The Thursday Show: Should designers worry about Google's new AI tool? Plus: Urban Electric looks to cause a scene in New York

26:50And the irony is that many people who are American manufacturers are being hurt the most in some cases, and they wish that wasn't the case. We'll see a lot of things are going to be decided in the courts, it sounds like, very soon, and we'll see. But if it continues, it's going to reshape a lot of the industry in ways that we don't even fully understand yet. So we'll have to stay tuned on all of this. But I think it's great that we're hearing from a lot of different voices about it because this is certainly not a black and white issue. Moving on, we're going to talk about a hot take in the world of interiors, Fred.

27:31hot takes in the world of interiors been seeing a lot of those recently this week tony lou took aim at clickbait interior was writing that the language we use to talk about interiors stopped helping us get to grips with what we like and started flattening everything into a shorthand that is more about performing taste than understanding it dennis do you perform taste or understand it i've been guilty of performing taste every now and then I thought it was so interesting that it talked about, have we in fact lost our sense of what our true taste is because of all of this? And I do think that some of these key words and some of these other things that he raised are playing a part in that.

28:16But we should talk about who Tony Liu is and what he's really writing about here. Sure. Well, Tony Liu is the co-founder of an Instagram account called Diet Prada, which is a very influential account, actually, that talks about, I don't know, it's a little bit of a provocateur of the fashion industry. They post about dupes and labor practices, and they also post about the design industry a little bit as well. So that's kind of where he's coming from. And he was writing about how the basically the online discourse around interior design has gotten so reduced to hashtags and catchphrases. And, you know, the entire design media is all about trying to get you to click on grand millennial is over.

28:56Tomato girl summer is here. And he was talking about how like that kind of language really reduces these sprawling, complicated, you know, aesthetic movements into these little buzzwords and how that reduces our understanding and makes our own tastes a little bit dumber and more reductive. And so, you know, that was kind of his take. And I think that, you know, largely people seem to agree with it. I don't know. I didn't see a whole lot of people saying that this was wrong. No, I think I saw so many people saying, yes, we really need to talk about this. Yes, this is an issue. The ever thoughtful Brian Paquette very kindly wrote in to me and said that, yes, there's a lot to talk about here.

29:37But ultimately, listen, if you're spending all of your time on social media, if that's where you're getting all of your design influence, his advice is pick up an old book, for heaven's sakes, and get out there in the world. And I think that's what you hear from, honestly, so many people is find other sources, look in other places, and don't be stuck having the algorithms feed you what to be looking at and looking for and feeling and thinking about all of this. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. And I think that what Tony Liu is talking about in this article is something that maybe affects those of us who are extremely online more than it does others.

30:23I think this is something that like, you know, yes, if you sit there and kind of like let the algorithm wash over you and you're just like navigating all these buzzwords that are coming at you, then it starts to feel a little bit shallow. and so maybe this is more of a you know a cri de corps about stepping back from that than it is about changing you know the discourse of social media but on the other hand like it's almost naive to think we can get outside of that I mean that's Instagram is just where the design conversation happens I mean I do think people would be well served you know to read old books and maybe even read sub stacks if you can't quite manage a dusty old book but I do think that like Like Instagram is the, you know, it is the town square.

31:01So I think it's fair to talk about, you know, what the discourse is like on Instagram and to talk about whether it's problematic or not. I mean, to be fair, when I first saw this article, I was like, okay. And it fit into this bucket of this kind of article that comes up every now and then where it's, it seems like it's critiquing something, but really it's a take that everyone can agree with. It's like, oh, things used to be better before. Yeah, I agree. You know, everything looks the same now. Yep, sure does. You know, it's sort of this unspecific attack about how things are bad now. And my initial reaction was to be like, oh, this is just a clickbait article designed to get me to rag on clickbait interiors.

31:42And I think that was my initial reaction. But he's a very good writer. And I actually think he breaks down the issue very articulately. And I do think that there is something to be said for, you know, all of these buzzwords that we ourselves have been guilty of talking about here on the show are maybe a little stupid and maybe they are dumbing us all down a little bit. I just think it's if you're really out there in the world doing interior design professionally, you probably aren't paying that much attention to what the hashtags are below the images that you look at. I don't know. What do you think?

