The Thursday Show: Zoë Feldman is tackling the small-project dilemma. Plus: Should designers care about tariffs?

26:12And I think that that, you know, demonstrates, you know, when these brands are looking for, you know, someone to collaborate with. It's not just somebody that has a social media following. It's someone who has a social media following and the people who follow that person will spend money, you know, as part of their fandom of that designer. And I think Heidi is, you know, very much demonstrated that. I mean, the collection itself is also really nice. You know, it exemplifies Heidi's very unique look. She has a unique aesthetic. So it's cool to see this. And I'm sure it'll probably be the first of many for both sides of this equation.

26:43I think this was a smart move, smart rollout. We'll continue to watch it. But now, Fred, we've got to move on because it's the hot topic of cannabis decor that we're going to get into next. So you ready? Ready. For the New York Times last week, Matt Yan wrote about how cannabis paraphernalia is entering the world of high-end design with brands now elevating smoking devices to the level of decorative objects. Smoking devices. Exactly. Smoking devices. And the word bong and the word, yeah, I mean, there were, yeah, there's a lot of people just putting some smoking devices around. And apparently people are feeling a lot freer and more open to talking about it and displaying it.

27:31Have you seen that, Fred? I have seen it, but I should just let listeners know this entire, including this item in this podcast is just an excuse to get Dennis to say the word bong. So I'm glad we've ticked that box. And now we can move on. And I mean, in all seriousness, on some level, you know, this was a great article in the Times and there was a lot of like really beautiful objects. But I think like this is not really a new story. I mean, I feel like right when I started the business of home in 2018 or 2019, there was someone pitching me this idea of like, look, you know, like there's a lot more acceptance of marijuana now.

28:01It's legal in many swaths of the country. It's not some taboo subject. People with like great taste want to get high and they want to like, you know, bring those two things together. There's all these articles about how dispensaries are these very high design environments. And I don't think that this is really new. I mean, we were at Kips Bay last year and there was some stuff, right? Well, absolutely. I mean, I think in the in the and I can't remember whose room it was. Workshop APD, wasn't it? Was that what it was? OK, well, because there was Seth Rogen's his brand houseplant. He made this ashtray that actually quite a few people wrote to me and said that they had specified in projects.

28:41But yeah, I agree that it's definitely people are much more comfortable talking about it. I don't know if I'm seeing overwhelming signs of it showing up on the pages of shelter magazines, cannabis-related paraphernalia. But but a lot of designers spoke to the fact that they their clients talk to them about it much more certainly than they did in the past. Yeah, it's maybe not ending up on the cover of A.D., but it's like coming up in conversations. It's interesting, though, because even though there is this like broader social acceptance of it, I don't think, you know, there are these weird complications.

29:15I remember there was this one brand I wrote a profile on a few years ago called 40 Goods. And the idea behind it was that it was like lockable furniture where you could keep your stash. And it was sort of like high end and, you know, pretty nice furniture that was lockable where you kept your kept your edibles. And I think that like one of the one of the problems with it, though, that she encountered was that when it was advertised for that purpose, she kept getting like delisted from e-commerce websites or like Google wouldn't let her show ads because it was earmarked as like drug paraphernalia, which you're not allowed to sell online.

29:48And so it's sort of interesting, though, even though there is this broader social acceptance, there's all these obstacles that companies who want to capitalize on that face. And it still feels kind of like a gray market more than it does this thing that's really out in the open and accessible to all. I know you've had some of your own experience with the furniture designed around this purpose. Well, I mean, back in the day when I was at Avery Boardman, the son of the founder of Avery Boardman, was a pretty big fan of marijuana, actually. And he loved this idea of furniture with little built-in stash secret places.

30:23And we may have spent quite a bit of time for a few weeks trying to design some furniture pieces that had lots of places for you to hide your stash. But as you say, how commercially viable was that product? I'm not sure. It might have just been ahead of its time. Maybe now if we had rolled that out, it would have been different. But, you know, it's interesting, the issue around edibles, because a lot of designers wrote into me that funny enough, even though, and I think it was Christy Radjavec out of Atlanta said that, in fact, her client had the very pipe that was shown in the New York Times piece.

