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Business of Home Podcast
The Thursday Show: Trump's tariff bombshell. Plus: A high-tech approach to sampling
01:08:37
Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world. Later, Mattoboard founder Guy Ailion joins the show to talk about his company's digital approach to sampling.
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- [00:08]
Dennis Scully
This is Business of Home. I'm Dennis Scully and welcome to the Thursday Show. Later on, I'll be talking to Guy Alion of Matter Board about his company's high tech approach to sampling. But first, we're going to catch up on the news, including the arrival of a major tariff deadline, Wayfair's new AI tool, and what happens when designers become their own clients. To do all that, I'm joined by by Business of Homes executive editor Fred Nicholas. Hi, Fred.
- [00:36]
Fred Nicholas
Hi, Dennis. How's it going?
- [00:37]
Dennis Scully
Little on edge today, Fred. A lot of news coming our way.
- [00:40]
Fred Nicholas
Yes, yes, exactly. Liberation Day we'll get into shortly, but I'm choosing not to worry about it. I'm. No, we're headed into the busy season here. Our market editor, Caroline Biggs is headed to Salone pretty soon. High Points just around the corner. A lot to look forward to, Dennis.
- [01:01]
Dennis Scully
Absolutely. Can't wait.
- [01:03]
Fred Nicholas
He says through gritted teeth. Tariffs on his mind. I just want to quickly. I'm actually going next week, not to Salone or High Point, but I'm going to Dallas to do the Design Social event. I'll be there on Thursday, April 10, if listeners want to come out and say hi. I'll be interviewing a former podcast guest, Brad Ford, at the event. Now, once Dennis Scully has interviewed somebody, what is there really left to say? But I'm going to try and explore Brad's career in a new way and it should be fun. So if you're in Dallas or in Texas or really you just want to come hang out, come to the Design Social next Thursday because I will be there.
- [01:40]
Dennis Scully
Well, I'm a huge Design Social fan and I'm terribly jealous that you'll get to be there in Dallas, Fred. So I'm sure it'll be a wonderful time because that is the loveliest group of people that comes together for the Design Social. So I envy you getting to spend time with them.
- [01:56]
Fred Nicholas
Well, I will bring your regards and I will eat some barbecue. Let's get down to business, though. You spoke with Jeffrey Alan Marks on Monday. How'd that go?
- [02:03]
Dennis Scully
I did indeed. Indeed. In a fun conversation, there were a lot of interesting perspectives that Jeffrey shared on his many years in the business. One of the most amusing I thought was towards the end we actually talked about his beautiful new book that's out. And so often I ask designers, so what does a book help you do? And Jeffrey said, well, in this case, it's a very costly way for me to travel the country and catch up with old friends. His accountant wanted to make sure that these numbers were right because it seems like you're spending an awful lot of money. And he said, yes, yes, that's right. But this is going to be so good for me to see old friends. So there you go. Another use for your book for designers to keep in mind.
- [02:51]
Fred Nicholas
It's a very efficient way for me to go bankrupt, I think is the joke he made.
- [02:55]
Dennis Scully
Yeah.
- [02:56]
Fred Nicholas
But to be fair, he's done it before, so he knew what he was getting into coming into it.
- [03:00]
Dennis Scully
Indeed.
- [03:01]
Fred Nicholas
It was a good conversation. Jeffrey's always been an interesting guy because I do think a lot of designers don't have like a signature style and sort of pride themselves on that. Whereas I think he really has developed a look and it's this interesting combination of sort of British formality that he picked up when he was in England as a young man and then his sort of California surfer roots. So it was interesting just to talk about him developing that and how that took a long time to sort of refine. I thought that was pretty interesting. I also will say for fans of Million Dollar Decorators, there's a couple things in there, but we cut a lot, so maybe we'll release a special episode at some point. That's just behind the scenes gossip from the set of Million Dollar Decor Decorator. So if you're interested, DM me and I'll see if I can hook you up. But it was a fun and insightful conversation with Jeffrey to be sure.
- [03:46]
Dennis Scully
We do need to do a standalone show one day about the Million Dollar Decorator, because there are a lot of stories, I'm told we might not be able to get all the cast members to come back all at once. There might still be some unresolved issues there.
- [04:00]
Fred Nicholas
It's a job for Andy Cohen or Dennis Gulley. That's what I want to know.
- [04:03]
Dennis Scully
Well, it could be a great conversation should it ever happen. But the conversation, Jeffrey, was very interesting and enjoyable and I hope people get a lot out of it. In the meantime, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll get into the news. This podcast is sponsored by Jaipur Living. Rooted in purpose and crafted with care, since 1978, Jaipor Living has redefined the art of rug making, championing ethical production and environmentally conscious practices every step of the way. They believe that when individuals thrive, society as a whole is elevated. That's why they empower more than 40,000 artisans, 85% of them women. Through financial consistency, skill development and education, discover how they're ensuring they leave the world a better place@jporeliving.com this podcast is also sponsored by Chelsea House. Chelsea House is excited to announce a major expansion to their lighting line. Crafted from designer requests. At Spring market, they'll add 150 new designs to their already brilliant collection of lamps, sconces, pendants and chandeliers. Each one is priced to maximize designers margins. Ships in days and all are available with no minimum purchase. Discover what's new in lighting at the Chelsea House showroom, 200 N. Hamilton St. April 24 through the 30th. And we're back. Fred, did it feel like Liberation Day? I don't know.
- [05:51]
Fred Nicholas
Happy Liberation Day. On Wednesday, President Trump unveiled a long promised flurry of tariffs, including a base tax of 10% on all imports from around the world. On top of that, dozens of countries were hit with much higher tariffs, all set to go into effect on April 9th. We'd been anticipating this for a long time, but even with that expectation, these numbers were surprising.
- [06:14]
Dennis Scully
Well, they were surprising and we'll get into the specifics of the number. But I mean, to your point of how surprised everybody really was, it was striking to see that the market actually closed higher on Wednesday in anticipation that somehow these numbers weren't going to be quite so bad. And then, whoops, they were pretty wrong. Sideways it on that one as we'll, as we'll talk about. But let's get into some of the numbers and break it down for people.
