Window Treatment Marketing Pros

Guest Profile: Gavin Gray

Gavin is CEO of Louvolite, a fully vertically integrated manufacturer of window covering components, fabrics and shutters. He joined Louvolite as Operations Director in 2021 and was appointed CEO in January 2023. Gavin brings a track record of leadership across manufacturing and Oil & Gas, including as Managing Director of Stevens Ltd, a Hunter Douglas-owned window shading manufacturer, and senior roles at Emerson Process Management. He is known for collaborative, results-driven leadership and a hands-on approach to operational and strategic growth.

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Gavin Gray | CEO, Louvolite
Louvolite Website: https://www.louvolite.com/
North American Sales: [email protected]
Louvolite North America: Apopka, Florida

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November 3–5, 2026
Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida

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TRANSCRIPT

Will (00:00)
Most of the blinds sold in this country were designed by someone who never touched the material, never cut the tooling, and never met the shop that installs them. My guest today runs a company that does all three. I’m Will Hanke, and this is Marketing Panes Podcast. Gavin Gray is the CEO of Louvolite 50 years out of Cheshire, England.

making components and fabrics for rollerblinds and doing almost all of it under their own roof. Now they’re planting a bigger flag in North America in the Orlando area. So we’re going to talk about what it that actually buys you. Lead times you can promise, products that move faster from idea to order, and sustainability claims you can repeat to a homeowner without crossing your fingers. Gavin, welcome to the show.

Gavin Gray (00:46)
Thank you very much for having me.

Will (00:48)
Yeah, appreciate you jumping on. So for anyone who doesn’t know Louvolite, give us the short version who you are and what you guys make.

Gavin Gray (00:56)
Right, so we are a manufacturing business. Manufacturing for us means coating and processing of window shade fabrics of all sorts. It means injection molding components for window shades. means steel pressing of brackets. It means powder coating. It means extrusion and extrusion of polymers in particular. And we

We use all those processes to manufacture our products, which are components and fabrics for the global window shading industry.

Will (01:28)
Okay. You’ve got quite an operation. I know that it started as a small operation more than five decades ago. What did you guys get right early on that kept it going?

Gavin Gray (01:39)
Well, you’re right, was more than, it’s 55 years ago now. I think the one thing that our founder got right was taking control of everything. And he did it really early on. He started off making vertical blinds in a small room above a butcher shop here just outside Manchester. And he found very quickly that he wasn’t able to get the right

quality of components with the right repeatable level of supply and he, he’s sadly no longer with us but his whole mindset was, well if someone else can’t do it to my standards, I’ll do it myself. And that was such a huge decision that was made all those years ago that is just, know, sown into the fabric of our company even today. We still live and breathe that and I think that

That’s probably the biggest decision that’s gotten us here today.

Will (02:32)
Yeah, that’s pretty smart to to be able to control the whole process as much as you can, right?

Gavin Gray (02:38)
Right, right, that’s what

Will (02:39)
Very good.

Gavin Gray (02:40)
we try and do right up and down and side to side, right through our business really.

Will (02:45)
Yeah. So you personally came into this after a career in manufacturing. So what made Louvolite worth that move?

Gavin Gray (02:53)
Well, my career actually was in the oil and gas industry. I was an engineer, then moving into operations. And it was actually nothing to do well with manufacturing that took me out of that

Will (03:09)
Okay.

Gavin Gray (03:09)
and into window shading. It was more a desire to work in a business where I could directly influence the success of

of the business. And that’s what took me out of oil and gas where I worked for an enormous diversified Fortune 500 company into a blind making business in Scotland where we were delivering 400 blinds every day. And Louvolite was a key supplier to that business.

A good few years later, I found my way to Louvolite and really that was a culmination of that search to find my place in a business where people at every level can have a direct influence on the success of the business. that, again, that’s brought about by the control that we have in our business.

Will (03:56)
Yeah, that’s great. So I wanna I wanna talk a little bit about vertical integration. Now everybody says vertically integrated. Louvolite takes that further than most. What does that actually mean inside your business?

Gavin Gray (04:08)
Well, I like to joke that when we need a hole digging in the car park, we go out and dig a hole. If we grow and we go from 300 staff to 400 staff and we need some more toilets, we make the toilets ourselves. really, those

Will (04:24)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (04:26)
are real examples of how far we take being in control of everything that we do.

but I know that’s not what you’re asking me. You’re asking me about the products and the process. we design the product from concept and that might come out of a particular problem that we see or that our customers have shared with us, or it might be some new legislation, thinking around child safety, or it might be new technology that we’ve seen out there in the wider world that we think we can apply to the window shading industry. And we take that concept

We have a team here of product design engineers. They develop a number of possible high level designs. We then narrow those down. We then design for manufacture. And then if you think back to those processes that I talked about just five minutes or so ago, injection molding, steel pressing, polymer extrusion, those are all done with manufacturing tools.

that are made in a heavy engineering environment. So the next stage for us is that we actually design and manufacture those tools here in Manchester. So we have a team of around about 15 engineers using five axis CNC machines, wire eroding machines, wire erosion as a process.

we use an electrode and a very fine wire to cut away intricate detail and tool grade steel. We even manufacture the electrodes to go in the machine to wire out the intricate parts of our tools. And then once we have those tools, we place them into manufacture. The factory is ours. In this instance, we mold all of those individual parts.

Then they’re assembled in our factory here in Manchester, using automation predominantly. And then they’re placed into stock and we distribute them ourselves as well. So we’re as vertically integrated as I think we could be. There are some things, there are some really dirty processes like aluminium extrusion, for example.

We don’t carry that out here. That’s a different game altogether. But we do still design the tools. We do still help make the tools. And we do maintain the tools. And then we have full control over the quality of all of that. So really, we’re about as vertically integrated as we could possibly be.

Will (06:59)
So it sounds like you guys control most of everything. So for the end dealer, where do they feel that difference?

Gavin Gray (07:06)
Well, they feel it in the repeatability of the supply. They can have full confidence that when they make the decision to adopt Louvolite fabrics or hardware as the basis of their product offering, then they know and they can have complete confidence that next year, 5 years, 10 years, we’re going to be replicating that original quality.

And because we manufacture each individual part in-house and we maintain all of these tools as well. So every time, let’s take an end cap for a roller shade hem bar. So that’s something that’s not dimensionally critical to the operation of a shade, but it doesn’t matter to us. When that tool comes off the mold machine,

We’re going inspect that. We’re going to maintain it. And we’re going to make sure that everything is within tolerance. And that’s how we make sure that, you know, end caps don’t fall out because over time the tool is worn and we get to the bottom end of tolerance and all those things. So we have complete repeatability, but also we can carry out our quality checks on each individual part, not the assembly.

So a lot of the product that finds its way into the market, whether that’s on the fabric side or the hardware side, it’s finished. We carry out our QC procedures on every single part or stage before it even gets to assembly. that can really, really be felt by, you know, it’s felt by the consumer.

If it’s a manually operated shade, if it’s on a spring or if it’s chain control, then they feel the quality every single time they operate that shade. the trade can see it in their own way and installers see it in their own way when they carry out their work. So really it’s a benefit to everybody.

Will (09:05)
Yeah. Yeah. So for a dealer who’s maybe thinking about changing suppliers or or just in between suppliers, what is something that a dealer should be asking about how a product is made?

Gavin Gray (09:17)
I think it’s all in that repeatability, Will. What are the controls? How do I know that the products I’m installing this week are great when I get started and I’m doing my own testing before I’m comfortable putting my name against this product in my local market? How do I know that when I make that change and I change my systems, whether that’s a coating system or…

a manufacturing system or it’s a point of sale, if I’m going to make all of that investment and changing, how do I know that next month and six months and one year later, I’m still going to be happy putting my name to all of that? I think that’s what they need to be asking is, do you have the repeatability? If I have suggestions for improvements,

Are you going to listen to me? Are you going to be able to have the flexibility in your business and your design of your products to be able to accommodate something that I might want and my buddies from this forum that we have here or these guys that I met at the last trade show, we all got together and we agree that we need something different on this bracket or we need something different on that idle end.

Can you offer the ability to make those changes and be flexible and do you have the control? And the answer to those questions when it comes to Louvolite is very much yes.

Will (10:43)
Yeah. I like that flexibility piece is, in certain along those same lines of that, there’s obviously new trends, innovations that come along. How do how do ideas start at Louvolite?

Gavin Gray (10:55)
Well, I said earlier, it can come from a customer. It quite often does. And I think we’re very proud of the fact that we listen when our customers give us the feedback. Very often, we’ll involve customers when they come to us with an idea, we’ll involve them in the design process. But also, we do spend a lot of time, energy.

money, traveling the world, making sure that we are abreast of all the latest technologies in manufacturing, all the latest technologies in terms of electronics and communication, all the latest trends when it comes to fabrics. spend a lot of time, our creative teams spend a lot of time visiting different exhibitions.

around the world in different fairs to make sure that we’re at the right end of trends as well. And that’s a difficult thing to do. Our fabric collections are typically a three year collection. And our next launch will be 2028. And we started the work on that in 2026. So when you

Will (11:59)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (12:01)
ask a designer of textiles,

to tell you what’s going to be on trend and in fashion five years from now. I’m pretty sure most of those people around the world would look at you really funny. Our team

Will (12:16)
Mm-hmm.

Gavin Gray (12:17)
eat that for breakfast. That’s what they do. Cycle after cycle, they’ve been successful. So it takes a lot of time and energy and money to make sure that we’re…

and we’re in the right place to capture those ideas and generate those ideas. And then as well, I would have to say that historically a lot of the the ideas from new products at Louvolite have come from inside the organization because of the level of expertise and experience that we’ve had inside the business. So some of our most successful products actually, ones that really differentiate us and our perfect fit.

product range is a good example. That came from the team inside the business looking at a solution for a potential problem that most people didn’t even think was a problem. And that’s also made us really successful in the past also.

Will (13:09)
Hmm.

That’s great. There’s a book called Trend Spotting that talks about if you’re able to spot those trends ahead of time, how much further down the line you can. But obviously there’s there’s guardrails along the way to make sure you’re not going down a a bad path. So it’s pretty cool that you guys have that really dialed in.

Gavin Gray (13:28)
We try to, know, the team work really hard at that. And as I say, it’s not an easy thing to do to have the 2020 collection ready, which is still

Will (13:37)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (13:38)
going to be in circulation in 2031 in September 2026. But we do.

Will (13:43)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (13:44)
We know everything that fabric wise that we’re going to be promoting for the next five years, is kind of cool.

Will (13:53)
That’s great. So with doing everything in-house that typically speeds up innovation, or does it just change where the bottleneck sits?

Gavin Gray (14:02)
It does speed up innovation. A lot of the time elsewhere in the industry, the ideas will come from inside the market. The distributors of the products will be in the North American market, but the bulk of the material is produced overseas, predominantly in the Far East. And so we don’t have any of that communication.

timeline. We don’t have to go there to have a meeting with the people that are doing the detailed design or the design for manufacture. We just go downstairs or next door and that really

Will (14:37)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (14:37)
does help speed things up. I think if my, you know, if our engineering director Andrew was here with me, he might tell you that’s a bit of a curse because it means that anyone at any time of the night or day

can walk into his office with an idea and there’s no doubt that that can certainly slow things down. But I think one other way that we manage to keep things moving along is that we never delay an investment decision. So back to Mr. Alsop, our founder. know, being in control is one of his founding principles. Making sure that we reinvest the largest percentage of our profit.

into innovation and development, that was his other big thing. we still, that’s another one that we live and breathe every day. So we never procrastinate about whether or not to progress to the next stage on a product. The conversation is never about yes or no, it’s about how quickly. So we’re not perfect, we’d always like to be quicker.

But we do pretty well. The one thing I would say is that we’ve had to seriously grow the product development and engineering team in the last three or four years. Because the rate of change in the world has accelerated enormously, just in our daily lives. But the rate of change in the market, the rate of change in the pool from the industry for

we want the next innovation, the next differentiated product, the next product category. As technology, improves, the rate of that pool has grown exponentially. it might have been that five years ago, on average, we would have maybe two or three new products a year. I think we average between 12 and 15 now. So we’ve had to make sure that we’ve had the right

level of resources to make sure that we don’t slow down. I won’t say we got that perfectly correct maybe a couple of years ago, but certainly we’ve caught up now. I think it’s important to always have those new products. When you go to a trade show, people come, they want to see new products. Every time they see your area sales manager, they want to hear about the new products.

Every time people call me up or we have a meeting, it doesn’t matter

Will (17:01)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (17:02)
what the meeting’s about, at the end of the meeting they want some kind of scoop on what’s coming next. And I always give it, which makes the salespeople go crazy.

Will (17:12)
Ha ha ha.

Gavin Gray (17:14)
So I think we would like it if it could slow down a little bit, but we know how important it is to keep on innovating.

Will (17:22)
Yeah. One thing you mentioned was dealers or customer requests changing the product. Does that happen very often or or how does that process work?

Gavin Gray (17:33)
Yeah, it happens very often. think it happens in North America. It’s quite different from our other markets around the world because actually installers have a really big impact on which retailers will buy into which certain products. Installers are highly skilled.

It’s not an easy thing to do, especially in some of the more obscure applications that we have. But installers want to work with products where they can be efficient. so in North America, quite a lot of the feedback that we get comes from there through the retailers, through the owner operator of the business. It’ll be, hey, we love your product. Aesthetically, it looks beautiful. We want to sell it. We want to promote it.

my installer would like it if it was ever so slightly easier to line up the brackets for example or something like that. So we get a lot of feedback like that and we try to gather that together where it makes sense. If someone is selling roller shades in Albuquerque, New Mexico and they have an idea.

we’re not going to go and invest the tooling costs. We’re not going to go and invest $100,000 in tooling costs for that one person. But what we do is we do take the step of finding out whether that is something that other people are finding elsewhere in the market. And then, as I say, we try to make sure that we’re on the right track. And even though we’ll build a spec with the customer that gives us the feedback,

at beginning, we want to make sure that as we go through the process, we’re checking all the boxes. So we try to involve them as much as possible in the design process and the review gates, which I think is something that’s really quite unique for us. don’t see a lot of our competitors out there doing that at that level.

Will (19:32)
Yeah. I think it’s important or a benefit for the fact that you guys listen to your audience, especially the installers. Like you said, I think that’s the biggest piece because they’re the ones hands on, right? They’re the ones doing the things. so I think that’s pretty awesome.

Gavin Gray (19:47)
Yeah, we just launched a new child safety device in the US and it’s called ChainSafe Pro. It’s a chain tidy, an ASTM compliant chain tidy. But the reason that we put pro on the end was that we wanted to really signify that the feedback and the design came from installers. that was quite significant for us that we…

we made that distinction by calling the product ChainSafe Pro. We were signifying that look is designed by installers for installers.

Will (20:20)
I like that. And October is window covering safety month. So you you did that at just the right time.

Gavin Gray (20:24)
Right, there you go.

Will (20:26)
That’s awesome. so I’ve had a career in marketing, been around a long time. I understand that sustainability can just be kind of a buzzword. How do you guys

Gavin Gray (20:35)
Yeah.

Will (20:35)
define that inside your business?

Gavin Gray (20:38)
All right, so we’ve done a lot of research in our global markets about the impact of sustainability when it comes to the consumer choice with window shading. And I’m with you, sustainability can be a buzzword and

And actually our research found that or confirmed that in lot of cases it’s a buzzword. But we come at sustainability slightly differently. Yes, we promote our products as sustainable, but we look at sustainability as efficiency in lots of ways or, you know

an opportunity to introduce efficiency into our processes when we’re adjusting them for sustainability. Particularly, I was gonna say particularly in our fabric production processes, but actually everything that we’re doing there now is mirrored in our components business. So now in our components business, for example, anything that’s not

dimensionally critical or a child safety part or critical for operation, our first investigation is can we reuse what waste material we have. So we don’t actually have a lot of waste material. In our components division, we have lots of closed loops.

on our manufacturing processes. So in our injection mold, for example, the waste material, if we have a four impression tool, then usually that is fed via a sprue, which to you and I is the waste material in between the four parts. When that falls out, that falls directly into a regrinder, which is online and the material goes immediately back in.

That’s, we started that project because we felt like sustainability is coming down the track. It’s going to be a huge thing in the future. This is, you know, six or seven years ago, but actually the efficiency that we get that from that is enormous. And it’s the same in our fabrics division. Aside from using recycled base material, when it comes to the

coating material, so the liquor that we use for coating. So this is the pigment dyes, the binders, the foam, everything that we do to a roller or vertical fabric. We recover the waste from all of that. It goes into a mixing plant that we have on site. We use a spectrophotometer to analyze the color of the waste.

and it tells us which additives to supplement to get to the next color and the next recipe that we need. you

Will (23:26)
Nice.