30:59And so, yes, she was familiar with that. But Naz Nazawa, who said that because she's in San Francisco, she's done a lot of spaces to get high in for clients, but that so many of her clients really just prefer edibles. And so you're not necessarily having an ashtray out. But I think that a lot of people are feeling a lot more comfortable talking about their gummies of choice these days that they're taking. Yeah, and it's funny you should mention the lack of commercial viability of furniture for this purpose, because 40 Goods very much transitioned out of being furniture for cannabis and more into just lockable furniture, whatever you want to put in there.

31:41So I should check on her and see how she's doing. Well, I mean, as I say, clearly it's an issue that people feel a lot more comfortable talking about, so maybe it will have a bigger impact in design. We'll see. All right, that's it for the news, but there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com, including an interview with supermodel Helena Christensen about her new role at Bow Concept and a roundup of the latest showroom openings. We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break.

32:12We're taking a quick break from the show to hear about Hector Finch's plans for the Kips Bay Decorators Showhouse in Palm Beach, which they're proud to sponsor this year. Visit the house February 22nd through March 16th and see their products installed in five rooms, the result of collaborating with designers throughout the house. If you're in town, be sure to also visit the Benjamin Peterson showroom at 1200 North Dixie Highway, Lake Worth, where you can see a wide range of fixtures from the Hector Finch collection. To register for Kipps Bay, visit kippsbaydecoratorshowhouse.org. And to see the Hector Finch collection online, visit HectorFinch.com.

32:53This season, Jaypoor Living introduces their new cozy collection of textured rugs. Bring warmth and style into the home with high-low depths, rich materials, and designs that never go out of style. Whether you're curling up with hot cocoa or sprucing up your space for spring, start with the rug. Start with Jaypoor Living. Visit jpoorliving.com to join their trade program and become part of the Jpoor Living family. And now, back to the show.

33:30And we're back. I'm joined now by interior designer Zoe Feldman. Zoe, so glad we are finally getting to have a conversation. I know. It's been years in the making. I know. It has. And so I'm glad you've got this new initiative, Demi, that you've been working on that we're going to talk about and tell people about because I've got lots of questions for you. But let's start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your firm, where you are, what your firm's size is, all that. Tell me. Okay, so my firm is called Zoe Feldman Design, and we are primarily based in Washington, D.C. We have an office, a small office in New York as well.

34:10In the DC office, we're about 25. And then in New York, it's three. But we just hired another woman who's on the Demi side of things in New York. So I guess it's now four. Okay. And then we have a couple of employees who work on Demi who are remote. So since we've mentioned Demi now several times, let's have you tell us what Demi is. And what I'm curious about is how long this has been in the works. And let's talk about what led up to this. Okay. So I have been working in full service design for 20 years. And during COVID, my husband, who's in finance, my husband and I started a startup. We were manufacturing a chair.

34:54We were attempting to manufacture a chair. Got it. Because there weren't enough of those out there. There's no chairs. So we're like, we need a chair. There's no chairs around. We need, okay. I love that. There's a hole in the market. Good for you. And so we raised our seed money. We learned a ton. We were working with these wonderful consultants who at some point, because of COVID, my business was growing so big that they're like, this feels like you don't have, why are you focusing on this random chair that has nothing to do with you? When you've got this great big interior design firm. Wait, what?

35:28It was like I had to pay someone a gazillion dollars to tell me that. But my husband, Matt, and I really learned how to work together. And I asked him if he would come on full time because my business is growing so big. And I, while wonderful at design, am not great when it comes to scaling businesses and understanding the financial component of things in a really deep way. And he agreed to come on as the CFO and president of the company. And so we did that. So then what happened is he started to evaluate the numbers. well the consultants were looking at it too so matt and the consultants are looking at it and they're kind of like whoa there's all this income that's you know unrealized income that you know that you can't take these clients because you've grown so big and maybe you can't take a project three hundred thousand dollars or six hundred thousand or these big numbers um so then matt and i were kind of like wait should we like start up this like figure out how to like capture this income because I've always been, A, interested in growing businesses.

