How Pierce & Ward went from rock star clients to a West Elm collab

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guests this week are interior designers Louisa Pierce and Emily Ward, the founders of Pearson Ward. Louisa and Emily represent something of a rarity in the industry, a long-running partnership that has stood the test of time, even as both of them live in different cities. Together, they've built a design firm that's made the AD100, opened a buzzy store in Los Angeles and launched a blockbuster collection with West Elm. I spoke with Louisa and Emily about why they like to give each other wins, what it's like to have a Hollywood director as a client, and why the magic of their design process only comes through at the installation.

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1:57All custom-sized and delivered in as little as two weeks. And when you join Ernesta's exclusive trade program, their team of dedicated consultants will manage everything from ordering samples to generating quotes, connecting all of the dots to support and streamline your business. Apply for membership today at ernesta.com slash boh. And now, on with the show. I was going back and reading that. You mentioned in our last conversation this, I almost said Guns and Roses, Garden and Guns article. I was going back, you know, chatting with my friends at Guns and Roses, who you guys probably, well, you probably know them or something.

2:41But I was trying to figure out, Louisa, and you tell me the origin story, the when we first met, the how we became friends. I figure there seems to be one story that suggests, Louisa, perhaps you were bartending in New York. Oh, there's so many stories out there. I mean, let's get to the truth here. Let's try. Let's set the record straight. No. So when Emily and I met, I know I was not bartending, but we did meet at a bar. But it was a little bar called The Cabin Down Below. And at the time, my husband was a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. And Emily had just started dating the drummer for The Black Keys.

3:27and so my husband and Patrick were good friends and we kind of I believe it was a birthday party where Emily met Emily actually met my husband before me that was my birthday party oh that's the night that I met Patrick and Austin yes okay and then the three of them hit it off and then you know of course we all went out together and um from there it was just we were all fast friends I mean, we just started hanging out constantly. Emily and I shared, actually at that point, I don't even know that we talked that much about design. We didn't really get into it, the design part of our friendship. We didn't even connect.

4:06That wasn't how we connected. That's not true, a little bit. Because remember when I had that apartment on 12th Street? Right, yes, yes. That Carmy stayed in? So a little bit. But then we really got into it in Nashville. Because Louisa was like, we're considering moving to Nashville. I was pregnant. And we were sitting on their back patio having dinner. And I was like, I think we're going to move to Nashville. I don't know about raising a kid in New York. It's a little terrifying. And Emily and Patrick were like, oh, we want to move there too. We're actually going next week to, you know, I think they were just going to hang out with a friend or something.

4:39And she literally calls me, you know, she's there and she's like, buddy, we just bought a house. And I was like, oh, my God, wait, what? Like, slow down. um yeah so they emily was there a little bit before me and then when we first got there it was you know very frustrating because it was either all new builds that were just like so terrifying or the old houses were just like a bit out of our budget and so i had a 10 month old at the time and i literally like put him on my hip and would just like go to all the houses that were construction, but I just became like obsessed with, you know, that aspect.

5:18So, you know, I was like, okay, I want to build a house. And my husband's like, what are you talking about? Like, you've never done any of this. How is this going to work? What house building experience do you have? But so I just started kind of drawing freehand, like from all the different houses that I would walk through, like floor plans that I liked and things that I liked about it. And I found a with an architect and we kind of worked together, but it was just like, you know, a no-name architect, you know, just like someone that works for a construction company, you know, just. And so I built my dream house and it turned out really, really amazing.

5:57As you saw in the Guns N' Roses documentary. Exactly. Guns N' Roses can't stop talking about it. They're like, Louise's house in Nashville is amazing. We're a one-hit wonder. So here you are. So you, I mean, essentially design your own home and it gets built and then everyone sort of falls in love with it. Again, you tell me the truth of this story. There's some dinner party, Emily, where you're there, right? And your significant other at the time, I believe. And Lily Aldridge is there, right? The gang was all there. That is true. Yeah, we were all there and we were all like, help us. I think everybody was really blown away by how much of a home Louisa had put together, despite like the building of the actual house and everything.

