When a tiled table takes a trip

People browsing online marketplaces for furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles and much more often find what they are looking for quickly. All too often, though, the pleasure is short-lived. Beneath that promising listing, the words might as well be carved in stone: “Collection only.” It is perhaps one of the last outright refusals in an otherwise finely tuned world of same-day delivery.

In many cases, the seller is not simply choosing the easy option; the logistics leave them little choice. Once an item exceeds the parcel services’ quickly exhausted standard dimensions, the only options are to make the journey yourself, hire a freight carrier or leave the find where it is.

The last of these may be bearable when it comes to replaceable, standard products – chipboard shelving with Swedish names, or mass-produced household electronics. But it is truly frustrating with one-off pieces that will never reach the home they were meant for: the handmade floor lamp made from copper pipes, the limited-production turntable add-on that is unique to an enthusiast, or that side table covered in colourful tiles which, depending on its surroundings, looks like a Dadaist design statement or a fever dream from the wild 1970s.

All of them bulky objects that may seem out of place to those who prefer to live and furnish straight from a catalogue, yet are objects of desire for individualists. Interior design sometimes produces stories as unusual as life itself, and in both cases a happy ending is occasionally denied by nothing more than external circumstances. That last part, at least, is anything but a law of nature.

Take it with you, rather than leave it behind

Take that designer tiled table: 120 x 80 x 40 cm and weighing 10 kg. Like so many things, it was discovered during an evening scroll through an endless stream of online listings – perhaps on VIA X MARKET – from the sofa of a newly occupied two-person flatshare in a new neighbourhood in Essen. It stands out, almost like a needle in an interiors haystack. But it is at the other end of the country, say in Leipzig, while there is either no car in the garage or simply no room in the diary for a road trip east.

Without VIA X, it would probably stay there. After all, there is no shortage of side tables; that space in the Essen living room would not remain empty forever. But this particular table, with this particular pattern of tiles, this fever dream of colour that goes perfectly with the books that came with the move, or with the colourful spice mills – this perfect match for the home and its inhabitants – would remain a wish. A bubble burst by the limits of mass logistics.

But enough of the pathos: VIA X does exist. So the table is not left forlorn in Leipzig. It finds its way to where it belongs, thanks to people doing nothing more than travelling to where they belong, or want to be, and together creating ride sharing for objects. Thanks to a driver in a compact car the size of a VW Golf, already planning to travel from, say, Berlin to Düsseldorf, perhaps to visit family during the university holidays. A driver who remembered to plan the journey in VIA X in good time – the app can be used for route planning and navigation anyway. This distinctive table, which would never have fitted a parcel service’s standard categories, first finds a place in the boot of a VW Golf – and finally right in front of the sofa from which it was discovered, and where it first made someone’s eyes light up.

Simplicity, security and trust

In practice, this means that large, heavy or bulky items – furniture, electrical appliances, sports equipment, decorative pieces and much more – can travel on car journeys that are already taking place. The process feels so natural that the coordination behind it becomes almost invisible. From listing the table (unless it was bought through VIA X MARKET in the first place), to matching it with a route, booking the transport and finally collecting and delivering it, with barcode confirmation throughout, every step is so intuitive that you might think you were using a dating app, simply swiping left or right, rather than navigating a complex chain of demand and movement.

The best applications are always those that make the complex simple and take the stress out of the inconvenient:

“With VIA X MOBILITY, we are achieving something that sounds more straightforward than it is: bringing together existing journeys, an extraordinary amount of space travelling empty, and things that need to go in precisely the same direction. Ride-sharing platforms have been doing this for people for years, even decades. With objects, however, the demands on processes, trust and traceability are many times greater. That does not deter us, because we believe in the value of making complexity manageable.” – Alexander Doliva, CEO VIA X Mobility and Commerce