36:27I'm obsessed with how to make things efficiency and how to do things better. And my brain just naturally works that way. So it was an exciting opportunity to look at the business differently. And then I also believe that good design should be more accessible. I've often said, I look at Europe where regardless of their budgets, they all have an understanding of good design. It's not quite embedded in our culture in the same way. And so I thought, oh, this is interesting. Instagram has shown people all this beauty and they want it. It's not just in the pages of these expressive, beautiful magazines.

37:04It's now kind of like, look, you can have this too, but then sort of like, how do we get this good design to them? Well, so let me ask you this, Zoe, before you go on, what was your husband, and I gather these consultants, what were they looking at that was showing them this missed business that you weren't taking on, these projects that were merely a few hundred thousand dollars? And had you yourself consciously made the decision, oh, our firm today only takes on projects that are a million dollars or something? Had you articulated something that was a cutoff point or a level that your business...

37:39So I'm curious how they were seeing the small projects that you weren't doing. So I was very much resisting that rhetoric because I've never liked the idea of we only take a million dollar project. First of all, I can't afford to design a million dollar project personally. I just felt like that can't be the only way to make clients happy and to make money and to do all the things. So we had never really had a hard rule like that, but it was just sort of getting there where because of how we approach full service and how much we do for clients and things, the numbers just couldn't add up if you weren't at a certain level.

38:11For the client, like it couldn't be like, oh, your whole budget is$300 ,000. Great. We'll take$150 ,000 of that to design and project management and you'll get$150 ,000 of product. Like that sucks. And those numbers just don't make sense for anyone. And I didn't really feel comfortable with those numbers. So we weren't able to take those projects. So what they looked at is they looked at intakes. When clients would express interest, they would be asked, like, what's your budget? And then we were looking at those numbers that were substantial, maybe everything 150 plus or something that seemed to me like a lot of money and going, oh, wow.

38:46And it was alarming how much money we were leaving on the table. Now, we weren't going to get all those projects. We weren't going to take all those projects. but it was just sort of this like zoomed out look at how much we were missing, potentially missing. And that was so exciting because I'd been desperate to do something. And here I wasn't allowed to do the chair anymore. So. Well, and why is running an interior design firm not fulfilling enough for you, Zoe Feldman? That's my question. This is an answer for a therapist, probably. And I've refused to do therapy in any sort of macro way. So we'll never know.

39:20Okay, so you spot the opportunity, you get excited because you think there's a new business that you can get into. And it sounds like husband Matt gets excited as well. And tell me how you go from there. Well, I think for Matt, to some degree, it was exciting because I brought him into an existing business that I think will never feel fully his, right? Because while I want it to feel his, and honestly, I credit him entirely for scaling my company. I mean, I couldn't have done it without him. Whereas Demi is something that is also his baby, and it's something that we can grow together. Okay. Now tell me very specifically, and let's talk about what Demi turns into.

39:57Okay, so we all know about e-design. That's been happening and it's been, I would say, only marginally successful, right? Like a lot of people have tried it. A lot of people haven't been able to pull it off. I think there've been a couple of companies who have done an okay job at it, but that isn't what we were trying to do. So we weren't trying to capture that market. That market is kind of there. Also, I do the expert, which I'm obsessed with. I have an amazing relationship with them and I get to service a client that is a bit more in that world. And so that sort of fulfilled. The expert fulfilled this like really light design for us.

40:28And then we had our full service and there was this huge, you know, empty part of the market that we couldn't get to. So we said, all right, what if it's attainable design, but it's not quite as simplistic as maybe traditional virtual and e-design is? It's a little leveled up so that we can still bring our design and our aesthetic to the project. And I looked at myself, actually, and I thought, okay, I would be a Demi client. I can thankfully afford some level of service. But I couldn't afford me at a full service, not even close. And what I would want and value is I'd value a person's style and taste.

41:14But I'd be willing to accept that I might have to meet the painter versus the designer. If it meant I could get a better designer and a better product, I'd be okay with having to do a little bit of the project management as long as I had the support of a firm. And the firm helping you to make decisions about furniture and fabric and all of that, is that what the Demi part would be? Yes. And also, we do still create the assets so that a person can properly project manage on their own. The way that we've constructed it is while you are primarily, you as the client, primarily doing the project management, we feel that we're so good at this that we have created a world where you feel incredibly supported because we've been beta testing this for, at this point, 18 to like 20 months.

