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Business of Home Podcast
The Thursday Show: A tariff turnaround. Plus: The quest for a designer-approved recliner
00:37:38
Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world.
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- [00:00]
Dennis Scully
Foreign. This is Business of Home.
- [00:09]
Fred Nicholas
I'm Dennis Scully, and welcome to the Thursday Show.
- [00:12]
Dennis Scully
Today we're catching up on the biggest news in the design industry, including a tariff rollback, Lawson Fenning's surprising deal, and.
- [00:20]
Fred Nicholas
The rise of the recliner.
- [00:22]
Dennis Scully
To do all that, I'm joined by Business of Home's executive editor, Fred Nicholas. Hi, Fred.
- [00:27]
Caroline Burke
Hi, Dennis. How's it going?
- [00:28]
Dennis Scully
Great. How you doing?
- [00:30]
Caroline Burke
Doing good. Was sorry to miss you last night. The conversation with Stephanie Sabi. How'd that go?
- [00:34]
Dennis Scully
Well, it was an exciting evening when Stephanie Sabi comes to town and then the after party with my mother for dinner. I mean, how could you not?
- [00:44]
Caroline Burke
You can't taunt the audience with the after party, Dennis.
- [00:48]
Dennis Scully
Sorry about that.
- [00:49]
Caroline Burke
We should get someone to sponsor the after party with Dennis. Mom. That would be a fun event. Well, I was sorry to miss it, but I had a very good excuse, which is that I was staying up until the middle of the night writing 2600 words about recliners. So that's been my life recently.
- [01:05]
Dennis Scully
I know listeners might not know this, but often you'll get an email from Fred around two in the morning when he's wrapped up a story. And I felt terrible when I saw that.
- [01:14]
Fred Nicholas
But that's your dedication, Fred.
- [01:15]
Dennis Scully
That's what you do for this industry.
- [01:17]
Caroline Burke
That's when I get my best thoughts about recliners at 1:30 in the morning. Let's quickly look back on Monday's episode, a conversation with celebrated and buzzy design duo Pearson Ward. Fun one.
- [01:27]
Dennis Scully
Exactly. I got so many notes that people talked about having met them or seen them and how much fun they are. And they clearly have a lot of fans. They have this wonderful partnership that was built out of a friendship. They once lived in the same place, but not for long. And suddenly they're running what has turned out to be a fairly sizable design firm and retail shop while living in two very different locations, one in Alabama, one in la. And yet they make it work seamlessly.
- [02:00]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, we often talk about how do you make a design partnership last long term? Maybe one solution is just live in a different state. They seem to get along really well, but they talked about how it's always kind of like fun when they meet up and they really miss each other. So that was kind of sweet and fun. One thing I liked from the conversation was them talking about how they do installations. And it's interesting because they were talking about how they do a lot of improvisation when they're actually installing the stuff in their client's home. There's a lot of last minute shifting things around. I don't know, there's something really cool about that because I do think there's an inclination to have everything planned out to the inch and I understand why a lot of designers do things that way and I think it's probably a more efficient way to run a business. But I do think you get interesting ideas when you kind of make changes at the last minute. I certainly apply that to the podcast and much of my editorial output here at boh. So I'm a huge fan of last minute panic and improvisation, and I was glad to hear their fans too.
- [02:54]
Dennis Scully
Well, and I was so interested to learn about their constantly acquiring things not with a specific project in mind, but knowing they'll use it somewhere. It was interesting because at one point they said, yeah, and if it doesn't work out, you know, we'll put it in the warehouse sale. And I said, oh well, so do you do a lot of those? And they said, no, we've only had one. So I mean, it seems to work out for them and it's a really interesting process and the final result is very compelling. So many designers wrote to me about how they just they love the look that they have created.
- [03:30]
Caroline Burke
They have a great look. I will say, just as a warning, the buy everything and put it in a giant warehouse strategy is a difficult business move. Try that at your own risk. But it definitely works for them.
- [03:40]
Dennis Scully
Financial experts will advise you against it, but but if you can pull it off, oh, what fun. All right, we're going to get into the news in just a moment, but first a quick break.
