Wonder says home furnishings industry facing crucial AI adoption decision

Tampa, Fla. — Manufacturers and retailers in the home furnishing industry that fail to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) risk falling behind their competitors, warned Kaspar Fopp, CEO of Wonder, an AI -powered software company serving the furniture and home décor industry.

“If you do not know your tools you are at a major disadvantage; know how to use them, what the limitations are and understand what you are outsourcing and signing for,” said Fopp. “To have control of your creative work, businesses need to educate themselves and have control of what AI applications they are using.”

Speaking with Furniture Today, the AI expert said AI tools are no longer optional but essential for boosting sales and improving customer shopping experience in an increasingly digital world.

See also:

• Wonder offers free AI tools to furniture stores on its platform
• GigaCloud subsidiary rebrands as Wonder, launches Wonder App

“If you are not part of this, you are at a massive disadvantage, not today but Thanksgiving, Black Friday 2026. If the adoption goes up the way it has been in the past two years, then a lot of people, millions of people, will make purchases using GPT or other types of tools, and your products will not show up, and that means they do not exist,” he stressed.

Understanding and learning how to use AI is the first step

Fopp compared AI with an iceberg where only the top part visible. He said the visible part is the application people interact with, while several hidden layers underneath do the real work, including the models and technology. He said many AI companies only add an outer layer on top of tools such as ChatGPT and sell it as a product, which is risky for retailers and manufacturers.

“You have even less control if you are not using the foundational model correctly and you are just using a wrapper on top of it,” Fopp explained. “You don’t know what that company’s data governance standards are, what their security compliance is and you have no idea what’s happening with your information.  Your data could be somewhere out there, and  you have no control over it.”

The AI software company advises larger businesses to rely on in-house, foundational AI models or AI open tools for simpler functions such as image creation, advertising or research. Fopp suggested open platforms such as Google AI tools, Claude from Anthropic for coding and  Higgsfield, for recreating images and videos, as examples.

For internal chat tools that draw on a company’s own knowledge and data, Fopp recommended businesses to build or customize their own AI tools. “Build a custom GPT and then set the boundaries saying it should not be shared outside of the organization,” he said.

Despite gains made in AI by the industry, Fopp cautioned that, while today’s AI tools are powerful and impressive, they still do not create new ideas, which is essential in the industry. “All they are doing is recycling existing IP. It’s like … they can only imagine things based on what they know rather than outside of the box,” he noted.

Building Wonder 

Wonder was established in 2013 under the name WonderSign, initially focusing on interactive and digital signage before evolving into an AI-powered software company serving the home furnishing industry. It rebranded in 2025 to Wonder.

“In the beginning, it was a kiosk company with kiosk solutions. Ashley was our main client; they really put us on the map,” said Fopp. “It gave us our big footprint. We had a lot of adoption with thousands of customers, and over time we realized the true value was not the kiosk but rather the platform.

“You have all these different manufacturers displaying the data: One manufacturer calls it bedroom group, the other one calls it a bedroom suite, but it’s all the same. So, what we do is normalize all this information so that the retailer has one universal catalog that it can use in any application.”

Optimizing information 

The company updates its software every two weeks, releasing new versions to keep up with rapid changes the industry is facing in the market. Fopp said Wonder’s platform has changed so much over time that it is barley recognizable from its early versions.

Beyond the frequent updates, Fopp said its long-term strategy will be focusing on fundamentals, particularly how product information is handled, instead of pushing whatever data manufacturers provide.

The company also will continue to make it easier for shoppers to find, understand and buy products while helping businesses remain competitive in a changing digital market.