Gavin Gray (23:27)
know, all of that is born from sustainability, but for us, sustainability is also efficiency. And with the rising costs of material, of labor, of, you know, shipping, packaging.

fiscal costs around the world, it’s become absolutely essential and our drive towards sustainability has really helped us offset a lot of those costs.

Will (23:51)
Gavin, I know that you guys use recycled products from post consumer bottles, for instance. How did that come about and what does it take to make that perform?

Gavin Gray (24:00)
That is a great question. It came about because very early on we became aware through some of our yarn supply partners that this was a possibility now. again, wanting to be at the forefront of sustainability, we took the opportunity to investigate that.

as fully as possible, as early as possible. And our Carnival range was the first range to be woven from post-consumer plastics. And Carnival is our flagship plane and plane blackout range. So we really took a big risk there, taking our flagship largest selling

program all the way there at the beginning and we really wanted to make a statement there and we did very successfully. The team worked really, really hard on that and although it’s a plain fabric, our standards are very, very particular. So when we look at, when we analyse the weave, we’re looking for not too much.

intermingling for example in the weave but also the most difficult thing for the team was that we’re replicating an existing product that’s been in the market for decades. It’s known, it’s trusted, you know all blind makers out there, all retailers, all installers, they’ll tell you when you have a go-to fabric that you know can rely on then you know that that gives you comfort.

We have that in spades with Carnival and Carnival Blackout and we had to make sure that that was still a thing going forward. So the development of that product took, I would say, a year to 18 months. We took our time to do it properly and we managed to improve the product actually at the same time because at the same time that we were making

that change. also again with sustainability in mind, we also moved away from halogenated chemicals that give us our flame retardant aspect in Carnival. So at the same time as moving to the PET post consumer based material, we also introduced halogen free FR coatings.

I really have to take my hat off to the team there. They did a phenomenal job. So yeah, good for them.

Will (26:36)
That’s a risky move. So

Gavin Gray (26:38)
Yeah, really.

Will (26:40)
yeah, where do you think sustainability expectations are headed for manufacturers over the no over the next five, 10 years?

Gavin Gray (26:47)
I think that’s an interesting question because I think I’m going to say that they’re heading towards away from recycled and towards biodegradability. And I think that’s really interesting because the most sustainable product you can have is one that goes in the window and never comes out, right?

The next most sustainable product is one that has been made from recycled material, hopefully post-consumer recycled material or reclaimed material. In the case of our manufacturing processes, the closed loop on the polymers and the reuse of the liquor, that’s more reclaimed than recycled because it’s not post-consumer. And I think

the new we’re in we’re in danger of the new buzzword becoming biodegradable and if something’s biodegradable then by definition you’re thinking about that going into landfill and that’s not good I mean it’s better than something

Will (27:43)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (27:44)
that goes into landfill and never biodegrades but it’s not where we should be aiming I think we’re more interested in

We’re more interested in thinking about how we can have a closed product material loop inside, if not inside our business, then inside our industry. And I really think that’s something that would be interesting for the leaders of the window shading industry to come together and think about how we could make that happen. It’s neat.

that we use post-consumer drinks bottles to spin, to extrude yarn and weave fabrics. But it’d be even cooler if we could take the waste that we produce as an industry and find a way to get that back out into the market.

Will (28:35)
Love that. Yeah, that’s great. One last question on this topic. for a dealer sitting in a home with a with a you know mom and dad, what can they honestly tell the homeowner without over being overclaiming?

Gavin Gray (28:51)
Well, in the case of Louvolite they can tell the homeowner that the Louvolite fabric production process start to finish as accredited at step level three by OEKO-TEX. And that’s the highest level of accreditation that you can achieve as a textile producer. that is the process of us achieving that accreditation.

has led us to be audited in every single aspect of our business. And we’re talking about what do you do with your waste paper trash? How many of your staff cycle to work? How many take public transport to work? I know that public transport isn’t a thing for getting to work in North America, but it very much is

Will (29:33)
Ha ha ha.

Gavin Gray (29:34)
here in the UK. the, you know, we…

We’ve achieved that accreditation. That’s not about the fabric comes from post-consumer bottles. does. North of 70 % of our collection now does. It’s not just the Carnival range. I think a retailer sat in the home can tell the Mr. Mrs. that if they’re going to purchase

a Louvolite blind, that sustainability is at the heart of everything that we do and it’s accredited at the highest level that it can be on the textile side.

Will (30:10)
That’s awesome. so wanna switch gears and talk about you guys not really moving to North America. You guys have served North America for for many, many years. why was now the moment for you guys to really ramp up that US presence?

Gavin Gray (30:25)
Well, I’d like to tell you it was now. The moment was actually five and a half years ago when we decided

Will (30:30)
Okay.

Gavin Gray (30:31)
that we were going to do it. But these things don’t happen quickly. You have to decide exactly where you’re going to be. You have to investigate what the financial or fiscal implications are of that in different locations. You have to look at

where your existing customer base is, where are the people moving to in the United States. And that took a lot of time. And then you have to decide, are you going to buy a facility or are you going to build a facility? And then there’s a whole lot of investigation happens there. So really the investment decision was made in 2021.

it just took us a little bit of time in between now and then to really get to the point where we’re comfortable ramping everything up. I wish that we’d done it sooner because these days it costs a lot of money to fill a 60,000 square foot warehouse full of stock if

Will (31:33)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (31:34)
it doesn’t originate in the United States. But we also, you know, the original

investment decision was a no-brainer because we as you said we’ve been in North America for a long time the longest time people identify with our brand I think by and large they they know what we stand for they know what we do they know that they know that our whole approach to business is that we we want to be easy

to do business with. We’ve been solving the same problem for 55 years, which is how to give manufacturers a partner that they can rely on. And we’ve been doing that from afar.

Will (32:14)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (32:16)
we have that platform. People know what we stand for. But we’re really, really under-penetrated in North America. It’s a difficult thing to serve North America from Niagara Falls, Ontario.

And it’s real

Will (32:28)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (32:29)
testament to our team in Canada that they’ve been so successful at it. But we haven’t really scratched the surface of what we can achieve. And we’ve been operational in Florida now for 12 months in a soft way. And we really want to begin to make the noise about that right now. But as I say to the team,

If Louvolite North America is a 100 yard dash, we’re at the B in the bang of the gun. We’re

Will (33:02)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (33:03)
at the absolute beginning. We’ve been there for 30 years already. It’s not that we’re new in the market, it’s that we’re newly local. I think that’s the message that we want to get across.

Will (33:15)
Yeah. So why did you guys choose Orlando?

Gavin Gray (33:17)
Well, for some of those reasons that we talked about, we saw that as the anchor point really for us. I’ll say that’s the beginning. Again, back to the B and bang of the gun. there’s a really strong British American Business Council, BABC presence in Florida.

Most of your viewers, your listeners won’t know this, but the UK signed a trade deal with the state of Florida. And it was one of the earliest trade deals that the UK was able to sign after we left the EU. So it was nice. There’s a lot of, that opened some doors. There’s a lot of investment in the assistance for

European UK businesses to move to Orlando in particular. But also the Orlando Economic Partnership, the economic developers there really welcomed us with open arms. We spent time taking meetings with economic developers right up and down the East Coast. We wanted to start in the East Coast because as part of our endeavor here,

We’re really going to bring the team in North America much, much more close on the inside of the executive leadership team in Louvolite. We really are making a big investment here. So we want to make sure that it’s not a project over in North America. Hey, how are those guys getting on over there? That’s

Will (34:51)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (34:52)
not what we’re doing at all.

That was another reason for staying on the East Coast. And I think the level of construction in the domestic space and the level of migration to Florida is enormous, really. So that played a large part in our decision making.

Will (35:09)
Sure.

Gavin Gray (35:10)
But we can reach, you know, in 24 hours, we can reach an enormous part of the population.

on the eastern seaboard and in the central part of the country. So those were the sorts of aspects that drove our decision.

Will (35:23)
Yeah. Now that you guys are really making a concerted effort to really ramp this up, what kind of changes or benefits are dealers and fabricators going to see from this?

Gavin Gray (35:34)
Well, they’re gonna have access to localized support. Our lead times are gonna be greatly reduced. Nothing’s gonna be held up in customs, which is a major consideration. There’s less paperwork for everyone to do because we’re not crossing any borders. The carriage, obviously, has a smaller cost.

And, because we’re there, there’s just something about being there that gives us so much more focus. We’ve all got a lot of skin and money in the game in terms of investment. I think the, you know, our customers and those future customers, I’ll say, in North America, I think they’re really going to see a shift in the level of focus and the mindset of them.

of Louvolite in North America. we still want to have that global level of innovation. We want to make sure that we have the local focus. And we want to bring the same level of service to North America as we have in Europe. And that’s a really difficult thing to do because here in Europe, if you order today before 5 PM, everything is coming tomorrow.

you never have to

Will (36:46)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (36:46)
hold any stock. That’s not quite possible just yet in North America. that’s

Will (36:52)
Sure.

Gavin Gray (36:53)
something for us to aim for and we are shooting for

Will (36:56)
Yeah, I like that. what’s the hardest part of entering this market that a UK manufacturer maybe wouldn’t expect?

Gavin Gray (37:04)
that a manufacturer wouldn’t expect.

Will (37:06)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (37:07)
I think the one that probably caught me by surprise, I’m ashamed to say it, I’ll say it anyway, was the installer piece. Not understanding, four or five years ago, not having that level of understanding for how influential installers can be when it comes to an owner or operator making a decision about a product.

That’s something that’s actually really peculiar to North America. We don’t find that in Europe. We don’t find that in Asia. We don’t find it in the places in Africa and the Middle East where we do business. So that’s probably one that caught me out a little bit, I would say.

Will (37:45)
Okay, that’s interesting. what excites you most about this opportunity?

Gavin Gray (37:49)
I the size of the opportunity, it’s because we’ve been around for so long, we’re so well established in so many markets, but here is one where everybody knows who we are, they identify with our products. Whenever we exhibit at a trade show, we just get the most amazing response every single time, without exception. But a lot of the time,

you the questions are about well where are you based and when you have such a great meeting on an exhibition stand or in a retail showroom and then at the end you have to almost apologetically explain

Will (38:27)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (38:27)
that you know we’re based in Niagara Falls but not even on the right side of the falls then you know that can be tough so I think we’re really excited about removing that

objection and we’re very successful right across the world but if we just look at the maturity of the window shading market, the similarities between the European market and the North American market and then the size of the population, the number of windows in North America, our ability to have direct access to that now, we know that we can be

an effective partner to retailers, to manufacturers, to architect specifiers, to commercial home builders, because again, you know, we’ve been solving their problems for all that time. We just want to make sure that we’re doing that in North America. And I think that is what really excites us is that we know that we have so much there to go and get.

Will (39:27)
Yeah, you mentioned trade shows and having those conversations. A lot of this business still happens face to face. the

Gavin Gray (39:35)
Yeah, really.

Will (39:35)
the Sunshading Expo, for example, is just coming up you know right around the corner.

Gavin Gray (39:39)
Yes, it is. Yeah.

Will (39:41)
Why do shows like that matter to you guys?

Gavin Gray (39:43)
think they bring focus. So people come to those shows with an intent. They want to come and hear what’s new, they want to come and see you. And I think it’s rare that we all get together and it gives us an opportunity to share experience and share knowledge. We all do it. We bump into someone in the aisle and we ask them a question based on what we just saw.

or we asked them a question based on what happened in our business last week. And I think that opportunity is invaluable because otherwise you don’t do it. These are conversations that unless you go, you don’t have them. But I was saying that another one of these sayings that the team here are sick of hearing me say, but I always say, if you don’t go, you don’t know. And I think we can apply that.

to trade shows. Because if we don’t bump into one another, we don’t have those conversations. And I think you can, it’s not just about what happens on the booth or on the next booth, it’s about what happens in the aisle and in the bar. I think that can be as important as anything else. So I think the main reason why it’s so important shows like the Sunshading Expo.

are just bringing people together really. We actually don’t have that many forums that do bring people together, especially in such an enormous geography like the US and Canada. So I think the opportunity to come together is invaluable.

Will (41:16)
For sure. Yeah, and we don’t have very many events. You’re right. you guys all have a booth at the expo. what should somebody that’s attending it make a point to see?

Gavin Gray (41:25)
I think come to see Louvolite and see how we do things differently, especially with our fabric collections. Our fabric collections, our ranges are much more at the decorative end than would be typical in terms of what you’d see on other booths. So I think come and hear about that.

coming here about our process when it comes to design, coming here why we think there is a place for that sort of product in the market. But also come and see some of our new innovations on the hardware side, especially thinking about child safety. We have a new product called UniTouch, which is about to launch in the market.

very affordable motorization child safe option. So I think that that’ll be something that will grab people’s attention. But I think as well, again, I’ll come back to our DNA of solving people’s problems. I’d love it if your listeners and your viewers would come.

to us with their problems and talk to us about how we can solve those problems and how we can partner together.

Will (42:38)
Yeah, I think having conversations outside of just here’s our products, you know, I think those other conversations are are where the money’s at, right? Yeah.

Gavin Gray (42:45)
Absolutely, absolutely, definitely.

Will (42:48)
Yeah. One one last thing. you guys are having an event on Wednesday evening for

Gavin Gray (42:54)
We are.

Will (42:54)
the listeners that haven’t that are listening to this before at the the Sunshading Expo. tell me a little bit more about that event.

Gavin Gray (43:00)
Yeah, so like I said, we’ve been operational in Orlando, actually in Apopka which is about four intersections north of the convention center on I-4. So that’s where we are. We’re 25, 30 minutes away. So we really want to take the opportunity while the industry is descending upon Orlando to have a true

celebration of the opening, the true opening of the business. So we want to invite as many people as possible to come and join us for that in the evening. The organizers are helping us to promote that. So we’re going to run a bus actually, some coaches from the Orange County Convention Center to Louvolite Orlando.

So there’s more information available from Louvolite or from R &T about that. So we want to give people a bit of a talk about in more detail of how we got here, what’s this today, what we can offer. Again, not from the product standpoint. mean, by all means come and see our beautiful new showroom. It’ll look a lot like the exhibition booth, spoiler, but.

and come and and talk to us be part of the be part of the beginning of Louvolite get an understanding for the staff the people that you you could be dealing with and just you know see what we’re all about.

Will (44:32)
Love that. also an opportunity, obviously, to network and meet other people on the bus, right? So that’s fantastic as well. Yeah.

Gavin Gray (44:37)
on the bus and at our facility, we’re gonna have

some finger food and some drinks and a real networking opportunity.

it’s not gonna be the old timeshare sales pitch. We’re not gonna have you there

Will (44:48)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (44:49)
all night. You can come, you can have a look around, you can listen to 10 minutes of me talking if this isn’t enough for you already, and then you can network

with the other people in the industry. it’s.

it’s an extension of that time that you have in the aisle at the exhibition to bump into your peers. You can just do it in a bit of a nicer setting in our

Will (45:10)
Yeah.

Gavin Gray (45:10)
showroom.

Will (45:11)
That’s nice. That’s nice. So a couple of rapid fire questions before we wrap up here.

Gavin Gray (45:15)
okay.

Will (45:16)
what’s what’s one manufacturing myth that you’d like to bust?

Gavin Gray (45:21)
that’s easy because we’re living it right now. Space. think, so we have a brand new facility. We don’t need to fill it full of stock because it’s very, very large. And when we were looking at the layout there, because we’re going to do some production, the tendency quite often for manufacturers is to use the space.

I think that is the myth. The best factories and manufacturing plants that I’ve ever been in are the ones where you have to turn sideways to move in between the tables and you have to squeeze by because those are the ones where the material and the people move the least and that’s where efficiency really comes from.

Will (46:00)
Yeah, I like that. what’s a leadership lesson that you’ve learned that sh really shaped you as a CEO?

Gavin Gray (46:07)
I think the importance of bringing the team along with you. I’ve been really lucky to have some amazing leaders throughout my career. And the really good ones were always the ones that created a vision for the team and then provided the environment for that team to go and execute on the vision.

