Kristoffer Steen was living in a tiny apartment with no space for a wardrobe when he decided to go and solve his own problem by building something from scratch. From then on he gained a passion for helping people in his situation. He started his business, Cutfab, with one CNC machine, a computer with the free 3D design software, SketchUp, and no prior knowledge of furniture design. And he’s been making customers happy for nearly a decade.

But there’s a catch: the Kristoffers of the world simply couldn’t afford his services.

“Our customers today have a lot of space. They can basically buy whatever, and anything fits in their homes. But the people that live in small spaces, they need our services way more, but they can’t afford them.

- Kristoffer Steen, Cutfab & Volva.ai

However, with the right digital customer experience, he’s making tailor-made wardrobes accessible to the masses at a reasonable price.

Half the cost of tailor-made wardrobes is related to measuring, designing, and deciding.

Kristoffer has brought Volva to the world — an AI-based wardrobe configurator to drastically reduce the design cost associated with custom furniture. But how did he get there?

From professional golfer to tailor-made furniture

Kristoffer definitely took a non-linear path to arriving at his current company, inspired by solving problems and building a business the whole way. He started out as a professional golfer in his early years but discovered his passion for creating and building furniture when running into his own problem. After learning about CNC machines, he saw how a professional, data-driven shop mixed with classic craftsmanship could deliver a totally new offering into the market.

Most importantly, he acted on his belief that tailoring your space to your needs and personality improves your productivity, motivation and happiness.

Starting off alone, he’s operating with over a dozen employees with expertise in building high quality wardrobes, cabinetry, and more. His passion for quality and the process shines through when visiting his shop.

The new opportunity with AI

Kristoffer had long wanted to bring his services to people like him when he had his first need. The high time and labor cost related to measuring, designing, and deciding on furniture accounts for nearly half the price of custom.

He’s taken several shots at building a “wardrobe configurator” — an easy-to-use tool that allows individuals to design and request what they want, but it’s never quite delivered. Either it was too hard to use or didn’t generate the right files to actually build things.

He came to Databutton with the thought that AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), could bridge this usability gap. We instantly realized we were kindred spirits, us using LLMs to lower the cost and close the usability gaps for custom apps, and Kristoffer for custom furniture.

We were instantly excited to help him make his app reality and bring this new experience to his customers.

Fun Fact: Wardrobes are generated using a single prompt sent to GPT-4o.

Throughout the process, Kristoffer has been met with tremendous positive feedback from users and customers. So what are you waiting for?

Give Volva a try

If you go through the flow at Volva.ai, you can see how easy it is to design and tweak wardrobes with natural language already. What’s incredible is that these are real SketchUp renderings, with the information needed to actually build and deliver them. Volva is only available in the Norwegian market for now.

Achieve your own mission

We're incredibly proud to be Kristoffer's service of choice for building his app and achieving Volva's mission. Need help with your own app or software? You can also sign up for Databutton or reach out to us with your idea at hi@databutton.io 😊