Augmented Reality Creations: Home improvements reimagined

Over the pandemic, many homeowners have got stuck into home improvement projects. In the first lockdown, the UK’s homeowners spent a total of £55billion on renovations to create their perfect property. Home improvements can be an expensive endeavour, and present a step into the unknown for many property owners, so University of Exeter graduate Andy Clear and his friends Kris Woolhouse and Zack Tuff, created a software solution which allows homeowners to visualise the renovated property before parting with their money.

Coined as the try-before-you-buy for home improvements, the graduates’ company Augmented Reality Creations (ARC), create immersive and explorable Augmented Reality experiences for use by home improvement installers as a sales tool both in person (on a visit or in a showroom), or remotely.

Their latest product - ARC Design, is a web based 3D modelling software with AR for conservatories and extensions. It helps homeowners better understand their options, and in the process makes it easier for companies to sell to them. ARC Design is currently live on 12 websites and has an average of 15 uses per site per week.

Whilst a Natural Sciences student at the University of Exeter, Andy completed the Student Startups Pre-Incubator and Incubator programmes, which are designed to support students and graduates to take their startup ideas from ideation to launch through a series of workshops, mentoring and 1:1 advice.

On the Incubator programme last summer, Andy and his team of founders successfully pitched for a startup grant of £3500, which was used to cover software costs and server fees, as well as part-fund an intern from Keele University, who helped develop the User Interface for ARC design. The grant funding made available through the Incubator programme is possible thanks to the generous support of philanthropic partner Santander Universities UK.

Andy said: “The pitching experience was hugely valuable as it is something that you will have to do again and again whether to grant funds or investors. The audience was friendly and overall, it was fun.”

The ARC team also achieved second place in the University of Exeter finals of the Elevate 2021 Engineers in Business competition, winning a share of a £3000 prize. They pitched their business idea to an expert panel against eight other student teams.

Andy said: “In the future, we will continue to work with our market leading clients to turn ARC Design into the leading conservatory design, lead gen and lead conversion software. This will then be expanded to similar sectors.”

Find out more: https://arc-solutions.co.uk/