32:10Well, and it's interesting that the head of Instagram wants to tell us that hashtags don't have significance anymore. Obviously, they do. But I actually love that at least World of Interiors is raising some of these issues. We talked recently about the article that suggested we need more criticism, and you and I have been talking about that for a long time. And I'm all for that. And I'm all for thoughtful, well-written pieces that do make us sort of stand back and question some of what we get caught up in. And it's interesting hearing people's responses to it. And I'd like to have some more conversations with people about it.

32:48I do think his point about – and mid-century modern is a perfect example. That's such a broad descriptor. Yeah, it's become – it just means wood now. Yes, precisely. I mean, what does that really mean? And I didn't like Grand Millennial coming under attack there, Fred. And I felt like he was - I have to get Emma Bazillion on the line. I know, Emma, I mean, please. But on the one hand, I think it's great to be able to sort of help people have words that can lead them towards what they really feel. But I also think that so much of what seemed to come up for people is this, and we were having this conversation about fashion and home colliding.

33:30And many people feel like, well, no, home needs to be so much slower. Home needs to take so much more time. Home is so much more of a long-term investment and the project is never done. And I think I was talking to a designer the other day who was telling me about her home and talking about being almost done, but of course, never done. And I think that is such a big difference with home and fashion. So I like that that part of the conversation came out of this too. So I'm all for clickbaity, though it might be. I'm all for something that gets a whole bunch of people to kind of pour out their thoughts about them.

34:14And in some cases, I thought those thoughts were very good. One designer wrote in saying that, listen, the things we talk about that are timeless classics today were once trends. We weren't talking about them back then, Fred, but somebody might have been calling it out as a trend and now it's hung around. And so it's not a trend. It's a timeless classic. So there you go. I think just as someone who's written a fair share of clickbait in my life, I felt attacked. Maybe that's what this is boiling down to. Well, that I can understand, Fred. And as I say, I didn't like the way that perhaps you and Emma Bazillion were being called out here.

34:50So that I cannot support. All right. That's it for the news. But there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com, including advice from Sean Lowe on side hustles for designers and a report from the Design Fair Collectible. We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break.

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36:28And we're back. I'm joined now by the founder and CEO of Urban Electric, Dave Dawson. Dave, great to talk to you. Hey, Dennis. It's great to be here. Feels like it's been a little while. I know. It's been a while since we've had you on the show. I've missed you. I think it's been six or seven years. Have you missed me? Stop it. I've missed you terribly. Fortunately, I've gotten to see you in person a little bit, so it's helped to fill that void. But part of my preparation for this call, Dave, lest you think I don't prepare for these conversations. I went back and watched the YouTube video of the TED Talk that you gave.

37:06Oh, my goodness. Let's say it was 2013, I guess it was. A long time ago. Yeah, yeah. Yes, indeed. I had more dark hair, I think. And there was a young fellow who was talking about American manufacturing. And he was talking about being innovative and making people rethink offshoring and what American manufacturing could indeed do. And I was fascinated by how timely that conversation feels with everything going on today. I still believe the same thing I did back then, Dennis. I think it is American manufacturing. It's never been a better time, I think, to make product in the United States. I think there are some interesting headwinds, which we can probably talk about as of late.

37:54But I think as a strategic business model, I still – I mean, frankly, I've spent nearly a quarter century now focused on American manufacturing, thinking about the state of craft, how it works, when it doesn't work. And I continue to believe what I believed whenever that was, 12, 13 years ago, that it's a fantastic model. Let's tell people, not everyone might be familiar with Urban Electric and the company that you founded and have grown quite dramatically over the years. Give us the quick elevator pitch on Urban. Yeah, so Jen and I, my wife and I started the business in 2002, 2003 as a specialty lighting manufacturer making product in Charleston, South Carolina.

38:39We started out in a 500 square foot tiny little workshop. And over the years, we've grown the size of the room and the size of the team a little bit, but we're still doing exactly what we did almost 25 years ago, which is make high quality American made customizable product for the interior design and architecture industry. And so over the last years, our focus has been on getting better at that, continuing obviously to – and what I said in that TED Talk, I think the emphasis of that TED Talk was really about innovation, which what we've done over these last couple of decades is spend every day thinking about how we innovate small and large aspects of what we do.

