Back in 2010, at the time when I was still living with my parents in a tiny small bedroom, I tended to stay in my bedroom most of the time because all I wanted was to play a video game and write some scripts for short films.
However, there wasn’t any writing desk in the room, so I needed to buy one. But because the room was so tiny that I must find a desk that could perfectly fit into space in front of the window between walls, so to not to waste any space.
I measured the size and it was a rather odd size, 1155mm x 630mm to fill up space perfectly.
So off I went to all well-known furniture shops and all I found was some standard sizes of furniture with a width like 900mm, 1000mm, 1200mm, 1500mm, etc. the price was good but it was never something that I wanted.
I soon realized I must order custom made furniture if I needed to have some odd sizes. But then where and which shop? I went to a street which was famous for building materials and furniture, but because there were so many of them, I wasn’t sure which one I should go for. They all look similar in a way and most of them didn’t have a display model or picture of a writing desk to show me at all. However, they all said they could do anything I wanted to and offered me to come in to have a chat.
I randomly picked one in the end as I was getting tired. It was an old man serving me and asked me what I wanted. I said if there is any good-looking writing desk design that I could have a look in this shop first? The old man said no and asked me to just tell him anything I have in mind and then he could draw it out for me.
I told him I wanted a very simple writing desk in white colour, the old man then drew an axonometric drawing in pencil for me. The drawing looked horrible, it looked like some distorted primary school kid’s drawing but I accepted it in the end because I thought all I wanted was a simple writing desk, it would be very hard to go wrong anyway.
They told me it would be ready in 21 days, but it ended up arrived at my home in 42 days later with the size of the desk legs twice as what they have drawn in the drawing. I asked them why they changed the sizes without letting me know and they said it must be that big structurally and they would not refund or exchange it for me even the sizes did not match with the drawing.
Despite the ugly heavy looking desk legs that I got in the end, the worst thing was not the look but it smelled horrible and I couldn’t close the window for months.
All these bad experiences made me wanted to set up MerryJAM, to create a reliable online platform that whenever someone thinks of furniture with or without custom sizes they could just come to this platform and order the furniture they like with the sizes they want. All furniture is displayed clearly with quality pictures, 3D renderings, sizes, and material descriptions. People could then order quality custom made furniture with just a few clicks at home without the stress wandering around in the street like what I did 9 years ago.
9 years was a long time, but I needed time to transform myself from working as an architect to an interior designer, then from a filmmaker to a father, then finally to an online business entrepreneur. I think it is a reasonable time and it takes time to do some quality stuff too.
JW