6:46It was just like such an amazing feeling. And Louisa and Austin really know how to throw a party. And we were all there and it was like, we were young. So nobody really had that yet. It was a lot of, it was really beautiful, but it was also like a major feeling. and my husband at the time was leaving for tour and we had just bought another house like a Bobby McAlpin house which is an architect in the south is really well known sure this really beautiful house and he was like oh my god Louisa should help you when I'm gone and it was a really quick turnaround um and that was like okay this is really fun and then and then it would be like people would come to both of our houses for parties.

7:27And then this music manager who lives in Nashville still, and she was like, you guys are doing my office. And she kind of like forced us into it. And then it was like a little store from one of her clients who was in the band Lady Antebellum. Their mom was like, I want you to help me with my store. So we did this store, and that was really fun. But all sort of born out of Louise's house and then - Totally. Right? And then my house. Your house. Right. But it really all was born with Louisa's house. And then these people that really trusted us. Yeah, it's crazy. We got so lucky. I think that Louisa has always been on the forefront of trends.

8:16It's like she can predict trends, sort of. And I think that somehow these people who hired us, they saw that. And they really had faith in these two people who weren't taking ourselves very seriously at that point in our life. And it was really amazing to have people trust us like that. I mean, Karen Elson was like, here you go. Here are the keys to my house. And trusted us. We showed her a couple of mood boards, I think. That we cut out with magazines. We used to only go to fabric warehouses and get little cutouts off the rolls. We never used any designer fabrics. We didn't know any of them. So it was like we were kind of forced to go a different way than everyone else, than like typical designers take that path.

9:02It was so different. I remember my mother-in-law was like, I want to get you a bag to like carry all your fabric samples and everything in. And I was like, what is she talking about? I didn't have a close. I was like, huh? I don't need that. yeah we would just go and figure out whatever had enough yardage for that room that we we knew what yardage we needed for a room if it was a solid or a repeat and we would go figure it out you know whatever was available yeah no often it would be like at these fabric stores that you know some of them it would be like they only have 14 yards left and we're like okay what can we cover it's that needs 14 yards and it's like oh that this this chair will work or you know it was like Like we'd like to make things work.

9:47And we still do to this day. I feel like that's kind of, we're almost happy when the contractor is like, guys, I'm sorry. We've run into something and like, we can't do it this way. And we're like, great, we'll find a new way. And it's going to be more interesting. Yeah, that's where you get like something that looks older or unintentional. Well, so help me understand that better. What this look is that you became known for? because, I mean, the media seems to want to put this granny chic label on it. No, it's just whatever yardage is available. It's really whatever was left on the bolt. That is the look.

10:28I think it's a nice mix of Emily and I coming together with our contrasting styles and being raised on different coasts. And I have the old southern feel, and Emily has a very fresh, like, you know, California Japanese feel. And it's like the marriage of all of those together feels, you know, it's such a wacky mixture, but it somehow seems to work and be harmonious. Yeah. Like Louisa and I really do love a lot of the same things, but we both have strongly different points of view. Like in the way that we dress, in the way that our houses look, I think Louisa leans more glam and Eileen more masculine.

11:10And so it is a part of having a partnership that's so nice because you get a balance. And how do you come to agreement on it? Because truthfully, my wife and I have different aesthetics and I haven't done a good job of coming to agreement about the whole thing. So how do you make that work and decide, okay, we're going in this direction? You got to just give each other wins. No, I think we trust each other so much. We really trust each other so much. But also it's what Louisa was saying before where like we find that the magic can come out of like not necessarily a mistake, but something that's not overly planned.

11:50We just found early on that like some mistakes aren't necessarily the end of the world. You can and also like there are quick fixes for things like paint a wall a crazy bold color because at the end of the day, the worst case scenario is that you repaint the wall. Wait, don't paint one wall though. Never an accent wall. Never one wall. an accent wall let's make that clear very clear but louisa and i were like would like would like actually paint something ourselves and fix it if we needed to and i think that's where having a partner is like the best because you're less scared to make a mistake in the very beginning we painted um the store that we were doing we painted the painter didn't show up we were doing this insane pattern and he didn't show up and i had a six month old baby they had taped it they had taped it out but then he didn't show up and we were like then the store opening was in like two days and we were like, we have to paint this floor.