- [06:40]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, well, there are a lot of numbers. You know, these are tariffs on basically every, every country on God's green earth is getting hit with a tariff. Indeed, there's a 10% tariff on, you know, no matter where it's coming from, it's getting a 10% tariff. But maybe more importantly, there are all these individual tariffs in individual countries and there's a few kind of big buckets. So one of them is a lot of the furniture manufacturing hubs in Asia, like Vietnam and Indonesia all got hit with tariffs. Vietnam in particular got hit with a 46% tariff. Now, I had been talking with somebody who is in Vietnam and they were saying, yeah, you know, we can take 3 to 5%. And then it's, you know, you get this number. It's like, holy mackerel. Okay, so that, that's one bucket. Then there was the EU, which is getting a 20% tariff, which we kind of knew was coming. But it's definitely still a surprise to see, see that big of a number. And then on top of all the numbers that have already been dropped on China, there was a 34% additional tariff on Chinese goods. And I sometimes talk to people who do importing from China and as soon as these numbers were released, I got an email from a guy and the subject line was gobsmacked because when you stack up all the numbers on China, it is a huge tariff we now have on China. So these were very, very high, higher than people were expecting. And if they stick, there will be big implications from this.
- [08:01]
Dennis Scully
Well, exactly. If they stick. So what feels different this time around is the White House seemed to be making it very clear that these tariffs are going into effect almost immediately and that these huge numbers, particularly to your point, the China number, the Vietnam number, that those are rolling out and those are the numbers.
- [08:24]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, well, I mean, if they're rolling out in a week and keep in mind these are individual relationships with all these countries, there's not even really time, I would imagine, just logistically to negotiate individually with all these countries. So, I mean, I don't know, it's silly to make predictions. We're talking on Wednesday rather late and it's possible that by the time this episode comes out and some news breaks on Thursday, then some of these will get rolled back. Who really knows? But it would be foolish to assume too much one way or the other. And as you were saying, the market had sort of jumped before it closed, but in after hours trading, dow futures dropped 1,000 points, about 2.4%. A lot of people are predicting a major sell off tomorrow. So this is clearly what Wall street was expecting. How do we feel about homestreet? How is our industry going to be affected if these numbers stick?
- [09:13]
Dennis Scully
This is so much more dramatic than people were anticipating. And we were already seeing in so many reports that consumer confidence was coming down, down, down, because everybody was just getting spooked about this. And it's hard to believe that this doesn't just have a huge, if nothing else, an immediate shock impact. And then I can't imagine that people are going to take a let's wait and see what happens for a while approach to this. There was a lot of speculation that, oh, part of the reason that these numbers won't be inflationary is because they are in fact going to freeze people in place and stop them from making any transactions for a while.
- [09:57]
Fred Nicholas
Is that good?
- [10:01]
Dennis Scully
That's how you bring inflation down. You just get them to become completely frozen in time and they don't do anything. Tomorrow we'll reach out to all of our friends in Furnitureland, many of whom are no doubt on window ledges as we're recording this trying to figure out where they went so terribly wrong in their choice of careers. But this is pretty dramatic. And we'll get into one furniture company that we did hear from immediately after shortly. But everybody has really got to be pretty shaken up by this.
- [10:35]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, it's consumer confidence, it's housing built. The cost of building a home is definitely going to go up. You know, it's a lot of different things. I mean, to be fair, there obviously are companies that make furniture and home goods in the US And I'm sure that they will see their order flow go up a little bit. There have been people talking about how their business is going to increase because of this because of course it's going to be so much more expensive to import. So I don't want to be so one sided and say that these tariffs are all bad. I think the challenge is just that like people have to make a decision. Well, okay, let's say these tariffs stay in place for a good amount of time. Is it going to be long enough that I can afford to set up a new factory and hire 500 new workers only for a new president to come in and undo these and then it gets cheap in Asia. Again, it's difficult to think about the time horizons here. Even with these high numbers. It's really hard to imagine that this massively restarts US manufacturing. Although I do think you will see some US producers get a bump in the short term. And I don't want to ignore that. That is certainly part of this conversation. It's just what does it do to overall demand is the big question.
- [11:35]
Dennis Scully
No, no, and you're absolutely right, of course. And I think that there are certainly some upholstery firms in North Carolina and LA that may well stand to benefit from this. Although as we've heard from many of them, even before all of this, they were having a hard enough time finding workers. So to your point, how easy is it to scale up? And our friends in North Carolina have been telling us for years that there just simply aren't enough people to h and certainly they experienced that quite dramatically during COVID So again, yes, there are some companies that will stand to benefit from this, but it's very few companies in the big furniture industry today that are not importing quite a lot of merchandise from many of the countries that have been hit quite dramatically with this tariff announcement. So again, we'll have to see and maybe workrooms around the country will benefit in the, in the short term as maybe more business goes goes there. But These numbers are again, much, much bigger than people were anticipating.
- [12:46]
Fred Nicholas
Just one final thing. I mean, I do think we're seeing an impact on the stock market as we were talking about already. And I think that's what I worry most about the high end is, you know, obviously designers clients or, you know, high end designers clients are still going to have the money to spend on their homes. But people get cagey when the stock market is tanking. And if these numbers continue to go down and indexes go down and Apple dropped X percent, I don't know, that has sort of just a depressing effect on the marketplace overall, even if people still have money. So I don't think this is just something for the big mass furniture importers. This is going to affect all areas of the economy and we're going to find out just how much tomorrow and.
- [13:22]
Dennis Scully
The day after that and the day after that.
- [13:24]
Fred Nicholas
So stay tuned.
- [13:27]
Dennis Scully
No question about that. This show is going to drop and I am quite certain that the market is going to be quite a bit lower when it does. And I'm sorry about that for everyone. Speaking of a stock that's going to be quite a bit lower on Thursday's opening, let's talk about rh. So while President Trump was issuing tariffs on the White House lawn, Gary Friedman was hopping on the phone with analysts. The company formerly known as Restoration Hardware shared its latest earnings report. On Wednesday, RH missed on two key expectations and the stock dropped a pretty remarkable 25% in after hours trading. Fred? Pretty dramatic.
- [14:07]
Fred Nicholas
Yes. This was a wild moment just simply because you have to understand. So I'm sitting here at my desk, I'm looking at Trump on the White House lawn issuing these really high numbers. You're seeing everyone react to it and then it's like, over to you, Gary. And I'm sure that he was finding out in real time and he was almost referencing it on the call, just saying, hey, we're just finding out about these tariffs the same as you guys. And of course RH imports a lot of stuff from all of these countries. And so, so all of the tariffs are very impactful. And he was clearly, as everybody is a little shaken by these numbers and trying to kind of work through the implications of what they meant in real time. This was an odd call. It had a weird vibe to it, for sure.
- [14:45]
Dennis Scully
Well, as you say, I mean, a very unfortunate position for him to have to be in to be talking to analysts immediately after this news broke. And I think you could tell that he was clearly pretty surprised about the magnitude of these numbers. And as he pointed out and spelled out in the company's filings, 72% of RH's product comes from Asia. And they had been moving to change the numbers so that 35% now comes from Vietnam versus the 23% that comes from China. And he thought that was going to spare them from the tariff drama. But as we talked about earlier, what is it, more than 40% is now being levied in tariffs on Vietnam?
