page_title: Scene7
section_title: GoodHome.com (1995−2000)
hierarchical_section_title: Scene7 / History / GoodHome.com (1995−2000)
caption_attribution_description: English: The en:headquarters of en:Mattel in en:El Segundo, California. Photographed on en:April 21, en:2007 by user Coolcaesar.
context_page_description: Scene7 is an American on-demand rich media software company that provides document hosting and interactive publishing services such as online catalogs, targeted email, video, and image management. Retailers use the company's services to showcase products on their websites and to allow customers to interact with the products. Scene7's technology allows users to manipulate product images by zooming in and rotating products, simulating the inspection of merchandise in retail stores.
  The company, founded as a division of Autodesk, created a room decoration computer software called Picture This Home in the mid-1990s. The division was sold to Broderbund in 1998, then spun off as a company called GoodHome.com in June 1999. After GoodHome.com failed to become profitable, it was reorganized and renamed Scene7. It formally launched on January 23, 2001 and focused on helping companies prepare interactive advertisements for consumers. Adobe Systems acquired Scene7 in 2007 for an undisclosed sum.
context_section_description: The company began as a development team that created software called Picture This Home in the mid-1990s for Autodesk in San Rafael, California. The program allowed people to virtually preview room decoration projects before any work began. Its users can create virtual rooms, change walls and arrange furniture, and create photo-realistic renderings of completed designs. Picture This Home was awarded the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. In 1998, the software and its team of 40 developers were sold to Broderbund, which was owned by The Learning Company, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Broderbund eventually spun Picture This Home off as a company called GoodHome.com in June 1999 with Doug Mack as its CEO. The company received $30 million in venture capital from Hearst Interactive Media.
  Mack noted that before Broderbund spun off GoodHome.com as a separate company, there was a "big culture clash" between the established company and the new media division. He said that companies such as Broderbund were so concerned with established business that smaller, newer divisions found it hard to receive sufficient attention and bandwidth. He praised Broderbund's decision to spin the company off as a separate entity: "We would have never been able to build our Web business if we were not in a separate building with separate funding." Mack observed that newer companies like GoodHome.com rarely had any problem in hiring new employees because of the opportunity for Internet companies to grow quickly into "the next Amazon.com".
  In September 1999, GoodHome.com merged with Alexandria, Virginia-based nHabit.com, a rival company, for an undisclosed sum. After the merger, GoodHome.com was assured that it would grow quickly; the merger also added the Internet service provider America Online to GoodHome.com's portfolio as a client. Ten weeks after forming a business plan, GoodHome.com officially launched on September 29, 1999 with offices in San Rafael and New York City, New York, and Roger Horchow was assigned as its chairman. The company used the slogan "A beautiful home. It was never this easy," and focused on selling furniture and other home items, spending $20 million on advertisements in its first year. Mack decided that the company should target women, since "women make 80 percent of decorating decisions." The company built a home furnishings portal to compete with the websites Living.com and Furniture.com, which both went bankrupt in 2000. In April 2000, GoodHome.com's monthly sales topped $1 million; the company's goal was to be profitable within two to three years.
  One of the website's biggest attractions was its virtual decorating service that let customers see how certain features such as the paint, upholstery fabric, rugs, and pillows would look before a purchase. When considering why this service was so popular, Mack noted that consumers usually feel more confident in a purchase when there are few unknowns. At the time, selling products over the Internet was not a popular concept outside the United States, but Mack was confident in expanding GoodHome.com's portfolio to include foreign companies: "We're already getting so many requests from companies about expanding our website abroad... I see this happening quickly within the next few years."
  GoodHome.com encountered difficulties in running its business in 2000, when several other companies that offered similar services launched. The increasing demand for online catalog services, considered a phenomenon, was dubbed the "hottest thing since sliced bread" by an analyst from technology research firm Forrester Research, which estimated that roughly $500 million was invested in home furnishing websites from 1999 to 2000. It became difficult for consumers to decide which service provided better quality; a business owner commented, "You can't tell the difference in quality between something that's $3,000 and something that's $10,000." GoodHome.com, which had offered free shipping, phased out the feature on July 15, 2000, in favor of "heavily subsidized rates". To compete with new companies, 
caption: Mattel's headquarters in El Segundo, California. The company owned Scene7 for a year before spinning it off as GoodHome.com.
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