From Athens to Ann Arbor–how Ramsay Nye turned distance into a perfect partnership

Summary

Business of Home Podcast Summary: "From Athens to Ann Arbor–how Ramsay Nye turned distance into a perfect partnership"

Release Date: July 14, 2025

Hosts: Dennis Scully
Guests: Krista Nye Nicholas and Tammy Ramsey, Founders of Ramsey Nye

---

1. Introduction and Partnership Formation

Dennis Scully kicks off the episode by introducing Krista Nye Nicholas and Tammy Ramsey, the dynamic duo behind Ramsey Nye, an interior design firm operating between Athens, Georgia, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Their journey began with a simple interaction on Pinterest, which blossomed into a thriving long-distance partnership encompassing both design practice and a multi-line showroom business, Cloth and Kind.

Notable Quote:
"What began as a comment on Pinterest evolved into one of the industry's most successful long-distance partnerships." — Dennis Scully [00:03]

2. Meeting Through Pinterest

Tammy Ramsey recounts how she and Krista connected on Pinterest, a platform they both embraced early on. A mutual interest in artisanal textiles and shared values led them to collaborate, culminating in attending a design conference together.

Notable Quote:
"It felt like we had always known each other and the conversations were effortless and nonstop." — Tammy Ramsey [05:02]

3. Overcoming Geographical Distance

Despite being based in different states, Krista and Tammy leveraged technology and strategic project management to build their business. They emphasized that their geographical separation became a strength, allowing them to tap into diverse markets and client bases.

Notable Quote:
"When you are in love, anything is possible." — Krista Nye Nicholas [11:34]

4. Building the Business and Team

Both founders come from non-design backgrounds—Krista from journalism and marketing at Conde Nast, and Tammy from a critical care nursing career. They swiftly developed business processes, emphasizing organization and systematization to manage their growing teams in multiple locations.

Notable Quote:
"We are super system and process oriented. So we have all manner of platforms that we function on..." — Tammy Ramsey [12:57]

5. Transitioning into Interior Design Without Formal Degrees

Krista and Tammy navigated the interior design industry without formal design degrees. They focused on practical experience and emphasized the importance of taste and creativity over formal education. To ensure quality, they required all team members to hold design degrees.

Notable Quote:
"If you couldn't teach taste, then that's the bottom line." — Tammy Ramsey [22:34]

6. Pricing Models and Client Transparency

The founders discuss their approach to pricing, balancing hourly rates with product markups to create a transparent and fair pricing structure. They highlight the importance of clear communication with clients about how they charge and the value provided.

Notable Quote:
"We're real buttoned up and very serious about making money as well. This is not a hobby." — Krista Nye Nicholas [27:43]

7. Showroom Evolution and Challenges in Retail

Krista and Tammy share their experience transitioning Cloth and Kind from a showroom to also operating a retail store. They realized that retail was not aligned with their strengths and passion, leading them to refocus solely on the showroom, which caters to designers and affluent clients in the Midwest.

Notable Quote:
"It was not what we loved. It was not what our heart was in, and it ultimately was a distraction from the showroom." — Krista Nye Nicholas [40:19]

8. Regional Focus: Midwest Dynamics

The discussion delves into their strategic focus on the Midwest, highlighting the region's growing demand for boutique and artisanal textile lines. They explain how their showroom serves a diverse and expansive Midwestern clientele, adapting to varied design sensibilities across 12 states.

Notable Quote:
"The Midwest is so enormous, it's a hard thing for any line rep to get out there and go see them." — Tammy Ramsey [48:36]

9. Industry Trends: Boutique Lines versus Consolidation

Krista and Tammy explore the current state of the textile industry, noting a trend where larger fabric houses are acquiring boutique lines. However, they express optimism that there's ample space for both established brands and new boutique artisans, especially with the rise of digital printing and on-demand production.

Notable Quote:
"There is enough room for everybody. We certainly need the Schumachers and the Kravitz and the Thiebauds of the world." — Krista Nye Nicholas [63:40]

10. Rebranding and Hiring a COO

Recognizing the need for structured growth, Ramsey Nye rebranded their design firm under their own names while maintaining Cloth and Kind for the showroom. They also brought on Jessica, a seasoned professional from New York City, as their Chief Operating Officer (COO) to streamline operations and support their expansion.

Notable Quote:
"Transitioning from Cloth and Kind to Ramsey Nye would not have been possible without her." — Tammy Ramsey [60:27]

11. Embracing Technology and AI

The founders discuss their cautious yet optimistic approach to integrating artificial intelligence into their business operations. They utilize AI for marketing and data analysis to enhance their decision-making and operational efficiency.

Notable Quote:
"We're getting there. We're not all in, but we are definitely exploring and finding some good use cases for it." — Krista Nye Nicholas [55:04]

12. Future Outlook and Conclusion

Krista and Tammy reflect on their journey, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, transparency, and a customer-centric approach. They express confidence in their continued growth and their role in enriching the Midwestern interior design landscape with unique and artisanal offerings.

Notable Quote:
"It's been an amazing time and opportunity for these smaller makers who can now do this, they can digitally print a line, they can print to order." — Krista Nye Nicholas [64:45]

---

Final Thoughts:
Krista Nye Nicholas and Tammy Ramsey exemplify how strategic partnership, even across distances, can lead to substantial success in the interior design industry. Their commitment to transparency, quality, and adaptability has allowed Ramsey Nye to thrive and expand its influence, particularly within the Midwest's evolving design market.

Stay Connected:
To follow Ramsey Nye's journey and explore their offerings, visit Ramsey Nye’s Website or connect with them on their social media platforms.

Transcript

[Dennis Scully]

This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guests this week are Krista Nye Nicholas and Tammy Ramsey, the founders of Ramsey Nye, an interior design firm operating out of Athens, Georgia and and Ann Arbor, Michigan. What began as a comment on Pinterest evolved into one of the industry's most successful long distance partnerships. Over the past decade, they've built a thriving design practice as well as a multi line showroom business, Cloth and Kind, which represents artisanal textile lines, lighting and furnishings across 12 Midwestern states. Their recent decision to rebrand their design firm under their own names while keeping Cloth in kind for the showroom marks a new chapter in their evolution. I spoke with Krista and Tammy about how distance became the secret ingredient to their partnership's success, how running a multi line showroom sharpens their design practice, and how an Eat, Pray, Love moment taught them exactly what business they didn't want to be in. This podcast is sponsored by leloy. For over 20 years, Laloy has been a leader in the home textile industry by upholding the highest standards in craftsmanship and customer service. See the newest collections of Laloy rugs, pillows and wall art at Vegas Market this summer from July 27th through the 31st. Showroom appointments are highly recommended and you can make yours [e-mail] that's L O L O I rugs.com and don't forget to follow Loyrugs on Instagram and TikTok. And now on with the show. So we've got a great many things to discuss and there are a lot of topics that I want to get into detail with both of you, but can't start this conversation without telling we met through Pinterest. Who wants to tell that story so that the that the listeners can get to know you very quickly? Tammy, do you want to take that?