- [15:33]
Fred Nicholas
46.
- [15:34]
Dennis Scully
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it's a pretty dramatic number. And I think again, even he was startled by the magnitude of that. And then I think he comes on this call already being somewhat on the defensive about the very stretched or overly leveraged position that the company is in. He spells out very clear in his letter that the company is still carrying that $2.2 billion worth of debt. They've now built up over a billion dollars in merchandise and in inventory. And he talked on the call about how inventory is your friend. Well, he's got a lot of friends because he's built up, as he describes, maybe 2 to $300 million in extra inventory, which he may well need to turn into cash. So it's a company that's feeling quite stretched and now suddenly learns that the country that it's getting the biggest percentage of its merchandise out of now has a 46% tariff on it.
- [16:43]
Fred Nicholas
He seemed shell shocked. He also did seem somewhat energized by the challenge. As we all know, Gary Friedman definitely loves to prove the haters wrong and thrive in a difficult moment. And this is a difficult moment for the broader industry and RH in particular. But yeah, as you said, $30 million cash on hand. This call, by the way, we should also say comes. It's the first earnings call they've had since this short selling report came out a few months ago that pointed out that the company was short on cash. It didn't really seem to impact the company's stock all that much. But it was another thing to think about. They're not talking quite as much about the luxury mounted. I'm not even sure if it came up on this call. This is more about getting through a difficult period right now.
- [17:23]
Dennis Scully
No, absolutely. And that's such a great. And the stock down 25% in after hours trading, as we pointed out. And to put that in context, that brings the shares down to $184 a share. And let's not forget that when they did the big repurchase that put the $2.2 billion worth of debt on the books, the average share price that they bought it back at was over $320 a share. So that's how dramatically the shares have come down. And that's all money that has basically just disappeared. Weird. And so, as you and I joked about, I think on the last call, when he tried to describe that as some kind of a currency swap, and that wasn't really debt that we're carrying, we just swapped it for currency. Unfortunately, they swapped it for shares that are now quite a bit lower than they were when they bought it. And he has to realize that. And as you say, all of the talk of scaling the luxury mountain has been played down. Although I will say talk of the European expansion continues and talk of coming to Paris in time for one of the Maison objets. We're not sure if it's September or January of next year. I certainly hope for his sake that it's January of next year. But he's certainly talking about Paris in a big way. And the question came up, listen, I mean, are you concerned of how Europeans might be responding to the arrival of an American furniture company at this time? And he didn't say he wasn't concerned. Right?
- [18:58]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, it's probably a weird time to be an American brand expanding into Europe at the moment. There were other things that came up on the call. It does seem like they're kind of going to unveil this new concept that sort of brings together. A few years ago, they acquired the upholstery maker Dimitri and the furniture maker Joseph Jupe, and they're going to sort of put them together in a new concept. Seems sort of like a high end thing. That seems interesting and I'm certainly curious to see what that looks like. When it gets rolled out. It's just, you got to feel bad. They're hopping on this call right after this seismic change. I think they open up the call by saying, welcome to the new world. So I think all the plans they had on April 1st are now getting looked at again with a microscope. And we'll see what happens in the next earnings call that'll be even more interesting than this one, if that is possible.
- [19:47]
Dennis Scully
Well, and I mean, I mean, to your point about the challenge of hopping on this call, I mean, even he was quite surprised at the dramatic drop in the stock price. When the call started, the stock was down about 15%. And then as the tariff ramifications sort of hit everyone, it fell even further. And I think everyone was pretty startled at how dramatic the drop was. And I should point out that all of the other stocks that we talk about on the regular are down quite a bit as well in after hours trading. So, I mean, Wayfair Is called down 16%. Williams and Omas called down over 10%. So, I mean, no one is going to be spared from this. But poor Gary Friedman had to be the first CEO on an earnings call right after the announcement. And it was pretty intense. But stay tuned for what happens next in the scaling of the luxury mountain. But in the meantime, we're going to talk about Rocket Mortgage, which is making another acquisition. Fred.
- [20:49]
Fred Nicholas
Just a few weeks after scooping up Redfin for 1.75 billion, Rocket Mortgage made another purchase this week, acquiring the country's largest mortgage servicer, Mr. Cooper Group, and a $9.4 billion deal. This is truly wild. You know, it's like trying to think of an analogy. It's like Wayfair bought our house two weeks ago and then they bought RH this week. Like, it's really so much consolidation in such a short amount of time.
- [21:15]
Dennis Scully
I agree. It's another huge deal. And I'm not sure what to really take away from this very aggressive position that Rocket is taking that we want to be so dominant in this industry that we're just going to roll these companies up so rapidly. I should say, in the interest of full and frank disclosure, Mr. Cooper is my mortgage lender. So I did receive a note from Mr. Cooper letting me know perf personally about this news. And they wanted to assure me that nothing was going to change in any of my routines. But they did tell me that one day soon I, Fred, will be a Rocket man.
- [22:02]
Fred Nicholas
Yes.
- [22:03]
Dennis Scully
So I'm pretty excited about that.
- [22:04]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, very exciting. Well, you know, we should say we talked about this when Rocket bought Redfin, but this is kind of largely a symptom of, you know, a struggling housing market that is impacting all of these companies that work on housing and mortgages. And they're all looking to get stronger. And obviously rolling up a bunch of different companies into one big giant entity is one way to do that. And in this case, it's Rockets steering the ship. This is the second biggest ever consolidation in the mortgage industry. This is really a very significant deal in that corner of the world. I guess my question is, does this matter for designers? Is this something that's going to show up in our, in the rarefied air that we travel in? Dennis, what do you think?
- [22:47]
Dennis Scully
Well, I mean, I think we always try and find the positive story for designers in some of these news items, such as we Hope that all of this consolidation perhaps leads to a lower cost structure for home buyers, thereby leaving them more money for their designers to spend.
- [23:07]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, I mean, there's that, you know, big pile of money that a homeowner walks into a new home with. A lot of it goes away to the lawyers and the real estate brokers and a lot of it goes away to the contractors. And we want more leftover to buy sofas and pay designers at the very end. And hopefully this will go a little bit in the direction of doing that. I will say that the fact that these companies are willing to make these deals to me at least implicitly, suggests that they don't see the housing market turning around immediately because if they felt like their prospects were going to rapidly improve, they maybe wouldn't be quite as eager to do this. But then I think on the other side of that, Rocket Mortgage is obviously optimistic that there is a sunny day waiting for us at the end of all these storm clouds and there will be a reward on the other side. I guess I'm reading the tea leaves a little bit. This is more short term pain in housing, possible long term gain.