39:23And I think that's such a crucial aspect of the sustainability of manufacturing is making sure that you stay relevant, your business model stays fresh, and friends, you just stay forward. You stay innovative. And so over the last couple of decades, that's what we've been doing. And we're still in Charleston, still making our product in Charleston. Now we've got about 350 folks on the team. We manufacture in two separate factories in Charleston, about 180 ,000 square feet. but essentially still doing the exact same thing we've been doing for all these years. I'm just coming off of a conversation I had yesterday with George Matouk, who had written an op-ed piece for the journal.

40:03Read it. Talking about, okay. So he's raising the issue of sort of the irony of some of these tariffs, which were designed to, in theory, help American manufacturers and bring manufacturing back. But part of the perhaps unintended consequence has been that so much of the materials cost, in his case, just about everything that is his product is coming from overseas. And I would imagine in your world, there's probably quite a few things that are also coming from overseas. Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, and I read that op-ed, and George is a good friend of mine, and I really admire and respect his business and what he's done.

40:41And I've been to his factory. I mean, it is much like Urban. It would be kind of the poster child of what American manufacturing is, can be, should be, all of that stuff. And I think he hit the nail on the head. I think this is a conversation, tariffs particularly, is a conversation that my peers and colleagues who also own manufacturing companies around the country were having this sort of the top of mind conversation this year. And you said it. And you would think that a company like Matuk, a company like Urban Electric, we would be ecstatic about the idea of protective policies for American manufacturing.

41:23The problem becomes that it's not quite so simple in a modern global supply chain. Yes, we make our product in Charleston, but we source component parts. We source raw material from all over the world. And the tariffs, I think they create kind of this unnecessary and really a self-imposed headwind on what is already – it's a difficult thing. It is not the path of least resistance to make any product in the United States. And most businesses who are making product in the United States are small. It's a struggle. And then what these tariffs have done is created a lot of disruption. obviously added cost and complication to the supply chain.

42:10My VP of supply, who is a brilliant guy, has been with me for a long time, did a masterful job with all of the chaos during COVID. He says he's almost done nothing else over the past six months, but try to dig through the ever-evolving, rapidly changing tariff landscape. Part of the problem that I see is that there's not a very clear policy intention or goal with it. It changes. Is it because we want to bring American manufacturing back? Is it because we want to exert better trade deals? Is it that we, you know, what is the policy? Because sometimes those things are at opposite ends. And one thing that George said in that op-ed I thought was really interesting was, and I think this is probably, I would say by and large, this sentiment is shared by everybody that I know who's trying to do the same things that we are doing.

43:07George said, it almost feels like we're being attacked by our own government. That is sort of a punitive policy. And I know that's not the intention. That I know is clearly not the case. But as you said, the unintended consequences of it is a lot of disruption, a lot of added cost. We bring in raw materials from Europe, from Asia, and component parts. And we've had situations where the tariff changed dramatically from the time we put it on the water to the time it landed in Long Beach. And that's just a very hard landscape to navigate. But unlike COVID, this one feels self-imposed. So it's definitely added some complication and challenge.

43:51There's no doubt. Yeah, no question. And as you were saying, the unpredictability of it all, as in a way, I mean, April, it was big announcement and these were the numbers. And then, oh, no, we're going to put that all on hold. And then we seem to make some agreements with different countries and we got some stability. Now, suddenly, a lower court has suggested that much of this is not even going to be viewed as legal. And the president has announced they're going to take it to the Supreme Court and we'll find out. And the problem with all of that back and forth, one problem with all of that back and forth, even apart from the day-to-day, how do I manage, what tariff am I paying, is that all of that back and forth creates no visibility for business owners.

44:40So I can tell you because we've done this personally, we've had to put millions of dollars into our manufacturing facilities in Charleston. if you're an owner of an American manufacturing company today, or you're thinking about manufacturing in the United States, are you at a point now where you're willing to commit the finances to invest in manufacturing when it could change? We could reach a new deal with China or the EU or the Supreme Court could overturn it. I think it has a lot of manufacturers essentially just kind of trying to, you know, sort of shoulder through it. But I don't know that it is changing people's investment decisions or strategies yet.