[Tammy Ramsey]

Sure. Well, we are very much early adopters and so when Pinterest hit the world wide web, we were right there with it to usher it into the world. And Krista and I actually met over a comment on Pinterest, which doesn't sound crazy in this day and age, but back then it was almost obscene that you could actually meet someone that way. And it was a comment on a pin that another mutual Pinterest follower that we both had had pinned. And it was a repin of something that I had pinned. So like meta and so effectively, Krista commented and said sold I want to buy it. This other person sold vintage furniture and they directed her to me. And from there, ultimately we started following each other and then ultimately discovered that we were both in small college towns. Myself in Athens, Georgia, Christa in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And we're both practicing independently and just started kind of utilizing each other as resources. And very quickly discovered that we had tons in common, had a similar level of intensity and a very deep love of textiles and pattern and color and whatnot that ultimately led us to go to a design conference together out west. We met in person there, rooming together for the first time.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Mind you, this is after only a few months. Oh, yeah. So just a few months. Fast and furious.

[Dennis Scully]

Yeah, a few months and we're sharing a room together at a conference, sight.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Unseen, sharing a room together. And then at the end of that three day conference, it made perfect, logical sense to go into business together. And as I've said many times, I came home from that trip and told my husband and felt like I was admitting that I'd had an affair, that.

[Dennis Scully]

I had basically followed someone, met someone.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And we're going into business together. And so that's how it all started. Kind of crazy.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

It was kismet.

[Tammy Ramsey]

It really was.

[Dennis Scully]

One of the things that you mentioned that I'm. That I'm curious how this revealed itself. You said, Tammy, that you discovered you had a similar level of intensity. And it's one of the things that I admire so much about both of you. And I wonder how that revealed itself initially. What demonstrated that intensity?

[Tammy Ramsey]

I think that both of us kind of approach life with a very genuine curiosity and probably a open heartedness, if you will, an open mindedness. And it just naturally made it easy for each of us to be ourselves with each other. And so it was just a. Honestly, like falling in love, like when you meet somebody and their energy matches yours. And our energy was a lot. I mean, we're a lot, you know, to deal with and. But our allots liked each other and it just really kind of fell into place. It felt like we had always known each other and the conversations were effortless and nonstop and. And even interestingly, at that same conference, we happened to meet Annie Selke at one of the parties. And she said something to the effect of like, are you all sisters? Are you all business partners? And we said, neither. And she said, well, you should definitely business together. And so within short order, we did.

[Dennis Scully]

I love that you have Annie Selke to thank for sending you off into the world together. Yes, yes. So you decide you Fall in love, you decide to go into business together. And what was. What was the early notion of what going into business together meant and what that would look like?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

We talked a lot. You know, we talked a lot. We had initial conversations about how do you do this? How do you mark things up, how do you. What are you charging your client? You know, all the things that we love to talk about in our industry with other designers. And I think we both felt tremendous relief at being able to talk very openly about that with somebody whose opinion we respected and share notes. And, you know, this is before we went into business together, just being able to. To kind of touch base on all of those things. But we quickly, you know, once we went into business together, we just quickly fell into this cadence of figuring all the things out. You know, we initially started before we were in Studio Designer, then Studio Webware. We had our Excel spreadsheets, and we figured out how to do that and how to just all the various and sundry things about running a business together. We fell into that cadence really quickly and easily.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And I think also speaking of, like, how our personalities are super intense, and also our skill sets, while very complimentary, are not the same. Like, we have some overlapping skill sets, but our skill sets really came out in this initial interaction and discovering that we really thrived. I think Kurt Vonnegut refers to it as a single genius. You know, separately you're idiots, but together, you're a single genius. And it kind of came out that way that when the two of us were figuring these things out, like, Krista makes the most beautiful spreadsheets you've ever seen in your life. There's nothing more gorgeous.

[Dennis Scully]

They are a work of art.

[Tammy Ramsey]

They really are. They really are.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Are.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And God forbid you send her a crappy one. But what is this you're putting before me? Yeah, it just really made us even more convinced that we were doing the right thing. Like, things just kind of fell into place, and, you know, we could practically complete each other's sentences.

[Dennis Scully]

Right. I want to talk about the original name for the business, because it's going to come full circle as we discuss. So tell me the thinking behind what you originally decided to call your firm, because part of our conversation is going to be the. The evolution of that notion.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Sure. Cloth in Kind is really an ode to our shared love of textiles. It's one of the things that Tammy and I came together very quickly on, this love of artisanal textiles in particular. And, you know, we were kind of struggling to come up with a name and knew we wanted it to be something with fabric or cloth. And really, cloth and kind is meant to be cloth and the likes or cloth and things of a similar nature, meaning all the other things related to interior design. People always ask us jokingly, which one is cloth and which one's kind? We say it depends on the day. Right. But it has come full circle because we now employ an amazing team of women across our two different locations, actually now three, because we're also in Winnetka, Illinois, now, and worked hard on our core values. It was important to us that as we grew, we had a set of core values that really aligned with how Tammy and I feel about what's important in our business. And kindness is at the top.

[Dennis Scully]

And at the time that you were forming the business, was there this notion in your minds even then that this cloth in kind would translate over to actually somehow bringing fabric collections together and representing lines or. I mean, how far ahead had you thought with all of that? How much of that vision had you seen early on, really, when you get.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Down to it, Krista and I decided very early on that we were going to do a business plan just so that we could check that off of our list of things. And so in a business plan, you really are thinking ahead. You're thinking of now and how you want to establish things, but you're ultimately thinking about how the business will grow and where you see yourself going. And so part of our business plan did include, in fact, this notion or this idea of wanting somehow to continue to be songbirds for artisanal textiles. So while Cloth and Kind was the name of the company, we knew that at some point in our business, we wanted to do something with textiles, and that didn't necessarily mean us doing textiles. We had all these initial relationships with small textile designers, and those were primarily the things that we were using in our projects. We loved that one degree of separation. And so it really just kind of made sense, ultimately, that the evolution of our company would eventually and has now become also a showroom. A trade showroom.

[Dennis Scully]

Yeah. No, no, no. Which we're gonna talk about. But we start a business, and I want to talk about the geographical complication. Not that you seem to think it was much of a complication, but others might have, because, as you mentioned, Tammy, in telling the story, you're in Athens, Georgia, and Krista is in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And those aren't right next door for those who aren't familiar with geography in the United States. So it's not like you were gonna be down the street, from each other, or even relatively close by. Tell me how you thought this would work.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Well, I think when you are in love, anything is possible.