- [03:55]
Fred Nicholas
This podcast is sponsored by Jaipur Living. Since 1978, Jaipur Living has redefined rug making, where the value lies not just in the rugs themselves, but in the hands that create them. Every piece is a reflection of heritage care and extraordinary craftsmanship passed down through generations of artisans. For interior designers, the Jaipur Living Trade program offers more than just exclusive benefits and insider pricing. It offers a trusted partnership rooted in Service. With over 2000 rugs in stock and ready to ship, they make it seamless to deliver timeless style and substance to every client. Apply to become a partner@jaiporliving.com this podcast is sponsored by the Crate and Barrel Trade Program designers. If you haven't joined yet, it's time to check them out. You'll get access to beautiful, high quality furniture and decor from three design driven brands, Kraton Barrel, CB2 and Kraton Kids, right at your fingertips. Plus a dedicated concierge team to support your Projects from concept to flawless installation. Members also get an exclusive 20% discount with no minimum purchase. Join today@ CrateAndBarrel.com trade and start enjoying all the perks. And we're back.
- [05:22]
Dennis Scully
Guess what, Fred, we have to talk about tariffs again.
- [05:25]
Caroline Burke
And you know what that means. It's time for a patented Thursday show timestamp. We're recording this Wednesday, May 14th at 3:13pm over the past week, the Trump administration announced it had moved to roll back tariffs on China and the UK following negotiations with both countries. Happy days are here again. As you posted on Instagram.
- [05:44]
Dennis Scully
The empire is saved, Fred. The nation will thrive. And everybody celebrated, right? Stock market went bananas and RH and Wayfair, huge rallies. Let's talk about what really happened here though, besides all of the celebrations.
- [06:02]
Caroline Burke
You know, maybe the more important one for our neck of the woods is the tariffs on China, which as most listeners will know, are up to a staggering 145%. So the US and China met over the weekend and came to a deal to roll back the tariffs. So now the US is charging 30% on most Chinese goods on top of the tariffs that had been put in place in 2018, and China's charging 10% on us. So we've reached this kind of rollback of the very high 145% tariffs, which is good news, but we've still got 30% tariffs. And also these are just framed as a 90 day pause. So, you know, maximum uncertainty. But it is, it should be celebrated, I think, you know, it is good news to roll back from 145%. Want to make that clear.
- [06:45]
Fred Nicholas
And it seems as though many have.
- [06:47]
Dennis Scully
Begun to believe that the word PA really means we're not going to do this. The markets and so many of the companies that we talked to, they recognized this couldn't continue and they're going to fix it somehow. Is that your sense?
- [07:05]
Caroline Burke
I mean, that's my sense as well. We talked about this last week, how there was this bizarre sort of twin reality of shipments at the port of Los Angeles are 80% down and tariffs are crazy high. But no one was making plans like that would last forever. So it hasn't lasted forever. The question is where? Where is it really going to land? It's very hard to situate yourself amid this rapidly changing landscape. I think for right now, that's very much the story for me because on the one hand, commerce with China was really frozen. This will thaw it out and melt it and certainly some people will start to bring over shipments. But there'll be some brands who for them, 30% is still too high. There'll be some brands who rush to stock up to try to take advantage of this 30% window. And there are some brands who will wait and think, okay, maybe at the end of this 90 day so called pause, we'll have a and it'll get down to 10%. So there's still a lot of uncertainty in the mix here.
- [08:00]
Dennis Scully
Indeed. I was with a company, as you know, for an upcoming episode of the podcast. I had been with them last Thursday when everyone was very downcast and the 145% tariffs were in place and this company was already paying those tariffs for product that was coming in. And they had sent out a communication to designers saying that for now, any project that's ongoing, they'll cover and they're not going to increase prices while they figure out what happens. And so when I saw them on Monday just on the heels of this news, it was a very different mood and a very different conversation that we ended up having. But they felt that even if it lands at 30 or somewhere around there, that's something they can maneuver around versus 145.