45:27And this is the thing, you know, and I've had long conversations with our supply team. We lost a huge, almost generation of craftsmanship in the United States. If you think back 30, 40 years ago, when people, maybe a little longer, when everybody was still going to shop class in high school and we had technical schools were really strong and parents were pushing their kids to get into manufacturing. It was a different environment. We've lost much of that. Along with that came this huge infrastructure of supply chain, domestic supply chain, that essentially over time starts to wither away. Other countries have built that.

46:04And so a lot of things are just frankly not available in the United States. I'm talking at either component parts or certain kind of semi-raw types of semi-processed type pieces. There's just not an infrastructure for those things in the United States. And it'll take a long time for them to come back with a very clearly stated intentional policy. If we said, this is what we really want to do, I could still see it taking 10 years. And in the meantime, you have a lot of small businesses who are going to really struggle to navigate this landscape. I hope over time the policy starts to shape a little bit and policymakers can see some of the unintended consequences and we'll get some relief.

46:49But in the meantime, it is for sure, I have this group of manufacturers that we get together regularly and it is absolutely perhaps topic number one. Even beyond the cost for, I could say, oh, let's see what the tariffs are going to cost Urban Electric. That's one added cost and complication to our business model. The bigger thing that I worry about is the ramifications in the macro environment. What does this do for investment generally? What does this do for stability and certainty in the larger economy? And how does that, what are the implications of that for the design field, for small manufacturers, that sort of thing?

47:29My sense was that many of those companies prior to all of this were doing rather well, yourself included. I mean – Yeah, and here's the thing I will say. For all of that sort of down talk, the downer talk about tariffs, we're having a fantastic year, Urban is. We just closed out our best month ever in the month of July, and August was right behind it. I mean it's been a very good year. So there's this bit of a duality to what we're looking at. We're hearing a lot of disruption and chaos. And at the same time, business has been strong. But you're always kind of wondering, when does the other shoe drop?

48:04For the makers generally that I speak with, they are also reporting something similar, which is there was this period, COVID was a big hit. Then it became a really big win for the interiors industry. Then there was a year or two where post-COVID got a little soft. Then over the last, let's say, year, 18 months, it started to kind of, you felt like the tracks were getting laid down again for a strong recovery. That seems to still be continuing with this asterisk about what the tariff policy is going to mean. So tariffs aside, what do you think is leading to business conditions being as strong as they are for you and for many of the companies that you speak with?

48:51I have to say part of it, I will say, I used to, especially when I first started out in business, I kind of felt like we were completely at the mercy of the macro environment. We just got bounced around based on whether it was a good economic time or bad. I feel like the longer we go and the more we refine our excellence and our approach to the market, we have a little bit more control over the types of results that we can see in good times and softer times. So some of this, I would say, for us has been just an excellent operation. I feel that way. But I do think that the economy continues to be fairly robust.

49:30Lately, you're seeing some weakness in the jobs numbers, but the stock market, which is a good indicator for a lot of our clients, continues to be strong. Obviously, there's talk of an interest rate cut that might put a little fuel to the economy. And there was, for a couple of years, there was a slowdown in demand, kind of a clog in the system because so many people during COVID started projects and they couldn't all get going. There weren't enough architects. There weren't enough builders. So there was this long lead time. Those projects are now – that pipeline is starting to get a little – starting to move, I feel like.

50:05And we're seeing a lot more projects. And the designers I'm talking to are seeing a lot more projects coming to fruition now. So all of those things, I think, might be contributing to why it's been a pretty robust year. And do you think that interest rate cuts? And we're talking on the morning that we just received an ADP employment report that was much weaker than people were anticipating. So I'm imagining a lot more fuel or ammunition for those who want to lower rates in September. The market seems to feel that that's already assured at this point. But I wonder if more rate cuts would more quickly follow based on employment looking weaker.

