Hi,

I am wanting to guage people's interest or response to the idea of having help with moving (ie. furnishing and decorating) apartments in the Zurich area.

If you were moving to Zurich and could have the opportunity to - would you be willing to pay for someone to do a style analysis on you and then do all your shopping for your new apartment and organise all the installation of the furniture and decorating for you?

What would be a reasonable price you would be willing to pay for that kind of service and do you think it is something that if it was offered people would make use of?

I am really seriously wanting to start a service offering this - basically getting the person's requirements - needs, style, budget etc and then doing all the work for them to get their apartment ready for them and doing it all in a really short time span - ie. a week from start to finish? Then they would be able to move in and everything would be taken care of.

And on the other end offering a free pickup service for their furniture that they don't want to take with them when they move out, but that is still ok, ie. not the stuff that should just be chucked out on the street.

What do you all think - would you be interested in something like that? Do you think a price per hour would be better than a fixed rate for the service - I would want to keep the prices really reasonable so that the service would be available for people with all kinds of budgets.

Offering a basic, midline and topend moving in service package kind of thing.

Can I have your feedback or suggestions please? I was a bit unsure about posting these questions because I don't want to give anyone else any ideas to steal first, but in order to guage response I have to put the questions out there.

Also - forum mods...is this the right place to post this? Wasn't sure as I am trying to scope out people's responses to a service like this, but wasn't sure if it should go in the business section or not since it is more to do with housing issues and wanted to post it in the housing section as that is where most people who are moving or coming and going would be reading...so would get their perspective on it??

Seems about right to me

If I may comment: it's an awfully big apple to bite into. My suggestion would be to start at a lower level - IKEA range - and work upwards. It's amazing how many people use IKEA; just see the For Sale threads.

Your client could offer you their budget and you deliver the goods. I'd avoid heading towards interior design. You could charge 20% of the value of the goods. I see your problem being getting your service known. Maybe you could talk to IKEA about outsourcing your service..?

I paid somebody to move my stuff around and lug it up to the flat, but I wouldn't pay for a 'style' analysis. I like to choose and buy stuff myself.

20% is a lot. I would like to get a style analysis done and get recommendations on the type of stuff that I eventually buy, but, will definitely not pay 20%. Probably, I can consider paying 8-10% but that looks high.

Any basic furniture or style shopping would be about 50,000 CHF for an average person; am not getting into the league of ultra-rich 500,000 CHF expenditure on furniture. 8-10% on this amount is reasonable!

Some good points already...

So does anyone care to pitch in what they think is an average they would spend on furnishing a full apartment - or that they have spent on furnishing an apartment in Zurich initially?

50,000 as an estimated amount by Gsach for what an average person would spend - any comments?

Obviously someone coming on a tight budget wouldn't probably use the service as they would be looking to save wherever possible, but for those who would spend about 50,000 on furniture - what about just making a flat rate of how much it would cost for a week's worth of work (ie hours) to get their flat ready?

Something like 2,000 - 2,500chf instead of a percentage - actually this would work out at about 5% of the total purchase price if it was around 50,000.

Any thoughts??

Also in terms of style analysis - what I mean is that before I would go and purchase anything for the person I would have them fill out a very comprehensive list of likes/dislikes, etc to make sure that I had as many guidelines as possible so that whatever is purchased fits within their taste.

I like the idea of starting out by offering the service as an Ikea shopping service...that would certainly make it much clearer to the customers at least in terms of their choices and whats on offer.