- [08:51]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I'm sure you're familiar, Dennis, with the concept of anchoring. You know, where you walk in, you know, you tell the consumer like it's going to be a thousand doll. Wait, no, it's $200. And that makes it seem like a deal, Even though maybe $200 is expensive for whatever it is you're selling. This is a classic anchoring scenario where you got really afraid of 145 and severing the relationship with China. And 30% seems like a good deal. Whereas as we've discussed, that will be very impactful for companies who are really with their entire supplier bases in China and they don't have the margins to accept that. I think for designers, it's been a really interesting period because Caroline Burke, our producer on the show, did a great article about this for business, talking about how designers are getting absolutely flooded with communications from brands. Understandably, brands want to let designers know what they're doing, but it becomes hard to really track what's going on because you're getting, we're not raising prices, we're raising prices this much, we're adding surcharge. It's almost like an organizational challenge for designers, some of whom are just kind of tuning it out, saying, hey, just tell me the price when you know. And while I think this rollback will probably give vendors some breathing room and they won't be sending out another flood of emails about this next month. It doesn't set these numbers in stone. I wish I could tell designers there aren't any more emails coming, but there may be. Just one final thought on this. I said at the beginning of the conversation that this is good news and I think it probably is. It's probably better for the economy overall. But there were some domestic producers, I'm thinking in particular of textile mills in North Carolina who were excited about being on a level pricing competition with Chinese imports. And they had a great market. They were having a lot more conversations with upholstery manufacturers and some of them were gearing up to hire more people. I do wonder if this rollback to 30% makes them think like, oh, I'm not competitive anymore with Chinese imports. And this kind of up and down tariff policy really demonstrates why it's hard for these people to build a new factory. If it's going to be 145, one month, 30 the next month, it's impossible to plan for the very long term, which is the timeline on which factories get built.
- [10:49]
Dennis Scully
Yeah, no, no, no, absolutely. Which is why I think we've talked all along about how perhaps it was a pretty naive notion to think that suddenly many factories were going to get built. All of this. But I do get the sense in talking to a lot of people that their conversations to try and continue to move more production out of China is still very much ongoing. I think this has everyone feeling as if fool me twice thrice now at this point. Exactly. So I do think that a lot of conversations are going on about where production can be moved. I'm not sure a lot of it is coming to the States in our industry. Although on the upholstery side, there's still a lot of conversations happening there. So we'll see. Let's move on though. We've got to talk about Lawson Fenning's deal. The Los Angeles furniture brand has sold a majority stake of its business to a holding company called Standout For Good, the owner of several faith based apparel retailers. Fred, I'm eager to get into what is going on here.
- [11:54]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, this was kind of a surprising one, not least because we just had Lawson fitting on the podcast a couple months ago and I think they were talking about like, we don't want to grow, you know, we want to take it slow. And you know, this deal part of the press release was this is about national expansion, so maybe they had their head turned. It's an interesting deal for Sure. I guess we should just start by explaining what Standout for Good is. Is this a name you'd heard before?
- [12:17]
Dennis Scully
It wasn't a name that was on my radar. I've since learned quite a bit about it since. But no, it wasn't one I was familiar with.
- [12:23]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, so I wasn't overly familiar with it either. Standout for Good is the parent company of a bunch of different brands. Largely built off the success of this retail company called Altered State based out of 10 Tennessee but has become a national brand with more than 100 stores. They've got a bunch of spinoff brands like one for children and one for weddings. And as you said, it's a faith based company. The founder talks about how Christian values inform a lot of what they do. They have, I think it's called a Mission Mondays program where they donate some of their proceeds and some of their marketing kind of has a lightly religious tilt to it. So this is obviously just. It's a very different company than Lawson Fenning which is an LA company that caters mostly to designers. Comes in at a much higher price point than a lot of what Standout for goods companies come in at. Standout for Good has been getting into the home a little bit recently, but a lot of the stuff that they sell is less expensive than Lawson Phoenix. This is just a puzzler at how these two companies came together to make this deal.