42:09We've made certain that everybody working on Demi has either worked for me for a long period of time, has been properly trained, or they spend six months to a year in an apprenticeship working under somebody so that all of the designers that you get on the Demi side are well-trained, understand the Zoe Feldman aesthetic, understand more importantly, how client focused we are because to sometimes the detriment of the company or my husband's, he doesn't love it all the time, but we're very client focused. We're very like, oh, the client's right. We'll handle that. And we brought that to Demi also.

42:48I see. Okay. So sometimes you're writing checks for things that Matt says, boy, really? We have to cover that for that client? But you feel like the client needs that level of service and it's worth it in the end. Yeah. And I look at companies that I respect and have built really amazing businesses, like say Restoration Hardware or Waterworks are different companies that I feel aligned with from what appears to be like an ethos, a similar ethos. And oftentimes these companies understand that it's better to help a client now, even if it hurts a little bit in the moment to retain the business or get additional business.

43:28And it's not easy. A lot of people don't do it this way. And you're playing a little bit of Russian roulette sometimes. Let's walk through the exercise. So what did you decide in order to make this profitable for you? What was the minimum budget that somebody would need to be a customer for Demi? 50. So we have a starting out at 50. It's important that the client understands that we're a bit like a car starting off at 50 ,000 with the understanding that you will likely spend a bit more than that. You don't have to. We come in and we say, if you do exactly what we say and you add no bells and whistles, you can drive off the lot with this car and it's going to function.

44:08It's going to make you happy and it's going to heat you and it's going to do all the things. But if you want the sunroof and you want the leather, right? So it's a starting price of 50 ,000, which we're very comfortable with. That includes our design fee. And we've broken it down by room. This has worked so far. We imagine that it will evolve and things will change. People keep asking, can we just do a kitchen? Can we just do a bathroom? We will be able to just do a kitchen and just do a bathroom. We're just being careful at how we grow. I imagine that future us will when we have figured out, right?

44:42Because that's the thing about building a business, right? I mean, let's all remember that Amazon started as a bookstore. So you're Amazon now. Okay. I like this. I like your big thinking, Zoe. Yeah, we're big thinkers. So getting back to, okay, so let's just take$50 ,000 as our example. And I want to do my living room and I want to get some furniture and some window treatments and a few other things. Are you placing orders on my behalf? Are you giving me access to all of your trade resources and that's part of it? Or is it more you're using other kinds of resources where I'm going to be dealing with them directly?

45:19No, we do all the procurement. That stays actually exactly the same as how we do it in full service. We procure everything. We do not pass along discounts. We make money on product, which is one of the ways we can keep our design fee down. So we make money both in design fee and in product. Neither is egregious. And so this is how, because we play in both fields. And everything goes to receiving house just as it does with full service. Everything gets inspected. Everything gets installed on one day, one week, depending on how large the project. And at the moment in Demi, we do for local projects, meaning DC and New York City.

45:57At the moment, we are doing in-person installs. We are still beta testing, say, Miami or long distance where we don't necessarily have to go. This remains a question mark in my brain as to whether or not we can pull off an install and not have to be there, or if we can't maintain the quality without involving the install. What's really important is not just be able to give the information to whomever you need to, but you're also protected so that that information is written down and there's tons of redundancy. So if at any point the tile is installed incorrectly or the paint is painted incorrectly, we have many different versions and in different places to show that you said this color, not this color, or running bond, not straight, or whatever it is.

46:42And that's really important for clients so that they don't, you know, even if there's a mistake made and there will be mistakes made, you're protected as the client. Well, and you mentioned earlier as you were beta testing, and it sounds like you've been beta testing for 18, 20 months, yes? You discovered some of the pain points. So what were some of the pain points that have come up and how have you addressed them? I think a big pain point for people is there's an overwhelmingness to the experience of project managing. And so even if you give everyone an enormous map, right, and an enormous binder, and I use map, not actually a map, but some, you know, floor plans and finish schedules and a play-by-play of how this is going to go and questions to ask, because it's unfamiliar territory to people, there's still a level of unrest and uncomfortability.