- [24:00]
Dennis Scully
Well, that's very positive. I think the other positive note in this, and you and I were talking just before we started the show. So Mr. Cooper was born out of the great financial crisis, the great housing crisis. It was once Washington Mutual. Many people might remember WAMU as one of the big names during the housing crisis that had dramatically overextended itself with subprime mortgages. And Mr. Cooper was a brilliant rebranding of that company and some others that were brought into the fold. And Mr. Cooper, Uber has actually been thriving. A stock I wish I had purchased a year and a half ago because it's actually been increasing in value quite a bit. But I think the fact that it was born out of the housing crisis, to my mind reminds me of how far we've come. And for all of the challenges with where mortgage rates are or how slow the housing market is, it is such a vastly different housing market than all those years ago. And so while, well, things aren't moving as quickly and things aren't turning over as much as people would like, it's a big reminder that housing prices are very high. There's a lot of home equity in homes. And I think that Rocket is just looking to scoop up as much as it can during this slow time because they really obviously see a big turn and a big opportunity coming in the. We hope not so distant. In the meantime, Fred, we're Going to talk about Wayfair. Recently, the E commerce giant debuted a new AI powered tool called Muse, which allows users to upload photos of their space and generate new inspiration images. You tried it out last week and wrote about it. What did you find? Fred?
- [25:47]
Fred Nicholas
I found a lot of AI slop. Dennis we're going to be saying, I.
- [25:52]
Dennis Scully
Was wondering how long it would take for us to get to the AI slop.
- [25:55]
Fred Nicholas
We should say AI slop is sort of a obviously pejorative term for AI generated imagery that's sort of like low quality, that just sort of exists, just to sort of get your attention for a second and steer you towards a purchase. And that is very much what Muse is based on, just to break it down a little bit. So Wayfair, actually, this isn't the first time Wayfair has rolled out an AI design tool. They had something called Decorify, which they launched, I think, in 2023. And at the time it was very similar to a lot of the other AI design engines that were debuting during that period. It was like users would upload a picture of their room, you'd say, I want this to be cottagecore modern, and then it would come up with a redesign of your room. What decorify tried to do was then, instead of actually putting in real Wayfair product, because that is actually very technically complicated, it would just generate fake AI product and then it would search through Wayfair's database of SKUs and try to find look alikes. But the problem was it wasn't that good. So you'd have a room that had a sofa and the link for the product would be an OD ottoman. Or you'd have, you know, there was one that it was like a chandelier, but the link was for a decorative birdcage. So it was very. It was not. That part of it really just did not work. And it was hard to see it being like a real tool that Wayfair rolled out. So they kind of scrapped that approach and started over with this thing, Muse, which is a little bit more like, I don't know, it's like AI Pinterest, I think, is the best way to describe it. It's really more about just dialing up a look quickly. And then there are links to products, but they're not trying to make it like, oh, this is the chair in the room. It's more like, yeah, this is about. In the vibe of what you're going for. What did you think of Muse? You played with it, right? Dennis?
- [27:36]
Dennis Scully
I did. I fooled around with it right about the time that we were enjoying the AI slop story from Pinterest and saying to ourselves, yes, here's more of that very thing. And as you say, I mean, and you point out in the article, the. The costs that would have been involved in really pulling up specific images with all of the Wayfair product, and they obviously must not have felt that was worth the investment at the time, but it is reassuring. Another point that you make in the article. It is reassuring to designers that think they're going to be replaced any moment by AI. When you see some of these, I get it, inspirational images is some of them are not great. Not great, right?
- [28:26]
Fred Nicholas
I mean, and it's funny that you say that it was like the cost was prohibitive. I actually think just it's technically a huge challenge. Even if you had all the money in the world, people underestimate how technically complicated it is to take a picture of a room, redesign it with AI in a way that's accurate to the actual dimensions of the space, and then fill it with real shoppable product. You know, that is a very complicated technical challenge for a variety of reasons, and muse this sort of proof that Wayfair, either, as you said, maybe they just couldn't afford it or didn't want to afford it, or it's just too complicated, or they didn't think that's what people really wanted and what they came up with is more of an inspiration engine. But as you said, the problem is all of the imagery is generated by AI, so it's only so inspirational because it's all just sort of generic approximations of other images that the AI has scooped up. So you end up with a lot of very basic looks. But I will say, like, it's easy to dog this kind of thing, but I could see a customer being like, I don't really know how to define my style. Typing in a few things into this thing, getting some images back clicking, tweaking it a little bit, and then finding product that roughly approximates what they were looking for. So I do think that this is probably the right thing for them to do. But I think it, as you said, demonstrates that this thing isn't coming for an interior designer's job anytime soon. And it is a little. I don't. Depressing is maybe. Maybe the word that, you know, that we're trying to build an inspiration engine out of AI, you know.
- [29:52]
Dennis Scully
Well, exactly. And I think our guest on the show today and some past guests that we've had on in talking about the inspirational role that AI plays. The truth is, for designers, I don't know how inspiring some of those images will be, but as you say, perhaps for the Wayfarer customer base this will be helpful to. Right? Yes. For the uninitiated, these might well be some inspiring images. And if so, I would encourage people to pick up some good design books. But anyway, I will leave it there. I don't want to poke fun because I feel like we picked on Wayfair last week, so I'm going to give them a pass on this one. Moving on, Fred, we're going to talk about Rita Koenig's latest column.
- [30:39]
Fred Nicholas
Yes. For her ongoing Elle Decor series, Rita explores what happens when designers become their own clients, AKA when designers design their own homes. The analogy about the cobbler's children going shoeless, is that the one? Is that the. Is that the old saying very much applies here. What'd you make of the article? Really fun read.
- [30:57]
Dennis Scully
A very fun read. And interesting to hear her talk about both how long it can take to actually work on your own home because you keep canceling your own appointments with yourself because of more important clients, which as she pointed out out is pretty much anyone selling herself short. She said they're all more important than me. But also fun to hear some of the things that she did in her home that were the kinds of risks that she wishes clients would take, but she has a hard time selling them on the idea.
- [31:34]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a sort of tried and true principle of the industry is that like your own home can, it's your laboratory to experiment with new ideas. It's sort of a marketing hook. It's kind of interesting. From the article, it seemed like Rita actually had her like firm take her on as a client. Did you get that implication as well? Like it wasn't just she was tinkering around herself, but it was like actually she brought her associates on to help as well.
