The Thursday Show: Trump's tariff bombshell. Plus: A high-tech approach to sampling

26:52But the problem was it wasn't that good. So you'd have like a room that had a sofa and, you know, the link for the product would be an 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.

27:26And 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? I did. I fooled around with it right about the time that we were we were enjoying the ai slop story from pinterest and uh and saying to ourselves yes here's here's more of that very thing and as you say i mean and you and you point out in the article the the costs that would have been involved in in 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 at the time but it it is it is reassuring uh another point that you make in the article it is reassuring to designers that that think they're going to be replaced any moment by ai when you see some of these i get it inspirational images some of them are um not great not great well right i mean and it's funny you 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.

28:45You know, that is a very complicated technical challenge for a variety of reasons. And, you know, muse is 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, you know, what they came up with is more of like 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, you know, other images that the AI is scooped up. So you end up with like a lot of, you know, very, you know, basic looks, but I will say like, you know, it's easy to dog this kind of thing.

29:20But 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 know, depressing is maybe the word that we're trying to build an inspiration engine out of AI. Well, exactly. And I think our guests on the show today and some past guests that we've had on in talking about the inspirational role that AI plays.

30:02The truth is for designers, I don't know how inspiring some of those images will be. But as you say, perhaps for the Wayfair customer base, this will be a very helpful tool. 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. Yes. For her ongoing El Decor series, Rita explores what happens when designers become their own clients, a.k.a.

30:45when designers design their own homes. The analogy about the cobbler's children going shoeless, is that the old saying? Yes. Very much applies here. What did you make of the article? Really fun read. 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, is pretty much anyone. Selling herself short. But she said they're all more important than me. But but also fun to to hear some of the things that she did in her home that were the kinds of risks that she wishes clients would would take.

31:30But she has a hard time selling them on the idea. Yeah, I mean, I think like 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. Well, I think she really appreciated getting the feedback from her team.

31:58And 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 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.

33:00my old friend 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 that come up organically in conversation I just want to take you to my bedroom and show you something oh one more thing can I just lure you into my bedroom and show you how orderly my socks are kept. Yeah, no, it's funny. And, you know, it's interesting.

33:36I'm thinking of an article I read a couple of 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, you know, of course, it's expensive to redesign your own home, and people want to constantly be changing and updating their style, and that, you know, 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 like vendors to sponsor it because they were getting marketing out of it.

34:06So it was a very kind of clever way to sort of, you know, 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 think I I thought that was like a clever way to turn a money pit into a potential moneymaker. Well, it's why I think these designers own home issues are always so interesting. Eldecor just had theirs and there were some really fun projects in there. Jeffrey Allen Marks in the interview we did with him just recently talked about how for all the great many projects that he had published, people were always uniquely interested in his homes.

34:51and seeing what they were like and that that often got more attention. So, I mean, I think it's especially fun to 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 peaceful and calming. So that's fun when something that you try works.

35:30Eldecore needs to do an issue on designer sock drawers. I think that's where this is going. I 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 Gail Doby on how to make an exit plan for your business. and a look at Kravitz's new showroom strategy. We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break.

35:56Jaipur 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 at jaypoorliving.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.

36:42See Jamie's brightest new ideas in the Chelsea House showroom at 200 North Hamilton Street, April 24th through the 30th. All available at designer-friendly prices with no minimums required.

36:59And we're back. I'm joined now by Guy Elion, who is the founder of Matterboard. Guy, thank you so much for joining me. Dennis, it's great to be here. I'm excited to talk. 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 Matterboard came from. My name is Guy Adamadion, and I have been in the design world for two decades now, mostly working as an architect. And I started my career actually doing sort of boutique hotels on islands for wealthy individuals and celebrity retreats.

37:43And 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 designers 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.

38:36Some 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 you know corian composites you name it 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 imagine this little one imagine this little thing is the feature of your entire room.

39:15And 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. Okay, impossible challenges. But let's go back to the physical sample. So 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.

39:53We did that a 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.

40:33It 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, and 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 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.

41:32We 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. 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?

42:12And how have we progressed in that area? Okay. So you jumped into a very, very, very dark world of color theory very, very quickly. I'm sorry. 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 materials 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.

43:03So that's what we do 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 can 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 all the products in our studio 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.

44:03That's what we can give you. So Matterboard 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? 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.

44:40And 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 designer's 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-off using Matterboard. And that's great for them because they can just move forward with the process. Huge relief. Huge relief, right? So that means that the visualization gave the client in those instances, in those use cases, confidence.