- [13:19]
Dennis Scully
Yeah, as you say, the company seems to want to get into the home industry much more and interestingly seems to have been hiring quite a few people who have RH on their resume. I couldn't help but think of the period of Banana Republic wanting to get more into furniture and some former RH people as well. So it was interesting to me thinking about them looking at wanting to get more into this space and do they see Lawson Fenning as a great name and a supplier or sort of what's in this for them? What do you think, Fred?
- [13:57]
Caroline Burke
Well, it's interesting because there are very different price points in the market. Right. Like the Altered State at Home brand is frankly less expensive than Lawson Sven Svenning stuff. It seems like a different consumer. So it didn't seem likely to me that they had made this investment in bott majority stake in Lawson Fenning to just fold Lawson Fenning into the Standout for Good roster of brands and sell to the same consumer. It seemed more like to me that it was maybe just a little more opportunistic. Maybe the CEO of Standout for Good is just a fan of Lawson Fenning and Saw okay. This company could really grow and I know how to do retail growth. It is confusing though.
- [14:34]
Dennis Scully
Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm hoping that we can get Lawson Fetting on the show at some point to talk about all of this. It's an interesting acquisition and it certainly took me by surprise, Fred. I will admit I didn't see this one coming.
- [14:47]
Caroline Burke
No, neither did I. And I'm really curious to see how it plays out. I mean, reading between the lines on the press release, it seems like they're going to continue to operate independently. They talked about opening up a new showroom in la, focused on vintage and one of a kinds. And I hope that Glenn and Grant will come on the show to talk about it and we'll hear more. But it's certainly an interesting partnership, one neither of us saw coming and one we'll definitely be keeping an eye on in the days and weeks ahead.
- [15:12]
Dennis Scully
Absolutely. Stay tuned for more on that. In the meantime, Fred, sadly one of the industry's long running textile printers is shutting down.
- [15:20]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, kind of sad news. So the Rhode island screen printing facility, Griswold Textile Print is closing its doors permanently after May 30th. Throughout the company's 88 year history, it was a favorite among brands like Clarence House, Durley and Brunswig and Fee. Not a name that I think a lot of designers necessarily knew. But behind the scenes in Fabric World, this was a favorite and sad to see it's going away.
- [15:41]
Dennis Scully
I agree. It was interesting. I was having a conversation at the D and D building just the other day with several people talking about the scale and enormity of what Brunswig and Fee used to be and how large Clarence House used to be. And I can imagine that over the years as those businesses scaled back, that perhaps there just wasn't as much demand for this company's services. But it's sad to see this one go away.
- [16:10]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, it was a really cool facility in Rhode island and they had this enormous room where they would spin these big bolts of fabric and they would do hand screen printing and it wasn't like block printing, but they would go section by section by section. It was a really beautiful process and produced a lot of really cool fabric for Brunswig and a lot of other people's. I do think they had a relatively successful business actually working directly with designers. A lot of designers made their collections there and some smaller boutique brands. They didn't have a very high minimum order. So I think a lot of the business that fell off from Brunswick Got picked up by more Bouti brands. But certainly, as you said, yeah, overall market conditions for textile hand printing facilities in the US are not great. And I don't really know what went on here, to be totally candid. I just know that they're closing their doors. So it could be market forces, it could be that they want to retire, it could be something else entirely. But it's maybe not a surprise. There aren't a lot of facilities like this left. People aren't really starting new ones. So kind of a sad sign of the times.
- [17:09]
Fred Nicholas
It is.
- [17:09]
Dennis Scully
And you referenced Scott Kravit in your article. And I remember when Scott Kravit was kind of taking me through the Kravet archives and he would hold up these old fabrics and pieces of things and he would say, yeah, no one can do this anymore and no one can do that anymore. And he kept sort of pointing to things that sadly there just weren't people to produce. And so the industry always loses a little something when an 88 year old company goes away like this. That was just making something very special.
