The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2026
Inahono Furniture's Chois turns hardware-store dowels into tool-free furniture
Japanese designer Nobutsuna Honami sells 3D-printable joint files; buyers add standard wooden dowels and assemble tables, valets and hangers with wedges.
Inahono Furniture
What it had to solve
Chois is the work of Japanese furniture designer Nobutsuna Honami, who also works as Inahono Furniture. The design brief he set himself: furniture people can build from ordinary, standard parts instead of shipped finished pieces. Chois—Connective Hardware for Open Integrated Structures—answers with printed components that join standard-sized dowels into three-legged furniture units.
How it works
Chois is a furniture system whose only custom parts are the joints. Japanese furniture designer Nobutsuna Honami, who works as Inahono Furniture, created 3D-printed components that join standard-sized wooden dowels into three-legged tables, valets, hanging systems and other pieces—the buyer supplies the wood.
The name spells out the method: Chois stands for Connective Hardware for Open Integrated Structures. Dowels push into holes in the printed components and are held there by wedges, so nothing needs tools, glue or screws, and the range of connectors—hooks, hangers, tray inserts, even a tissue holder—lets one simple kit become many pieces of furniture.
Distribution follows the same logic. Instead of shipping furniture, Honami sells the .stl files through the CraftedCycle store and the buyer prints locally. Core77 featured the system in September 2026, and the line has since grown a Chois Mini desk-organizer scale alongside the full-size furniture modules.
Why it lands
- The product is the connector, not the piece: the only part that must be bespoke is the joint, so the file becomes the product and the standard timber comes from any hardware store.
- Files instead of freight: selling STL downloads means no inventory, no shipping and no finishing, letting a one-person studio offer a whole furniture line.
- Wedge-locked joints keep assembly tool-free and reversible, so the same components can be taken apart, reconfigured or extended as needs change.
- Standard dowel sizes and a compatible module family turn one product into an open system—anything can join anything, from a valet to a full side table.
What it did
Core77 profiled the system in its Furniture Design and Digital Fabrication sections on 1 September 2026, headlining the twist: 'You Supply the Dowels.' The storefront has since expanded Chois into a modular catalog with a Chois Mini desk organizer, a free starter kit and paid personal and merchant plans that license commercial builds.
What you can take
Sell only the part that must be custom: when everything else in a product is a commodity found at any hardware store, the file is the product and it can travel further than the furniture.
Since then
The Chois catalog on CraftedCycle now spans full-size furniture and a Chois Mini desk organizer built on the same printed-joint-plus-dowel principle. A free starter kit—cone base, round tray and an adapter for Japanese rod sizes—leads into paid personal and merchant plans; the merchant tier licenses commercial builds and lists buyers as official Chois makers. As of September 2026, the Core77 feature is the main design-press notice in the collected material.
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