- [31:54]
Dennis Scully
Well, I think she really appreciated getting the feedback from her team. And so I think she talked about the loneliness sometimes of doing your own project with yourself. And so bringing the team on board and sort of getting their feedback was helpful. And it's interesting because we've talked to a lot of designers about a show house that they've done where they get to just imagine a client and sometimes they say that that's actually harder. And also I think a lot of designers want to show people how they live in a certain way so they think about making their, making their home how they want their Clients to see them. Laura Jenkins out of Atlanta sent me a note when I posted about this on Social, saying that part of the reason she wants to have clients to her home is one to start to build that relationship, but also to show them how she really lives and some of the choices that she wants them to make or at least understand her process. My old friend Bruce, Bruce Bierman, who's a legendary designer, always talked about trying to get clients into his bedroom so that he could show them his sock drawer, which was apparently wonderfully organized in a way he wanted all of them to be. And he said if they appreciated the sock drawer, that usually sealed the deal on the project. If they didn't get it, how could.
- [33:24]
Fred Nicholas
That come up organically in conversation? I just want to take in my bedroom and show you something.
- [33:27]
Dennis Scully
Oh, one more thing. Can I just lure you into my bedroom and show you how orderly my socks are kept?
- [33:34]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah. No, it's funny and it's interesting. I'm thinking of an article I wrote a couple years ago, and I'm kicking myself because I can't remember the designer's name. But she's based out of Arizona, and she had a very clever way to do this, which is, of course, it's expensive to redesign your own home, and people want to constantly be changing and updating their style, and that's time and money. But she did this thing where she would basically build a home, like a spec home, and turn it into sort of like a show house, where she would invite clients over and show off what she'd done. But then, of course, at the end, she would sell it and make a profit on the home, and she would get vendors to sponsor it because they were getting marketing out of it. So it was a very clever way to basically make it less expensive and onerous to design your own home and show off what you can do. I thought it was very clever. Probably only works in certain markets. It would be hard to do that in Manhattan, for example. But I thought that was a clever way to turn a money pit into a potential money maker.
- [34:26]
Dennis Scully
Well, it's why I think these designers own home issues are always so interesting. Right, Right. El Decor just had theirs, and there were some really fun projects in there. Jeffrey Alan Marks, in the interview we did with him just recently, talked about how for. For all the great many projects that he had published, people were always uniquely interested in his homes and seeing what they were like, and that that often got more attention. So, I mean, I think it's get to see the choices that designers make. And as we've talked about, some designers are very thoughtful about it from a future selling perspective. And then others, it's a laboratory. It's a chance to see if you layer that many paint colors, as Rita Koenig talked about, what that will actually look like. And then apparently it worked because she said that actually brought clients. I think she described their heart rate actually lowering because it was so, it was so peaceful and calming. So that's fun when something that you try works.
- [35:30]
Fred Nicholas
Eldacor needs to do an issue on designer sock drawers. I think that's where this is going.
- [35:35]
Dennis Scully
I'll bet after they hear this, they're going to. All right, that's it for the news. But there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com including advice from Gale Dobie on how to make an exit plan for your business and a look at Kravitz new showroom strategy. We'll be back in a minute, but first a quick break. Jaipur Living's award winning art and sustainability initiative Manchaha empowers rural Indian artisans to craft one of a kind rugs from leftover yarn, reducing waste and celebrating true artisanry. Each vibrant rug tells a story inspired by history, culture and environment, embodying creativity. Learn more about this collection and shop the one of a kind pieces@jaiporliving.com for the newly expanded Chelsea House lighting line, designer Jamie Merida drew on decades of experience as a successful retailer and interior Designer to create 80 new products that strike a perfect balance of elegance and functionality. See Jamie's brightest new ideas in the Chelsea house showroom at 200 N. Hamilton St. April 24 through the 30th. All available at designer friendly prices with no minimums required. And we're back. I'm joined now by Guy Alion who is the founder of Matoboard. Guy, thank you so much for joining me.
- [37:08]
Guy Alion
Me, Dennis, it's great to be here. I'm excited to talk.
- [37:11]
Dennis Scully
Well, I'm excited to talk to you too. Let's set it up for the audience and explain a little bit about who you are, the career that you've had leading up to this and where the idea behind matter board came from.
- [37:25]
Guy Alion
My name is Guy Adam Adian and I have been in the design world for two decades now, mostly working as an architect and, and I started my career actually doing sort of boutique hotels on islands for wealthy individuals and celebrity retreats and before moving to London where I then lead a award winning architecture and interior design practice called KSR Architects and Interior designers. So these are like construction values of anything from 5 million to $150 million amount. So just very complicated, very large projects, often difficult clients, mostly doing the architecture. Dennis and then we decided to open up, like, an interior design wing of the company. And really, it was through this work, working with our head interior designer, that I became very familiar with the interior designer's process and the way that they work. But what I began to notice was that we would get physical samples sent to our office of materials and products on a daily basis. Some of these were solicited. We asked for them, we need them, and a lot of times they're not. We get these catalogs. We have to open these files, and in the files there's pieces of materials. This is like fabric terrazzos, Corian composites, you name it. But one of the problems is that there are tiny little cubes, tiny little squares that are meant to represent your entire vision of this material being applied to the whole surface in a whole room. Almost an impossible task for a well trained interior designer, let alone your clients, who you're going to have to show this little tiny piece of plastic to.
- [39:11]
Dennis Scully
Imagine this little one thing is the.
- [39:14]
Guy Alion
Feature of your entire room. And this huge floor sample that I have is actually not going to be the biggest thing. And I need you to invert what you're seeing in front of you. You okay? Impossible, impossible challenges. But let's go back to the physical sample itself. These were arriving in catalogs. Leather wrapped in bubble wrap in a box. And we would store these in physical sample libraries. But the reality was, 95% of these materials we would never use. And on an annual basis, we'd have a librarian come in, clean this out, and I would be dumping these products into the trash. We would donate as much as we could to local arts and crafts schools. We did that a lot, lot to students. But the reality is it gets piled up into the trash. And what I found was that anyone under the age of, say, 40 in my office wasn't actually walking into this physical library to start the process of mixing and matching. They were trying to hack ways online. And it was interesting. I didn't take much note of it until Covid hit. What I realized was now everyone was doing it online, and no one had access to the physical sample library. But that wasn't what was the most profound thing for me, what was profound was that our clients were accepting of it. They loved the fact that we were trying to find ways to show them the stuff digitally and remotely. It helped Them make decisions quicker. And I began to realize that this was now one of the only industries that hadn't yet been digitized. And I was talking to my co founder, George Hart, who's CTO in explaining this problem, and he couldn't believe that we were in a sort of bookstore before Amazon moment with an entire category of assets that had not been brought into the digital existence. And I said to him, you know, it is crazy because everything a designer does is digital now. We decided that there was an opportunity to create the first category defining product for a category we call virtual sample sampling and visual curation. And that we could bring this library online all the world's interior design materials, but not just at a high level, but to show designers up close and personal the details and the textures and the way light reflects and bounces off these products. We could do that for them online to give them confidence in what they were mixing and matching under one lighting condition and to give brands the confidence that they could finally do this virtually and save themselves billions in waste and capital.