[Dennis Scully]

When you're blinded by the love that.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

You felt for each other, anything is possible. You know what? We didn't know any better. We started off sitting on Google and just working together all day. It was just the two of us initially, and we worked on all client projects together. And, you know, it just, it was what we did. She was boots on the ground for projects regional to her. I was boots on the ground for projects, you know, in the Midwest and in Ann Arbor. And now we have projects, you know, all across the country and we work with clients, you know, where we're flying there, but we also do quite a bit remotely. Certainly when Covid hit, we felt really well prepared because our whole team at that point was already used to working virtually. So we made it work and we built the business around the fact that we view this as a positive in our business. You know, we have two great offices, two really amazing teams in each of our offices, and we do function though very much as one team from a, you know, in the interior design studio, we collaborate together, not on all projects, but as needed. When we take on very large projects, oftentimes the whole team goes in and collaborates. So it's an asset. You know, we really view it that way.

[Dennis Scully]

And you scaled up each office so that there are. And tell me sort of roughly headcount wise in each, just to give me a sense.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Well, our design teams are actually. I wouldn't describe them as large. I mean, Krissa and I both have a junior designer. She has a junior designer and another designer. I have a senior designer here in Athens and a junior designer and both between essentially those people that comprises our team. We do have a couple of other designers that are on our team that kind of split their time between studio and showroom, but they're trained designers. One of those is like especially good at technical skills, so she kind of flexes her muscle there when we need her to. But a huge part of this is possible because we are very system and process oriented. So we have all manner of platforms that we function on that everybody is involved in every single day. We are super keen on templates for how things are done so that really everybody kind of knows where they are and what needs to get done. And so to your point earlier, this, you know, this could be a really complicated thing. Like if it was super willy nilly and you were just trying to figure it out. As you go and bootstrap it. Yeah, that would be quite a nightmare. But, Kristen, I come from very non design backgrounds, and as it turns out, being a critical care nurse for 20 years comes in handy. Also, running an interior design business, it's kind of hard to, you know, I can decorate and resuscitate, so whatever is necessary on the day. But. But all of those things kind of bottlenecked into skill sets that, that helped us really set up this system that allows our company to really thrive this way.

[Dennis Scully]

And take a minute there, Tammy, and I'm so glad that you mentioned that. And, and of course, I'm always thinking of how many designers say there are no design emergencies, right.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And.

[Dennis Scully]

And no one is. No one is dying. No one is collapsing from a condition. But you had experienced that in your previous career. And tell me briefly what you were doing before design, because it was all hands on.

[Tammy Ramsey]

So I had worked in a critical care fashion, both in an ICU and then in a critical care recovery room. So we received patients that had outpatient surgeries, but we also received critical care patients on ventilators. And so that was my entire professional work life. And then the last maybe three years that I worked, I was the nurse educator for a large perianesthesia department. So I was in charge of all the training, policy and procedures, writing policy and procedures, instituting those, all the education, just all the various and sundry. So it means that I'm organized and real bossy, but.

[Dennis Scully]

But confident in your direction as well, right?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

I mean, super confident.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And I look adorable in scrubs. I miss the outfits. I really do. There's nothing like a pair of drawstring pants. Oh, my God.

[Dennis Scully]

Well, and I'm sorry that we're not getting to see you in that outfit today, but. And Krista, your background prior to all of this, just recap briefly for us so that we understand your organizational skill set as well.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

So I have a journalism. Ironically, Tammy also has a degree in journalism. We both got those degrees and my emphasis was on the marketing side, so I worked in publishing. I'm from Chicago and still have family there and worked at. For the most of my career, I worked at Conde Nast as a Midwest director. So I was with Glamour and Vanity Fair, which was just one of my favorite jobs ever. And you know, there's a creative side like the, the marketing and the kind of sales aspect of what we do really is come so easily to me.

[Dennis Scully]

With that background and the desire to make the transition to design. Tell me what that meant for you. How did you think about coming to the interior design business and why you wanted to?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Well, I had always been obsessed with design. I think we hear this from so many people you interview, right. As a child, I decorated my room constantly, sponge painting it and splatter painting the walls and plastering the walls with all sorts of, you know, Absolut vodka ads and whatever I could come up with. And I lived abroad with my family in India for a year, which I am certain informed a lot of my design sensibility and my love of bold color pattern, you know, just that beautiful chaos. So. And my mother also has been very influential. She really has a love of design. She's not a trained decorator. She was an educator, but she has always taken very thoughtful care of our home. And it's beautiful. So I, you know, for a long time thought, well, I didn't get a degree in this. I didn't study this. I get dabble in it. I help my friends and my family and design my own homes. But really it all came together for me when I moved kind of kicking and screaming, to be honest with you, for my then husband's job to this part of the country. Leaving Chicago and leaving what I thought was really my dream job at Vanity Fair and finding myself here and pregnant with my second child. And, you know, we. We bought this beautiful old home, historic home, and I renovated it from the ground up. And the builder that I was working with kept saying, I'm going to start referring you to clients. I'm going to start referring you. And I was kind of like, no, I'm not a designer. I'm not an interior designer. And anyway, he did, and I got my first client and have not stopped working since.

[Dennis Scully]

Okay, I want to stick a pin in the design degree conversation because I want to hear if that's been a challenge for you or not. But, Tammy, I want to quickly hear your transition into this industry. Did you just need a break from all that or what?

[Tammy Ramsey]

I mean, are you doing? Also similar to Christa, I didn't necessarily grow up with. I mean, I painted my room black one time and I had a big party and people drew all over the wall. So that was kind of my dabbling in design at that part of my life that I didn't really decide discover that until I got to college. I went to college in Charleston, initially at the College of Charleston, and I just was exposed to things like, I can't. I grew up in Myrtle beach, so I mean, I really, you know, just had only been exposed to the beach and putt putt courses my entire life. And, and so I got to Charleston and it was like a culture shock. It was just so sophisticated and civilized in so many ways. And I was just exposed to things that I didn't even know existed. And so just the initial stuff that you do, like I started collecting furniture. Like instead of going to parties on the weekends, I would actually go looking for antiques and started just constantly doing that type of thing. And so anyway, the short of it is that, you know, after a handful of years of working as a nurse, we designed our own home. We lived in a historic neighborhood in Athens, Georgia. It required going through the historic preservation committee to design a new home in a historic neighborhood. And so we had to go through the whole process with an architect. And it just blew my mind. I was like, this is all it want to do. All I want to do is work on scaled plans all day long. Like, please hand me a scale ruler and let me just go after it. I think it pissed the architect off because it, I had, I was like, that's not how we're doing it. We're going to do it this way. And so it's not so much that I fell out of love with nursing. Nursing was a very honorable profession for many, many years. I have so much respect for doctors and nurses. It's just not where I want to spend my life. And so all that said, I had some opportunities come available and I'd called my husband one day and I said, you need to find us some insurance. I'm leaving this joint. And that's what I did. I resigned that day and walked out and never looked back. I did not renew my nursing license. Like I could not go back to nursing if I wanted to. I just jumped ship.