I think that’s the secret, probably the biggest lesson that shaped me, I would say, is the importance of that collaboration and bringing the team along with you. I haven’t, honestly, well, I haven’t had to work hard at that in my six years at Louvolite because it was there when I got here. And I’m really standing on the shoulders of some giants here at Louvolite

I didn’t have to make that change but was one of the things that attracted me to the business was that that was already there and I’ve learned that lesson in the past and it was good to be able to come into an environment where everybody gets it.

Will (47:07)
That’s great. I see some some sports stuff behind you there. what

Gavin Gray (47:11)
yeah.

Will (47:11)
what what outside of work recharges you?

Gavin Gray (47:14)
sports.

Will (47:16)
yeah.

Gavin Gray (47:18)
Particularly as a fan. So I’m a big soccer fan. That’s how I spend time with my family. We go and watch a lot of soccer in the UK. My son and my daughter are both really into following soccer here in the UK. But some of that

sports memorabilia you see behind me is pretty obvious that some of that is US related. During my time in oil and gas I spent some time living and working in Houston, Texas and that sort of shaped my interest in sports as well. You don’t find too many people, you will find people in the UK that are interested in football.

and the NFL in particular have done a great job of promoting the game in Europe. But you won’t find a lot of people in the UK who are as fanatic about baseball. that’s, you my time in Houston really made me an Astros fan. So I’m that guy that through from spring through to fall, I’m awake at 1 a.m. if I’m in the UK watching the Astros.

So I really, really enjoy American sports. then aside from that, I play a lot, well, I try to play as much golf as I can. then Scotland in particular, growing up in Scotland gives you really good opportunities to spend time in the great outdoors. And so I like to do that.

Will (48:45)
Hmm. Yeah, as a as a longtime Cardinals fan, I just found out we can’t be friends. So

Gavin Gray (48:50)
Yeah, yeah you did. You did. We moved. We moved but

the scars are all still there right? Yeah.

Will (48:55)
That’s right.

thank you so much for being on today. if if a dealer takes one thing from our conversation today and acts on it in the next 30 days, what is that?

Gavin Gray (49:07)
And the one thing I’d like them to take is that we’re a business that wants to partner with you and we want to solve your problems. I think if you’re having a conversation with a potential supplier and it isn’t Louvolite I think ask them, or ask your incumbent supplier, are you my partner? And ask them how…

you can be confident in the repeatability and the sustainability of supply now and forever. think that’s, if those are things that are important to you in your business, and I believe they should be, then I want you to take that away from this session that Louvolite can be a really attractive option for you.

Will (49:49)
Yeah. What’s the best way for a dealer to start a conversation with your team?

Gavin Gray (49:53)
Obviously you can come and see us at the R &T Sun Shading Expo, but as well as that, we’re available. You can reach us through our website. You can reach us through R &T. US.Sales at Louvolite.com is how you can reach us via email.

And if you all you have to do is Google Louvolite Apopka Florida and all of our phone numbers email addresses website It’s all right there for you. We’re we’re very very easy to if you can’t find us then we’re definitely gonna find you

Will (50:31)
Awesome. Gavin, thank you so much. You’ve been generous with your time. and more importantly, generous

Gavin Gray (50:35)
Thank you for having me.

Will (50:36)
in sharing the business experience and knowledge behind how Louvolite actually runs. if something stuck here with you today, do one thing this week. Ask your supplier how your product is actually being made and who makes it. And if you’re heading to the Sunshading Expo in Orlando, November three through five, stop by the Louvolite stand and say hello.

Gavin’s team will be there. Gavin, safe travels. Good luck with everything coming to Orlando. We’ll see you in a couple weeks.

Gavin Gray (51:04)
Thanks Will, I’ll see you soon. Bye bye.

Guest Profile: Joe Estrada

Joe Estrada has been the Midwest & Northeast – USA Account Manager for Coulisse for almost 3 years. I’m a dad, husband, and dog dad. In my free time I enjoy golfing, watching my favorite sports teams, learning about business + the stock market, and spending quality time with close friends and family.

Other Notes/Links:

Learn more about Joe Estrada on:

• Coulisse Website: https://www.coulisse.com
• Motionblinds Website: https://motionblinds.com
• Coulisse LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coulisse/

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TRANSCRIPT

Will (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about their marketing, innovation, and business growth. I’m your host, Will Hanke, and today we’re welcoming back a familiar face.

Our guest is Joe Estrada, account manager at Coulisse Distribution, serving the Northeast and Midwest regions of the U.S. Joe has joined us on Marketing Panes before.

And we’re excited to have him back for another conversation about an area that continues to evolve: smart shading and innovation. Joe partners with custom window shade fabricators to deliver innovative, high-quality solutions, particularly through smart shading technology like motion blinds, with a focus on responsive service, long-term relationships, and empowering trade professionals.

He brings a valuable perspective on how technology is shaping the industry. Today we’ll talk about that: how technology is reshaping the market, the evolution of modular systems, and what’s next for dealers and fabricators in the smart shade era.

So let’s get into it. Joe, thanks for being on again.

Joe (01:14)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me back. Will, I dunno what that says about your judgment or lack thereof, but thanks

Will (01:20)
Yeah.

Joe (01:20)
For having us back at Coulisse. We really appreciate it.

Will (01:23)
Yeah, no problem at all. We were excited to have you back on. You were on episode fifty, where we mostly talked about the absolute roller 2.0 and the arrival of motion blinds. So for anyone who missed it, give us the short version of who Coulisse is and what you do there.

Joe (01:42)
Yeah. So Coulisse is a you know, we’re kind of a one-stop shop for custom window shade fabricators all around the world. Our team here, based out of Miami, Florida, serves North and South America. So, you know, we, in terms of Absolute Roller 2.0, that’s our roller system, our roller system platform. So we have a very user-friendly concept. It’s built out on a modular concept. So no matter what type of control option you’re using, you know, whether you’re using a chain shade or a smart motorized shade, everything about the shade itself stays the same, right? So the tube sizes stay the same, the deduction sizes stay the same. The only thing that changes is whatever’s controlling that shade. And then on the motion blind side, that’s really our brand of motorization, right? So we have our traditional Bluetooth motors, just our standard Bluetooth motion blinds. And we also have our Eve motion blinds. Our Eve motion blinds use smart motors. So if you want full integration into your smart home or your smart building

Unlike some other systems that need an added bridge, our Eve motion blinds give you that capability through an existing border router already in the home or building. and then we have our wired motor program as well that you can that have has Eve capability. So if you’re doing a new build residential or a commercial project, a big renovation project where the walls are already exposed, there’s going to be some new wiring run throughout the home or the building. Our wired motors are a great fit for that. So

we work with fabricators all over the world. We sell components, hardware, motors, fabrics. So we’re a little unique in that sense. Again, kind of a one-stop shop. And you know, we would prefer if you took all of it from us, but we meet

Will (03:23)
Yeah.

Joe (03:23)
fabricators where they’re at, and some fabricators choose to take the bits and pieces that work for them. So that’s a little bit about who Coulisse is, what motion blinds are, and what the roller two-point platform is.

Will (03:36)
Awesome. So in the short term, what has changed most at Coulisse since our last conversation?

Joe (03:43)
Yes. So I would say, so, we here in the US do have a really exciting new roller fabric collection that we launched back in the summer. We teased it at a trade show earlier this year, and it officially went live this summer. So we have some brand new developments in there that are only being sold here in the North American market. So that’s been really exciting. We’ve gotten a lot of really positive feedback on that. The market seems to be absorbing that at a pretty decent rate so far.

So anytime, you know, every few years, we like to update our collection. And it seems like our team knocked it out of the park with this one. I would say the other thing that’s probably changed the most, even more so than that, is just really the explosive growth that we’ve experienced with motion blinds. So globally, we’re up a little over a hundred percent in volume versus last year. And here in the US, we’ve actually almost tripled our volume in units for our motion blinds platform.

So you know, the time is kind of now when it comes to motorization and automation. And you know, luckily for us, our team, our engineering team, our leadership team has equipped us with a really great platform in motion blinds that is being very well received by the market. And we don’t really see that growth, you know, slowing down anytime soon. So that’s probably what’s changed

Will (04:59)
Yeah.

Joe (04:59)
the most.

Will (05:00)
I love that. So the fact that you’re seeing that growth says that the market likes the product and, you know, wants to use more of it. What do you think is pulling that piece in? Is it the product, the price, the market finally being ready, or all of those?

Joe (05:19)
Yeah, I would say definitely all three of those, a combination of all three. I do think we have a great product. It’s very user-friendly, and we’ll dig into that a little bit. We dug into it, you know, last year as well. I think our pricing is right in the market, right? And I do think a big chunk of it is the market being ready. So s a lot of the you know, the smart home companies, right? The Apples, the Googles, the Amazons, the Samsungs, the companies that we’re compatible with, they’re talking about it a lot more.

They’re pushing the smart home and the smart building a lot more. So obviously companies of that size can get the word out a little bit quicker and on a larger scale than maybe what we could, or just what our industry can. So that’s been a huge help. And so yeah, I think it’s a good combination of both. And then I think it’s really two from our side: really educating our fabricators and then them educating their dealers and designers on why motorization and automation is the right choice for many of their clients who maybe initially thought about a manual solution.

So I think it’s a combination of all three. I don’t know that everybody is growing at that rate. But we are, and I think it has to do with a great product at the right price and a market that’s ready for it, for sure.

Will (06:29)
Yeah.

That’s fantastic. Congrats on that growth. I love that. So you did, you kind of touched on education, and that’s a big piece of what you guys do. I know that your motion blinds are built on matter and thread. Translate that for a dealer who doesn’t follow the home standard, the smart home standards. And is it something that maybe they could promise their customer that they couldn’t before?

Joe (06:53)
Yeah. Yeah. So Matter over Thread is, you know, what we use for our motors. So Matter is a smart language, right? So a lot of the smart devices- anything that can be integrated into a smart home, smart building- a lot of them now, the standard has become Matter, right? So that’s just the smart language that all these devices speak to each other so that they can be integrated with each other. And then Thread is the low-power mesh network that everything is built on.

So unlike you know a Wi-Fi network, that the more you add to it, the weaker that network or the weaker that signal gets throughout a home or throughout a building. Thread is a mesh network. So it’s the opposite of that. So the more wired or plugged-in devices that you add to it, the stronger that signal gets throughout a home or throughout a building. So in theory, you can extend that network as far as you need to throughout a really big home or a really big building with more wired and plugged-in devices.

So our wired motors actually are our network extenders. They are Thread network extenders because they’re plugged in. You know, a smart bulb, anything that’s plugged in that also is on Thread, we’ll extend that network. So that’s great for dealers to know because a lot of their clients are going to start having more and more of those questions, and their curiosity is gonna be piqued a little bit more because they’re gonna

They’re starting to get a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more curious about, okay, this smart home thing maybe doesn’t seem as daunting and scary as it once did. What could

Will (08:24)
Yeah.

Joe (08:24)
be that next step? How could I integrate my shades into what I’m doing in some other parts? My kind of personal thought on it is I don’t think that a smart shade will probably be the very first thing that a homeowner or a building owner has as they’re in within their smart home or smart building platform. So there will probably already be a little bit of knowledge there on their end, and that’s better for the dealer.

Because then you’re working with somebody who’s at least somewhat familiar with it, which makes that hurdle a little bit smaller to jump over to convince them that, hey, this is probably the right way for you to go. So matter over thread

Will (08:57)
Yeah.

Joe (08:57)
is, in our opinion, the most future-proof solution. And that’s why we, you know, our engineers and our team decided to go that route. We were maybe a little bit early on that front, but it’s the most future-proof kind of solution that’s out there. And since we have the Bluetooth and the Eve motors, we can kind of meet.

Our clients, or, you know, the dealers of our clients, our fabricators, can meet their homeowners, their building owners, wherever they’re at in the chain, and then over time they can grow with them

Will (09:26)
Yeah.

Joe (09:27)
As they’re ready, you know, to maybe evolve over time. So

Will (09:31)
That’s awesome. I know I know some hotels that could use some matter over thread because if I get room 799 all the way at the end, I’m fighting for Wi Fi, right? You know, you’re at the wrong end of the building. So that’s fantastic that it does all that. As you know, I like smart home stuff. I I have

Joe (09:49)
Yes.

Will (09:50)
tons of automations growing or going here in the house. I recently got some new cameras for outside of the house and replaced those. And one of the things that I

On the camera, I just shot the QR code, and it went off. It set itself up, did all that stuff. So you guys are doing something really similar to that as well.

Joe (10:09)
Yes, absolutely. It’s called we call it our I think that’s one of the huge advantages of motion blinds is our our QR code setup system. So we call it our setup-in-a-minute system. It’s very user-friendly. So, you know, some of the solutions out there, I think homeowners and building owners maybe do look at the smart home world as a little bit more complex than maybe it needs to be because some of the solutions that are out there and that they’ve become accustomed to can be a little complex sometimes.

Motion Blinds is kind of the opposite of that. So everything about the way that it was set up was that we wanted it to be very user-friendly. So you can scan that QR code. No account creation is needed. You do it right in the app on your phone. That’s my favorite way of setting up a shade. You know, adding a shade to your home, setting your end limits, setting some timers if it’s a Bluetooth shade, setting some scenes and automations if it’s an Eve shade, or if it’s a Bluetooth shade with our optional bridge that’s added.

Will (11:05)
Yeah.

Joe (11:06)
So

Yeah, you can program the shades with the remote or from the actual motor on the shade itself. For me, it’s the easiest. I mean, even if you’re not a very techie person, you scan that QR code, you just do what the app tells you to, follow those couple of steps, and you’ve got your shade added to your app and to your smart home platform if you’re using our Eve motion blinds. So easy.

Will (11:22)
Yeah. It’s so nice and easy when you just shoot

that QR code and off you go. And I mean

Joe (11:28)
So easy.

Will (11:29)
Three, four, five years ago, the world of automation for homes was so clunky, and you know, you had to be very brand-specific, or else nothing would work. Nothing else you bought would talk to each other. So that’s come a long way. Are any parts of what you guys are doing not yet plug-and-play?

Joe (11:50)
No, it all is. And actually, that’s kind of the beauty of the matter: the Overthread platform is that you don’t have to be so brand-specific. That’s a great point, Will. You know, you don’t have to try to stay in one lane or, you know, try to solve some complex problem to interchange multiple brands. As long as

Will (12:06)
Right.

Joe (12:07)
Whatever device you’re using, as long as it speaks Matter, it can be integrated with what you’re doing with your shades, with the motion blinds or the Eve motion blinds. So yeah, I

I know nothing that’s not plug and play at this point. Again, that was kind of the

Will (12:19)
That’s great.

Joe (12:20)
the goal of what we had in mind, you know, years ago. A little bit early, but now it’s kinda cool. We’re in that moment now where it’s becoming more popular. You’re seeing the growth within our company, but just in the industry in general. So yeah.

Will (12:35)
Love that. For a shop that’s selling mostly manual products today, what’s an honest first step for them to kind of get into the motorization piece? And what would it cost them to try that?

Joe (12:48)
Yeah, you know, what it would c at least, you know, I’ll just speak about our solutions, what it would cost them. Nothing really. You know, we have a lot of support on the education side, obviously, you know, you know, buying the motors themselves. But I think it’s really just being more comfortable or having your sales team more comfortable talking about it and presenting it to clients, right? So even on every, you know, if it were me, I guess I would present it on every project. I mean, even if somebody has you coming out to install manual shades, that might be what they had in mind.

You know, I think it’s worth asking, hey, have you thought about motorized shades or have you thought about, you automated shades? And see what they say. You know, they might tell you that they’ve thought about it. They did a little bit of reading on it, but you know, I’m not ready because it’s a little scary; it’s a little complex. I don’t think I’m techie enough for it. And with our platform, I think that’s a great opportunity to come in and say, well, actually, here are some of the reasons why you shouldn’t be so scared. And so I think just talking about it, being comfortable talking about it.

And then, yeah, presenting that, hey, no matter what they asked you to, you know, to come in and quote or whatnot for them, I would still present it, or maybe a good, better, best option, right? The good option is this manual solution that you came in wanting; the better is this Bluetooth, you know, option that we have, and I’ll explain to you why. And the best option is, hey, this Eve motion blinds option that we have. And here’s why. So

That’s probably how I would approach it. You know, I’m sure there are some other theories out there too, but people are becoming more aware of it. So I think again, as you said, a few years ago, if you brought it up, they might be like, well, you know, I’m no thanks. But now I think most folks are at least somewhat aware of it and are probably open to a conversation if you’re comfortable enough to talk about it.

Will (14:32)
Yeah. And at the end, the dealers doing the in-home appointments, they’re being asked about it pretty often now. So

Joe (14:39)
Yes.