- [41:48]
Dennis Scully
What I'm so interested about so often when conversations about bringing so much of this online were first starting to take place, one of the hesitations or the reservations that were suggested was, am I going to see color accurately? Are different people on different screens going to get a completely different impression of what some of these samples are actually looking like? And how have we progressed in that area?
- [42:17]
Guy Alion
Okay, so you've jumped into a very, very, very dark world of color theory very, very quickly.
- [42:24]
Dennis Scully
I'm sorry.
- [42:25]
Guy Alion
No, no, it's great, great. This is what it's all about. First, let me just say maybe in one line to summarize this whole big story, exactly what it is that we do now. So Matterboard, what it does now is that we're an online tool for discovering material and creating your material boards using 3D products so that you can really examine and mix and match materials and products under one lighting condition with one virtual library. But we allow you to do this with ultra photorealistic realism. And you can create material spec sheets and you can link to product data and information all on the browser. Share it with your clients and your teams. So that's what we do now. Now, now coloring is extremely important because this is mixing and matching at like the finest eye of pixel examination. And what we can say is that your screen is going to look different to my screen, and you could put two screens side by side and they're going to look slightly different. So what we do is we create one lighting environment One studio. It's like a studio table. You could think of it like that. And. And all the products in Istudio are synced to be their appropriate coloring and texture in that lighting environment. And what that means is that when you're mixing and matching them in Matterboard, you know that they will look right when you order them, even though you might be in a room that's got a 300 kelvin light. And so they're going to look slightly different or slightly pale or more rich in tone. What you'll know is that they are going to match under that lighting environment because they matched on ours. That's what we can give you.
- [44:05]
Dennis Scully
So Matoboard is allowing you to virtually build a mood board or a concept board and pull all of these different samples and materials in and allowing you to see them, as you say, in different lighting conditions and all of that. Ultimately with the goal of being able to push a button and say, okay, I do want to see the physical samples. Or is the idea that some of this is going to eliminate the need for some of the physical sampling?
- [44:33]
Guy Alion
If I was a betting man, I'd say we will always want to. I come from this industry, I need to ultimately hold and feel the product at the end of the day. And if I am ordering 200,000 square meters of flooring for a hotel lobby, I want to see the product before I do that. And that's a very large bill. So I think there will always be a quality control process in the design as well world. I think I could guarantee that. We have seen instances of clients not needing to see the physical sample and that the designer got sign offs using matter board and that's great for them because they can just move forward with the process.
- [45:11]
Dennis Scully
Huge relief.
- [45:12]
Guy Alion
Huge relief. Right? So that means that the visualization gave the client, in those instances, in those use cases, confidence. So I do think that the designers will order the physical samples. We are working with some partners now to help with the logistics of that. We're not a logistics business, we're a software company. And then some brands are wanting to do it themselves. So we have like a call to action. The designers can then request a physical sample and they can order it directly from the brand. What's interesting here is that if we win, I believe that we will reduce the amount of physical sampling by an order of magnitude because the designers will get closer to them having a confident composition client buy in, they've made their changes visually and then they order the physical sample, which gives the brand much higher return on Sampling investment because it's not like a designer, I don't know what leather to choose here. I'm just going to order 15 different samples. They can actually do this process online, share it with the client and they'll be like, okay, actually I need three. Three, Three I'm not sure about. And I'll order those three. It's a huge order of magnitude less. Physical samplings moving around the world in transport hubs and so on.
- [46:28]
Dennis Scully
So in the past, when I've spoken to various AI companies that are trying to render images of, let's say a highly textured fabric, for example, or a very elaborate pattern, they talk about the complexities of really having that image appear so that the end user and the designer both can get a real sense of the pattern and texture. And I'm wondering, as you've gone through this process and working with lots of different kinds of samples, what have been some of the challenges along those lines and what have you been learning about this whole process?
- [47:09]
Guy Alion
The first problem that we fell into is that we thought that we were going to have physical rigs where we'd have like SLR cameras. This is how the state of the art was being done when we started the company, which would then do very complicated photography of these samples, which meant that we had to have a hub and receive these samples. And samples had to be shipped all over the world and come to us and we would photograph them and create these digital assets. We quickly realized that that is not how we are going to create a new behavior, a new category called virtual sampling. We just can't scale that quick, can't bring the next million SKUs online like that. So we started to develop an in house technology. It's a bit of computer vision and AI. It's called Metasku AI. And what it does is in a nutshell, it can take a single photograph of an image and we can then make a series of smart assumptions. We know how wood should behave, we know how a marble should behave. And we can then create the digital asset that is high resolution, we can upscale it at the same time and that is rendered in high fidelity in Matterboard's environment. So we had to develop our own piece of software to do that. It has some, it has some limitations at the moment. So it's become extremely successful for us. When we started we had maybe a success rate of 40%. We now have a success rate of over 80%. That means what goes in comes out 80% of the time, ready for matter board with very little artists interpretation so it's getting smarter, but there are limitations, like not to get too technical, but what we call three dimensional textures. So things that have hairs, like very fluffy materials. That is the moment of computational limitation of our world. But we have ways that we're going to get around that.
- [49:09]
Dennis Scully
Okay. Because if you can crack the Ivory Boucle code.
- [49:14]
Guy Alion
Exactly.
- [49:16]
Dennis Scully
A whole world is going to open.
- [49:18]
Guy Alion
Up for you, Guy Boucle is all the rage. So me to get that online.
- [49:23]
Dennis Scully
One of the challenges, for example, with, with Material bank, for example, right. Which was going to be this incredible solution of being able to order all these samples online. And designers and architects would be able to just quickly hit a few buttons and then FedEx would bring it the next morning. Amazing, incredible robots, right? Robots pick everything out and all of that. But the challenge for the fabric companies and others was, oh, great. But now I basically have to outfit a whole other showroom essentially with all this inventory, inventory of all of these samples. And I have to pay whatever the subscription fee is to be part of all of this. So it ended up being this greater than they could bear cost. And many of the fabric companies ultimately ended up pulling out of Material Bank.
- [50:13]
Fred Nicholas
Right.
- [50:14]
Dennis Scully
Because it was just, at least on the residential design side, it was just too expensive. And I get the complications.