[Dennis Scully]

Well, big, big, big step. And did it at any point create a challenge for either of you, for both of you, that you didn't have degrees, that you didn't have the background education. Was it ever a meaningful issue?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

You know, it's interesting because we did talk about it a little bit when we first got together and we thought, is this something we need to be concerned about? Shortly after we formed the business and went into business together, we were afforded the opportunity to design a window in the La Cienega design district for lcdq. And we were at that event and we met so many incredibly talented designers, decorators, whatever you want to call them, who were calling themselves interior designers and who were self taught. And we just decided then and there that's it. We're not, we're not Going to be concerned about this. We know we're good at what we do. We did take it very seriously, though, about hiring the right people that are trained in the ways that. So everyone that works for us has a design degree. That's a requirement.

[Dennis Scully]

So we leaned into other people's qualifications to make sure.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Yeah, you know, we just were like, whatever. We're going to get over this. We're not going to. We have lots of other things to focus on and worry about. We're not going to, you know, let a test or an accreditation stand in our way.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Look, Dennis, you can't teach taste. I mean, that's just the bottom line. And so that's not to be cavalier, but I think that, you know, while, yes, we were not trained, we knew also to be able to do everything that we wanted to do and to have the opportunities we had to have a team. We had to scale to be able to have a team that could participate in and execute on very large, very complex projects. And so we know that it's very valuable. We're not in any way poo pooing, technical training. Like, if I could have it, I'm like, I actually feel I missed my opportunity.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

I should have. Me, too.

[Tammy Ramsey]

I should have gone architecture school, you know. Yeah, you should have. So I wish I had one, but I'm just going to have to, you know, be okay with the fact that I'm fairly creative and I can just figure stuff out.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

You know, we did really build the business ourselves. So I think what they don't teach in design school, or at least not, you know, a lot of the people that we have coming in as interns.

[Dennis Scully]

Is, here we go. Here comes the what they ought to be teaching in design school. Go ahead, Chris, lay into it.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

After we get an intern or a new hire, the first. You know, one of the first things we do is expose them to all the beautiful artisanal textiles and welcome rings, because they have no clue about where to source things. So that's the beautiful, fun side of it. But the business side of it. The business side of it is more than half of what we do and more than half of running a really successful interior design firm. And that is not taught. And that is something that Tammy and I built from the ground up with our understanding of the world and business and having business experience and all the systems and processes. And we rely on people coming from design school for their technical skills is really the biggest part of it.

[Dennis Scully]

So break that down a little bit for me. So when we say the Business side, you brought us here, Krista, so we're gonna have to talk about it. Yes. So when you say you wish that there was a greater understanding, what exactly appears to not be there from the business side when you bring people on.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

A large part of it just can't be taught. You need to be working with clients, you need to be ingrained in the process to really fully understand. I think that this business is so much more complex than it looks to be. The systems that are required. So we're, as I mentioned earlier, all in and studio designer. You know, beyond that, I mean, oh my God. Just like sales tax and all the different states and you know, the rules and regulations and codes in different states and there's a lot to keep track of, aside from the fact that not only are we selling goods, we're also offering services. You know, it's just, it's a very complex business.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And I think a lot of times, like just designers coming out of school don't appreciate that there is, you know, one of the ways that we make money is product markup. That's what a trade account is. It's a, you know, tax free situation. We ultimately pass the tax along to the client that we're selling it to. There's a markup involved. There's a logic to the markup and many of them don't even understand the terminology like a wholesale or D net or, you know, whatever the different tiers are that that particular vendor might have and why it's important that those things are correct in your system. You know, so it's just, there's just a lot of that that they, you know, kind of come in wet behind the ears. And again, like, I just think there's so much to be learned in a design program. There's no way to cover all nuances.

[Dennis Scully]

Exactly, Tammy, And I'm so glad that you said that because if you. Right. So if you push back, if you ask this question at the design schools, that's exactly what they will say to you. Listen, I've only, I've only got these students for X amount of time. I've got to teach them as much of the foundation of design as I possibly can. So they would say they can learn about purchase orders or they can learn about studio designer when they get to your office and they can learn all that.

[Tammy Ramsey]

But we don't want to hire anybody fresh out of school that's not at least done an internship either with, with us or with another firm that knows how to do that. And so I think if there's any word to the wise, it. And it's like, internships are hard to get. Like, I totally appreciate, like, we have to really think through, like, who we hire, because it is. It's a losing proposition for us to hire. I mean, not unless they become an employee. It takes so much time to train them to do that type of thing. And so we take it very seriously. We don't want somebody just, like, putting memos up. I mean, we want them actually learning something while they're here. But I do think that, like, to be properly prepared coming out of design school and to be a really attractive candidate, you need to have some of that because the training is so deep. Regardless, coming into a firm and having to learn all the systems and all that type of thing.

[Dennis Scully]

You mentioned the whole markup discussion, Jammy. And thinking about even the language around that. And we were just having a conversation about that on the Thursday show, which our own Caroline Burke wrote this lengthy and in depth piece about markups and how to think about them, the language that we use to describe them, the purpose that they serve in creating the foundational structure of how a design firm makes money and grows beyond just the designer's time that is being charged for. So knowing that you both have given this a lot of consideration, let's. Let's hear where you have landed in all of that and how you think about those foundational building blocks around how you charge and what you charge for.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Well, we're real buttoned up and very serious about making money as well. This is not.

[Dennis Scully]

No surprise there.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

This is not a hobby. This is not a thing that we do. I mean, we do do it because we love it. And Tammy used to always say, I would do this for free. I love it so much. And I'm like, I would not do it for. I love it, but I would not do it for free. But it's a whole lot of schlepping and managing and coordinating and handling problems so that clients don't have to handle it. So we have explored lots of different ways of doing this. We are currently on hourly, for the most part, hourly plus markup. We did experiment at one point with flat fee. And look, it's a luxury business. So at the end of the day, if a client prefers a flat fee, we will happily do that. And we're comfortable, you know, doing that. We have a different service agreement that they would sign that is. Is more particular to that type of arrangement. But we are on a 35% markup. We used to actually. I think Tammy and I both really liked the way we used to do it because it felt very easy to explain to clients. And that was that we always said we would split our discount with you evenly. So if retail's here and our discount's here, we're going to split it with you evenly. You're going to be paying less than retail. But because we appreciate the data and really spend a lot of time looking at it and evaluating historical projects, once we've completed them, we did this look back and we're like, look, we know from peers in our industry this is about what people are charging somewhere between 20 to 40 to 50% to 100% markup. We landed on 35 because it felt very congruous with what we were seeing in our own data. And it saves on a project management. You know, from the project management standpoint, our PMs aren't having to, for every single item, calculate what the discount is. It was a lot easier to explain to clients who don't understand the complexity and the nuances of this business that we split our discount with you and you get. You're going to be paying less than retail. Now, you know, it's not always. That's not always the case because if we, for example, purchase something from a real bespoke small maker in Brooklyn, you know, they might only offer a 15% discount to the trade. So they would be paying more than retail. We're comfortable with it at this point, and we're comfortable talking to our clients about it because they're not paying us for that individual item. They're paying us for the overall design and management and implementation of the project. And so on the sofa or the sectional for their lower level, they might be be paying significantly under retail. On this one item, they might be paying a little more than that, but it's the overall, you know, part of what we're being compensated for.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And we're very transparent with that, very transparent. We very much want our clients to feel like that this has been so worth the investment. And that's what we kind of think about projects like, this is an investment in a home. And it's not about just getting the best deal at every turn. There are times to invest in pieces. And the thing is, is that like, like it's guaranteed you're going to get a deal on something. It's just the nature of it. Like, you find things that are like, next to nothing and you barely, you know, there's just, there's not a huge markup on that kind of stuff. So in the end, that's what's working for us. But again, as Krista mentioned, you know, we have clients sometimes that just from a financial planning standpoint, they want to count on a certain amount of money every month. And we have had arrangements in which we do design fees, if that makes sense, that are, you know, flat feeds that we do and are collected incrementally over specific deliverables, you know, along with, along with product markup. I think it's really the bottom line is that we are, you know, capable of being flexible about that kind of thing to make sure that the project works really for everybody.