47:37And so we learned that just having a few calls like leading up to or afterward to just do that like human moment with people makes people feel more comfortable. I think it's why I feel, you know, I mentioned to you when we were getting ready for the show that we're doing some AI training and I'm really excited about it because actually at the few future of home, I saw Martha Stewart there. And she mentioned being an early adopter to progress and tech and things like that. So I took a page out of that and I was like, we got to get into this AI thing. But one of the things I think that things like AI or when you're just giving assets to people in a very kind of just here you go and you don't have the human touch, people still feel confused and just like nervous.

48:23And when people are nervous, they mess up. So we just wanted to bring like the human element into it. And that's why I think that we've looked at like where people get nervous, where people feel confident. And we've dropped in like human moments into those spaces so that people are like, oh, OK, I just need to have like a 10 minute chat. I thought that's what it was. But OK, I feel better. Well, but so to that point, and I'm glad that you raised AI because I was curious if there were technological efficiencies that were helping to make a lot of this possible and control costs, but also just make the process go a little bit more easily.

49:03Tell me the role that AI or technology is playing. We don't know yet. We're having our training on Monday. Okay. And we're very excited about it at the moment. Okay. pretty analog and we're using AI chat GPT, you know, little bits that everybody's doing. But I imagine that now that it's being integrated into so many products that the way I understand it is it will become enormous. And I hope that it will mean that the human component can actually get deeper and not affect the margins. So right now, because humans have to do so much of this analog work that's just mundane and redundant and whatever, it takes away from our ability to design or do other things where we actually probably provide more value.

49:49How big a team have you dedicated to this initiative at the moment? It sounded like you've got some people who are working remotely in other places. And how are you thinking about the team and scaling? I think there's about eight people right now working on Demi. we imagine that there will always be people apprenticing because we believe that they shouldn't have their own projects until they're dripping in how we do things. They really understand it frontward and backward because it's not just from an aesthetic space and it is that, but also the way that we value customers, the way that we approach business.

50:29That's going to take time. Sometimes there will be a one-person team and oftentimes there will be two-person teams. We do have a few people on full service who act as design directors and kind of work in both spaces right now. I also, I'm like the chief creative officer of Demi. Then we have two design directors on full service who work in and help with the design on that. We have some wonderful more senior designers. And then we have a bunch of like junior or a few junior design assistants or mostly junior designers. We are also working out, we just started Design Pods. Because I believe in the art of collaboration.

51:10What are design pods? So if people are going to work in silo and be remote, that panics me. So we're clustering them into like four or five person pods that meet weekly to talk about lessons learned or problems they're having. Or just to be able to be like, what do you guys like, blue or green? You know, and all of that. And then they're part of a team. And they will have a Slack channel that they can constantly be also accessing. And so it's just like the, I think the art of collaboration is just massive in everything, not just design. When you talk about the difference between Demi and full service, we've talked obviously about the scale of the project and the budget and all of that is a clear distinction.

51:52And the Demi customer has to be willing to take on some of the project management part. But also I'm wondering how else you think about distinguishing it. And are you thinking about Demi as part of your firm or a separate standalone company? Does it become this whole separate design firm on its own that just takes on a different scale and level of project? How are you thinking about it at this point? I know it's early. I think at the moment, Demi is a part of our firm, but I think it's pretty obvious that Demi will have its own legs and be its own company at one point. We're growing it as a startup under the umbrella of Zoe Feldman.

52:33I don't imagine it will ever lose that branding and not be a part of us, but it will be an entirely, I think, separate. It is already an entirely separate service, but it will likely be an entirely separate company at some point. Well, I'm curious because in a way, I mean, I can't help but think about HomePolish, for example. Yeah. Right? And back in the day, and again, for all the things that went so terribly wrong at HomePolish, There was a time when home polish was great. And it was just as you were describing, you know, this client who had a limited budget and you could buy 10 hours and you could you could start a project.

