Here we are at the precipice in the United States. Despite rising cases and lockdowns in Europe, Americans are ever hopeful that we will be largely through the COVID crisis by Summer. Vaccines work, they are effective, prevent infection and are safe for kids and therapies are getting ever more powerful.
For creative business, we can feel it. Restoration Hardware — to me a bellwether for the power of high end interior design is booming, according to Gary Friedman, RH’s CEO, only Tesla has outperformed RH’s stock in the last 24 months. Venues are filling with events and we all stand ready to express ourselves again in ways that have been largely denied during COVID.
Then again, supply chain issues are very very real. Good luck getting anything from Europe and, as I predicted in Apriland what is playing out right now, suppliers are focusing on their core products to those that made sure they did everything when times were awful to stay on the top of the list. The difference in access and deliverability is staggering and will only get worse for the foreseeable future.
Here we are. The temptation to extrapolate the future with the burst of energy is the stuff of bubbles and fool’s gold. How to evaluate all that is in front of you? Will you chase the money? Will you reach for a new level?
My advice: double down on your culture and make sure that it is deeply entrenched in everything that you do. It boils down to three to five idiosyncratic words that mean everything to you, your art and your business. My favorite example: an interior designer in Michigan that grew up in a traditional Italian family where Sunday dinner was everything. Her three words — Family, Community and Love. She requires that she attend at least one family get together with her clients as part of her intake process. All of her employees are free to talk about their families and how they gather with clients, colleagues and partners alike. Literally, everything she does as a designer and a business can be related back to one or all of her three words. These three words are how she judges performance and acceptability. Oh she is enormously profitable but that is the side effect for her. Culture drives profits not the other way around.
All of which brings me to a conversation about TheExpert.com. Have a listen to this awesome podcast from Business At Home with the founders and Dennis Scully to get a feel for the business and what it is all about. Basically, it is talk to an ultra high end interior designer about your project for an hour, no strings attached. It is a very simple model, Zoom and a calendar app with a payment function grouping elite designers together for consumers to schedule. Hourly rates range from $500 to $2,500 an hour. The Expert takes a 20% fee. And no, there is nothing stopping any interior designer from doing the service on their own, and some have. But, according to the owners, there is a wait list of 600 designers trying to be on the site. Clearly, The Expert has struck a nerve and even though it only recently launched and was formed in April 2020 because of COVID, they have already raised $3 million (Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the investors).
What I love about the idea is that it absolutely validates the value of the mind of a designer. So long as it remains limited in scope — one or two sessions where clients take away the security of the professional opinion, we are all good. It will not stay there though, one session will become five and value pricing will ensue. Before you know it there will be a bunch of no man’s land where the difference between advice and the true journey of design will be blurred. And there is no leverage here. We are talking about Zoom and one-on-one interactions, not junior designers taking care of e-design. Of course, The Expert says they do not want to flood the site with designers and want to maintain the luxurious standard. Instead, the strategy is to focus on product selection and affiliate type relationships with providers. We will see.
To be plain, I am all for what The Expert is doing as a business. If they make it go, fantastic. They found lightining in a bottle and why not? My focus is on the designer who chooses to opt in as a path for her business. Does it fit culture? Does it offer opportunity to serve those who care the most? Is it sustainable?
I think that if the integrity of basically being a design therapist on The Expert can be sustained, then sure. But greed is a cruel mistress and session packages await. If this is the future for luxury designers, hard pass. There are better ways to be glorified product salespeople. Because it is so new, no designer has reached the confusion point where a core client can say, “what about me?”. That time is coming though and I am also confident that these designers will not have a great answer. Uh oh for them and the rest of the industry.
Please do not think that The Expert is limited to interior design. The success of The Expert means that you can count on it coming to your creative industry and it is not new. Everyone would love access to those who epitomize excellence. There will always be a market for it. And the real question is whether the consumer has earned the right to the expertise. If you flip the keys of a Ferrari to any enthusiastic teenager, they will jump at the chance to drive. Does not mean they should be able to.
The question is whether or not the culture behind you, your art and your creative business will bloom or erode in the effort. Let that be your barometer and not whether or not it is easy money, big money and/or a breeze to your ego. History has shown over and over again that vanity is its own folly. Learn the lesson and do better.