50:41Do you think that would have a meaningful impact on your business if rates came down by 50 basis points or a full percentage point? I think it could. And again, you are stretching the limits of my economics knowledge here, Dennis. But yes, I think it could. Absolutely. I think that would help the bigger economy. Most of our clients are probably not terribly sensitive to mortgage rates, but they certainly are. Plenty of them are. And also, even the ones that aren't are obviously impacted by the pace of investment, and that can be affected by interest rates. And obviously, we haven't had an interest rate cut in quite a while.

51:26I think the challenge that I see for the Fed is you have this – what I would think is an inflationary policy on the one hand of tariffs that is raising costs for businesses. If you lower interest rates, are you compounding the inflationary effects? And I think that's why they've been cautious. But I think I agree with you. It'll probably happen here shortly, and then we'll see. but I'm optimistic about it. I mean, I, again, the things that I try to stay focused on are the things that we can control, how our, how we work within the four walls of urban and our relationships with our clients and the types of products that we're putting out and what the design community, what the clients that we are with regularly, how they're feeling.

52:10And I like much like design, you know, American manufacturing. I think that it's a fantastic time to be in design. There's never been, if you think about it, there's so much visibility and adoption of good design. Even when I started 24 years ago, design was a little more – good design was a little more rare. We kind of forget that. Now it is top of mind for every homeowner, for every restaurant and hotel. They see it as a business imperative. Good design is a statement of good taste in your home. There's a social currency to it. It's a bit like fashion in a way. It's almost as much a signal as it is a product, as it is a practical component to it.

52:57It's a bit of a signal of your taste and your standing. And I think that's all really, really good for the design industry. And the designers that I talk to are getting, continue to get better jobs, bigger budgets, clients who care more about it. Maybe that's not always a good thing for designers when they've got clients who won't let everything go. But I think generally speaking, when you've got homeowners and restaurant owners and hotel owners that care so much about design and it is a big part of what they seek in their life, it can only be good for business. Well, it's interesting because the founder of Cabana wrote a piece for Business of Fashion just recently saying, you know, is home the new fashion with echoing many of the sentiments that you just expressed?

53:43And is this a new way for us to tell you a lot about yourself by what your home looks like and the pieces that you've chosen? And we've learned a lot more about design over the last 25 years, and we certainly see a lot more of it. And it's also very, very interwoven to the point of maybe to Martinez Mandadori's relation to fashion. It's very interwoven with the other aspects of luxury, whether that's fashion or automobiles or jewelry and watches and travel. These things are all very, very interrelated. And I think, again, if you think about it, that's probably also why I have seen so many, I'm sure you have, the baseline standard of taste in the decor of most specialty hospitality has never been higher.

54:34and because if you are in the hospitality business and you're catering to a certain crowd, you know at home they live with some beautiful things and some tastefully done, some stylized rooms and they expect that now when they travel as well. And so it just, it all interrelates and it tends to pervade all aspects, you know. What I wanted to get into, Dave, we talked earlier about innovation and I, as much as anything, see it as this unconventional approach that you've taken to how you think about showrooms, how you think about creating relationships with clients. The media landscape is very different today.

55:17And how to reach people and how to allocate budgets and print media got very expensive for a time. And so it was limiting from that perspective. And then print media got smaller and many suggested that perhaps it was less impactful than in the past. And so many companies started to think, well, we can create our own publication. We can do our own thing. And suddenly brochures or binders that we used to have suddenly became internal magazines. But what it made me think of was these niche publications, The current, for example, the parallel that I saw was something like the current where you referenced that some of these articles when you were on stage in L.A.

56:12recently, you were talking about the fact that you have the luxury of going 60, 70, 80 pages into a story. Right. Some of these articles are quite in-depth in a way. This Robert Keim piece, I mean, you tell me how many pages it was, but it's - About 75 pages. Exactly. Which is a little longer than your typical magazine article. Yes, and why I think you're right to call it the book because I think it really looks and feels like that. But it made me think that something like this today can only exist if there is some other business that is underwriting it and making it, right? Yeah, I mean, you're not wrong.