[Dennis Scully]

A quick break from the show to remind you about Leloy. This spring, laloy launched two exciting collaborations. Discover bold modern rugs and pillows from their new collection with Jeremiah Brent. And don't miss the latest season of Magnolia Home by Joanna Gaines Fresh Designs. You'll love. Explore [e-mail] that's L O L O I. And follow laloyrugs on Instagram and TikTok. And now back to the show. And do you think that it is damaging to our industry that there are so many different charging models out there?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

100%?

[Tammy Ramsey]

Yeah. I think it can be confusing for clients.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

I often say to prospective clients, we always ask them, have you worked with a designer before? What has your experience been? You know, how did they charge? And I always, almost always use this, this line, which is. Unfortunately, our industry has been historically shrouded in secrecy. And that means that people don't understand what they're paying for and what they're being charged. And that is the opposite of what we're trying to do here. We built this business transparency. It is incredibly important to us, as Tammy said, that our clients understand what they're paying us for, that they feel like they're getting a value. That's not to say that we're inexpensive, but that they are getting a value for the service and the design and the whole project. And then we tell them very point blank, you're paying us hourly and you're paying us a markup. And those two buckets combined comprise our profit margin. It's interesting because clients often feel that maybe they should be getting, you know, the full discount or whatever, but it's, it's just. It's not possible from a. I mean, it is if you charge an inordinately high hourly or an ordinately high project fee. But I think in the end, our clients are getting what they're paying for, and it feels more fair to them if they're paying hourly with the markup than doing a flat fee. Because if it's a flat fee, we have to err on the higher side of things because we don't know yet if they're going to be the client that requires, you know, multiple revisions or hand holding or what have you. So.

[Tammy Ramsey]

But yeah, I think, to your point, Dennis, I think that, that, and this is why this conversation comes up endlessly when designers get together, is because we all do it differently and, and people just do it the way that feels right and most comfortable to them. And so we, we do, at the outset, like to have conversations with clients to make sure that we're all on the same page. We're not trying to hide anything. Like, we will show you all of our cards any point, if they want to see receipts or backend information that's fully available. Like, it's completely available. Like, we will provide all those things. But it's just, this is what works best for our company because we run a profitable company. Like, why would we run a company otherwise? You know?

[Dennis Scully]

Yeah.

[Tammy Ramsey]

The other part of that, though, that's really critical to all of this is having a budget for the project. So, you know, we can tell you how we charged, but, you know, there can't just be an endless amount of time billing and an endless amount of product markup. So, like, what is the overall budget? So we've also, because of the reporting that we can run and looking at all the historical data, we, we do have a sense about, like, what it's going to cost from a time billing standpoint, because there's nothing sillier than starting out a project without a budget. If you have a client that says, well, I have no budget. Well, at a certain point, everybody's got a budget. I mean, everybody's got, like, a point at which that they're like screaming uncle. And so for us, we really like the boundaries of a budget because it helps us to define what we're looking for. Like, we, because of our experience and our knowledge of the industry, if we know that we have a certain budget for certain things, we know where to go to look for it. Like, we know they're going to be a certain, you know, cache of vendors that we're going to go start looking for different things for. So there's some amount of responsibility on the part of the client to, to provide a budget or at least to be open to what we suggest the budget should be to reach this level of finish. And look, you know, there's got to be like a meeting of minds where that's concerned.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

It also really helps the project stay on course from a project management standpoint, because we do an itemized budget in studio and we start off with kind of like a. Here's a low, high range. Some clients just look at the bottom line and say, I'm comfortable with that. Some want to, like, look line by line. But once we lock in the budget, we do budget versus actual reporting every month, and they're able to see and we can say, hey, amazing, we're going to splurge on this, you know, $45,000 custom dining table when we didn't have a budget for it. But, you know, this is going to put us over. Or are we going to make some accommodations elsewhere in the project budget? It's not like we're. We're not holding ourselves to it line by line, but we are very much allowing ourselves to rob Peter to pay Paul without throughout the budget overall. And clients really, since we started doing that maybe a couple years ago, clients really appreciate that, and they know that we're taking the budget seriously, and they feel empowered to make decisions to go over the budget. Oftentimes that does happen, but at least they know and they're confident that we're managing it carefully and respect their budget.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And we just. We've always said that we're, you know, we. We feel a great responsibility that we're stewards of the budget. Like, once we've been provided that it's on us to do right by them. So we don't need to be off, you know, specifying things that are way outside the budget. Like, that would be not negligence so much, but just honestly, like, stupidity on our part. Like, you know, we have to exercise the control within that and make the proper selections that we're going to be, you know, showing clients.

[Dennis Scully]

Well, I want the two of you on the. On the planning committee when we get together to create the. The structure that we're all going to agree on in the future, we will gladly volunteer. Okay. Okay, so we'll be calling on you then. But let's come back to the cloth and kind evolution because it does ultimately become a showroom business. There's a retail store that pops up for a little bit of time as well. And I want to quickly touch on how the business evolved. So well, you tell me, the retail side, the fabric side, how does that finally start to happen for you both?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Well, we had been in business for about five years when we opened the showroom and shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. When we were working, you know, actively working as designers, it became pretty evident to us that there was an unmet need in the Midwest in terms of boutique showrooms. And specifically, you know, an underrepresentation of a lot of these artisanal lines that we loved so much and had been using in our projects and had gotten to know the designers and the artists behind these lines. So we, again, just like, kind of the naivete, maybe you call it, of saying, sure, we can have offices in two separate states, we thought, sure, we can just open a trade. Boutique trade showroom, and surely we can sell these lines that we love to other designers. And it really was about a deep respect and honoring, honestly, of these beautiful fabrics that we just were obsessed with and these people behind the lines. And so we decided. We knew the showroom was going to be a part of it at that point, and we were really excited about that. And then kind of like halfway through planning it, someone said, oh, you should have a retail shop and be open to the public, too. And eye roll. And many, I think, regrets later and wishing we had heard more from people who didn't love the shop side of the. We decided to open a shop and the showroom at the same time and the shop. Some people do it and are successful at it. For us, it was not what we loved. It was not what our heart was in, and it ultimately was a distraction from the showroom. So we did that for a couple years. And we joke. It was kind of our Eat Pray Love moment. We went to India. We went to India right before COVID and we were like, okay, we have to sell off all the inventory from the floor, and we have to, like, buy all new things and create new vignettes. And we just kind of looked at each other, and we're like, I don't want to do this anymore.