- [50:21]
Guy Alion
Well, it's also Christmas for, for the designer insofar as, you know, they can get the product in 24 hours. Okay. So there's a little bit of like ordering products on Amazon. You get a little bit of that tone. I'm like, cool, this is too easy. I'm just going to order a lot of stuff.
- [50:38]
Dennis Scully
Yes.
- [50:39]
Guy Alion
And I don't think the responsibility should be put on the designer. I really don't. You know, the designer just wants to do what's best for their client. And the fastest way they can make decisions is the best. So you offer them 24 hours to get something, they're just going to start ordering a lot of stuff. That doesn't mean that it's the right product for what they want. They love the fact that there's a sustainability component which Material bank offers, which is fantastic because the products go back. Someone has to pay for that back and forward. And that is a lot of logistical movement, which is questionable. Also from a sustainability perspective, also from a design perspective, I think it's just me personally talking. I think that the 24 hour is extremely beneficial if you're on a 24 hour deadline. But the reality is that designers, we think, can act in seconds.
- [51:28]
Dennis Scully
So there's even greater urgency than 24 hours.
- [51:30]
Guy Alion
It's just that the 24 hours is the ordering of the physical sample. That's really to do with like the final process of putting things together or needing it for a client pitch the next day. But I believe that if you can do a very good job visually with photorealism, you could be making multiple iterations and decisions in seconds without having to order that physical sample. Get the client to say, yes, I love this. I love these 15 different boards you've put together. Let's order the samples. It's totally different. You don't need the 24 hours. It's okay to take a week after that. But I do believe Material bank is an unbelievable business. And I know Adam Sandow well and we've had loads of conversations and I admire him. He's just an unbelievable entrepreneur and the company is an unbelievable company. But behavior might be changing.
- [52:20]
Dennis Scully
Well, and I wonder. I mean, so since you mentioned Adam and knowing that, I'm sure he's fascinated by your company.
- [52:29]
Guy Alion
Yeah, he loves technology.
- [52:30]
Dennis Scully
Yes, he loves technology and he loves innovation in this space. And I can certainly imagine him wanting to partner with you in some way or maybe just acquire you all together. I don't know. Have you had those conversations, guy? Do you want to share anything today about.
- [52:51]
Guy Alion
I guess I'll put it this way. We are hell bent on creating this future for the industry. And so our single focus here is creating this category and being the company that does it. So that's our focus.
- [53:08]
Dennis Scully
So with that in mind, let's come back and explain to the designers how much it costs and what they get for that. Just to, you know, in a nutshell, just so we get a sense.
- [53:20]
Guy Alion
So Matterboard is free to use for absolutely everyone. And with that you get access to the entire catalog of virtual samples that we create and the samples that we continuously keep bringing on. There are advanced tools for professional needs. And this is often more to do with the storytelling component and the management of the boards. So if you want to create more compelling visuals, so the ultra photorealistic versions of them, if you want to create more projects, you have a much heavier load on our software. Then you have to pay for the Pro tier. The Pro tier is $19 a month for a user or $199 for the whole year. And then we have a teams tier. And this is where you want to be able to collaborate with your team. So you want to manage boards, share them amongst your teammates, create libraries of preferred materials and share those as well as upload your own library. So you can start to do that. And for teams, that's a $30 a seat or $300 a year for that seat. Otherwise, Matterboard is absolutely free to use.
- [54:38]
Dennis Scully
So who have been some of the big brands that have jumped into this? It sounds like some big companies participated in the most recent funding round in part because they wanted to be part of this. But tell me about some of the brands that have wanted to be sure.
- [54:54]
Guy Alion
They'Re representing presented here on the fundraising side. You know, we were really lucky to have some industry giants join us, which is Masco Ventures, they own a whole conglomerate of brands. And as well as Home Depot out of the us and so we've got companies like Behr Paint and Formica all joining us and a bunch of others. And for example, you know, know, if we use Behr Paint, which is, you know, one of one of the US's largest commercial paint providers, Paint was one of these categories where from an E commerce online perspective, they were reduced to a single pixel of color to represent their paint. Literally a square with a hex code online. Like, that's how they had to try and sell themselves, you know, to a digital like first design community. And of course, what we know about paint is that the way light hits it, the way shadow hits it, changes everything about its color and the finish. If it is glossy, if it's matte, if it's eggshell, if it's like super waxed finish, all of that changes the way that light reflects off it and changes its color. So a single pixel of color just would never have done it. And what we worked with Behr to develop was the ability to showcase all of those finishes, the entire spectrum of paint finish in our digital format. And it's so fascinating because, Dennis, if you took a color of paint on a swatch in Matterboard and just change its finish from eggshell to high glossy, you will see the color change, which is just as it would do in real life, because light is not being absorbed as much in high glossy as it is in a nickshell. It's bouncing off differently. So very, very fascinating. And I think that's part of why it's been a compelling story for brands.
- [56:56]
Dennis Scully
One of the things that comes up in conversation when you talk to some of these project management software companies that again, allow you to pull different materials into a project. Again, more on the speccing side than the showing client side, but the companies behind those products can get a lot of feedback as to what people are specifying or thinking about specifying. It's been interesting to hear the data that they're able to get. Has that been useful to a lot of the brands that are participating with you, that they get to see how they're being shown and what they're being paired with. Is that helpful?
- [57:37]
Guy Alion
So we're in the early days of that, but it is starting to show some real value. And you know, the way I liken this is if you think about songs, individual songs on CDs that sat on shelves in, in record stores, we'd all go in, we, we'd look at these albums, they were physical and we'd take them out and we'd take them home and we'd listen to them. But the studios, the record labels and the musicians didn't know exactly the format in which you were listening to those songs. They didn't know where you started a song and where you dropped off the song, where you paused the song, where you fast forwarded to the parts that were the best part of the song. And not until we had a digital asset, digital twin of that song could we start to see that. And that was obviously the emergence of a company like Spotify where now what's useful to the musicians and useful to the brands is they can see exactly how you're pairing songs with each other. Other a playlist. A playlist is the same as a material sheet and preferred materials in a library. But now I can see if you're pairing an oak floor with brass hardware. And I can also see if high geometric shaped patterns are trending in wallpaper. And not only does that help me as a designer, because if Dennis is doing one thing and I'm doing something similar, we both might like, like this material. It's extremely useful in the same way that we can suggest songs to each other. So brands can now start to see which products are trending on Matterboard Universe, which parts of their inventory are being used the most. And especially this basket analysis. What's going well with what, what are designers doing? What interests them changes your whole marketing approach to your products. And the best part of all of this is that it helps the big companies and the small ones. The small ones who have like no data, no optics into how the market moves and what trend really are until they're established already. Because it's a virtual asset. We can bring on like a mom and pop store who does like wallpapering or various sort of bespoke paint products and we can offer them the same insights that we can the big guys.
