The furniture company that thinks like a tech startup
Things are moving fast. Across the Norce platform, we are already seeing concrete examples of how our underlying AI capabilities enable customers to build entirely new types of digital experiences. In this article, Daniel Källstrand Modig, CTO at String Furniture, gives a sneak peek into how they are currently putting these capabilities to work — shaping a new kind of customer journey set to be released shortly.
String Furniture has been making iconic shelving systems since 1949. But when it comes to digital commerce, they execute like a tech company. With in-house development teams, String Furniture is step by step taking advantage of the AI capabilities in Norce Commerce. Their goal, in the words of Daniel Källstrand Modig: "We want to reduce the distance from understanding to buying."
Buying a String system is not a quick decision. Customers browse, save ideas, come back weeks later, and slowly work toward a purchase. String Furniture built My String (soon to be released) to support that journey, a personalized customer portal where shoppers can save favourites, collect inspiration, track orders, and store shelf configurations they are working on.
My String is built entirely on Norce — accounts, order history and personalisation all run on Norce. And it was built fast. The time it took to implement, from idea to a fully working feature, was cut in less than half, thanks to Norce's Agent Gateway and the Norce Assistant MCP for Developers (Model Context Protocol) that allows AI Coding Agents such as Claude and Codex immediate access to the Norce documentation library.
By connecting the Norce Assistant MCP directly into their development environment, their developers can use AI Coding Agents to generate working code instantly, instead of manually reading through API documentation. The result is a team that can go from idea to shipping a new experience on their site in a fraction of the time it would normally take.
"Buying a String system is not an impulse purchase. My String is the place you come back to, where your inspiration is waiting for you," Daniel says.
String Furniture is now building AI into the experience on top of My String. The first step is personalised search. My String analyses which products a user has saved and adjusts search results accordingly. The more you engage, the more the experience shapes itself around what you are actually looking for.
The next step is a conversational shopping experience built on Norce's Agent SDK and the Norce Agent Gateway. Customers will be able to describe what they need in their own words and receive a ready-to-buy product recommendation in return. No need to understand how the modules fit together and no need to browse through hundreds of combinations.
"The mission is to go in, make yourself understood, and within a minute arrive at a combination that matches exactly what you are looking for, close enough that you feel ready to click buy," Daniel says.
Alongside the conversational experience, String Furniture is developing an AI engine that generates shelf combinations based on a conversation. Tell it what you need, and it builds a suggestion. That suggestion then feeds directly into their new 3D configurator, where customers can visualise exactly what the finished shelf will look like — and in the future, place it in their own home using augmented reality.
Together, these pieces form a purchase journey where the product sells itself. From a conversation to a configuration to a checkout — without confusion, without friction, and without needing to visit a store.
"Our CEO always says we are an IT company that happens to sell furniture," Daniel says. "Because we have the teams in-house to move fast and keep up with what is happening in the technology landscape."
For brands like String Furniture — willing to move fast and build for the future — Norce provides the infrastructure to make it real. As AI and Agentic Commerce continues to change how people discover and buy online, the right platform makes all the difference. For String Furniture, that platform is Norce.
See Daniel walk through My String and talk about how String Furniture is using Norce AI to build the next generation of furniture shopping — in the video below (in swedish).