04FurnitureConcept project
Forest & Mallet
The price, before the enquiry.
- Year
- 2026
- Typical timeline
- 6 weeks
- Sector
- Furniture
- Live site
- Visit the site (opens in a new tab)
- Work completed
- Art directionWeb designCopywritingWeb developmentConfigurator design
Forest & Mallet does not exist. It is a workshop that makes one thing — a dining table in salvaged English oak — and a site built around the moment most furniture makers lose people: when a customer wants to know what it costs, and is told to get in touch.
The brief
A brief we set ourselves: a small Cotswolds workshop selling a single signature table, made to order in four lengths, three finishes and three styles of iron joinery, to customers who will research for weeks before they commit.
01Challenge
The problem worth solving
“Price on application” is where made-to-order furniture goes to lose customers. Someone considering a table this expensive does not want a sales conversation to learn whether it is in budget. They want to size it for their room, see the finish and know the number — privately — before deciding whether to talk to anyone at all.
Objectives
- 01Let a customer design and price the table without speaking to anyone
- 02Carry the chosen design into the enquiry, so nothing is asked twice
- 03Make a high price feel earned before it is shown
- 04Keep the whole journey, from first look to commission, on one page
02Strategy
The approach we took
We put a configurator at the centre of the page. Every choice updates a live specification sheet — seats, timber weight, workshop hours — and the commission estimate changes with the size of the table. The case for that price comes first: why salvaged oak, why no screws, what sixty hours of handwork means. When the table is right, one button carries the design into a three-step commission request that opens by asking the customer to confirm what they have just built.
03Design
How it looks, and why
Slow design, set slowly. A light serif at large sizes, generous space, and a palette taken from the materials — alabaster, natural oak, charred timber and rusted iron. Photography is soft and daylit, and the configurator is drawn as a specification document rather than a shop widget, so choosing a table feels like commissioning one.
Display
9664402416
Palette
- Grit#1A1917
- Alabaster#F5F2EE
- Natural oak#C69D70
- Rusted iron#824733
Grid — 12 col / 8px
04Development
How it was built
One page, and no dead ends: every in-page link resolves. The configurator redraws the specification as each option is chosen and re-prices the table as it is resized, then hands the finished design to the multi-step request form without a reload. The page’s largest element paints in 0.8 seconds on a throttled connection.
Key features
- 0136 configurations — four lengths, three finishes, three joinery styles
- 02A live specification sheet: seats, timber weight, workshop hours
- 03A commission estimate that changes with the size of the table
- 04One button to carry the design into the enquiry
- 05A three-step commission request that opens by confirming the design
- 06Materials and method set out before the price appears
05Results
What was built
A workshop that does not exist has no commissions to report. What it has is the site: a table you can size, finish and price without asking anyone, and a request form that already knows what you want. Every figure below can be checked on the live site.
Concept project — Forest & Mallet is fictional, but its website is live, and the figures below are measured from it rather than modelled. Performance was recorded over a throttled connection (4 Mbps, 70 ms latency) with a 4× CPU slowdown. Check them on the live site (opens in a new tab)
- 36 Table configurations, built on the page
- 3 Steps from finished design to commission request
- 0.8s Largest contentful paint throttled
- 0 Dead links
The number people want, shown before they have to ask for it.