- [17:40]
Caroline Burke
Yeah. And it also presents sort of a dilemma for the brands who are producing fabrics there, which is who are they going to get to make their stuff? And because there aren't a lot of these facilities around anymore, there's not a ton of options floating around like, oh, let's go over to the textile printing facility next door. You really have to dig somebody up. It's also tough. A lot of fabric people will tell you that going from one facility to the other often means the pattern changes subtly, the colors change subtly. It's not an easy thing. You don't just email over the file. So it'll be a challenge for those companies. Scott told me candidly that they're going to explore digital printing for some of the Brunswig patterns that they made at Griswold, simply because digital has gotten a lot better. And some of the patterns they produced there were 25 screens. So you're talking about going out there getting 25 actual giant metal screens, bringing them to a new facility, working with a new facility to get them to get the colors exactly right. And then you're hoping that that facility doesn't go out of business. So I do think some brands will go digital on this, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think digital printing is really co. Another example of the way that fabric is made seems to change every year.
- [18:48]
Dennis Scully
Yeah. I mean, as always, it sounds like all roads lead towards digital printing. And that's the silver lining, I guess, in all of this, is that perhaps it's Good news for 22 and some of the others in that space, but always sad to see a longtime business go away like that. Next up, there's a new designer matchmaker in town this month. Jackie Poulson, the former chief marketing officer of Summer Classics, is launching the Home Design Guild, a new online platform that looks to pair homeowners with designers. I think she said in the conversation that I had with her, Fred, that it was Hinge meets Houzz meets Pinterest.
- [19:27]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, it's a good pitch. She's got her VC pitch down cold. Yeah, this is an interesting one. A lot of designers will relate to this phenomenon of getting a lot of leads, but they're no good or they're not going to work out in the long term. So you're sifting through your Instagram inbox, talking to people, educating them on your process, and then it kind of goes nowhere. I think that her site is kind of an effort to solve that problem, and it does it in kind of a unique way. One interesting component of it is that homeowners actually pay to browse through portfolios. Homeowners pay $150 to use the service, which is interesting because most sites are free for the prospective client. They also go through this process. It's like a questionnaire. There's a psychology exam. You have to let the designer know what your budget is and if you like cats and stuff like that, before you actually look through pictures, which is of normally the way that people hunt for a designer, they start by looking at pictures, then get into talking to the designer. Jackie framed it as I want to flip it. So you start with the relationship so that when you start talking, when the client and the designer come together, you're already on third base, as opposed to first base, which is how she put it. I think the question or the big challenge for Jackie is attracting enough homeowners to a site that they have to pay for and that they end up taking a quiz. You really have to convey the value to make it clear to them that it's worth it. There's clearly a need to find a way to better match clients with designers. It's funny. One of the very earliest ones was this woman named Karen Fisher, who had a business here in New York called Designer Previews, who you actually you met a couple times, right, Dennis?
- [21:01]
Dennis Scully
Yes. And we may have talked about this on the show in the past, but interestingly, Karen Fisher of Designer previews took a 1/3 page ad in New York magazine every week, every issue, for years, building this business that she largely ran.
- [21:21]
Fred Nicholas
Out of her home, in her kitchen.
- [21:23]
Dennis Scully
And remarkably, she had some very well known designers in her stable. And at one point back in the day, when Peter Salak had his Design Investors group and was talking to a lot of different companies that didn't necessarily have an heir to the business, he asked me if I would join for a lunch with Karen Fisher in the hopes that we would get to acquire her business. And I think the hope was to put me in as the next Karen Fisher to help bring designers and clients together, which was a dream for me. I wanted that job so much, but it didn't happen, sadly. Karen perhaps had a little bit of an inflated sense of what her business was worth at the time, sadly.
- [22:10]
Fred Nicholas
But she did have a remarkable business.
- [22:13]
Dennis Scully
And I will tell you without naming names, there's a very prominent designer who said that he continued to pay her 10% of his fees for the rest of his career, basically for as long as Karen was still around, because he felt so grateful to her for really launching his business and all that she had done for him. So it was a very personal business and she much like what this business is trying to do now, she was very focused on the personalities and who was really the right design designer to.