Will (14:39)
They have to know it, which means they have to have the manufacturers that are on board as well.

Joe (14:45)
Yeah, and you know it’s funny, like when a lot of times our team, like when we present it to a fabricator, right, we’re demoing motion blinds to a new fabricator or maybe an existing fabricator that just wasn’t ready for us at one point in time, but maybe now they are. We typically have somebody that works for our client do the demo to show them how easy it is, right? Rather than us doing it, it’s like, hey,

Will (15:04)
Nice.

Joe (15:07)
Imagine you’re a homeowner. Obviously, you might have a little bit more knowledge because you’re in the industry, but you’re not as familiar with our products as we are. I want you to really feel how easy this is so you do it instead of us showing you. And again,

Will (15:19)
Yeah.

Joe (15:20)
Anybody can do it. And I think that really drives home the point. And they’re like, okay, so then when they go to talk to their dealers about it, their designers about it, they can really sell it with a similar passion ’cause it’s like, Hey, they did it themselves. So

Will (15:33)
Yeah, that’s awesome. So one thing you mentioned along with motorization is smart homes, but you also mentioned smart buildings. So I wanted to kind of move a little bit and talk about the commercial side of things because that’s a big piece of everything nowadays. you mentioned I think twenty to twenty five percent of your clients offer commercial products right now. What are the other three-quarters of those people leaving on the table?

Joe (15:59)
Yeah, so you know, I think one thing I have learned is the commercial space in our industry; it is kind of its own beast. It’s its own lane. So I do think if you’re gonna, you know, dive into that world, you should do it with some good intention and a real purpose, right? One thing I have seen, you know, just from, again, we don’t have direct exposure to this. We kind of have indirect exposure through our fabricators and through their clients.

I think there’s a lot of opportunity in what I would call, like, Main Street commercial right now. So that guy that owns a local restaurant or owns a local, you know, multi-use units in your hometown. A lot of the big companies, they’re chasing a lot of those really, really big deals, the big hotel chains, the really,

Will (16:44)
Right.

Joe (16:44)
really big, like commercial, like property owners. But I think there’s a ton of opportunity to loc to serve those kinds of main street commercial owners in your town or in your

You know, neck of the woods. So again, I would do it with intention. I would do it with some research. You know, sometimes there are additional licenses and permits and things that you need, depending on if you’re going to do some commercial stuff or some outdoor stuff. So know what your state requires there, obviously. But from a size-of-job perspective, those are typically really, really nice-size jobs, even the main street commercial stuff.

And you know, somebody that owns a building, they probably own a home or multiple homes and maybe some other buildings as well. So that could become a really great client for you. And kind of what I have heard is that the Main Street commercial process is maybe a little bit more similar to a residential process versus, like, the really, really large hospitality projects, right? You might be able to work with that owner the entire time. And maybe if they have a contractor or if they have an architect.

But it’s a little bit more similar to probably what you’re doing already. So again, I think it’s having a plan, having some intention, and not just winging it. But you know, I would start asking around or start doing a little bit of market research, and if you see a gap in your market that’s not being serviced the right way, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. And again, you never know what that could lead to on the residential side too. So

Will (18:11)
Right. Yeah. So you meant you pointed towards the twin pole, the balance roller systems, kind of working together as what really helps strengthen that commercial growth. Explain that pairing to a dealer who’s never sold, maybe, or only ever sold residential.

Joe (18:30)
Yeah, yeah. So we’ve got a lot of creative solutions on the commercial side. So you know, one issue that on the commercial side maybe you run into a little bit more than on the residential side is just these really, really large windows. And obviously it would be great if everybody would just get converted to a motor, right? That’s the easiest solution, I think, from our side in the industry. That’s what we wish everybody would do. But if they’re still looking for a manual solution, we do have some really creative manual solutions for the really, really large shades.

So yeah, you know, if that’s something that’s interesting to you, if you’re a dealer or a designer, and you’re working with one of our fabricators already, that’s an easy conversation to have. If not, get in touch with one of us at Coulisse, and we can have that conversation with the right fabricator, or if we’re not working with them already, maybe there’s some opportunity there. But yeah, no matter how, no, no job really is too too

limited, except exceptions. There’s no job really that’s too small or too big now, with a lot of the creative solutions that we’ve come up with within our portfolio of products. So Yep.

Will (19:31)
Yeah. That’s great. what

does a res go ahead what does a residential shop need in place before it says yes to its first commercial project? Like I’m thinking people, pricing, lead times, other things like that.

Joe (19:47)
Yeah. Yeah, I would say on the commercial side, especially if you’re gonna gonna walk into some of the bigger projects or the bigger bids, I would say that clientele can be a little bit more price sensitive, right? So I would make sure you have things dialed in from a process standpoint within your own shop, right? Make sure you’re running as efficiently as you can. Make sure your pricing is right. Make sure you’re using the right products for the type of commercial work that you’re going to be doing, right? I don’t think commercial work, like residential work, is a one-size-fits-all category, right? So maybe have a little bit more intention with, hey, what type of commercial work am I gonna chase? What type of products, in terms of the quality, in terms of the types of, you know, configurations and controls that I’m gonna offer, makes the most sense.

And then go from there. But I would definitely, again, it’s something that I would have a lot of intention behind because it is a very competitive industry, especially the bigger you go. But I do hear that there is a lot of opportunity in that kind of, again, Main Street commercial space, especially from a service standpoint. So if that’s something that you’re really, you know, your shop is strong at, and and you’re capable, you and your team are capable, or maybe you have somebody on your team that has that kind of

experience at another company or in a different area of the commercial kind of slash contract world, I think it’s something that’s at least worth looking into, for sure.

Will (21:22)
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we work with window treatment companies all across the US. I would venture a guess that 15% of our clients offer commercial or have a page on their website specifically talking about commercial. It’s still a pretty small piece of the pie, right? But I think, as you said, the jobs are bigger. The margins may be a little bigger; I don’t know. but

I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. Along the same lines as that previous question, what is one way a shop could get burned on its first commercial job, and how could it keep that from happening?

Joe (22:03)
I would say a lot of that probably comes down to how the pricing is structured. Right. I think, I think there’s a little bit more maybe science involved on that side of things, especially if it’s your first time, right? From what I hear. Cause it is, you know, it is kind of its own world, its own beast, from what I hear. So I think if you’re going to get into that space, you should really know what you’re doing from a pricing standpoint. And again, make sure you’re running a really efficient shop because

Timelines can be a little bit tougher to meet because of the size of the jobs. On most projects, even residential ones, you might run into some bumps in the road. And so if that happens, you should be able to adjust accordingly and not, you know, lose your shirt, you know, if something like that happens. So I would say the way that something is priced is probably, you know, where people are the most prone to expose themselves in a negative way in that world.

So not totally indifferent from the residential space, but I think decisions are maybe made a little bit quicker, a little bit more competitive, and just the size of the job, one or two little mistakes here and there that happen with your pricing can really leave you exposed. So again, I would just have a lot of intention and make sure that you do your research and have a narrow scope of how you want to enter that market. And then maybe from there

Will (23:22)
Yeah.

Joe (23:22)
you expand as you learn a little bit more about it, just like

You probably did when you first started your business and got into the residential space. So again, just one opinion,

Will (23:29)
Yep. Yeah.

Joe (23:31)
But that’s probably how I would approach it.

Will (23:33)
Yeah. I’ve also heard people in conversations with owners who do commercial work that sometimes they’re waiting for a check for 60, 90 days, right, for those jobs. So you have to

Joe (23:45)
Yep. Yep.

Will (23:46)
factor that in that cash flow is gonna take a dip, or you know, or you need to have a buffer to survive while you’re waiting for that check to show up.

Joe (23:55)
Yo, it is, yes, I’ve heard similar stories, and I think that too will, like, lend itself to, you know, again, just one person’s opinion. Like, if you’re somebody that’s in the residential space and you’re thinking about dabbling in the commercial space, it probably should be, because things are going pretty well in the residential space. You run a pretty efficient shop, and so maybe that’s an opportunity to really expand your business. If you’re already struggling in the residential space or there’s just some things you need to work out there, I don’t know if the answer is to then maybe try to make a pivot, but

Again, I think there’s a little bit more work that needs to be done on your market, where you intend to start, what type of commercial, you know, projects you wanna go after.

Will (24:33)
Yeah.

Joe (24:34)
What products do you make internally, and what do you source from others? All that kind of should go into the decision-making process. But yeah, the

Will (24:41)
Yeah.

Joe (24:42)
Cash flow element of it obviously is something you want to make sure that you’re set up for too. That’s a great point.

Will (24:46)
Right. Yeah,

I love your advice to do a lot of research and come in educated. And also just dabbling with, you know, a local restaurant, or you, most of us business owners, have other friends locally that are also business owners, right? That you could

Joe (25:03)
Exactly.

Will (25:04)
probably do a restaurant or, I don’t know, some, you know, a dentist’s office or something like that, right? You could probably start to dabble in that world without

without taking on a ton of responsibility and perhaps debt as well.

Joe (25:21)
Yeah. No, and you know, I think again, a lot of the big guys, they’re chasing a lot of those similar bigger projects. And so I think it’s kinda like, you know, I’ve got a cousin of mine that’s in private equity, and he, you know, can only look at these deals that are ten million bucks or above in terms of a purchase price. And he’s like, I can’t tell you how many great businesses come across our desk that are sub ten million bucks. And that’s kinda how I view

you know, as we’re kind of talking about this out loud, how I kind of view what’s happening in the commercial world, it’s like everybody is kind of chasing those same big projects. I’m not going to put a dollar number on it. And there’s a lot of those quote-unquote smaller projects that are kind of, you know, flying under the radar and maybe not getting as much attention as they should. But if you’re not a huge operation with a full commercial team and a bunch of A and D reps and things like that, you might not need to get those kinds of projects. And you might not even be set up to take those kinds of projects.

And you can really, you know, add a sustainable arm to your business by just eating up a lot of that Main Street commercial. And then yeah, I mean, just like you said, if you do right by one business owner, they probably know a few others in your town as well. And that’s a great way of getting started, and so definitely a lot of opportunity.

Will (26:31)
Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. So as a business owner, obviously we’re a family-owned business, right? There’s a lot of family-owned businesses out there. And I know a lot of your manufacturing partners are family-owned shops. what does support look like on a Tuesday afternoon when something goes wrong on a job?

Joe (26:56)
Yep. we so Coulisse family owned business. You know, we talked about that last year. Same owners for coming up on almost 35. So next year be our 35th year anniversary. So

Will (27:08)
Wow, nice. Congrats.

Joe (27:09)
yeah, no, so I think that we take the service element very, very seriously. So our clients have direct lines to their, you know, sales rep like myself and their customer service rep, right? So you’re not calling like a generic number, you’re not submitting an online, you know.

service ticket or whatever, you have direct access to the people that can help you, whether it’s an order question, an installation question, a programming question, wh whatever you bump into on that Tuesday afternoon, like you said,

Will (27:39)
Right.

Joe (27:39)
your sales rep or your customer service person can help you. And you have a direct link to their phone number, to our emails. So I think we are we definitely take a more hands on and kind of personable approach when it comes to the service side of things. and I just think, yeah, I mean I think

we always keep the long term in mind. So we really don’t wanna it’s never about like one order or one project or or one opportunity for us. We are really looking to build sustainable long term partnerships. You know, that’s how Coulisse built a great business over the last almost thirty five years and we do it the same way today all over the world here, you know, in the US or in in North America, but we we operate that same way all over the world. So I think

Will (28:19)
Yeah.

Joe (28:20)
we can just level with each other.

in a way that that maybe some other companies can’t or or they’re not trying to ’cause they just have a different business model. So yeah, most of our fabricators are family owned and they they tend to appreciate kind of how we operate. So

Will (28:34)
Yeah, I think that’s a huge bonus just to know you’ve got somebody in your corner, in your back pocket if you need the help, right?

Joe (28:41)
Yep. Well everybody’s been you know, you everybody’s been in that same position. You’re you need help with something. Whatever you’re trying, something’s I don’t know. you need help with something and you’re sitting on hold for forever waiting for a real person. You’re

Will (28:52)
Ha ha ha.

Joe (28:53)
screaming operator into your phone or hitting zero a bunch of different times, right? Trying to give me a real person. With Coulisse you can always get in touch with a real person. So there’s no worries there.

Will (29:04)
Yeah.

Joe (29:04)
So

Will (29:05)
Yeah, that’s great. you guys list your fabricators on the Coulisse website store locator area.

Joe (29:13)
Yep.

Will (29:13)
so the brand sends buyers straight to the partner. How much business does that actually move for a shop?

Joe (29:21)
Yes, it’s gonna move more and more kind of moving forward because we’re doing dealers and you know fabricators, especially a fabricator that has like a

Will (29:28)
Okay.

Joe (29:29)
an arm of their business that sells direct to consumer, which some of our fabricators do.

Will (29:34)
Okay.

Joe (29:34)
but oftentimes we we will actually partner with dealers that are working with our fabricators because then what’s good for that dealer is good for our fabricator. And so yeah, the store locator is great.

Our team in the Netherlands and our team here in the US, we’re always doing more and more on the marketing and advertising side side of things to get more exposure with the motion blinds brand. So we actually have been doing some pretty interesting things. I think actually I think when we I was on last year, we talked and you know we’re we were kind of talking about hey, I think the I think more and more people, just like you Google search something to before you buy it or or you stumble across something and buy it through a Google search.

More more people are going to start doing that through AI, the LLMs, right? Through

Will (30:14)
They are.

Joe (30:15)
chat GBT or Cloud. That’s happening. That’s already here. It didn’t take that long. So we’re doing a lot of cool things with some of the AI searches of boosting our, you know, our, I guess you would call it like your SEO or what like boosting our visibility with those searches. So early just earlier this year, we were at number five or six.

And within a matter of a few months of just being really intentional with our with our approach and and our strategy, we got up to number two with the goal of obviously

Will (30:42)
Nice.

Joe (30:43)
getting to number one. So our goal is to get there by next year. We’ll see kind of how that shakes out. but I think the more that people are searching for, you know, motorized shades or automated shades or smart shades near me, and the more they see motion blinds, then that’s gonna kick them to the store locator and then from there.

you know, however they’re gonna set their appointment. You know, if they’re if they’re using you will, they’re gonna have a super easy website where you can go and

Will (31:09)
Ha ha.

Joe (31:09)
schedule a consultation or whatever. And but yeah, we see a big, big jump in activity around trade shows. and like I would say like the holidays too seem to be like a big bump as well as people are searching for those things in a more concentrated manner. But yeah,

You know, we can’t get our we don’t make a finished product. So we lean on our fabricators, our fabrication partners, to get our products out in the market. So everything we’re doing on the back end is is going to benefit them ultimately and their dealers. So

Will (31:42)
Yeah.

Joe (31:42)
I don’t have a number for you, but the share that you should be receiving is growing and growing. And I think some of that could be

Part of the reason why we’ve seen such explosive growth in motion blinds. And again, the goal is to have that continue to grow you know, over the long term as what you’re doing with AI and even with traditional searches becomes more and more important. You know, we find, especially in our industry, a lot of the searches start online, but people still like to deal with somebody in person for that measurement, that installation, that demonstration. So

It’s like you

Will (32:19)
Yeah.

Joe (32:19)
kind of have to have your ducks in a row on both ends. And so, you know, we don’t have dealerships, we don’t have installers, we don’t make a finished product. So the side we really try to support is what we’re doing with AI and with traditional Google searches and and online searches like that. So that when people are searching for what our fabricators dealers sell, motion blinds come acr comes across first and that’ll kick them to the store locator and it’s it’s kind of a flywheel from there.

You know, a traditional funnel or flywheel from there.

Will (32:48)
Yeah.

Super smart. I’ll I’ll tell you, I don’t know how many vendors are still, you know, doing pen and paper and and they’re they’re not being proactive like you guys are, especially talking about AI and that kind of stuff. it’s getting more and more adopted. I’m in the I’m like in the internet world, right? All the time, and I have been for 20 something years. My wife just installed Chat GPT yesterday. So there’s a there’s a different world out there, right? That is not super into all this stuff.

But you know, she’s I wouldn’t say she’s a Luddite, not at all, but but she’s not as forward as I am with this kind of stuff, right? So

Joe (33:25)
feel like she’s probably

just been protesting it all these years. protesting it and protesting you. Just in spite of you, right? Yeah, yeah. She’s

Will (33:28)
Could be. I’m so tired of hearing Will talk about it.