[Tammy Ramsey]

You know, and it should be her mentioning that we're also not good at it.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Yeah, not good at it.

[Tammy Ramsey]

There's that part, like, it's a very, very different thing. We were like, oh, it's just a shop. We'll create little vignettes. It's just like designing little rooms.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Now.

[Tammy Ramsey]

That is not even remotely what it's like. That's not even.

[Dennis Scully]

Turns out that the vis. Visual merchandising, it's just a small component.

[Tammy Ramsey]

We were so blind to what it was actually going to take. And so, again, like, we didn't. We weren't good at it. We didn't. Love really was a distraction from the showroom, which actually and from our.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

And from our interior design business, because I pulled out of our interior design business for the better part of two years to open and run this thing and get it off the ground.

[Dennis Scully]

Oh, I didn't realize that you had fully pulled yourself away from the.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

I had to. I mean, it was like. It was in my. Yeah, it was. So, again, you know, at this point in our lives, we're at the place where we can look back fondly and think of all the lessons learned.

[Dennis Scully]

Oh, we can laugh how much wiser we are to be.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Yes, so much wiser. But it really was a very hard time for us going through that and learning what it took and that we didn't want to do it. And the investment we had made in it. You know, we're all. We're just so self funded. And, you know, it was a lot. It was a lot. And so we went to India and we have our E Pray, Love moment. We come back and we. We decided to close the shop down. And then the world shut down with COVID and we eventually got out of our lease and have been focusing. I got fully back into design, and we've been focusing very heavily on the showroom, which has just grown leaps and bounds since we closed. Since the shop. Okay, so.

[Dennis Scully]

Right. So you've. Right. Tracked yourself with all of that. What felt or feels so different to you running the showroom versus running a retail store?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

It's just, I think, having customers or clients who are designers who understand the process, who. They're working in a bespoke or custom manner with these fabrics. They have clients that have the budgets for these. These fabrics and wallpapers and the other lines that we represent. Hardware and some furniture, lighting. But that's the world that we're immersed in and that we really, really love. And that's our audience for these textiles. I really do keep bringing it back to these artisanal lines because that is what Tammy and I came together over a shared love of. And it really drives so much of our own interior design work and the sensibility of our projects. And it's just where our heart is.

[Dennis Scully]

That makes sense. That makes sense. And you love it so much that it's expanded to Winnetka, Illinois as well now.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

That's right. We have been in Ann Arbor, which, again, is kind of funny because the Midwest is a huge swath of the country, as it turns out. We have 12 states in our primary territory for the showroom. And our biggest base of clients is in Chicago, although, gosh, Minnesota, Minneapolis, Wisconsin, Ohio. I Mean, all of these places are really responding so well because we've been going in and doing meetings in all these places and designers are just so hungry to see interesting new things. But yeah, Chicago's by far been our number one territory. And a little opportunity came up for a beautiful space in. When I cut on Green Bay Road and we took it, we jumped at it.

[Dennis Scully]

And you mentioned, I mean, you mentioned the breadth and depth. We tend to talk about the Midwest as if it's all one homogeneous place with one design sensibility or one type of home or designers. I mean, tell me all the things that we're getting wrong about how that, that thinking about the Midwest really turns out to be.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

The Midwest, I think is, is a workhorse of sorts. Like designers have previously always been thought of as kind of, I think maybe a little more sensible than east coast or west coast or even Texas designers. And for a long time that was true and there was a lot of kind of safe design happening here. But that's really changing and we are seeing that tenfold through the eyes of our clients. On the showroom side, there's been a massive expansion of people moving here, I think since COVID and just wanting to get out of bigger cities. And so specifically the second home market, the lakes, you know, in Northern Michigan are absolutely stunning. There's Door county in Wisconsin, Lake Geneva also in Wisconsin. There's gorgeous lake communities in Minnesota. And that second home market is driving a ton of demand from really affluent clients, customers. And really like there's just so many designers who haven't had access to great design centers and are so hungry, so, so hungry for something other than the typical lines that they, the large lines that they go to. So we have dedicated salespeople that go out. One is based in Chicago in, in Winnetka and the other one in Michigan. But they travel. And we've employed this pop up strategy where, because we've found that when we go to some of these smaller markets, they're eager to host and they'll bring their friends and sometimes we'll go in with another vendor. Like, we've done a lot of interesting things recently with Farrow and Ball and Kohler and Ann Sachs. So not directly competitive, but we all have kind of the same audience and that's worked really well. And I just think it's a booming market, the Midwest, and it's a little slower burn, takes a little bit longer to get in with designers, a little bit longer for a new line to maybe take hold. But some of our lines that have Been with us since the beginning, like Decor Babar, Penny Morrison, Farrick Mason, Seema, Krish. They've been with us since the beginning and they're really, really happy. They're doing great. I mean, they've all said historically the Midwest never really amounted to much, and we're really proud that it is now.

[Dennis Scully]

What is it about the slow burn? What is it about the taking a little bit longer with Midwestern designers to win them over or to get them to try new things?

[Tammy Ramsey]

I think it's just the personality. It's just a slower paced life, life there in many ways. Not that, you know, Minneapolis can't be busy or these other places. It's just. It's just a sensibility, I think. And this is, you know, coming from an outsider looking in. You know, I mean, I'm Southern through and through, but like, even me, when I go to visit the Midwest, like, it's less showy, you know, I'm used to like massive SUVs and flaunting everything you've got down here. And it's like, it's hard to find anything but an electric car up there or anywhere in the Midwest. You know, everybody is just so reasonable, you know, and. And so I just think some of it is just like, there's not the same.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Spoken like a true Southerner.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Yeah, there's not, there's not the same urgency about things that I think you can see in these other markets, larger markets and whatnot. It's refreshing, actually. But there's a lot of loyalty. And I think that's what's really interesting is that once these people have been exposed to these lines and have had an opportunity to also truthfully be seen, I think that because the Midwest is so enormous, it's a hard thing for any line rep to get out there and go see them. You know, if you don't have a design center, it's like someone's got to come travel to you. And so I think we've done a really, really good job of that, of not only physically showing up in these places and doing the pop ups, like Krista was saying, but also just like outreach. Like, we make sure that they know where we are, how can we service them, we follow them on their feeds, we know the types of things that they like. And we will inquire, you know, like, hey, we see that you're doing such and such. We've got some great things that we think that you might like for your projects. And I think a lot of it has just been the fact that They've been actually seen in some, some ways for the first time.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

It was one of the things that prompted us to want to do a showroom in the first place is because I was buying a lot of artisanal textiles from, you know, the one or two showrooms at the Design center, the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. And, and every time I called up there, they were like, I'm sorry, who, who, who are you? You know, nobody called on me, nobody sent me new things, nobody. And ironically, it's like, you know, we're friends with Katie Lead as an example and she's like, she would be like horrified. She's like, you buy so much of my fabric, like, how are you not getting any attention? And we just thought we can do this, like, we can do this with kindness, we can do this with exceptional customer service. We can meet people where they are, not they don. To wait to hear from us or to ask us for them rather. But I think, yeah, I think the slow burn too is also just that. Think about these smaller design firms and they have their libraries and they source from their libraries. And so you, you get in, you meet with them, they ask for a lot of memos that they love. They get them in, but then it's like that, that slow burn of kind of like, okay, when they start finally pulling from those libraries and using the memos, it just, it takes a little bit longer here.