56:53I do think you're not wrong about that. I think we have a bit of a luxury because publishing is not our primary business, much like Frederick. And we drew a lot of inspiration from Schumacher and what Dara and Frederick have done, which I think is a beautiful publication, different than ours, but equally beautiful, because they kind of broke the ground with this a little bit. And how you could really, only to your point, if it's not your primary business model, it changes the dynamic and the economics quite a bit. For us, we looked at print, and you said it. I remember that I've been around long enough to have gone to clients' offices and swapped out the tear sheets in their notebook while I was there.

57:33Where print was such an important part of the practicality of transacting, and it's just not that way anymore. Obviously, all of that happens on the web. I mean, now our clients can configure and purchase their product on the web. And so the idea of putting out a catalog of products with specifications and things like that really doesn't make any sense. If you're going to do print, you should do print for what print is really uniquely good at and uniquely special. And that's why for us, when you sit with a book and hopefully with the current, you feel this way, you're sitting with something you want to kind of soak into and you can only experience it physically as you turn the pages.

58:15There's a tactile-ness to it. There's paper changes and emboss and deboss and textured papers. And these things can only happen in print. And then the things that can happen digitally, we want to do those digitally. And then combine those two things to make a really well-rounded storytelling effort. We're now taking stories that we've produced in the book. and we're doing a, I think, an incredible collaboration with Robert Ruffino, who I'm sure you know, who probably most of the industry knows. And we approached him about a year ago and asked him if he would be interested. And I don't know if everybody knows this about Robert because everybody knows him in his current career for the last however many decades as this incredible magazine stylist.

59:05But in his early years, he did window display at Henry Bendel and Tiffany's. And so we went to him and said, hey, would you be interested in going back to your early professional life and creating some windows inspired by the stories in this year's book? And we're installing them in four storefronts on 10th Street. We thankfully managed to talk some really fantastic stores into letting us take over the windows for a couple of weeks. So So, Maison Gerard is letting us take over both of their storefronts, Plain English and Nicky Kehoe. Todd and Amy have been good friends for a long, long time. And I think it's going to be a big party, much harder than we thought it would be in terms of the logistics of all of that.

59:57But really rewarding. There's a little bit of – I don't know if you know the London restaurateur, Jeremy King. He's a very famous restaurateur. I've admired his restaurants for a long time. I had a mutual friend recently introduce us, and I had a chance to sit down with him. And we were talking about these things, and he, I think, instantly latched on to what we were doing with the book and these types of projects. And he used the term creative altruism, which I thought was really fascinating. And obviously, these kinds of projects are not done for truly altruistic reasons. This is part of an overall business model, of course.

1:00:37But going back to that notion that people buy why you do something more than what it is itself, that people really respond to passion and what you care about, these kinds of projects give us an opportunity to express that in a way that is not purely transactional, in a way that is perhaps not transactional at all. It's really about celebrating our clients. You know, there's not just the stories in the book. We have dozens and dozens of installations of our clients' work in there as well. Beautiful work that we hope is inspiring to other clients, you know. and you hope that by putting that out there and trusting that it deepens the relationship with the client you don't have to then necessarily worry about a direct sale from that effort and we don't we try to not spend too much time thinking about what is the roi on the book in fact if i did i'd probably don't don't do that to yourself i'm not even gonna i'm not even gonna shut the whole operation down if you just not even gonna do it no no no yeah i started to no uh no because we we trust again it goes back to what we were talking about earlier which is at the core of everything we do is the relationship with the designer yeah no no i agree and and i think it's the opportunity to show that we're in a creative industry and that we are passionate about creating which is what I go back to when I think about your TED Talk and about the passion behind American manufacturing and that that is still so alive and well.

1:02:22Look at how I brought that full circle. Wow. Very good. You're actually kind of good at this, Dennis. You're pretty good at this. In the same way that we talk about the book and how we're passionate about the book itself and the stories that we're telling in the book, we're equally as passionate about the work and the craftsmanship that's being done in Charleston. One of our core values is passion. One of our six core values is passion. And we say we love what we do. We love who we are. We love what we represent. We love who we will become. And that really matters so much to the people that are in Charleston.