Joe (33:34)
like, I don’t wanna I don’t wanna play into it any more than I already have to hear it, right?

Will (33:37)
Yeah,

yeah. But I bet that same kind of thing is happening everywhere. People every day are starting to install ChatGPT and finding out what it can do. And before you know it, they’re using it to search for products and services in their area. it’s all of our clients are growing in AI visibility is the is kind of the term there. And I love that you guys are helping your dealers and your manufacturers make that happen.

Joe (34:03)
Yeah, Coulisse is always always looking forward. You know, our owners and our leadership team is always looking forward on all aspects of our business. So we just had our, you know, it’s similar timing as last year, just a couple weeks ago. We had our global sales meetings over in the Netherlands and got to recap a great year. all the things that they tried this last year, how things went. For the most part, it went really, really well. And hey, you know, what we’re gonna be looking at doing.

not only over the next 12 months, but over the next five years. So we’re always looking to be a little bit of a trendsetter and and really be looking ahead at where the industry is going. because yeah, if you don’t, you can kind of get caught behind, especially when it comes to technology, because things are changing so quickly. So it’s like, you know, if you’re slow on your feet, you can get left behind very quickly. AI seems to be accelerating and changing even faster than any of the other technologies before it.

you know, in in some ways for better or for worse. So I I think, yeah, it’s even it’s even more important to always be looking ahead. And luckily for us,

Will (35:05)
Yeah.

Joe (35:05)
like our our our team is always doing that and and putting us in a good position. So and and therefore our clients too. So

Will (35:13)
Yeah, that’s great. so I want to touch a little bit on outdoor. we had we you just touched on it a little bit, but before we do, I wanted to ask, what does Coulisse ask of a partner in return? So what makes the relationship work well from your side?

Joe (35:32)
Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, something you said earlier, right? Pay your bills on time, right? That’s that’s one of them.

Will (35:37)
Ha ha ha.

Joe (35:39)
but no. I think I I think like you know, maybe we do a little bit less of the asking from our side, right? But but I think having somebody that where there’s just a mutual respect there, right? So we are a very transparent company. So I think we would we appreciate when that transparency is reciprocated, right?

If if you’re having if if there’s something that’s going wrong, it doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while it does, or there’s a struggle or a bump in the road, let’s work on that together, right? Let’s not hopefully find out about that after, you know, a change has already been made or whatever. and you know, if you have questions or if you feel like you’re not getting something that you want and need, tell us that. again, we’re very transparent. I would say we’re kind of old school with how we do business, right?

Here in the US, we love our contracts, right? our corporations and companies love

Will (36:26)
Ha ha ha.

Joe (36:27)
our contracts. We would do most of our business with a handshake, you know, if people would let us. So we don’t

Will (36:33)
Yeah.

Joe (36:33)
do a lot of the asking, you know, seriously. I think, hey, pay your bills on time. you know, certain things when it comes to branding, especially with motion blinds, you know, we do like some synergy there on the branding side because we’ve done a lot of work in building the motion blinds brand and wanting it to be positioned a certain way. So we have some small asks there.

but no,

Will (36:52)
Makes sense.

Joe (36:53)
real yeah, really it’s just I I think we do a lot less of the asking from our side and and

Will (36:58)
That’s great.

Joe (36:59)
if we are asking for something, it’s usually like, Hey, how are things going? What are you missing? What are you seeing in the market? What opportunities or gaps are you seeing? Because then we kind of, you know, take that that feedback in and as we’re always developing new products and bringing new things to the US market, you know, we wanna we have our thoughts and our ideas too.

But a lot of those thoughts and ideas start with some feedback that we get from our clients. So

Will (37:26)
Yeah. Yeah. Great answer. I love it. so I mentioned earlier that I’d say fifteen percent of our clients are doing the commercial, right? they have that as a page on their website. The same story would kind of be true for outdoor. You know, five years ago it was ten, fifteen percent of our clients offered outdoor. Now that number is probably closer to fifty, I would say,

Joe (37:48)
Yeah.

Will (37:49)
have some sort of outdoor component mentioned on their site. So the

Tying all this together with the smart home stuff is outdoor motorization, right? that’s a a huge growth story right now. So you mentioned outdoor motor sales are running, you know, eight, eight or nine to one against the indoor. So where does that figure come from and what should a US dealer take from that?

Joe (38:14)
Yeah, when I first heard that, I I was kind of shocked by it. But then I guess that the the more you think about it, it makes sense. Cause if you’re gonna have an outdoor awning or outdoor shade, you’re probably not gonna wanna operate that manually, right? For a number of reasons, it’s gonna be easier and just more convenient and better overall experience to have that be motorized. But yeah, you know, like you s I mean you nailed it, Will, like five or six years ago, there were some established players.

Obviously we all know it happened with with COVID and and a lot of the folks in our industry really rushed into that side of the business. at least we kind of decided to kind of see how things were going to evolve. you know, from from my read on it, we decided to get into the, you know, we’re deciding, I should say, to get into the outdoor market because of our ambitions with our motion blinds platform, right? So just the the amount of volume that that that motor the amount of motors that are sold.

with outdoor shades and awnings. there’s a lot of opportunity there that and and we want to we want to chase that opportunity. So yeah they because of the explosive growth we’ve experienced with our indoor motors that we talked about you know earlier it was a natural I think kind of transition to develop an outdoor motor and awning program. So we’re actually going to be launching some more details about that at the RT show.

in Stutgar in in in February. So if you’re gonna be at that show, please come by our booth. it’ll be right when you walk into the the main building right there, the main entrance. and we will have our our new outdoor motorization program on display there for everybody to check out. So yeah, we’re really excited about

Will (39:53)
Nice.

Joe (39:56)
it. We think there’s a lot of opportunity there and you know our engineering team’s done a great job, been very thoughtful and deliberate about you know what solutions we wanted to provide to start.

And yeah, we’re really excited to to kind of launch that to everybody next year.

Will (40:10)
That’s great. That’ll be big. so Stuttgart, obviously in Europe. that market may be a little different than North America. So what’s

Joe (40:18)
Yes.

Will (40:19)
driving the overall demand here and is North America following that same pattern?

Joe (40:26)
Yep. Yep. You nailed it. It’s definitely a different different market in Europe, versus say the United States. just different types of windows, different types of window coverings. Over here though, you talked, I mean, you know, because of your clients, that market still has exploded. a lot of awnings. there are still some outdoor, you know, solar and roller shades that are installed. You know, a lot of people are doing these conversions of outdoor spaces and

and converting them into enclosed rooms or or s spaces with with screens, with their motorized, you know, screens. you’re seeing it at a lot of restaurants too, and bars, right? So they’re converting

their

Will (41:05)
That’s true.

Joe (41:05)
outdoor space, whether it’s for like whether it’s it’s weather related, insect related, you know, temperature related, especially since COVID, you’re seeing people utilize all the space that they have. So the market in the US is is still very, very large.

as well as in Europe and some other parts of the world. But yeah, we we’re very bullish on kind of that side of the business. And again, our it what’s nice about it is those outdoor motors, you know, some of the feedback that we’ve heard is like, hey, I’ve got indoor, you know, my indoor shades that are motorized can’t be synced up with my outdoor shades. Well, if you have motion blinds inside and outside, same QR code setup system, they can be easily integrated with each other.

So that’s the thought behind it. we think that’ll be more and more important to end users. so that’s the goal. So yeah, we we will be launching that next year and we’re super excited about it.

Will (42:01)
That it’s interesting that you mentioned COVID and how COVID kind of sparked restaurants in particular to suddenly have outdoor seating, right? Let’s

Joe (42:12)
Yeah.

Will (42:12)
because we need the tables, we need people sitting at them, but they have to be far enough away from each other. So these patios showed up, and now I think phase two of this seems to be: we probably should start shading them or making

Joe (42:26)
Yep.

Will (42:27)
them more comfortable, right?

Joe (42:29)
Yep.

Will (42:29)
For people. So that’s interesting to see as well.

Joe (42:32)
Yeah, and and you know, some some climates in the US, you can you can sit out on the patio all year round, no problem. You know, where I live up in Michigan, having a little bit of extra, you know, keeping some of that cold out and the heat in goes a long way, right? Or in the summertime, keeping those bugs out. So yeah, and I think that’s a that’s here to stay. So and it j again, it opens us up to a whole new range of you know, some of our fabricators e even maybe it didn’t make sense to they didn’t, you know

there wasn’t a partnership opportunity there in the way that they had wanted. And now maybe it would make a little bit more sense because they do so much outdoor work in addition to whatever they’re doing indoor as well. So yeah, we’re very excited

Will (43:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe (43:12)
about it. I think we I think we took the right approach, not rushing into it, right? being thoughtful, being deliberate, which that’s kind of the Coulisse way. so yeah, we’re we are ready. We are ready to sell it when it when when they come in. So

Will (43:24)
Yeah, one

last question in this this area. You mentioned indoor and outdoor like talking to each other, they’re connected together. And and I can see some dealers picturing just this service nightmare. what’s the reality of that situation?

Joe (43:44)
Yeah, at least with our our platform, and we talked about this a little bit last year. We really there aren’t really a lot of service calls with our motors, right? They’re very easy to troubleshoot. and we do have a motion blinds chat bot. So motion blinds GPT, that is infinitely better now than maybe it was even a year ago. And that’s

Will (44:02)
Yeah.

Joe (44:03)
going to continue to improve because it’s continuing to be trained. You know, all the questions it’s getting, those questions,

You know, if it gets a negative review, it gets kicked right to our engineering team and they’re gonna put a better response in there. So it’s going to get better over time, but that’s kind of the first layer. if you’re an install, you know, if you’re a dealer listening to this and your installer is on site or you get that service call, that motion blinds chat bot should be able to answer whatever it is that you’re you’re looking to troubleshoot if if what you’ve tried already hasn’t worked. which again with our motors, it’s pretty easy. You just

reset it, right? Reset your timers. If something’s wrong there, usually it’s it’s as simple as swapping the motor out. and with the modular concept, that’s pretty easy to do with with our system on the indoor side, outdoor side will be a little bit different. but then from there again, they have that direct line to us as sales reps. anything on kind of the product side or or like the service side as it pertains to a product, that’s going to fall more in our lane versus say like the our customer service lane. So yeah.

If the motion blinds chat bot doesn’t work after the installer tried everything themselves, and we don’t have an answer for you, it probably just needs a new motor. And so I I mean our claims rate is incredibly low on our motor. So it does not happen very often. but yeah, that motion it’s motionblindsgpt.com, I think is what it is. But you know, if you are a client out there or you become one in the near future and you use that, you know, go

And and you get a you get a good answer, please give us a thumbs up. If you get an answer that maybe you don’t love,

Will (45:35)
Yeah.

Joe (45:37)
and you and you do give us a thumbs down, that will get corrected almost in real time. So

Will (45:42)
Love that.

Joe (45:43)
yeah, it’s it’s great. It’s a great tool. And and again, we even kind of use it, you know, if you’re a new sales rep, sometimes it’s a great tool if you need something on the fly when you’re out visiting a client. And so yeah, it’s again, it’s another example of just us always looking forward and trying to provide

you know, solutions that are actually helpful to our clients, to our team. So yeah, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t be too worried about it with our products. I cannot speak for the others. but but yeah, we don’t get a lot of those calls and when we do they’re they’re usually answered pretty easily. So

Will (46:16)
Awesome.

And you have the resources in place for that. So that’s great.

Joe (46:19)
Yep. Yep.

Will (46:21)
cool. A couple rapid fire questions for you. You ready?

Joe (46:23)
Yeah. Yep.

Will (46:26)
what’s something about commercial work that would surprise most residential dealers?

Joe (46:32)
Yeah. So I would say how the way that you jobs are are bid, right? it’s almost like depending on the the fabricator that you talk to, they all that there’s a different process to it. You know, sometimes some projects maybe the you know the the the spec is king, right? And that’s maybe how it should go. Other projects, you know, maybe the fabricator or the architect has a little bit more leeway.

than on some other. So it is kind of its own its own world. So I

Will (47:03)
Yeah.

Joe (47:04)
that’s why like what we talked about earlier, that Main Street commercial lane, to me, if you’ve never dove into commercial before, I think to get your feet wet, that’s where it makes sense. And then maybe you know, crawl before you can walk, before you can run, I would start

Will (47:18)
Yeah.

Joe (47:18)
crawling first, but it is its own world. It is very, very different. I mean, even from our side and again, everything I’ve learned is through our fabricators.

But yeah, it’s almost like if there’s no one manual for it or no one size fits all where maybe the residential

Will (47:33)
Yeah.

Joe (47:34)
space is a little bit more uniform, right? with how every and then everybody

Will (47:37)
Yeah.

Joe (47:38)
kind of has a their different ways of going about, you know, reaching new clients and the products that they offer and all that. But yeah, do your research, have some intention behind it, which

Will (47:47)
Yeah.

Joe (47:47)
I think anybody listening to this that’s thinking about it, I I’m sure they already do and they are. So yeah.

Will (47:51)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

battery wired or solar? Which one wins five years from now?

Joe (47:58)
Ooh, yeah, five years from now. I could see solar becoming more and more popular. I still think, you know, I still think battery is gonna probably be king because you know, for wired motors, it’s like that that makes sense for you know, for a new build or a major renovation, right, where the walls are already exposed. For the most part, not every wired solution needs the walls exposed, but it it certainly helps for a lot of them. So I’m gonna go with battery. I I still think it’s the most user friendly. You can do some retrofitting, right? Especially with with our system.

You know, we prefer them to to buy a a motion blind from from the get-go, but let’s say they

Will (48:32)
Yeah.

Joe (48:33)
buy a a chain operated shade or a twin pull shade now, and in the future they’re ready for a motorized shade. It’s a very simple swap out process. So I’d probably say battery still. Don’t play this don’t

Will (48:40)
Yeah. I’d probably agree.

Joe (48:44)
play it for me five years from now if it’s if it’s dead wrong, but I’m gonna guess that.

Will (48:46)
Yeah. I I’d

probably agree. For five years from now, that’s probably the case. I I mentioned the the cameras I bought earlier. I also have a smart doorbell, which most people do. Both of those are running on PoE or power over Ethernet, which requires

Joe (49:01)
Yeah.

Will (49:02)
me to run Ethernet to the device.

Joe (49:04)
Yep.

Will (49:05)
and that’s a lot of work, right? So that’s back to the wired thing. But I think that’s gonna become more and more mainstream over time. Just my thoughts.

is that you don’t have to be an electrician to wire something up, right? You just run Ethernet to it, plug it in, shoot the QR code and you’re up you’re up and running. So it’ll be interesting to see how that goes.

Joe (49:26)
Yeah, one of our great clients, you know, PowerShades, they they have a solution in our market for that’s POE. So yeah, a lot of our wired solutions, you don’t need, you know, some of them you do not need a certified electrician. Some of them it makes sense. but I’m with you. I think that user and it’s like, yeah, with everything from kind of a technology informate there’s so much information out there now to anybody that’s

relatively handy and wants to do some of the stuff themselves, I think it’s going to become easier and easier to do a lot of the stuff yourselves if you want to. So

Will (49:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe (49:59)
I think there will always be a the need for for the professionals, to use a broad term. But yeah, like you said, I think

Will (50:03)
Yep. For sure.

Joe (50:06)
I think the DIY or kind of the user friendly solutions are going to win out for sure.

Will (50:12)
Yeah.

what’s the most common install mistake you still see?

Joe (50:17)
Yes. So I think from our side, if I’m thinking motorization, sometimes and we actually have a a solution for this coming, but every once in a while it’s like, hey, maybe you’re using the wrong app. because there are a couple of different apps. We have a solution for that coming moving forward.

And if it’s on the if it you’re just talking about any type of shade, I think because I have some newer clients, right, that are like brand new to our industry. when it comes to there’s two things. One, how accurate you really need to be with your measurements, right? that can make a huge difference, especially when it comes to light gap. and if you’re not going to use side channels and things like that. Like the getting very, very accurate with your measurements is super important.

Will (51:01)
Yeah.

Joe (51:01)
no matter what type of configuration you’re doing. and then anytime it comes, obviously, to a non-traditional window, right? If there’s a recess, if you need to use an installation profile, you know, anything that’s non-traditional. if you’re a pro, you’ve been doing that for a long time. I I think everybody’s kind of figured out their own ways of of working around it with the system that they use the the type of product that they use. but myself having some newer clients, I think that’s where they run into.

some bumps in the road and then having a partner that can help walk you through that, maybe even when you’re on the job, can can go a long way. Right. It just call comes back to that service element where if you’re gonna run

Will (51:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe (51:41)
into something that you haven’t dealt with before, having a partner that you can lean on that can help you is is huge.

