major U.S. cities, with more to come. ATTIC indexes more than 1,000 local stores, dealers and boutiques to allow users to quickly discover products in their city and surrounding region.

Audience & Topics

Individual Consumers, Collectors, Interior Decorators and Designers, Fashionistas

Furniture, Home Decor, Interior Design, Fashion and Clothing

Launched

May 2015

Markets

Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis - St Paul, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC

Press Coverage and Awards

The search for vintage furniture, made easier

-Local Living, The Washington Post

A new online platform makes it easy to shop for vintage furniture and home decor across dozens of Philadelphia businesses

-Philadelphia Inquirer / Philly.com

This Brilliant New Website Finds the Best Vintage Furniture in DC for You

-Washingtonian Magazine

July 2015 Microgrant Award Winner

"It's highly unusual for us to help a business, but we loved what ATTIC was doing to feature mom'n'pop furniture shops around DC!"

-Shana Glickfield, Dean, DC Chapter of the Awesome Foundation

New site Attic aims to help you find that perfect piece of furniture and support a local business

"...find that perfect piece of furniture and support a local business."

-Elevation DC

"...a new website that will help you find the best vintage, antique, and restored furniture in D.C."

-DCist

10 Startups Managing Images in the Cloud

"Focusing on vintage, antique and used furniture in the Washington DC area, Attic DC offers a wide range of beautiful furniture for every home."

-Cloudinary blog

Roles & Deliverables

Founder

Concept

Information Architect

Working prototype

Designer

User interface and user experience (UI/UX) design

Logos

Developer

Responsive web application with custom data harvesting, indexing and consumption services

Technology & Tools

Homepage screenshot of ATTIC DC, a marketing and local commerce application and platform

#shoplocal

This is a mission driven and passion-based project. The goals:

To make shopping for vintage, antique and other used furniture from local independent businesses easier — easier for both consumers and shop keepers.
To increase the foot traffic to brick and mortar retail, which make our streets and community interesting and rich in character.
To promote using restored, reclaimed, and upcycled furniture to create beautiful and comfortable home interiors.
To lower the environmental impact of home furnishing by limiting the need to harvest wood; decreasing the need for worldwide shipping; and lowering furniture replacement needs that result from using cheap and lower quality building materials common to new affordable furniture.

As of early 2020, ATTIC is available for fourteen major U.S. cities/regions. It indexes furniture, home decor and fashion products from more than 1,000 indie stores, dealers and boutiques. Learn more about ATTIC and see it in action for yourself.

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ATTIC Screenshots of Responsive Web App on Mobile Phone Tablet and Desktop

Features

Hourly and Daily Updates

ATTIC indexes the latest furniture postings from hundreds of local stores every hour, allowing avid shoppers and collectors to see the latest inventory in near real-time. All from a single source. Prior to ATTIC, a similar outcome required checking hundreds of websites, Instagram feeds, Etsy stores and Flickr accounts.

Cloud + API = Performance

ATTIC utilizes a variety of technologies to offer an incredibly fast user experience for mobile and desktop environments alike. Smart caching, several CDN services, and additional cloud-based services, packaged and seamlessly coordinated make it all possible.

Mobile First

ATTIC's inventory — new listings for vintage and used furniture products that change as often as every hour — makes it the perfect candidate for a mobile application. On the bus, waiting in line, sipping coffee, those are all great opportunities to see what's new. ATTIC delivers with a fully responsive, mobile-optimized web application.

Case StudyATTIC