1:02:59It's just something that really moves me is the sustainability of American manufacturing and how that stays relevant. It's just one component of that overall piece. And I think it is, like I said earlier, it's as relevant or more relevant than ever and will continue to be. I agree. And I think a lot of the other big macro trends that we see happening, I think will make product from makers even more appreciated in the future. I very much believe that, which is why I'm so eager for some of the pressures to loosen up so that American manufacturers can thrive. Agreed. I agree. Yeah. Dave, it is a pleasure to get to spend time with you.

1:03:42I thank you so much for making the time. Always great to talk to you, Dennis.

1:03:50And we're back. We're getting to the end of the show here. But before we go, we'd like to take a second to highlight anything going on in the industry that might have caught our eye. Fred, what caught your eye? Once again, the media caught my eye, as it often does. This time it's good news, which is rare. Lila Allen, an editor formerly of AD, and she's been a bunch of different places, just started a new publication called Wrong House, which is based on Substack, which is, of course, very hot, as we've talked about many times on the podcast. But it's more than just a newsletter directly from her.

1:04:19She's got all kinds of great design writers. Diana Buds, I know this was in there. Sarah Archer had an article in the debut issue, and she describes it as design writing with guts, which of course I love. No clickbait, but I'm excited to check it out more and love to see what Lila's up to. So check out Wrong House if you get a minute. Also, I noticed that we have a new neighbor at 200 Lex. Business Home has its offices there. We are almost never there, but we do have offices there. And we have a new neighbor, which is Pookie, our friends at Pookie, just opened up next door. So excited to see that.

1:04:53Excited to go over there and hope, beg them for some free lamps. and I hope they're not doing too hard with the India tariffs because I know they manufacture a lot in India, so it's probably a weird time. But Pookie's a cool brand and it's cool to see it growing here in the U.S. Well, they were having a swinging party last night, Fred, and it's a good thing you weren't there because they overtook much of our office. So the catering was in our office and all of the gift bags as well. So I felt like we were in partnership for a few hours there, But nice to see that showroom finally completed. It's always stressful when you've got a date on the calendar for your party, and the showroom is still being worked on.

1:05:32But it's a fun showroom. I hope people will swing by and check it out, and then you'll discover that we're right next door. Design centers live. Dennis, what caught your eye this week? Well, a couple things caught my eye in addition to, as you were mentioning, Lila being on Substack. Another big name has joined Substack, and that's Colin King. He has a new substech called The Last Layer. You can subscribe right now while you're talking. Carry on. Exactly. Go ahead, Fred. Get on that one. And yeah, hopefully we'll have Colin on the show soon to talk about that. But I'm excited for him. I think there's a lot going on for Colin.

1:06:10So we're eager to get him back and catch us up. But can't help but feel that substech. It's a thing, Fred, right? I mean, who's been talking about that? It's almost like a couple years ago someone wrote a 6 ,000-word article about how Substack is going to be a big deal. Who has been talking about that? I don't know. Speaking of other big deals that we'd love to talk about on the show, I'm just going to tease this for next week because that's right. It's RH earnings time. So if you wonder why we're not talking about RH Paris and their big hot opening, yes, yes, we saw it. We saw it. We weren't there.

1:06:42But we will talk about it next week in the context of what are going to be some pretty big earnings because we're eager to hear how RH has been navigating all of the rough tariff waters. And we'll learn a lot more about that. Fred and I mentioned at the top of the show that we're going to be at What's New, What's Next next week. And then the following week, I'm actually going to be in Atlanta. So please come to ADAC and visit the Century Showroom the afternoon of the 24th. I will be sitting down with none other than Bobby McAlpine and Tara Shaw. So I am looking forward to that fun conversation.

1:07:23But as we were saying at the top of the show, we're going to be out and about a lot more. So look for that. Look for Fred and Dennis sightings out in the real world. It's exciting. Come give us an Alex Shuford style hug. Exactly. Take pity on us when you see us because you know it's not our normal environment. All right. That's all the time we have today. 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 at businessofhome.com. If you want to get in touch with the show, write to us at podcast at businessofhome.com.

1:07:58This episode was produced by Fred Nikolaus and Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Cacigneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Have a great weekend and we'll be back with you on Monday.