Will (51:48)
Yeah. Don’t lean on the the strategy that I seem to do when I do construction related stuff and that’s measure once, cut twice. I think. Right. That’s right.

Joe (51:56)
Yep. Supposed to be the opposite, Will. Yeah, it’s supposed to be

supposed to be measure twice, cut once. No, it’s it it is true though. I mean it’s d again, I I think because I have some newer clients, like they bump into some things that, you know, your your really established dealers and sellers maybe haven’t in a while. But it’s

Will (52:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe (52:14)
like that, you know, light gap I think is something

As as and users we’re all getting pickier and pickier because there’s so much information

Will (52:21)
That’s right.

Joe (52:22)
out there. There’s you know, you’re you’re watching a million Instagram or TikTok videos. So I think that the the details, yeah, the devil’s always in the details and and how accurate those measurements are really matters. when it comes to window shades.

Will (52:34)
Yep. Yep.

Joe (52:36)
So

Will (52:37)
Good stuff. for a dealer who feels like they’re behind in the motorization world, what would you tell them to do first?

Joe (52:44)
Yes. I think, well, yeah, maybe evaluate why are you behind? Are you offering the wrong solution, right? Are you offering a solution that the market is just in some way, shape, or form rejecting? I think there’s a lot of that going on. That’s where I think something like motion blinds is could be a great solution for you. you know, if you’re selling something that’s not very user friendly and it’s already a an expensive option for a lot of people because it’s going to be more expensive than a manual solution, well, you’re not really enticing them to make that change, right?

So they’re probably just going to stick with the manual solution, or maybe they’re going to go find somebody else that has a better, better offering. So maybe I I would evaluate why that is and maybe be honest with yourself. are also are you targeting those types of end users, you know, with your marketing and your advertising that you’re doing? I think that’s probably a big part of it. And then yeah, are you bringing it up on every every meeting or every call, every home visit, everybody that walks into your store if you have a store?

Every phone call, I like I said, if it were me, I would always offer it. I am not a dealer, so I mean, take that with a grain of salt. But if it were me, I would,

Will (53:48)
Yeah.

Joe (53:49)
you know, whether it was a good, better, best or a manual versus a motorized, I think I would always offer it. And I mean, I don’t know, I’m in sales, so I’m used to getting a lot of no’s, but I mean, even if it only if only ten or fifteen percent of people said yes, how much would that grow your motorization sales? Probably a lot. So yeah.

Will (54:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe (54:07)
What

I d you know, it’s like all the different Ps, right? So yeah, what’s your product look like, what’s your pricing like, and then, you know, are you are you are your people presenting it in the right way? or presenting it at all, right? If if you’re never talking about it, it’s hard to sell. So

Will (54:23)
True. Yeah. You meant

Joe (54:24)
That’s that’s how I would maybe look at it.

Will (54:27)
yeah, you mentioned RT next year in Stuttgart.

Joe (54:29)
Yes. Yeah.

Will (54:31)
Coulisse is also going to be at the Sun shading Expo North America in Orlando in November, right?

Joe (54:36)
Yep. Yes.

Will (54:38)
what should a dealer that’s walking that show, why should they make a point of stopping at your booth?

Joe (54:45)
Absolutely. So one, you’ll get to see our brand new US roller fabric collection. So we’ve got five new books. they all have their own purpose. so definitely come by and check that out. We’ll have copies of those on our tables. we always do a great job at the shows. We’ll have a bunch of our finished products on display there. So if you want to see what it one your fabrication partner or one of our fabricators that maybe you’re not already partnered with.

can make for you, we will have a lot of our products on display. So you can see how our chain shades work, how our twin pull system works. So twin pull is pretty unique to Coulisse, how our motors work, both our Bluetooth motors, our Eve Smart motors, our wired motors, how our can our cordless system works. So we have a zero gravity balanced roller system and you know for roller, for Roman

so yeah, you really can see it’s kind of like our own little dealer, right? Our own little showroom right there to really get a feel for what our products could look like if you were to sell them. you could talk

Will (55:47)
Yeah.

Joe (55:47)
with us, the the sales team, right? Get a feel for us, ask us the questions that you have, you know, hey, what are you not getting from or maybe what are you and your fabricator or fabricators not getting from the people you’re currently working with?

Is your product offering kind of stale? Is it not been upgraded in a while? yeah, if you’re gonna be at that show, I think you have to stop by the Coulisse booth and come talk to our team and yeah, let us show you around of of all the different things that

Will (56:14)
Yeah.

Joe (56:15)
we’re doing.

Will (56:16)
It’s a great show. you guys have a a fantastic looking booth. Joe, you always got your nice suit. You look really sharp. a lot sharper than me, right in my little polo. so

Joe (56:26)
Yeah. You can thank our team.

Yeah, you can thank our team for that. they always outfit us really nicely. Yep.

Will (56:33)
Yeah, you yeah, great. That’s a great booth. So yeah, make sure to stop. If you’re going to Sunshading Expo, make sure you stop and say hi to them. any other shows, events on your calendar that you guys are doing that dealers should know about?

Joe (56:46)
Yes. So we will we’re we’re always at the IWCE show and the Sun shading Expo and the R T. Those are shows we’re always going to be at, at least here, well, our that our our US team, our North and our North American team will be attending and and exhibiting at. we’re also we we have a presence at some of the other shows as well. So at the Cedia Expo, at the BDNY

Will (57:06)
Okay.

Joe (57:06)
show. There there’s a few others that that we will attend as well. but the next one is the Sun Shading Expo and it’s always a great show.

it’s in Florida this year, so our home state. So it’s gonna be pretty close

Will (57:17)
Nice.

Joe (57:18)
to home. We expect a lot of our clients and and kind of our indirect clients to be there. We have a really big presence in the southeast. You know, we’ve done a really great job in the southeast region for a long time. so yeah, we’re really excited. when it’s close to home, it’s we’re we always get maybe a little bit more excited. So

Will (57:36)
Yeah. Yeah. And and I’m sure you’re like me, if you’re in Michigan, I’m in Missouri. It’s always good to have an excuse to go to Florida in November. You know, that’s not a bad thing.

Joe (57:43)
Yeah. Y Yeah, hey,

better yeah, move the show to January or February. That’s when that’s when it’s really time to get the heck out of the north. So yeah.

Will (57:49)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So last question, Joe. Thank you so much for being on today. I really do appreciate it. what’s

Joe (57:55)
Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Will (57:58)
the best way for a a dealer or a shop to start a conversation with your team?

Joe (58:03)
Yeah, absolutely. So you can reach out to, you know, we’ve got sales reps that service each kind of region of the country. So depending on where you’re at, you know, if you’re already working with a fabricator that that is a police client, that’s a pretty easy conversation. And that, you know, that’s that’s a very easy pairing. if you’re not, we’re always open to having conversations with new fabricators as to, hey, here’s what we have to offer. This is how we could partner together, especially if there’s dealer interest, you know.

We have found you know, when dealers are interested and they’re kind of getting, you know, fabricators are getting pushed from that side of the equation. you know, I think fabricators tend to listen to that, right? Because that’s their direct client. So yeah, get in touch with one of us on the sales team. obviously, if you’re gonna be at the show, come say hi to one of us. let us get some more information about, hey, who are you already working with? and then obviously the the the ideal pairing is wherever you’re located, we would love to pair you with somebody in your area.

that we’re already working with. But we’ve got fabricators all over the country, all over the world. We’re adding new ones, you know, on a weekly, monthly basis, basically at this point. So it will not be hard to get you in the hands of somebody that could get you more Coulisse finished products. and then yeah, you know we so cool is dot com is is our is our main website where you can check out some of our products motionblinds.com

is again, Motion Blind is our brand of motorization. So you can learn more about everything we’re doing on that front. I think we do a great job with with how we present our our our our brand in the market and the information that we provide. we’ve got you know almost daily, definitely weekly posts on LinkedIn. So Coulisse is very active on LinkedIn. yeah, just about anywhere that you would want to find us.

You can. And and yeah. you know, you’re you’re

Will (59:59)
That’s awesome.

Joe (1:00:00)
more than welcome to put my information too in the show notes or whatever will, and we can always get you in the hands of the

Will (1:00:04)
Yeah.

Joe (1:00:05)
right person. So

Will (1:00:06)
Definitely. We will we’ll put all the links in the show notes. We’ll also put a link to the to the GPT you mentioned. if there’s some people that are already using your products and maybe didn’t realize that, we’ll link to that as well and your information. So Joe, thanks so

Joe (1:00:20)
Absolutely.

Will (1:00:20)
much for being on. Always a fantastic conversation and and good information. I really appreciate it.

Joe (1:00:28)
Absolutely. Thank you, Will, for having us. I know our team it is very appreciative of it to have the opportunity to talk about all the exciting things that we’re doing. And I’ll see you here in about a month, give or take. So see you in our in sunny Orlando. I can’t wait. Thanks, Will.

Will (1:00:39)
That’s right. Yep. Yep. Awesome. Thanks, Joe. So

thanks to Joe Estrada for joining us today.

If you learned something new or got inspired to rethink your shade strategy, send this episode to a colleague. Be sure to follow marketing Panes wherever you listen, and we’ll see you next time.

Guest Profile: Joe Estrada

Joe Estrada, Account Manager at Coulisse Distribution, serving the Northeast and Midwest regions of the U.S. Joe partners with custom window shade fabricators to deliver innovative, high-quality solutions—especially in smart shading technology through MotionBlinds. With a focus on responsive service, long-term relationships, and empowering trade professionals, Joe helps clients stay competitive in a fast-evolving industry

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Heading to the Sun Shading Expo in Indianapolis this November 5–7? We’ve got you covered!

Use code SSENA25WTMP when registering to claim your FREE admission ticket.

Don’t miss this chance to connect with top industry leaders, see the latest innovations, and experience hands-on demos — all at no cost with our exclusive listener code.

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TRANSCRIPT

Will Hanke (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of marketing panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about their marketing, innovation and business growth. I’m your host, Will Hanke. And today we’re diving into the world of smart shading and innovation with guests who knows this space in and out. Our guest today is Joe Estrada, account manager at Coulisse distribution, serving the Northeast and Midwest regions of the U S.

Joe partners with custom windows shade fabricators to deliver innovative, high quality solutions, especially in smart shading through technology called MotionBlinds, which we’re gonna dig into a little bit today. With a focus on responsive service, long-term relationships, and empowering trade professionals, Joe helps clients stay competitive in a fast evolving industry. We’ll be talking about how technology is reshaping the market and

the evolution of modular systems, and what’s next for dealers and fabricators in the smart shade

era. Joe, thanks for being on the show today.

Joe Estrada (01:07)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me Will.

Will Hanke (01:09)
Yeah, glad to have you. So for listeners who don’t know yet, can you share a little bit about your background and what you do at Coulisse Distribution?

Joe Estrada (01:19)
Yeah, yeah, so you touched on it. So I’m a sales rep for Coulisse . I’ve been with the company just a little over a year and a half, coming up on almost two years now, serving primarily the Midwest and parts of the Northeast. So our team, we have coverage throughout the whole country here in the U.S. as well as Canada, and then making our way down to Central America and South America as well. So we have local representation in kind of every corner of the country.

and my portion is the Midwest and a few accounts of the Northeast as well.

Will Hanke (01:50)
Nice. I heard a rumor this was your first podcast.

Joe Estrada (01:54)
It is, it is. think I was joking with you. I, I’m about a daily listener of some kind of a podcast, especially when I’m traveling. but this is the first one that I’m on. So you’re you’re kind of like an adult Santa Claus, you know, Santa Claus for adults making my, little dream come true here. So thanks again.

Will Hanke (02:08)
⁓

too funny. What made you say yes for joining us today?

Joe Estrada (02:12)
Yeah, so ⁓ obviously having the opportunity to share some of the exciting things that we’re doing at Coulisse , especially in evolving landscape in our industry right now. And you guys, the R+T group, you yourself, have always been really, really ⁓ kind to us at Coulisse So when the opportunity presented itself, we felt we had to jump on top of it. I guess you guys are stuck with me. So.

Will Hanke (02:35)
Yeah. Well,

it’s great having you here today. So let’s talk a little bit about Coulisse . I’d love to know what sets Coulisse apart from the other component and fabric suppliers in the window treatment space.

Joe Estrada (02:49)
Yeah, yeah, so I would say one thing that’s kind of unique about us is we are a global one-stop shop. So whether it’s components, hardware, our collections, and our own motors, we are a true, we sell a true system. So obviously you can take the parts that you like if you don’t want or need the full system, but really the beauty in what Coulisse offers is our system approach. ⁓ And we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into that, but I would say that’s something that’s unique.

and then I think our look, our feel kind of our marketing, our branding is a little unique to us. I’m obviously a little biased, but I think we do that part of, the business really, really well. so yeah, a few things that we offer that are unique in that

sense.

Will Hanke (03:30)
Yeah, as a marketing guy, always paying attention to that and I see you guys everywhere. So you’re doing a great job there. Yeah, yeah, very good. Well, let’s jump in. I want to talk about the absolute roller. What is it? How does it serve as the foundation for your product lineup?

Joe Estrada (03:35)
Yeah. Yep. Thank you.

Yes, so we are absolute roller 2.0 system. That is it’s a modular concept, right? So the terms that our engineers like to use is it’s kind of like working with

Legos. So interchangeable components and hardware. You don’t have a right and left bracket, for example. And you can go from our essentially what, you know, for lack of a better term, our dumbest system, our chain manual operated system to our smartest motorized.

motion blind system just by removing the mechanism, the chain clutch mechanism or what some people would call a clutch and replacing it with our motor. So the tube sizes are the same, the deduction sizes are all the same. ⁓ So obviously that’s handy if you’re upgrading a shade that maybe somebody bought years ago or maybe they’re going to buy now if they’d like to upgrade at some point in the future. But it really makes it easy for the manufacturers to work with as well.

So a lot less SKUS and components to work with. ⁓ And obviously we have different sizes, whether it’s a small, medium, large size, depending on the configuration and the control. ⁓ But the modular concept of it makes it user friendly, not only for the fabricators or the manufacturers, but also the installers and then eventually the end users as well, especially when you’re talking motionblinds.

Will Hanke (05:04)
Yeah, and I can assume with that modular approach, the inventory management side of things is easier as well.

Joe Estrada (05:10)
Yep, yep. actually an introduction into our space last year, I got an opportunity to work on a bid for a company and they sent me the existing system that they were using and had said, hey, here’s all the components and hardware and everything that we buy, tell me what your equivalent would be and kind of how that would look differently.

And that’s when I really, the advantage of the modular concept kind of sunk in for me because we talk about it a lot internally.

But when you’re looking at a list of you know hundreds of components and SKUs and I’m using the same 30 40 50 SKUs essentially for the whole thing That’s when it really sunk into me like wow if I was owning the fabrication business ⁓ Especially everybody has a limit on space some some really big some small But everybody’s trying to make the most of the space that they have and they’re in their facility That’s a real big advantage to using a modular concept like what Coulisse offers

Will Hanke (06:04)
That’s great. What are the benefits for like dealers and workrooms when it comes to the system?

Joe Estrada (06:11)
Yeah, very similar. for dealers, it’s easy to install. So if the dealers are paired with the installers or have their own installers, our hardware is very, very easy to use. Again, you’re not worried about a right versus a left and having any errors or issues there that you have to fix. ⁓ For workrooms, it’s similar to a fabricator, right? Depending on where the workroom gets it or starts working at it on the product in the process. Again, fewer SKUs.

the tube sizes are all the same. ⁓ so yeah, you don’t have to familiarize yourself with a bunch of different series or systems all under our umbrella. You get used to that system and it’s a little bit easier to work with from there.

Will Hanke (06:54)
that’s great. I love that approach. I think it’s a lot easier for the end users, as you said, when it comes to figuring out what they need. And you’re probably cutting down on the amount of things that they have to order as well.

Joe Estrada (07:05)
Absolutely. Yep, just because there’s fewer SKUs ⁓ and then yeah, you really notice it with our motorized products because we have a QR code kind of system to set them up. So you don’t have to familiarize yourself with these elaborate, you know, softwares or apps. So if you’re not super techie, as long as you know how to use the camera on your phone and a QR code, which most people by now are pretty familiar with.

Will Hanke (07:30)
Yeah.