- [59:52]
Dennis Scully
Interesting. One of the things that you referred to earlier that I want to better understand is this ROSI or this return on sample investment? And tell me about that metric and how you. How you think about it.
- [60:08]
Guy Alion
So if we wind back to this, the act of making a material board. Let's just look at that. Why are designers even doing it? It's because the pairing of these materials is extremely important to them. And I think where our conversation will go a little bit on AI is that actually when I think about it, these material boards that designers pull together, it is the prompt, it's the original prompt. Because these are like the input that tells us about the vision that we plan to generate. Right? It's the minimum things that we need to pull together and we have an understanding of what we're going to generate in our mind's eye. So it's the original prompt. Right. And designers are very visual people, so it's not just about language. We actually look at physical materials and things and how they pair together. But that means that the designers are pulling these things, these material boards together. That little piece of real estate where I choose this floor, this countertop, and this pool handle and this door handle and this paint, this is pole position for a brand. If their product doesn't get on the board, it doesn't get ordered, it doesn't get shown in front of a client, doesn't get specified. The whole process comes from this board. So when you think about it that way, you realize, oh my God, that little piece of real estate is extremely valuable to billions of dollars of decision making that happens in interior real estate. And that's why brands sample. That's why they do it, so that they can get on that sample board. And I always say that a brand would have paid someone to stand in my office, studio, library just to be there when we walked into the library and started be like, do you want to try my product? They would pay someone if we let them to just stand there all day because it would encourage increase their return on sampling investment. They send the sample, they want a return on that which is getting specified. So we believe that we can reduce the amount of sampling needed, get the designer closer to a decision virtually then when they order the sample, that means that the designer has a much higher conviction with them and the client that they will use that product. They just now need to see it in person. Finally, we call it increases your row see your return on sampling investment. This future does.
- [62:20]
Dennis Scully
Okay, before we go. So you mentioned AI and I know that you are very excited about this moment in time. And the role that generative AI is going to play in our industry. And you think it's such an exciting time to be a designer with all of these tools at your disposal. So tell me how you think about it and what you imagine imagine happening.
- [62:44]
Guy Alion
To me, AI is the ultimate idea amplifier. It is the ability for us to produce ideas at scale. And when I think about AI, I certainly don't think about at all it taking our jobs at all. It doesn't even cross my mind. It just makes me so excited to be a designer because I genuinely think that we've been the laggards of software. We've seen graphic design and UX design and these industries be totally emancipated from their desktops. With Adobe bringing what you see is what you get to the desktop publishing and Figma bringing collaborative online tools for UX designers. And yet interior designers, we've been stuck with physical samples and very shitty software to try and do what we do. And I think that the convergence of AI and 3D is going to completely change the tool for us as designers. It's going to be such an exciting time. And one of the biggest shifts I think happening here is that to date, pre2025, we would have to draft to visualize our work. And what I mean by that is we'd have to sketch up, we'd have to model, we'd have to cad, we'd have to measure. And then we would need to create a visualization and get physical samples and do all of this only then to get client feedback back. And once we get their feedback, we have to go back to all these tools to help us redraft and do all the heavy lifting to make another visualization. And what I think is going to happen after 2025 is that that is going to flip. We will visualize to draft, meaning that we will generate our ideas in a beautiful way and in a realistic way so that we can get feedback from our clients to help shape those ideas. And then when we've got much better buy in, for example, we order the physical sample or then we start to draft and do that heavy lift shifting CAD work and administrative work. So I think that designs will do more creating, less administrating in the future. I think it's obvious, I think all these AI tools basically remove the friction from interfaces. And when you remove friction, it changes behavior and it amplifies human output. That's going to happen. And I just think interior designers, architects, it's the most amazing time. I think we're going to see 50 years of innovation in the next five years come our way. It's going to be amazing.
- [65:04]
Dennis Scully
Well, I love that positive messaging and it sounds very hopeful and I think a lot of designers will be excited to hear that. Guy. We're going to have you back for the how to land high net worth clients and keep them happy conversation in the future. But in the meantime, this has been so interesting and I really appreciate you making the time.
- [65:22]
Guy Alion
Thanks, Dennis. It's been a pleasure chatting.
- [65:29]
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.
- [65:37]
Fred Nicholas
Fred Elle Decor caught my eye this week. So just last week actually we were talking about how Stelline Volandis had sort of expanded her role at the magazine and was taking over, I guess during the brand direction as well was the announcement. But she's also appointed a head of editorial at Elle Decor. And I'm gonna butcher this name. I apologize. Elisa Lipski Karaz, I believe is her name, used to be at her a while back. Recently she was at the Wall Street Journal, people that I talked to yesterday at 200 Lex. I was at a lunch there and people were excited to see what she's going to do with the publication. The early buzz was good and I do think it's really interesting to see what's next for Elle Decors. So congratulations to them both and they seem kind of like a dynamic duo on social media already. So hopefully we can get them on the show to talk about what they're going to do. But that definitely had me curious for the next chapter at El de Corps.
- [66:25]
Dennis Scully
Yeah, me too. I'm excited and it sounds like, as you say, they seem like a good strong duo already. So big things to come.
- [66:33]
Fred Nicholas
What caught your eye this week?
- [66:34]
Dennis Scully
Dennis A couple things caught my eye, sadly. The president emeritus of Pratt, the Great Design School, Dr. Thomas Schutte, passed away at the age of 89. He had served as the President of Pratt from 1993 to 2017 and before that had been the president of the Rhode Island School of Design for nearly a decade. He was largely credited for turning Pratt into the world class art and design college that it is now considered. And it was quite moving to see the outpouring on social media of many of his students who are in the design industry today remembering him. He was obviously a remarkable man and my condolences to his family. The other piece of news that caught my eye was we talk about Daniel Lalonde quite a bit on this show, normally in the context of his his role as chairman of the Floss BNB Italia group. But finally Daniel Lalonde has moved on and moving to Copenhagen, it sounds like, where he will be the CEO of Vita, which is the company that has quite a few big tabletop brands like Royal Copenhagen, George Jensen and Wedgwood in its stable. So perhaps the LVMH of Tabletop Fred, I don't know.
- [67:56]
Fred Nicholas
He stole the joke I was about to make. Yeah, maybe we'll get him back on the show. We'll see.
- [68:01]
Dennis Scully
Yeah, well, we wish him well and hopefully he wants me to come visit visit him in Copenhagen. But we look forward to catching up with him soon. That's all the time we have today though. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to keep up with the latest news, browse job listings or 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 Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scott Gully. Have a great weekend and we'll be back with you on Monday.