- [22:45]
Caroline Burke
Work with this kind of client sliding doors moment there. That could have been a very different world here on the Business of Home podcast. Yeah. As you said, I think that's the thing that a lot of sites overlook is the fact that really what makes a match work is a personality cohesion chemistry. Much more so than I like pink. My designer likes pink. Let's do business. I think that's very smart to focus on that. I think so many of the other matchmaking sites that have sprung up since designer previews, a lot of them are Internet businesses basically, like Houzz, obviously, we all know, we all know their strengths and weaknesses. Home Polish was kind of a version of designer matchmaking. More recently there was the launch of that one Tal. You know, they all kind of have their strengths and weaknesses. I think designers all have like a, you know, it's a very compelling idea to want to get leads and to get the right leads. And so I think designers are right to be interested in them. You know, just the challenge, I think for Jackie is simply just it's hard to get homeowners interest. You know, I mean, I remember talking to Noah Santos at the time, time of Home Polish's problems, and they were spending tens and thousands of dollars on Instagram ads getting people to come to home polish. It can be a very expensive proposition. She has a plan for it. I think designers pay $5,500 to join for a year, and a lot of that money goes towards marketing campaigns. So that's the challenge really, is getting people in the door and getting them connected with the designers.
- [24:06]
Dennis Scully
It's such a challenging business. It was interesting in the conversation with the experts, expert hearing how many people were finding their designer through the expert, and not just through the consultations, but even just looking through the portfolios of all of the designers that were up there. And I think the expert wasn't going to pursue that business in a meaningful way. But it certainly sounded as if they had noticed a lot of it happening organically. And it did make them think, is there an opportunity that there. So the need is there. So I love that these companies are stepping up and trying to make it work. And whether TALD or the Home Design Guild or others will be the one to really pull it off, we'll see. Houzz seemed to want to do some version of that back in the day. I'm not sure that that's really the main focus now, but it's a business in a way that needs to exist to keep part of this whole to the trade system working.
- [25:02]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, it's a complicated problem. I'm not sure there's one solution. But if Home Design Guild gets designer' I'm all for it. You know, whether it takes over the world, we'll have to see. Yeah.
- [25:12]
Dennis Scully
No, no, no. I'm all for designers getting more leads, and we'll see if it works. So we'll keep an eye on it and maybe have another conversation about this in the future. Meanwhile, Fred, we have to move on to that story that kept you up into the wee hours. We're going to talk recliners this week. Fred, you wrote about some recent signs.
- [25:30]
Fred Nicholas
That Motion Furniture is finally shedding its unflattering reputation. Tell us what you found.
- [25:36]
Caroline Burke
He's really overselling the story here. I'm going to apologize to listeners if they're let down by reading it eventually. Yeah, this is a fun one to write. I don't know. Are you as fascinated by recliners as I am? Dennis, do you find the subject interesting or am I alone in this?
- [25:50]
Dennis Scully
I find it wildly interesting, and I'm so glad you wrote about it, because I have had to deal with it in different times of my life. And so it is one that's Quite close to home.
- [26:02]
Caroline Burke
I think what's maybe most interesting about it to me is, is that in our tier of the industry, kind of designers on the high end, recliners are basically invisible. If you open up a shelter magazine, nary a footrest shall ye find. And people just don't talk about them that much. But it's a huge business. It is an enormous business for a lot of companies. American consumers like recliners and they buy a lot of them. It's interesting. I want to be very forward thinking and not rooted in oversimplifications of gender. But you talk to people who actually make and market recliners and they tell you, you that the classic problem is that when a married couple starts decorating in a home, the husband wants a recliner. It's ugly and the wife has to deal with that. And that's kind of like the crux problem of the market. I don't know if that's actually true, but that's the way that people go about this business. And what's interesting about that is that it's an opportunity. If you can design a recliner that satisfies both the sort of needs for comfort and the cool factor, the aesthetic factor, you'll make a lot of money. And that's what all these brands are to trying.
- [27:06]
Dennis Scully
I can't think of what else in the industry is as clearly divided the men, the husbands are driving this one particular decision, wanting a recliner. And usually the designer and the wife are both in agreement that they don't want it. But, but, but there is, there's a demand and, and designers confessed, many designers confessed to me that they have to, they have to navigate the fact that, yeah, no, the guys do really want this. And what do I do?