12:40And I had a baby strapped to my front. I have a picture of it and a roller and we're painting the floor. Painting the floor. We will make it happen no matter what. Yeah. Because we always, always have had the mindset that like, we should take the chance. And if it's not right, we will fix it. We will take the money out of our pockets to fix it, but it's worth taking the risk. And that is easier to do as a team. Now, what's interesting to me, so we talk about Nashville and all this great stuff that's happening, but suddenly we leave Nashville. You both leave Nashville, right? Yeah, I left first.

13:14Yeah, once again, Emily leaves first. She's always leaving me. I was like, I'm going to go buy a house somewhere else. We got a job opportunity in LA and it was like a summer thing and we thought that would be really fun. We'll go to LA for the summer. I ended up staying because during that job I have a lot of friends in LA I'm from Southern California we started getting little jobs besides that one job that brought us out there so I ended up breaking up with my husband and thought I'll stay here and Louisa commuted heavily in the beginning like poor thing was really crazy like every two weeks were you coming to LA?

13:57It was insane. From Nashville. And I had a five-year-old and a two-year-old. And it was a lot. It was crazy. So that's where that happened. It just was like this one job and then these little side jobs that happened. Like we did a house for Colin and Sam Hanks. And then we like did a house for Aaron and Sam Taylor Johnson. And so they just kind of kept piling up. And we thought like, well, I should stay here because there's a lot of work here. You know, like in Nashville, we didn't end up doing that many more houses in Nashville after that, honestly. It was more LA, really, because it was really word of mouth.

14:34So once you did three houses in LA, it was like, there's a lot more opportunity here. And at one point, Louise, I assume you get sick and tired of that commute and you move yourself to - Well, that happened somewhere further away. I moved even further. That happened during COVID when it was just kind of madness. And my husband and I thought we were going to move to Whidbey Island. So we sold our house and bought land on Whidbey Island, which is a tiny little island off of Seattle. And we have cabins there where we go for the summer. So in the summer, when we made this decision, it was lovely. But then September rolled around.

15:12We're like, what have we done? We cannot live here full time. Then we actually tried out LA for a minute, but it just did not feel right for us. So we ended up driving, ended up in Birmingham, where my parents had just relocated from Nashville after we had moved. They were like, well, we're going to go back to Birmingham where I'm from. And so we showed up there and we somehow was just like, this, this is where we're supposed to be. But also like on the topic of partnerships, I think that in the end, it's probably for the best that Louisa doesn't live in LA because Because it's so special and exciting for us when we do get to see each other and we don't get burnout.

15:52And it's kind of fun. When we go away to work in New York or something, it's like a fun girls trip. But it's work. So it's fun. Well, I mean, so it's fascinating to me that you have made it work as well as you have being in such different places. And so it sounds like you meet up sometimes on different jobs in different locations. But a lot of it is just happening on Zoom and communicating remotely. Yes? Yeah, a lot of it. And then installs are like, you know, the pure magic, which is always usually together. The two of you together. And tell me about installs because lately I've been having a lot of conversations with designers that tell me, okay, so the first thing I tell the client is, no, no, you're not here.

16:41Oh, yeah. Right? Absolutely. I mean, that's always better just because, you know, like the first day of install is always very scary for everybody. It's like, especially the way that Louisa and I do it. Louisa and I, you know, we work in a variety of different ways. Sometimes a client has like so many beautiful things and we only get them pieces that they don't have like for their new house, let's say. So it's like big, big couches or a bed, or it's maybe like not the right color. Like we need to reframe their art and we add art in but what we do is we bring all of their stuff or all of our stuff and we have the major pieces planned but then the rest of it is like from our inventory from our warehouse of stuff that we've been collecting because we love to shop and we like to put it together like a tetris or like a puzzle in the end and that that is a big part of like what we think separates us maybe from other people i'm sure a lot of other people do this as well, but we find that that's the way that it feels less overly thought through and more collected over time.

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18:33Well, so interestingly, Emily, I'm so glad you said that because I've been thinking about this whole you buying all the stuff and warehouses. And if I understand, you have multiple warehouses now, right? And it's funny because business advisors will say, oh, no, don't do it that way. Make sure that everything you buy has some specific purpose and plan to it. But you've shown them with your own unique model of just, I mean, you tell me how you think about it. But it sounds like you shop and see things that you like and you're confident that you'll use them in a project somewhere. And it sounds like you've got a really good track record for making that work.