Joe Estrada (07:31)
You should be okay setting them up yourselves if you choose to do so. Obviously any installer that has a little bit of experience in our industry, it’s going to be easy for them too. So yeah.

Will Hanke (07:42)
That’s awesome. I’d love to kind of jump into the motorization since you mentioned that ⁓ it’s tech that’s turning heads across the industry, especially the motionblinds. So tell me a little bit about those.

Joe Estrada (07:56)
so anywhere you see Motion, it’s funny, so my first introduction to the industry was really at R+T Stuttgart last year. I hadn’t even been with the company, I don’t think two months, so talk about drinking from a fire hose as your first event. But I was really, really thankful for

Will Hanke (08:08)
Yeah.

Joe Estrada (08:12)
it,

and our booth was MotionBlinds branded. And so a lot of people kind of came over and said, hey, we heard the Coulisse booth is over here, know, where are you guys? And we’re like, you’re right here.

So when you see motionblinds, that is just Coulisse ‘s motorization line, right? That is our own brand of motorization. So we have our regular Bluetooth motors that have been around for a handful of years now for a while that everybody’s probably really familiar with. And then we have our newer smart motors, our Eve motionblinds. So a lot of folks are probably familiar with what Eve is. If you walk into a Best Buy or Apple store, you’ll see their products. They’re like a smart home company, I would say.

So that, and then we do have a comprehensive wired motor program as well for kind of the contract space and the new build space. So a fully comprehensive line of motorization kind of no matter where you’re at as an end user, whether it’s just a homeowner or you’re building a new home, building a new building. So yes, and because of the nature of just scanning the QR code to set up your shades.

It’s 100 % data private, so you don’t have to create accounts, you don’t have to give up your email and phone number and address and rights to your first child, you just scan the QR code and go.

So again, kind of that user-friendly term is something you hear us throughout there a lot, but it’s not just something we talk about. Once you start playing with it, you really can feel the difference between maybe some of the other systems out there.

Will Hanke (09:33)
Yeah, I have some experience with that with some ⁓ security cameras at my house. You just you just shoot the QR code and it just pulls that right in really quick. Yeah.

Joe Estrada (09:41)
Exactly, exactly.

so and with so thanks for mentioning that well on the on the smart home process or conversation, our Eve motionblinds, those can be integrated into your smart home or your smart building. So they’re compatible with the Apple platform, Google, Amazon and Samsung. And our our motors are matter over thread. So matter is just essentially the smart language that a lot of these smart devices speak to each other.

And then the thread network is a mesh network. So the more wired or plugged in devices that you add to it, the stronger that network gets throughout a home or throughout a building. Whereas, you know, on Wi-Fi, the more you add to it, the more juice you’re sucking out of that network. you know, wireless shades don’t necessarily strengthen that network, but anything that’s plugged in or wired will. ⁓ So matter over thread is the system that our EVE

motionblinds work on.

Will Hanke (10:36)
Yeah, and I know Amazon does something similar to that with their sidewalk, ⁓ where multiple Alexis, for instance, talk to each other. That’s always nice to have that additional kind of boost.

Joe Estrada (10:48)
Yes, and you know, a lot of people think smart is just motorized, right? You can set a timer or set end limits. Really, what smart means is that your environment ⁓ can react without you needing to do anything, right? So you can set scenes or automations based on weather, time of day, ⁓ internal temperatures, the glare of the sun.

Your smart home works around you the way that you would want it without needing to do anything. That’s kind of what makes it smart. And so that’s kind of the key difference between a regular Bluetooth motor and say like the Eve MotionBlinds.

Will Hanke (11:21)
Yeah, I’ve mentioned on a lot of my podcasts and I’m kind of a smart home nerd. And when people come over to the house, they’re always like,

Joe Estrada (11:25)
Yep. Yep.

Will Hanke (11:29)
Whoa, that just happened.

So how do you think the smart piece is going to evolve in the next 12 months? Do you think it’s going to be optional for installs or you think more people are just going to want it?

Joe Estrada (11:30)
Hahaha

Yeah, that’s a great question.

I believe the timing is anybody’s best guess, right? We have kind of chosen to be on the front end of it. We kind of got out in front of this maybe a couple of years earlier than most. ⁓ Right now, it does seem pretty optional, right? But the more people that you talk to,

the more you realize smart homes are becoming kind of the norm for lot of people.

I was telling you, Will, we were in the Netherlands last week for our annual global sales meetings with Coulisse and our home office there in Enter.

And the eastern part of the Netherlands and on the way home I sat next to a guy who has a full smart home was familiar with matter-over-thread So that’s the first time that that’s happened where I’m just kind of striking up a conversation with somebody and they really know what’s going on so I would be surprised in the next 12 months 24 months 36 months that starts to become more of the norm and eventually whether it’s in a couple years five years ten years or more a Smart home is going to probably be

Will Hanke (12:25)
Okay.

Joe Estrada (12:42)
somewhat of the standard. And depending on all the estimates that you see out there, you know, by 2030, there’s some estimates that, you know, anywhere from a third to half of homes will be smart homes, at least have smart capabilities, right?

And smart shades are going to play a bigger and bigger part of that moving forward.

Will Hanke (13:03)
Yeah, when it comes to the smart shades, what do you think? What do you wish more dealers knew about those?

Joe Estrada (13:10)
Yes, ⁓ obviously, know, so like for our concept, for example, just by changing one clutch to a motor, not much about the shade is changing, but the revenue. So your average, you know,

your average cost per shade is going to go up usually by about three X, roughly, roughly speaking. And then typically your profit margins on a motor are a little bit better than, a chain clutch as well.

The chain manual operated shades are something that the really, really big guys do really well and they’ve done really well for a long time. And they have certain advantages that maybe some of the smaller fabricators or smaller work rooms just can’t reach like they can.

But motorized shades are still kind of, are still growing in our industry.

So not only can you raise the average price per shade and make yourself more revenue by selling the same amount of shades or hopefully more, obviously.

But there’s a lot of opportunity that’s out there for the taking. So it’s as we enter kind of a new landscape, there’s a lot of clients that are looking for something that they maybe wouldn’t have been interested in before because they already had a manual shade that came with the house or apartment that they bought or whatever.

But as more folks are looking for a motorized shade, that’s where a lot of opportunity is going to be there

to eat up those customers at a higher cost per shade and a higher profit margin from what we see with our clients.

Will Hanke (14:31)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah. As consumers get more into the smart home world like me, ⁓ we have obviously installers that are putting this stuff together and they kind of have to know what is going on. On the troubleshooting side, like what’s involved there? Is it easy to troubleshoot the motionblinds or is a lot of additional knowledge required?

Joe Estrada (14:53)
No, it’s very simple. every motor will or every motor I shade will come with a kind of a setup guide and a troubleshooting guide. And it’s usually just a handful of steps, right? If all else fails, if something’s wrong with your shade, you just reset it and reprogram it. And you can program our motors in three ways. So you can do it right from the shade itself, right from the motor. You can do it with the remote or you can do it from your phone with the app. So we like to give clients, dealers, designers, whoever’s programming that shade, the option to do it how they would like to.

Will Hanke (15:17)
Okay.

Joe Estrada (15:23)
And then we also have a relatively new motion blind chat bot that you can go on to as a consumer, a dealer, a designer, an installer, ask it your questions, or even follow some of the prompts to get specifically to the shade that you’re working with. And 80, 90 % of the questions that you have, that chat bot is going to be able to answer for you. Over time, the goal is 99.9 % of the questions, so.

Will Hanke (15:45)
That’s awesome.

Joe Estrada (15:49)
Just like any LLM, it’s being trained right now ⁓ and getting better by the day. And then obviously for fabricators, ⁓ they have their sales rep like myself, ⁓ based on where they’re at throughout the country or throughout the world that they can go to for, hey, I tried the chat bot, I’m trying to reset this thing. And for whatever reason, there’s still an issue, you can lean on your sales rep and we’ll help you out as well. luckily with the…

the user friendliness of the the motionblinds and just the entire system. We don’t get a lot of those calls because they usually kind of are able to self correct one way or another. And

then with the chat bot, that has really been a huge tool and we use it a lot internally too to kind of test it. You know, how accurate is this? And so far so good.

Will Hanke (16:33)
That’s huge. And that is leading edge stuff. I probably had three AI questions yesterday on different sales calls. Everybody’s starting to use it. Our clients are starting to get referrals from Chat GPT.

Joe Estrada (16:40)
Yeah. Yep.

Will Hanke (16:47)
So having that system in place, teaching it how to answer questions is just going to make the installers especially, or the dealers, that whole thing a lot easier for them.

Joe Estrada (16:56)
Yeah, and it’s funny you say that. I was just listening to a podcast the other day. there’s actually a lot of data that’s coming out that, especially the younger generation, so Gen Z and the really, really young millennials, a lot of us, if you’re looking for a service, a product, or whatever, a lot of times it would start on Google, right? A lot of those conversations or those prompts or those searches are now starting on chat GPT, like, hey.

I’m looking for the, I don’t know, the best motorized window dealer in Detroit, Michigan or whatever. Those prompts are now a lot of times starting from chat GPT. as I think just kind of a personal opinion, as you see those guys try to monetize their platform a little bit more, I’m sure you’ll see a lot more direct links or click to go check out that product that you just did your search for. So yeah, I think that’s just kind of.

a normal part of everyday life and will be more so moving forward.

Will Hanke (17:51)
Yeah, that’s awesome. ⁓ I know that you had mentioned that Coulisse is really committed to empowering fabricators instead of competing with them. ⁓ How does that look like in practice? What does that look

Joe Estrada (17:58)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we don’t have a retail outlet, right? So it’s funny at our shows, we always do an amazing job with our booth. Again, I’m biased, but if you’ve ever seen one, you know what I’m talking about. And we get people that come up to our to our booth constantly like, hey, these are awesome. Where’s your website? Can I order them right now? We don’t have a retail outlet per se. So we really empower our fabricators to be the the engine of us getting our products into the end user’s hands.

So, ⁓ you know, like we have the Sun Shading Expo coming up here in a few weeks in Indy, that first week of November. And it’s inevitable we’re going to get some dealer, designer, architect leads that come from that. And we refer those, preferably, to somebody locally in that community. So we’re pairing a local, call it dealer, with a local fabricator. It’s a win-win ⁓ of somebody that makes the certain system or shade that they’re looking for.

So we really empower our fabricators and are a true partner to them to try to help them grow their business because what’s good for them is obviously good for us too. ⁓ So everything we do, we kind of look through as the lens of a fabricator of how can we do things better or a custom workroom. ⁓ How can we do things better to help them do their business better and grow their revenue.

Will Hanke (19:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. In a world of direct to consumer pressure, ⁓ why is that B2B balance and loyalty so important for Coulisse ?

Joe Estrada (19:33)
Yeah, so, you know, it all starts with the partnerships and, know, a lot of these companies that we’re working with here in the US, our industry is a very, very old one,

right? Windows are very, very old. So there’s a lot of clients ⁓ or fabricators, workrooms that have done a really great job of building their own networks, right? Of dealers and designers. It’s taken sometimes several decades for them to build the ecosystem that they all have.

So by creating partnerships with them and getting our products to them,

we could take advantage of what they have built to a certain extent as opposed to trying to go right to the end user and try something new that we’ve never done

We kind of see it as we’re really good at what we do. We have a unique system that we can offer. And so now it’s just, hey, let’s get that system or at least parts of that system into the hands of as many workrooms and fabricators as possible. And that will eventually lead to more end users, more, you know,

architects, more building owners buying our products as a result of that as well.

Will Hanke (20:36)
Yeah, that’s a smart model. Any advice that you’d give to other supplier brands that are trying to balance growth with these strong relationships?

Joe Estrada (20:46)
Yes, so I mean, think at the end of the day, all comes down to, know, assuming you have a competitive product and a competitive price people buy from from people they like and trust,

right? So if you’re always the most likable and trustworthy one, ⁓ even if there’s bumps along the road and you create that true partnership relationship with your clients and vice versa, you’re going to lean on each

other, right? And look for solutions as opposed to, hey, here’s this problem.

Now what do we do? Well, we know what we’re going to do. We’re going to find a solution together that’s a win-win and move past it. And the other thing, I think you just focus on what you’re good at, right? Lean into what you’re really good at. Whether it’s a person or a company, we all have strengths and weaknesses maybe. ⁓ lean into what you’re good at.

And for us, that’s the B2B market. And our partners here in the US and all over the world.

have helped us grow our business in a really sustainable and meaningful way.

You know, we’re still owned by the same two brothers that started our company, know, 33 years ago now. And they’ve always kind of done things in a similar way just in terms of partnerships and relationships. And, you know, the results and the success speaks for itself.

Will Hanke (21:58)
I’d love to talk a little bit about inventory and supply. ⁓ You mentioned inventory levels are pretty strong right now, especially on fabrics and solar screens. What’s behind that strategy?

Joe Estrada (22:11)
Yeah, so that’s always kind of been the coolest way we, you know, there’s some nuance there, but we always try to keep at least six to 12 months or more of our key SKUs. So whether it’s our key fabric or our solar screen SKUs, our key motors, key components and hardware from the absolute roller system, you know, depending on who you talk to, you get a different number, but our on time delivery rate is anywhere from about 95 to 98 % here in the U S depending on the year. So that’s something that we’re really, really proud of. And

as certain things may be changing the industry and you see certain thought processes wanna get leaner and leaner on the inventory side for a various number of reasons, we’re kinda going the other way. And that’s really due to our leadership here in the Americas and our owners keeping their commitment to our clients where, ⁓ especially during COVID, everything got a little crazy, right? But a lot of people lost a lot of money and a lot of opportunities and created a whole lot of extra headache that…

that they maybe didn’t need just because of out of stocks and not having the inventory when your partners need it. So that’s something that, and our warehouse team is amazing. We have the right processes in place. So we’ve done a really great job of balancing, hey, you’d never want too much inventory, right? You have to move it, you have to sell it, and you don’t want wasted space. But we really, really have out of stocks. And if we do, it’s usually, it’s going to be here in a week or two. It’s not.

You know, I’ve heard some horror cases maybe six months or more. And at that point, if you’re the work room or the fabricator or the dealer, you’re going to have to reselect. And so if you have to reselect, ⁓ not only is that going to cause more headaches and issues, obviously,

but time kills deals. So the longer you stretch that, that, that deal or that opportunity out, the more chance there is for something to go awry and you lose that opportunity, which is just lost money, which we don’t want for anybody.

So,

Will Hanke (24:03)
Right. Right.

Joe Estrada (24:04)
Kudos to our leadership and to our owners for staying committed to doing things that way. And when you’re owned by the same guys that have built everything, I think it makes that easier to kind of stay true to that in the face of a number of issues kind of in and around our industry and the world globally.

Will Hanke (24:20)
Yeah. As a vendor, you’ve always got to play the balancing of the supply chain, right? you know, do you see, more people making purchasing decisions based on availability over brand loyalty now?

Joe Estrada (24:25)
Yep.

Absolutely, in both, but absolutely to the first point of availability. Just speaking for myself, my own clients, I know of a handful of opportunities that I think we would have, you know, I’d like to think we would have eventually gotten to have an opportunity at closing those deals. But some of them that are coming our way more and more because they’re recognizing the difference between us and maybe some others of being able to deliver.

on time at that, call it high 90 % rate where others can’t. And if it isn’t out of stock again, like it happens, right? It’s not a hundred percent, but if it’s a week or two, everybody can deal with that when it’s several months. That’s when it starts to become really, really challenging. So, just speaking for myself, I can, you know, just off the top of my head, I’m thinking of three or four opportunities that have come up this at the end of last year and this year so far, that I’m not sure we get them as quickly as we did. If not for,

essentially them trusting us to be able to deliver for them on time more than let’s say who we’re competing against. So yeah, there is a true business advantage to it. Absolutely.

Will Hanke (25:35)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. So a lot of our listeners are dealers. How do you think they can learn from how Coulisse is approaching the supply chain and stocking differently today?

Joe Estrada (25:50)
Well, you’re dealers and designers love us, I think more than anybody, right? Because we just are our branding, our marketing is very, very good. Just our style. ⁓ It’s very, very, ⁓ I would say modern. It’s very, very fashionable. So ⁓ dealers, dealers and designers, designers, think love us as much as anybody. ⁓ So in terms of what they can learn from that, I think it’s just, again, kind of building that partnership approach and attacking it from a partnership approach, not being so transactional with everything.

and then leaning into what you’re good at and, being reliable, right?

Say what you’re going to do and then do what you’re going to say.