[Dennis Scully]

It's interesting what you were talking about, not being serviced or not being followed up with. I've been having a couple of conversations recently with fabric industry leaders that brought up this notion that we've slid backwards a little bit. We had gotten better in showrooms about being friendly and greeting and jumping up and having that energy. We, we were not very good at it a decade ago and we heard it so much as feedback that we collectively, everybody tried to rally around and say, oh, you're right, we do have to have more energy or be friendlier. But I don't know that we, I think we've slipped back a little bit with that in some of the big design centers. Nothing against any of them individually, but I think there are opportunities for improvement there. But I think also to the point of being data driven, as we were talking about earlier, I think some multi line showrooms still just get a new line and they send it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that's on the list and it's being dropped from a plane and everybody gets it whether you want it or not. And that doesn't make sense for anybody particularly knowing as expensive as samples are and all the time involved.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Well, and as designers on the receiving end of that, it's actually offensive.

[Dennis Scully]

Exactly. Do you know nothing about me that you don't know? That I wouldn't want this or that that's not my aesthetic or. Yeah, exactly. So often it's doing a disservice to your point. Right. I mean, so how do you, when you've got your multi line showroom leader hat on, how do you all think about that?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

We know what people are buying and buy repeatedly. And those people get the new memos from that line. We do postcards. So when there's like a new line that's a new collection that's come out from a line, for example, we'll do a postcard, a beautifully designed postcard, talking about it, and we'll include it in the memo packet that they sent, that we're sending out of things they requested. And then that way they, they, they know they go and, and we have everything online. So we built this really robust online shopping platform from day one. Designers can not only order memos, but they can also order yardage. They can log in and see every single detail they need from the repeat to the minimums to the cut fees to everything. And if they want, do they, do.

[Dennis Scully]

They go ahead and go all the way through the order process?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

They do, they do. It is. It's been of a couple gradual build, but more and more and more we are seeing designers buy things at odd hours, you know, and that's why we built it. That's why we built it. Tammy and I were like both had younger kids at home and we were first dreaming this up and we wanted it to meet all of our needs as designers. Right. We're, we're building this showroom. Let's really think about what our pain points are and build it accordingly. And one of them was that we are our creative time when we can sit quietly and actually dream and come up with beautiful things. And that oftentimes was like early in the morning or late at night or on the weekends. So we wanted designers to be able to log in and see what the DNET price is, see what the repeat is, see if this is even possible for whatever project they're working on and order the memo and then it'll be there on Tuesday and there's still a.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Human being follow up to that. Like, we have an unbelievable showroom liaison, Hannah. And so those orders do happen, whether for memos or purchasing fabric. And then a very, very cheerful Hannah will be emailing you very promptly the next morning to acknowledge that and. And to follow the process all the way through until it has been, you know, delivered to your workroom or wherever you've indicated for it to be shipped. So there's still very much a human connection, and that's important to us because in the grand schem, much as technology is fantastic, it does not check all the boxes on this whole thing of, like, providing an unbelievable customer service experience, one that's kind and thoughtful and all those things.

[Dennis Scully]

Is AI. While we're talking about that, I mean, is artificial intelligence showing up in a helpful and hopefully not menacing way at the moment for the both of you?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

We're dabbling in it. Yeah. I mean, it's very helpful from a marketing standpoint, just helping with copy. We do it a fair amount of marketing on behalf of our lines and in the form of email blasts, dedicated email, Instagram posts, stories, you know, lives, all those types of things. And it's been helpful there. But we're also really starting to use it to analyze data and come up with these trends for us. So we can see, you know, it can make recommendations on. Here's the designers you should be sending these new memos to for this collection based on their historical buying patterns. My husband is a big tech data guy, and so he's been. He's like, you're not using AI for that. What is wrong with you?

[Dennis Scully]

Good. I love him saying that.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

And I'm like, okay, okay, we're gonna do it. Just. And so he gives us these ideas, and then I come into the office and we talk about it, and our team will sometimes run with it, sometimes not. But we recognize the importance and the time savings, especially for evaluating and analyzing big data sets like we have. We analyze the showroom sales numbers on behalf of our lines, on behalf of our clients. We're always looking to understand, you know, what patterns and colorways are selling best in our territory, which is very unique to other territories. So we're getting there. We're not like, all in, but we are definitely exploring and finding some good use cases for it. It's both exciting and terrifying.

[Dennis Scully]

No, no, exactly, exactly. But also, I mean, I do think a lot of opportunity there. I want to talk about the name change because I just want to get some clarity around that. We've talked about cloth and kind quite a bit, but neither of you actually are named cloth or kind. Right. So let's talk about the decision that you made to finally put your own names on the door.

[Tammy Ramsey]

I mean, it's Been a long time coming. We've really been thinking about this for a number of years and I think as, as the showroom continued to grow and then, you know, in the midst of everything, as if we had, you know, time to do anything else, we decided also to add Cloth and Kind Gallery, which is here in Athens. And it's a periodic gallery where we showcase, you know, local artisans. It'll be a place where we can showcase collaborations we do with other artists and whatnot. So it just started to become a wee bit confusing, like which clothing kind are you talking about? It was like the three headed Munster. And so we, about a year and a half ago, maybe even two years ago, very seriously started thinking about this. But as anybody knows, that's changed the name of their company. It's quite an undertaking and it took so much time and so much effort and so much thinking and people and man hours and all the things. But it ultimately was just kind of a growing up moment for us in many ways that it allowed us, us to identify our interior design and decoration company on its own merit of not so much of our, the merit of our names, but just to distinguish it and let Cloth and Kind really represent these other aspects, you know. So it was in some ways a necessary and just a strong desire to evolve, honestly. And so it felt, yeah, it kind of felt like we grew up a little bit, but.