- [27:37]
Caroline Burke
What I think is interesting is just that in recent, maybe over the past year, I have really seen a lot of recliners and maybe more broadly motion furniture like a reclining sofa popping up from brands that you wouldn't necessarily expect it. Caitlin Peterson, our editor in chief in this week's newsletter, wrote about how Baker debuted a motion sofa. I think a couple years ago, very interestingly, RH debuted a bunch of power motion sofas and recliners last fall. I think after not being in the category for a long time, you know, so it's kind of like peeking through at the high end of retail in a bunch of different places. These are not companies that normally go after that market, but they're going after it.
- [28:14]
Dennis Scully
No, I agree. And I think we talked about when RH actually did an email blast around motion. It just seemed like this moment in time that, oh, my goodness, they have joined.
- [28:26]
Caroline Burke
Where were you the day that RH sent out an email about motion furniture?
- [28:30]
Dennis Scully
Exactly. I remember the exact date and time. And wow, the world changed. Funny enough, one designer wrote to me saying, yes, they've come a long way, but still no, hard no. And. And. And so many designers. I put something up on social media, and it was. It was so fun. I almost needed to create a separate Instagram account for all of the feedback about recliners, because this one got people so animated. First, the barrage of just hard. No. Joe Lucas weighed in immediately saying, never, and then quickly responded, ever. So never, ever from Joe Lucas. And other people just again said, listen, they're all just too hideous. If you wanna go lie down, there's a bedroom in the other room. What's the problem? There's an ottoman. Do you really need that? One person wrote to me that the recliner is the sweatpants of furniture. And, no, that just shouldn't even be allowed in the living room. But to the point about the male, female divide, Meg Lonergan of Meg Lonergan Interiors wrote to me that sometime, sometimes she'll float the recliner preemptively as a way to win the husband over. And it's amazing how excited the husband gets at this conversation. And suddenly, apparently, he's paying attention in a whole new way. Then in your piece, you talk about the fact that, listen, the population shift, and some people are getting older. Many designers wrote to me saying that.
- [29:58]
Fred Nicholas
Maybe I'm getting older, but I started.
- [30:00]
Dennis Scully
To find some of these recliners looking better. I don't know if that's me, my back, or just that looking better. So many people are working on it. I mean, I will tell you, making a good recliner is not an easy thing to do.
- [30:13]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, and that's another interesting thing about the category, is that it's sort of like technological in a way that a lot of furniture isn't. You know, it's the technology that goes into making a sofa. I mean, it's changed a little bit over the years, but it hasn't really changed radically. Whereas I think recliners, you know, the. The way that they make the mechs, you know, the mechanism that makes it expand and contract, really has gotten a lot better, a lot thinner, a lot lighter, and also cheaper. And so they're able to put reclining mechanisms inside narrower and tighter silhouettes, which. It's kind of funny, but it's like the one category in Furniture where everyone's like, I want to make a recliner that doesn't look like a recliner. What else do you ever say? I want to make a dining room table that doesn't look like a dining room table. Everyone wants to make a recliner that doesn't look like a recliner. And I think technology has gotten us closer to that. It's interesting. I wonder even if you had a chair that really was exactly the same as its non motion counterpart, whether people would just instinctively not like it because it was. Is there just something about the fact that it reclines that is reprehensible or unappealing? I don't know. It's an interesting sort of little psychological wrinkle of the industry.
- [31:14]
Dennis Scully
Well, I also think that it shows you how powerful and how long lasting people's memories are. And I think you say recliner and people have the memory of the arm that holds the six pack on one side or there was the giant levers or the, I mean there was were just all of these things that just made it horrible looking.
- [31:38]
Fred Nicholas
And that image just so stuck in.