53:13And in many cases, they would come to your home or whatever. And I mean, there were a lot of elements of that that sound similar here. Yes. Gosh, should that be terrifying? Well, listen, I mean, always, always keep in mind what happened. Right. And whether you think in the end it grew too quickly or venture capital forced too much change or people just got ahead of themselves. Yeah, I think things grow too quickly. I also think that venture capitals put guns to your head and all of a sudden you have to make a gazillion dollars. We don't ever plan to do any of that. So this is why right now we're not doing certain things, even though future us likely will.

53:53Because we have to grow slowly to maintain the brand, to maintain the quality. We already know historical reference tells us that growing too fast can be one of the hardest things in a business. So even though there's such a desire to do that, it's so exciting and enticing, we don't plan to do that. I think we're learning from the mistakes of others. And all that to say, there's plenty of businesses who have grown slowly and have maintained their brand and their quality. It's a great point. I mean, and you mentioned the expert earlier and I want to talk about that, but I'm curious, tell me a little bit about the Demi onboarding.

54:32So let's say I've got$75 ,000 and I want to do my living room and am I, are we hopping on a Zoom call? Are we, I mean, I filled out some intake form, I'm assuming, telling you what I've got going on. How does this get rolling? If you're in DC or you're in New York, we'll do an in-person. Okay. We then move into a virtual experience where we're going, we're sending you a quiz. We are developing concepts for you, seeing how you're feeling about them. We're doing space plans, but it all moves into a virtual experience from there. And we try to keep it as virtual as possible because we think in order to grow, that's one of the differentiating components.

55:17We also do believe that the world, as horrible as COVID was, it did usher in our ability to be virtual and not be so afraid of it. So we're taking advantage of that. But yeah, that's how we sort of get rolling. And we're just doing a lot of visual play, space plans, budgets. We do that. Those are our first things. Okay, okay. Well, and I'm curious because you have been on The Expert for a while and I'm curious - I'm the number one Northeast expert Can we mention that? So with that in mind, I'm curious. First of all, I'm curious as to who is coming to you on The Expert because I'm endlessly fascinated by the stories that I hear from designers on The Expert who tell me, oh my gosh, they come with plans, they come with all these things, or they want all this help.

56:09I mean, tell me what it's been like for you. Oh, it's amazing. I mean, it's so fun because as a designer, you're so used to homework. and with the expert you have none and so you just get to hyper focus for 55 minutes do your best work immerse yourself into a project and then eject and then you might hear from them again we often will talk to people more than one time which is really nice because you get to see the project you know unfold right we're talking to people a lot about layout about paint about wallpaper selection kind of overall concept but it tends to be pretty hyper focused into a living room.

56:44I had one yesterday and we did mostly paint. We went through the home and talked about how to, about the color story, a little bit on layout and living room. But that was really it. I mean, it's 55 minutes. It's long enough to get something really good out of it for sure. But sometimes the reason we'll do more than one is because I'll ask them to get samples and then call me back when they have the samples. And then we do the second one with the samples so we can actually select. Well, and I'm, and I'm curious if now that, now that we've got Demi, is there an opportunity on a call? Hey, you want to continue this conversation or, Hey, it sounds like you really have a project here.

57:24Let me tell you about this new service we've got. And can it, can it turn into that? Yes. Occasionally. And by the way, I asked the expert their blessing because they're good friends of mine. Leo is a friend of mine and I'm a fan. Yeah. So like, it was sort of like I didn't want them to think that it's a very different service. Occasionally when I'm on an expert call, I'll realize, is this something you've been interested in taking further? Are you looking for more of like a full service experience? And they'll say, yeah, but like I can't afford you. And then I'll say, no, you can. And here's how.

57:55Maybe that happens 10 % of the time. A lot of the times, it's just not what the people are looking for. They don't want to go any further. They just want a quick, they're pretty far along. They just want to make sure that things they picked are okay or, you know. So the expert, like I said, is, you know, we now have basically three tiers and the expert fills a hole that's exciting for me because, like I said in the beginning, I really like to get good design into more people's homes. And so it's fun. And usually the people are just like real stoked to be like having this moment. They're like, yay, I'm obsessed with your design.