19:21So why wouldn't you believe it? It's interesting. We just did an install recently where we had the couch planned, we had the chairs planned, and we had three coffee table options. We ended up not using the couch or the chairs because size-wise, we're all kind of in the same region and everything on CAD looks okay. Feels like it works. But then it's just like the tone of the ivory and the rug that you end up using, it all can change. So for us, like we like having options and we know how to like make a lot of furniture work in a small space or any kind of space. So we know like just buy those chairs.

20:01They're going to go somewhere. They're so gorgeous. They need to be in this house, you know. Right. And we've honestly done that from the beginning. Even when our budgets were smaller, we would go. I can't tell the name of the store that we go to. It's our secret spot. But we would go to that store and buy. I know what store. I know you do. um and we would you know even back in the day we would buy have three coffee table options and then one coffee table ends up like layering under a console yeah like we would do you know or at the end of a bed you know that is like where we i think have some kind of magic connection is like in putting it together at the end i remember seeing on instagram some a designer i will not say at an install and they are like twiddling like with like spinning like fruit on the counter or doing something and like and then it says like what I do during the install and so I I could be wrong but I think a lot of designers aren't even like it's so pre-planned that they have people doing their installs for them but I don't want that to sound like we're bad-mouthing any other designers no no but it's yeah it's just it's just a very different approach and you're right and so often I feel like the rooms are very planned with a lot of designers and and they show up and they're executing that plan and then there's always something that didn't end up looking the way you thought it would or it needed more accessories or or perhaps a piece of fruit right on a surface but I think there are clients that like you know they need a designer that they can see every single thing like there's people that need that and I think people that hire us know that you know That's not how we work.

21:42It can't be that way. There has to be a level of trust. I mean, look at Emily's shelf behind her. Well, I didn't want to say, but yes, I mean. Well, so to that point, though, I mean, you were just saying, Emily, they have to trust us. I mean, do you think that they see your look, they see your style, they want that, and they do take this leap, right? You're going to make it happen. Yeah, it takes a specific kind of person. And we've kind of found that like a lot of artistic people hire us who are artists themselves and like know how to relinquish creative control. But I remember we were doing a job during COVID and that's when our book came out.

22:20And the client, like we were kind of going back and forth with mood boards. They were struggling to understand like the vision that we were trying to get across. And then we sent them a copy of the book right when it came out and they were like, nevermind, go. We love this. Do your thing. Whatever you do will be great. And like that was a client that ended up, you know, hiring us multiple times. And they were so happy because it is like something that needs to be put together mostly in the end. Like you're going to know what your big couch is, what your curtains are, what your bed looks like and like the general vibe.

22:55But really, a lot of it gets put together in the install. Well, and you mentioned the fact that you work with a lot of artistic clients. it seems like you're very tied in with a lot of musicians and Hollywood people. Is it very different working with fellow creative people versus working with, not to put down Wall Street financiers or some other group, but I mean, is it just a very different client interaction? So yes, we get hired by a lot of actors, a lot of directors, a lot of musicians, and those are all people who are like very used to working collaboratively and you know like directors we work with some amazing directors who like they like want to hire the best people to make their movie the best version so they're used to like having you know a production designer or set decorator and it's like it's easier for them to know the end goal um we've never really worked for a financier, but I would say that a lot of people who we work with who aren't necessarily in the entertainment industry, they somewhat are free-spirited or they don't only have one home.

24:13A famous rock star is probably not going to introduce us to someone who used to be the head of Lehman Brothers. Maybe, I don't know. So let's quickly talk about the firm that you have now built. So we've talked about this partnership. We've talked about the two of you being in different locations, despite not having a grand plan for we're going to build this great big design firm. Suddenly you have actually built this big design. We're like, well, how do we have this many people working up here? We will literally be like, we are not hiring any more people. And then two days later, we're like, we have to hire someone else.

24:49What are we going to do? In-house person to fix the furniture. We need an in-house person. We need an in-house upholsterer. We literally said that two days ago. Do you have all these in-house people that do all that stuff? We're in the process of hiring. Yes. Okay. So, I mean, it's somewhere around, you tell me, 22. 24. 24. Okay. Yeah. People. All right. Yeah. A lot of that, the design team is still relatively small. I think we are about seven, including ourselves. Okay. And then the rest, it's like store, warehouse, you know, buying department, all that kind of stuff. So at one point you wanted to have a store, if I remember, and then some people in your lives told you, no, no.