[Dennis Scully]

Well, it seems as if another growing up moment for both of you has been bringing on. And we just referenced your coo, which was a big step and I know a big investment and something that I think you told me recently, you said we both can't afford to do this and can't afford not to do this. And so tell me, tell me how this even came to be.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Jessica was in New York City, she's from Michigan, born and raised here. And she, after college moved to New York City and worked on the business side of the interior design world for the better part of 20 plus years. Somebody introduced us and said, oh, you need to know Christa from Cloth and Kind because she's Michigan in close to you. And we had lunch and so we hit it off from that standpoint. And I remember calling Tammy and saying this woman and her experience is exactly what we need because we had been piecing it together, the two of us, you know, managing projects and trying to oversee the showroom with the growing team. And it just, we knew it wasn't going to work anymore so something had to give. And I said, we can't necessarily afford her, but we can't not, we can't not have her like we need. And she felt the same way. She was really excited about the opportunity to come in and help us on both sides of the business. But really, you know, she is very clearly running the showroom now. That's her, her baby. And I've transitioned that to her. I'm still involved at a high level, but she is running that on the day to day. But she does so much more than that. I mean she really has advised on all manner of things across, across the business and has just helped us grow and tighten and refine processes and get things streamlined and functioning.

[Tammy Ramsey]

And she was just hugely like us transitioning from cloth and kind to Ramsey Nye would not have been possible without her. Like she just kind of knew how to strategically move us through that process and just honestly all the like legal backend and just like all the things that have to happen and really structuring the company so that, that we're in a position to continue to grow, but in a way that really, that really benefits us and is the most efficient way to do this and most strategic way to do this. And so she just brought like a level of expertise and honestly, calmness like Jessica, like she could not be more counter to mine and Krista's speed. So while Krista and I are like moving at a million miles an hour, Jessica is just like, like slowly taking care of business.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Yes, slowly taking slowly and stealthily like.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Whirling dervishes, you know.

[Dennis Scully]

Well, and, and interestingly, she among other things, lived through a partnership that did not work out.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Correct. In the end she did.

[Dennis Scully]

Right. So David Easton and Charlotte Moss got together and it seemed like a perfect partnership and these incredible talents coming together and let's darn it, let's get that stationary printed and get the name up on the door. But for whatever reason, it wasn't to be. And truthfully that is, rather than being the exception, that is often the norm. Right. It's harder to do than it looks and often it's particularly hard to do with two type A personalities who are very strong willed and strong headed and yet here the two of you are.

[Tammy Ramsey]

But we're in different parts of the country, so I think that helps.

[Dennis Scully]

And, and do you think that it's.

[Tammy Ramsey]

That it probably is.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

It's a huge part of it. It's a huge part of it because she runs her office, I run my office. Again, we're a collective team, but we have autonomy, you know, to do our own things in a way. But the Other part of it is just it really, because people ask us all the time, oh, I would love a business partner. I would love somebody that I can just share all the things with and collaborate with and all. And I can't tell you the number of times we've been asked that over the years, and people are actively looking for someone, and I just don't think that that works. I think you have to fall into it the way we did. Neither of us were looking for a business partner. It just happened. And it was meant. It really was meant to be in.

[Dennis Scully]

Sort of wrapping up, in thinking about the boutique textiles lines. And often when the conversation comes up about all these fabric lines and people continually coming out with new lines and designers wanting to bring their own thoughts and dreams to the marketplace, there was always a feeling that there was going to be a big consolidation where some of these big fabric houses, we know that Kravit has Dongia and Brunswig and Lee Jofen. Lots of other lines have been consolidated through other companies as well. Do you feel as if we went through this moment of it being the golden age for boutique fabric lines? And digital printing has made all sorts of things possible? Do you feel as if we're headed for another moment of consolidation? Or conversely, are these boutique lines so much more interesting and artisanal, and there are so many more stories around each one that they are, in fact, going to start to take the lion's share of the business, and the more established brands are going to either have to find a way to get small themselves in some way to survive, or they're gonna lose out to these boutique lines. Which is it gonna be? Who's gonna win?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Well, it is an interesting moment in time. We agree. I mean, you know, you have Kravit, not that long ago acquired Caroline Cecil, which is a small boutique textile line. Schumacher is doing the same with, if not acquiring, representing smaller artisanal lines. So I think the bigger fabric houses are certainly experimenting with that and seeing how they can have some of that smaller line feel, which I think is interesting. But Tammy and I maintain until the ends of the earth that there is enough room for everybody. Like, we certainly need the Schumachers and the Kravitz and the Thiebauds of the world. And there's always going to be a place for those in our projects. Not every single textile that we put in our projects, or wall coverings for that matter, is from an artisanal line. But I do think that it's a really amazing time and opportunity for These smaller makers who can now do this, they can digitally print a line. They can print to order. They can have a line and be successful with it and feel like they're making their art and stories are getting out there into the world. And that's really meaningful for people, too.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Because I think a lot of them are. They're obviously both an artist and an entrepreneur. And so for many of them that do figure out the business side of this, they like this. They like the fact that they have autonomy, that they're their boss, that they're creating the art and putting it into the world. And it's. So on some level, like, certainly, I guess if some of those lines were approached by big fabric houses who might want to acquire them, I'm sure many of them would seriously consider it. But I have a feeling many of them would be like, I'm good. I'm good over here. I like my life. I like my life. I like the way I do this. I like the work that I'm able to produce, and I get to control it. And, you know, they get to craft the experiences of what showrooms represent them and that type of stuff. And so I think there's a lot of it that's just a unique opportunity because they can use all these various things that are out in the world to promote themselves, you know, and really be successful.

[Dennis Scully]

And does your. Having your hand in that world, having your hand in the showroom world and all of these different lines and different artisans that you work with, does it meaningfully inform your design business? And if so, how?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Wow, 100%. Yes. We are so inspired by the lines that we represent and other artisanal lines and the creativity that is brought and the crazy color combinations and the. You know, it's just. It's endlessly fascinating and inspiring to us. So, you know, we do start with our lines not because we feel like we have to.

[Dennis Scully]

In your own projects, you're sure?

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

Yeah, because. Not because we feel like we have to, but because we brought them on for a reason. We brought them on because we really, really appreciate their. What they're bringing into the world and want to. Want to incorporate them. And, you know, we tell our clients, our design clients, that we are by no means limited to, you know, we might show you some things from our showroom. We have an advantageous pricing structure if they are buying something from our showroom, but we travel the world over and we source from the world over, and that's part of the beauty of our projects, I think. And that will never go away.

[Dennis Scully]

Well, I'm thrilled that your business has evolved in the way that it has. I'm excited that the Midwest is being so well served by the two of you and by your whole operation. And I'm excited that your own names are finally on the doors of the design firm. And I'm eager to come to Winnetka when the space is really ready and see what you're doing there. But I want to thank you both for making the time.

[Tammy Ramsey]

Thank you so much, Dennis. It's been an honor, really has been.

[Krista Nye Nicholas]

It's been a great conversation. Thank you.

[Dennis Scully]

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to keep up with the latest design industry news, visit us online@@businessofhome.com where you can sign up for our newsletter, browse job listings and join our BOH Insider community for access to online workshops, a free print subscription and much more. If you have a note for the podcast, drop us a [e-mail] if you're enjoying these conversations, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others to discover the show. This show was produced by Fred Nicolaus and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.