- [31:40]
Dennis Scully
People'S minds that now reluctantly they say, okay, there are a few makers that have made them look better. But it still just brings to mind there's almost sort of a post traumatic stress reaction to people when you mention it to them. And again, it's an image from the 70s. And so many of these designers weren't even alive in those days, but they just had have it. It's as if they were trained on it somehow. Don't ever allow this to happen. And they show you an image of a 70s recliner, but the bark lounger, even that word, who even says that today? But, but that's the image that people call to mind. So it, so it is amusing. And again it was funny to just see how worked up designers got saying no, never allow that. But, but clients want them, there's no question about it. And they want to find suppliers that can make an element, an elegant seat.
- [32:32]
Fred Nicholas
That just goes back a bit I.
- [32:34]
Dennis Scully
Think is really what it's about.
- [32:35]
Caroline Burke
Yeah, I think there's some movement in the margins. There's a couple direct to consumer brands that are trying to make them cool for younger people with mixed success. I will say to the designers out there who just have an instinctive negative reaction to recliners, I will say only this manufacturers are trying very hard. I talked to a lot of people. I even visited American Leathers factory in Dallas to talk with them about this. Some of the stuff they do there is incredibly impressive. They are definitely trying to make recliners that don't look like recliners. So give them a shot, take a look. And if you still can't go over your recliner, ptsd we understand, but the people are working hard.
- [33:10]
Dennis Scully
Yeah, no, no, no. No question. It's going to be a tough sell, but the companies are working hard. All right, that's it for the news. But there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com including how designers are grappling.
- [33:21]
Fred Nicholas
With a flood of tariff updates, updates and A list of 8 essential interview questions for new hires.
- [33:27]
Dennis Scully
We'll be back in a minute, but.
- [33:29]
Fred Nicholas
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- [34:46]
Dennis Scully
And we're back. We're getting to the end of the show here, but before we go, we'd like to take a second to highlight anything going on in the industry that might have caught our eye. Fred, what caught your eye?
- [34:54]
Caroline Burke
Inflation caught my eye. Every month, you know, we get the cpi, the Consumer Price index, which shows how much prices have gone up or down. And the print, as they call it, for April was actually down, which surprised a lot of people because this was, you know, coming after, you know, Liberation Day. And there was a lot of speculation that prices would rapidly go up. It was. They did not. A lot of people are, of course, analyzing and saying that, you know, this is because, you know, people bought up in advance of the tariffs and price increases won't really happen in a big way until later on the summer. So maybe this is just a false signal, but it was interesting. But the one kind of caveat to that is I looked kind of at the data and furniture prices did tick up a very small amount. So clearly if you make a lot of stuff in China, it was hard to get around those, those Liberation Day tariffs. And so you're, even though the overall CPI was down, the furniture index was up a little bit. A worrying sign of things to come. We'll find out. Dennis, what caught your eye this week?
- [35:52]
Dennis Scully
It is interesting because so many designers said and those prices aren't going down again. They just won't like we'll have all of this inflation and it'll never come back. What, what caught my eye was the, was the announcement from High Point and the NKBA that, that Caitlin wrote about to the interview. Industry's biggest markets joining forces. We got a little taste of it last October at High Point when there was a National Kitchen and Bath association pop up at market. But this time around, they're announcing a greater collaborative partnership. The details aren't fully sketched out, but I think this could be really interesting. We had conversations before about what it would mean if some of these designs, designers who would come for the kitchen and bath show came to High Point. Would that bring more designers, different kinds of designers to High Point? Is there a benefit to these kinds of markets coming together? I, I think it could be really interesting and I was, I was excited to, to think that I don't know if it's next market that we'll see signs of this or, or sometime soon. But, but it, but it could be, could be good news for designers and could be good news for these markets.
- [37:01]
Caroline Burke
Unite. Unite the forces. Unite the kitchens, the baths and the rest of the world.
- [37:05]
Dennis Scully
Exactly. Come one, come all to North Carolina, I say, all right, that's all the time we have today. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to keep up with.
- [37:13]
Fred Nicholas
The latest news, browse job listings or.
- [37:15]
Dennis Scully
Take a workshop, visit us online@businessofhome.com if you want to get in touch with the show, write to us@podcastusinessofhome.com this episode was produced by Fred Nicholaus and Carol Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully.
- [37:31]
Fred Nicholas
Have a great weekend and we'll be back with you on Monday.