25:33Yeah. Before we even had an LLC, we were trying to name this store. And it was at one point called Tusk after a Fleetwood Mac song. And they were like, no, no, you're not. You're in no position to be opening a store. We considered naming our company Tusk when we first started. Instead of Pearson Ward, we were Tusk Design. Thank God. So you wanted to do a store, even before you were doing the design for you, you wanted to do a store. You were going to call it Tusk. How many times do we need to tell you how much we love to shop? Well, and was that part of it? Oh, sure. We should have a store because we love shopping.

26:10Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay. Luckily, there were some legal issues with Tusk and copyright issues. But also some people said, no, no, don't go open a store. Right? Yes, you can't open a store. These men in your life, I mean, they like poo-pooed the whole thing. I don't know. And then the first thing that you ever, like, Louisa, the first thing we ever bought that was like, she was in New Orleans. May or may not have had a cocktail or two and called me and she was like, are you okay with me buying a$5 ,000 gigantic chandelier that in order to get anywhere would need to be created? And I was like, absolutely.

26:48Love you. Bye. And then I think like three years later, it ended up in a house in LA. So the store got put on hold until when? So when does the store - Then after New Orleans and the beaded chandelier that Louisa had to buy, that's when we started going like, I'm going to buy like these two paintings and I'm going to buy this. And we kind of slowly started accumulating things, but then quickly dispersing them into homes. And then during COVID, I think it was like the idea of the store had never died. Like, I think, you know, that's and I have always wanted one. So it just felt like it was timing that was honestly, it was my husband that was like, OK, fine.

27:29You can open a store. You can do it now. He's our business manager. So we kind of, you know, he was like, you know, you know, it's like this makes sense. your established. Oh my God, he has a new nickname, Boston. His name is Austin, but he's in charge. But he finally thinks, okay, but now you've got an established firm, right? And so now it makes much more sense. And we were like, okay, yay. And I think I probably went and found the store like the next week. You absolutely did. Like Emily, if she has an idea in her head, it is going to happen no matter what, no matter what. She will make it happen.

28:05I do too. Sometimes I want to strangle her because of it because you know yeah because louisa doesn't love the beginning of a project no and i and i that's when i'm the most excited so i'm always like oh god this is exhausting and then like and i'm like up all night making a mood board getting like growing a budget yes oh she loves a budget jumping up and down with excitement yeah she loves doing a budget i mean who likes doing a budget i start the budgets carmen jean who's like our lead designer she helps me now but like we both have gotten so good at like we can make a budget very fast you know and the way we do a budget is like art and decor for a room is usually like the biggest number because you see how we design and and then and like you know curtains and rugs and those are like i know what it should be per room and then we give that to a client and then what we say is like are you happy with this general number and then we kind of end up allocating it a little differently depending like if we find a great 14 yards of fabric that's you know really inexpensive I mean you know sure so we found a place I think we started looking and we were like we wanted to be kind of like close to Nikki Kehoe and all those stores and sure um it was very like out of our price range at the time and I live in Atwater and a lot of our team lives on the east side of LA.

29:31So we started looking, found a little spot in Los Feliz on Hillhurst. And we were like, let's just do it. We're not biting off more than we can chew because it's a small space. And we made a small office in the back thinking that that's where we would work. That lasted about four days because we just outgrew it like really fast. It was a perfect location. There's like a really popular coffee shop nearby. There's a really popular restaurant nearby. So you get a lot of foot traffic and great clients who live in Los Feliz. And then, you know, that's sort of grown into like a lot of designers shopping there.

30:08We have the most amazing team that works in the store that are just unbelievable people and salesmen. And just, it's kind of just taken off. Although there are weeks that you feel like you're firefighting like in a circus, but that's just part of the job. You know, there's so many moving parts, especially with how many things we put in a house. Well, that's the thing, right? I mean, there's a lot of furniture and fabrics and, and right. And all of these things, I mean, the layers that you're putting in a house. I mean, I actually think that there are something on average of 90 packages being opened a day at each warehouse, which is a lot of packages.