58:31This is so exciting. And, you know, you're like, oh, good. This is so exciting. They're so excited. I'm excited. Let's go. Well, that makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned RH earlier. Do you use a lot of RH in projects? I don't even know these days if that's a lower price point necessarily, but maybe it helps at certain tiers. You tell me. I don't think we use a ton of RH because we don't get a big discount there. But I look to RH as an example of a company that I think has serviced their clients well. RH historically has been wonderful about like taking product back and not making a fuss over things.

59:09And from where I stand, that has served them well. And so we have taken some of that ethos and embedded it into Demi. I once read a Richard Branson book, and he talked about his journey from a young boy to now. And he talked about how he's never necessarily been obsessed with airplanes or music, but that what he's been consistently obsessed with has been creating a fun experience for people. And he's taken that to all of his ventures. And that really resonated with me. and I've taken that to my ventures. I'm like, okay, this is design. It happens to be design. But that's not the only thing we're providing.

1:00:01We're really trying to provide an amazing customer experience. And that could be for anything. And I feel that if we don't do that for Demi, then regardless of what happens, we will have failed. Well, so stay tuned. But I'm thrilled that you could take us through it. And now I understand it much better. But I so appreciate you making the time to talk with me. You're the best. Thanks, Dennis.

1:00:31And 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? $10 million caught my eye this week, Dennis. It's the amount of money raised by a company called Canvas. probably a little bit under the radar for most interior designers but what canvas does is they make software that goes on an iphone that allows you to make a three well actually some designers do use it to be to be to be clear it's a software for an iphone or any other phone really that has a lidar scanner that allows you to sort of take a 3d scan of a room and turn it into a cad model um i just thought it was interesting just because like there's not there hasn't been that much big funding announcements over the past year in the home world you know all of the money has just been plowed into like AI companies and no one wants to hear like 10,$20 million for an e-design startup or for an e-commerce venture.

1:01:23So I just thought it was interesting because it was the first fundraise I'd seen in a minute. But I also think in a way it actually does kind of tie into the AI thing because I think that, you know, there's all these new, you know, next generation companies that are going to try and use AI to do e-design or just design in general. And they're going to need some sort of interface between how you get the, you know, the shape of your room into your phone so AI can work its magic on it. And I think that's where Canvas comes in. And so I think you have companies like Isla Porter. I don't know if they specifically use Canvas, but they need technology like that.

1:01:52So I think that's stuff that is like AI adjacent is making money right now. And that certainly caught my eye. Had you heard of Canvas before, Dennis? Well, we had heard of it. And I was glad. I think you and I talked about the fact that there haven't been a lot of funding round announcements in our space. So I was happy to see that. And I hope that we'll learn more. What caught you right this week, Dennis? Well, one of the many shows that you and I don't get to go to is the Nashville Antique and Garden Show, which just happened recently. And a lot of people that we've talked to in the past were there.

1:02:26Rita Koenig and Veer Grenny were on a panel I saw with Derek Ebenigro. And a designer put up a post and referenced my recent conversation, actually, with Rita Koenig, where Rita talked about dealers and how dealers are just great people and they're so interesting and you learn so much from them. And there are a lot of just great antique dealers that participate in the Nashville Antique and Garden Show. She called out a few of them, Tucker Payne and Kenny Ball and some others. And so many designers tell me how much they have learned from great antique dealers and vintage dealers. And it really makes me eager to try and find some good dealers to have on the show and really have an interesting conversation about how the industry has evolved and changed and really share some of the vast knowledge that dealers have.

1:03:25But it's one of those shows that I think designers really get a lot out of is the Nashville Antique and Garden show. And so I was so pleased that there was a shout out to a bunch of the dealers there. Is this just like a come and get me plea for an invitation to the next one, Dennis? Well, you know, I'd love to hear from people who they think a great conversation would be. Certainly, I would love to participate in Nashville. Any excuse to get to that? But more, it was I'd love to have some fun conversations with people. So if people have thoughts about who some great dealers for me to talk to would be, I would love to hear.

1:04:02So by all means, let me know. 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. 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.