The Chaise Lounge Podcast

Today on The Chaise Lounge, Nick chats with Michael Stornello and Tom Konopiots, the couple behind Chicago’s Vincere, LTD. Both men started their adult lives in very different careers. Stornello was executive vice president of development at the company that would become CBS Television Distribution, and Konopiots was CEO and COO respectively of two different futures trading companies. At one point, Stornello was living his work week in L.A. and commuting back to Chicago to spend weekends with Konopiots. All the while they’d both become master decorators in their own homes, moving in, remodeling the place and eventually moving back out. So, in 2007, Stornello started Vincere, and three years later Konopiots joined him to become full-time business partners.

Welcome to the road to High Point Market on the Chaise Lounge. This week, Nick hosts two guests: Jane Dagmi, editor-in-chief of Designers Today, and Shayla Copas of Shayla Copas Interiors. Both guests are gearing up for High Point Market, and Nick learns all about their plans for that huge weekend.

On this Tuesday edition of the Chaise Lounge, Nick’s guest is author/influencer/designer Erin Gates, the woman behind Elements of Style. She grew up in her family’s clothing store around women’s fashion and her architecture-inclined father’s architecture business, so, after graduating college with a degree in collage, she found a way to synthesize those influences into a career designing interiors

Welcome to the Chaise Lounge. This Friday, Nick chats with Michele Atijas and Amber Friederichs of the London-based home staging company Yohan May Interiors. In 2015, Atijas and Friederichs were friends who weren’t working in jobs that fed their passion for design, so they started a business together in a niche of the market that didn’t really exist in Europe. Home staging was a tiny part of the interior design industry in Britain compared to the United States, so they worked to find and fill that need.

In the Lounge today, Nina Magon joins Nick to regale him with the story of how her designs attracted Universal Furniture to license a whole line of furniture of hers. She takes Nick through the very beginning of the process and what sparked the initial deal to the line’s launch at High Point Market next month.

Welcome back to the Chaise Lounge where Nick is trying something he’s never done before: talking to a designer who didn’t start the company he helps run. Jason Kalman is a Los Angeles-based designer who found his way to the top of Magni Kalman Designs by working his way up to the position of partner instead of starting from scratch. Magni Kalman also lends its name and aesthetic to a furniture line, Magni Home Collection.

Welcome back to the Chaise Lounge. Today, Lauren Svenstrup of Studio Sven is in the Lounge. Svenstrup tells Nick all about her circuitous route from studying woodworking in Michigan’s upper peninsula to interior design in the first place and through interior design to running her own company.

On this Friday’s episode of The Chaise Lounge, Charlotte-based designer Lauren Clement who grew up watching her mother make a living decorating. When she found herself at a crossroads after a serious car accident, grad school or follow her passion into interior design. She chose the latter, and currently runs Lauren Nicole Designs where she and her mother work on a dozen projects at a time with only the help of a bookkeeper.

Today, in the Lounge, Nick hosts a different kind of designer, event designer David Stark who works on interiors as well as anything that’s supposed to be happening at a client’s wedding, bat mitzvah or pop-up. This episode also features Farah Merhi, the woman behind Inspire Me! Home Decor, the interior design Instagram with 5.5 million followers.

Any designers, architects or students of either discipline in the western United States should look out for the 2019 ANDYZ Awards. If there’s a project that people in the industry should see, this is a great way to show it.

Today, Nick welcomes a special guest to The Chaise Lounge: Jaye Anna Mize vice president of creative for home interiors at Fashion Snoops. She’s returning to the show and will return again to chat about trends in interior designs, what to look for on the horizon and why clients seem to want what they want.