45:18So I do think that the designers will order the physical sample. 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 being 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's like 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 I'm not sure about.

46:17And 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. 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?

47:04And what have you been learning about this whole process? 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 that we 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.

47:45We 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 MetaSkew 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.

48:28It 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 percent we now have a success rate of over 80 that means what goes in comes out 80 of the time ready for matterboard um with very little artist's interpretation so it's getting smarter but there are limitations like um 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. Okay. Because if you can crack the ivory boucle code, a whole world is going to open up for you, guy.

49:18Boucle is all the rage. So you need to get that online. One of the challenges, for example, 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 of all of these samples.

49:59And 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, right? Because it was just, at least on the residential design side, it was just too expensive and I get the complications. Well, it's also Christmas 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 serotonin. I'm like, cool, this is too easy. I'm just going to order a lot of stuff.

50:37Yes. And I don't think the responsibility should be put on the designer. I really don't. 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 and 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.

51:11Also, you know, 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 and act in seconds. So there's even greater urgency than 24 hours. 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.

52:11It's just an unbelievable entrepreneur. And the company is an unbelievable company, but behavior might be changing. Well, and I wonder, I mean, so since you mentioned Adam and knowing that, I'm sure he's fascinated by your company. Yeah, he loves technology. 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? I guess I'll put it this way. You know, we are hell-bent on creating this future for the industry.

52:58And so our single focus here is creating this category and being the company that does it. So that's our focus. 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 in a nutshell, just so we get a sense. So MetaBoard 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.

53:46So 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 libraries. So you can start to do that. And for teams, that's a$30 a seat or$300 a year for that seat.

54:34Otherwise, MetaBoard is absolutely free to use. 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 they're represented here. On the fundraising side, we were really lucky to have some industry giants join us, which is Masco Ventures. They own a whole conglomerate of brands, as well as Home Depot out of the US. And so we've got companies like BarePaint and Formica all joining us and a bunch of others.

55:20And for example, if we use Bare Paint, which is 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.

56:14So a single pixel of color just would never have done it. And what we worked with Bear 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 gloss as it is in a nutshell it's bouncing off differently so very very fascinating and i think that's part of the why it's been a compelling story for brands 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.

57:08Again, more on the specking 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? So we're in the early days of that, but it is starting to show some real value. And the way I liken this is if you think about songs, individual songs on CDs that set on shelves in record stores, we'd all go in, 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.

58:01But 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, a 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. A playlist is the same as a material sheet and preferred materials in a library.

58:42But 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 you know 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 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 and especially this basket analysis what's going well with what what a design is doing what interests them changes your whole marketing approach to your products and the the best part of all of this is that it 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 trends 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 a wallpapering or you know very sort of bespoke paint products.

59:48And we can offer them the same insights that we can the big guys. 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 think about it. So if we wind back to 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.

1:00:29It'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 what we're going to generate in our mind's eye. So that'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.

1:01:07if their product doesn't get on the board it doesn't get ordered doesn't get showed 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 to be like, do you want to try my product?

1:01:46They would pay someone if we let them to just stand there all day because it would increase their return on sampling investment. They send the sample. They want to 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, it increases your ROC, your return on sampling investment. This future does.

1:02:19Okay. 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 happening. 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 generally think that we've been the laggards of software.

1:03:06We'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 tools 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, pre-2025, we would have to draft to visualize our work.

1:03:51And what I mean by that is like 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. And once we get that 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.

1:04:28And 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 lifting CAD work and administrative work. So I think that designers 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.

1:05:02It's going to be amazing. 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. Thanks, Dennis. It's been a pleasure chatting.

1:05:29And 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? Elle Decor come out this week. So just last week, actually, we were talking about how Staline 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 going to butcher this name. I apologize. is Elisa Lipsky Karaz, I believe is her name. Used to be at Hearst a while back.

1:05:59Recently, 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 will be really interesting to see what's next for Eldecor, 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 Decor. 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.

1:06:32What caught you out of this week, 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.

1:07:20The 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 role as chairman of the Floss B &B 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 stables. So perhaps the LVMH of tabletop, Fred? I don't know. He stole the joke I was about to make. Maybe we'll get him back on the show. We'll see. Yeah, well, we wish him well, and hopefully he wants me to come visit him in Copenhagen.

1:08:05But 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 at businessofhome.com. If you want to get in touch with the show, write to us at podcast at businessofhome.com. This episode was produced by Fred Nikolaus and Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Have a great weekend, and we'll be back with you on Monday.