⁓ and I think Huliss does an amazing job at doing that. And it makes our job as a sales rep really easy because you know that what you’re telling your clients, you can actually stand on it and your, teammates are going to do what’s necessary behind you to make sure that what you’re telling them comes to fruition. So, having that team approach.

and just being reliable, no matter at what point of the chain of the process that you’re in, I think will yield really, really good results for you on the business side.

Will Hanke (26:56)
It’s great that you have that awesome support. mean, it sounds like you got a great job.

Joe Estrada (27:02)
⁓ I do. do our team, you know, again, kind of going back to Chris and Maurice, they’re the two brothers. ⁓ it, Coulisse feels like one big family. So we’re a global company. We’ve got offices all over the world and representation all over the world, but we were all just together, you know, in, in a small little farm town in Eastern Netherlands last year. And it feels like one big family. So, ⁓ if I ever need engineering’s help, if I ever need marketing’s help, if I ever need to contact the warehouse supply chain,

I know who to contact and who to get a hold of and they’re always willing to lend a helping hand. And when you’re a global operation, a lot of people working remotely, you’re traveling all over the place, you have clients all over the place. It’s impossible to do this thing well if you’re not doing it as a team. So very thankful as a salesperson, makes my job much easier, which I really appreciate.

Will Hanke (27:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, for

sure. Yeah. So speaking of staying stocked and ready, let’s look at where Coulisse will be showcasing these innovations next. You mentioned earlier the Sun Shading Expo. Tell me about what you guys are doing there.

Joe Estrada (28:06)
Yes, so we will have our ⁓ booth like we always do and we will have all of our products on display. So we kind of separate it by, you know,

we’ll have like a child safe by design table,

which I actually haven’t jumped into just yet. It’s a, you know, child safety has been a huge topic of conversation the last few years all around the world, but especially here in the U.S. So we have systems, mostly our twin pull, our balanced roller, our zero gravity system.

and our motionblinds obviously that are child safe by design, right? So you don’t need a tensioner device ⁓ or something additional to make it more child safe. We have those solutions as well for our manually operated shades, but we will have them all separated. So we’ll have a child safe by design table. We’ll have a motionblinds table. We’ll likely have a wired motor, a wired motionblinds table, some of our manual solutions. We’ll have our entire US. ⁓

fabric collection on display. And then we’ll have all the individual components, hardware, motors as well to kind of get as granular as we need to with a fabricator or installer or even a dealer maybe. ⁓ So whether you want to see the really pretty finished products that everybody comes over and wants to buy a bunch of right away, or you want to look at the little bits and pieces, we’ll have it all. ⁓ And we’ll have coffee, we’ll have water. I think in the afternoon we usually switch it to the good stuff, the beer and wine as well.

Will Hanke (29:31)
Okay.

Joe Estrada (29:31)
If you’re going to be at Sunshading Expo, you have to come see the Coulisse Booth

Will Hanke (29:35)
I guess I know where I’ll be in the afternoon. Any sneak peeks that you can share with the audience?

Joe Estrada (29:38)
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right.

Yes, so we do have something that’s new with Coulisse is our absolute silent program that we will be kind of rolling out, call it next year. ⁓ So the first part of that is a silent bracket for our cassette, our medium sized cassette system. ⁓ So what that is is with our motorized shades, everybody’s always trying to, hey, how do we make the system, especially if it’s in a ⁓

cassette or if it’s in ⁓ fascia, ⁓ how do we make it quieter? How can we make it ⁓ even more quiet for the end users, right? Especially if it’s in a bedroom or so. ⁓ We’re always making tweaks to the motors themselves to make them quieter and quieter. And then we also are going to have the bracket, for example, that’s for lack of a better term, enhanced with some additional ⁓ advantages on it. ⁓

that will help make the system quieter. ⁓ So eventually we’ll have a ⁓ silent crown and drive as well that can be included. So I kind of anticipate the silent components just kind of overtaking maybe some of the other components that we’ve sold previously for our motionblinds. ⁓ But again, we’re about giving clients the option so that option will stay there. I know I will be pushing my clients to use those silent components.

just to give the end user an even better experience, right? If it adds an extra 10, 15 % enjoyment and satisfaction to the end user’s experience, I think it’s worth it.

Will Hanke (31:20)
Yeah, you and I lucked

out this year because it’s in the Midwest. We don’t have far to go, right?

Joe Estrada (31:25)
That’s right. I know. I

know. I told, ⁓ I told our team down in Miami, bring their coats and their scarves and their winter hats. So I’ll have some, I’ll have some hot cocoa waiting for them when they get up North. ⁓ and then the, the, the other thing too, sorry, we’ll is, we’ll have our wired motors. we have kind of a new comprehensive wired motor program, mostly for the contract market, but also for the residential market, especially a new build. We’ll have those on display as well. So if you’ve always, you know, if you’re an existing client with Coulisse .

Will Hanke (31:31)
Right?

Yeah.

Joe Estrada (31:53)
You’ve always wanted to work with Coulisse so you’re just interested in what we are doing on the wired motor side. Come stop by and we can show you that new program as well.

Will Hanke (32:01)
Yeah, so definitely stop by the booth for some goodies and ⁓ what’s going on. Why do you think the Sun Shading Expo is important to our industry right now?

Joe Estrada (32:05)
That’s right.

One, you can, know, especially we were talking about AI earlier, I think more and people are working remotely, myself included. No matter what, it’s still a people business. It’s still kind of a contact sport, right? So anything that gets people together from the industry, you’re going to have fun, right? But you’re also going to make a lot of progress on the business side. You can exchange ideas. ⁓ It’s kind of good to see, hey, what’s our competition doing, right? That’s a great opportunity for us to see what they’re doing. What are they highlighting? ⁓ But it’s a…

One place where you can meet clients, you can meet prospects, you can get in front of new people that maybe don’t know as much about you, or who, you hey, you always get the most out of who and what somebody is in person. ⁓ And then all the different learnings that are available, right? I’m new to the industry, so anybody that’s new, there’s a lot to learn. ⁓

Even though the industry feels smaller and smaller by the day, there’s still a lot to learn, not only about, you know, your own stuff.

but what everybody else is doing as well. So if you want to crash course and to be incredibly efficient, a trade show like Sun Shading Expo, there’s no better place to be for a week to again, kind of drink from a fire hose, all things window coverings.

so

Will Hanke (33:24)
Yeah,

yeah, and it’s massive. I’m blown away how big it is.

Joe Estrada (33:27)
It is.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s again, I think it’s really cool that it’ll be kind of centrally located in Indianapolis and the fact that it moves around to different locations throughout the country is is a huge advantage, I think.

Will Hanke (33:41)
Yeah.

Yeah. So what are you most excited about in the months ahead?

Joe Estrada (33:46)
Yes, motionblinds for sure. We are incredibly bullish on that side of our business and where we want to go with that. ⁓ Here in the Midwest, for me, there’s a ton of opportunity on the motion blind side just because we’re still a relatively newer region for Coulisse . We’re a 33-year-old

but we’ve only been in the US for about, call it 13-ish years, 13, 14 years. So the sky is still the limit for Coulisse all around the world, but especially here in the US.

So what we’re doing on the motion blind side and just on it with motorization in general, and we’ve got some stuff maybe in 2026, 2027 that’ll be coming out as well. Incredibly bullish on that side of our business, but on that side of the industry, I think you’ll see, I forget exactly what it was, but there was a link that was shared that I think it was some event with Apple.

where they spoke about Eve and they spoke about kind of smart home stuff and they had kind of a segment where they highlighted smart shade specifically as an industry. So ⁓ I think it’s as exciting of a time as ever to be in our industry and you’ll see a lot of cool stuff on display here in a few weeks and moving forward.

Will Hanke (34:57)
Yeah, that event is November 5 through 7 in Indianapolis and there are tickets available. We’ll put a link in our show notes below if anybody needs to get, grab some tickets, we’ll be able to do that. Love to talk just real quick about yourself a little bit. What’s something outside of work that keeps you creative and grounded?

Joe Estrada (35:03)
Yes.

Yeah.

grounded my friends and family that bust my chops constantly. So probably them, but no, I’m a husband, father, and a dog dad. Great group of friends, great group of colleagues. I would say you could add my colleagues to the bunch that keep me nice and grounded as well. ⁓ But as I get a little bit older, I’m playing less and less of the, you know, no more basketball and football. now golf is kind of my new obsession. ⁓

Will Hanke (35:23)
you

There you go.

⁓

Joe Estrada (35:45)
that,

that drives me nuts because just like most people that play it, I’m, not, I’m, I’m not all that good yet. So, ⁓ if I’m not doing that really just spending quality time with my friends and family. ⁓ I’m actually headed to, ⁓ to a wedding this weekend down in Cancun for, ⁓ me and one of me and my wife’s dearest friends, getting married down there.

Will Hanke (36:01)
Okay.

Joe Estrada (36:04)
So the older you get, the more responsibilities that are kind of thrown your way, the less of those types of opportunities you get. So, ⁓ I’m incredibly excited about that.

So and it’s a little sunnier down there than it is up here in Grand Rapids, Michigan this time of year. So just a touch.

Will Hanke (36:19)
Little bit. I’m headed

off to Miami next week for a conference, so it’ll be nice and warm there as well. ⁓

Joe Estrada (36:26)
Ah, yeah,

and hey, you know, while you’re down there, if you want to see the Miami is where our US headquarters is for Coulisse , if you want to see the office, the warehouse, the showroom, you let me know and we’ll get you set up for a nice tour down there and we’ll give you that. We’ll roll out the Coulisse red carpet for you. So.

Will Hanke (36:37)
nice.

That

would be great. What trends do you see like shaping the industry over the next three to five years?

Joe Estrada (36:49)
Motorization for sure, smart shades for sure. ⁓ It’s interesting kind of what’s happening in the exterior space,

right? Since COVID, I think a lot of people have jumped into that space and there’s a lot of cool stuff happening there. ⁓ But I think motorization and then AI as well, ⁓ not only just on like the actual product side, but how businesses are going to use AI to empower their employees. So I think a lot of people get a…

Will Hanke (36:59)
Yeah.

Joe Estrada (37:16)
you know, get kind of scared when they hear AI and how it may replace them. I think the better way of looking at it is like, how can you help it? How can you use AI to do your job even better and be even better at whatever it is that you do? So that’ll the effects will vary depending on what it is that you do. But I know at Coulisse we are kind of always looking to be trendsetters and stay ahead of the game, especially with new technologies. And it’s no different ⁓ with AI. So.

At our meetings last week, we got to learn a little bit about how our leadership and how our ownership is going to help empower us with AI and help us all do our jobs better and reach our goals by 2030 and beyond. So just kind of the, just like every industry, think right now it’s technology, it’s AI. In our industry, our company’s no different. So motionblinds for sure, Eve motionblinds. And then how we’re going to leverage AI to continue to grow Coulisse here, you know, in the States and abroad throughout the world.

Will Hanke (38:12)
I think that’s really smart of vendors to kind of embrace that. As a user of AI, an end user, I think you have to get over the fact that it is going to replace everything that you do. Once you kind of, there’s like a hump, right? Once you realize, oh, it can do that for me, oh, it can do this, then the whole world opens up and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

Joe Estrada (38:29)
Yes.

Yeah, and you know, just kind of on the sales side or on the marketing side, I think it’s just gonna make the great sales reps and great marketing reps amazing. I think it’s gonna make the good great because you can just, you’ll get more output with the same or less input, right? So yeah, I think, hey, what could go right? What’s the pro here? Not just looking at all the cons. And how can you use this to do your job better and help your company? And again, I’m thankful that, you know.

our company is thinking forward for us and empowering us, hey, this is how you can use this to do your job better, to service your clients better.

So yeah, if you’re an existing client of Coulisse or you will be here shortly, I think you’ll see some of the things that we’re doing make your life much easier, much smoother. It’ll save everybody time and it’ll be a good thing moving forward. Absolutely.

Will Hanke (39:24)
Yeah.

Well, Joe, this has been a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. Before we wrap up, let’s tell listeners how they can connect with you and Coulisse . So what is the best way for them to learn more about Coulisse in general or connect with yourself?

Joe Estrada (39:28)
Yeah

Yeah, so on the Coulisse side of things, MotionBlinds.com first and foremost, that’s where you can learn more about our, again, everything we’re doing on the motorization side. You get a good feel for our branding as well, kind of how we position ourselves. So if you’re a dealer, designer, fabricator that wants to leverage that with your clients and have maybe a little bit of a unique offering in the market, you can get a feel on MotionBlinds.com and then Coulisse .com as well. So those are the two best places. If you have LinkedIn, Coulisse is very active on

LinkedIn, think just about daily posts going on. So you can always stay up to date with us there, at the trade shows like sun shading expo. We’ll, we’ll always be there. and then for myself, just, you know, my email, [email protected]

Will Hanke (40:13)
Thanks.

Joe Estrada (40:24)
and again, we have representatives all throughout the country, all throughout the world. So that that service their areas, you have local representation, that know their markets intimately.

And so no matter where you’re at, no matter at what point of the chain that you’re at, if you get in touch with us, we’ll get you in the hands of the right person and you help us sell more Coulisse

Will Hanke (40:45)
love that. Thanks again for being on the show. I think we’ve learned a lot, both about lease and trends that are going on, what you guys are focusing on. Any final thoughts for fabricators, dealers, or designers that want to stay ahead in this industry?

Joe Estrada (40:49)
Yeah

Yeah, don’t be so afraid of change, right? Our industry is changing a ton right now. I think embrace that. Find your lane, lean into your strengths. And if you’re looking for somebody that’s going to take a little bit more of a partnership approach, you know, a lot of the fabricators, they are family owned. That’s one thing that’s interesting. As a supplier, you know, we are also family owned. So I think there’s levels that we can connect with each other that might be a little bit different.

And if you feel stuck, if you feel like, I’m just, I’ve been doing the same thing for a while. It’s not yielding the results that I want. need something a little bit different, maybe a little bit fresher. Get in touch with us at Coulisse . We can show you at least what we can do. And then the decision is yours from there, whether or not you want to move forward. So, yeah, use us, use us for all the things that we have to offer. We’d love to be a partner if we’re not already.

Will Hanke (41:48)
Awesome. Well, that’s a wrap on today’s episode of Marketing Panes Huge thanks to Joe Estrada for joining us and sharing such valuable insights on innovation, modular systems, and smart shading tech. If this conversation gave you even one actionable idea, do us a favor.

Share it with a friend in the trade and subscribe so you don’t miss our next episode. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, or at our website, Window Treatment Marketing Pros. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time on Marketing Panes.

Joe Estrada (42:22)
Thanks Will.

Guest Profile: Karen Lander

Karen Lander is the founder of Drapery Design, a custom window treatments company she built from a one-person home-based workroom into a million-dollar business serving top interior designers and architects nationwide. With over thirty-five years of experience in design, fabrication, and project management, she has worked across multiple business models while consistently growing her company. Today, Karen is focused on sharing her proven systems, templates, and industry insights to help the next generation of window-covering professionals build efficient, profitable businesses.

Other Notes/Links:

Learn more about Karen Lander on: Drapery Design Collective

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TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:01)
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is someone who has just seen about every version of this industry over the past 35 years. Karen Lander started as a one-person workroom, built a team,

Opened a showroom and eventually walked away from it all to build a completely different kind of business, one focused on consulting and project management for high-end designers and architects. Today she works on full home projects worth six figures, collaborates with top-tier designers across the country.

And has carved out a niche that most dealers don’t even realize exists. Now she’s entering a new chapter, packaging everything she’s learned into systems and training to help the next generation shortcut the learning curve. This episode is all about evolution, choosing the right business model for your stage, and how to break into the high-end market without chasing volume. Karen, welcome to the show.

Karen Lander (01:12)
⁓ thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

William Hanke (01:15)
I appreciate your time. so you mentioned that your business has gone through five different versions now. So let’s go back to the beginning. What first got you into window treatments and did you expect it to turn into a thirty-five year career?

Karen Lander (01:21)
Yeah.

I did not expect it to turn into a 35 career, 35-year career. I had gone to college, I was a textile design major and a business major, and I wanted to get into textile design. I live in Philadelphia. I interviewed up in New York and I realized New York was not where this Philadelphia suburban girl wanted to live. ⁓

William Hanke (01:54)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (01:56)
So I went and worked in the management training program for a retail company. And I it was women’s clothing retail in malls. Malls were opening all over the country at this point. I was a store manager, a district manager, and then I became a training manager where I traveled all over the country to new mall openings and hired and trained management teams.

So I, you know, had a strong textile background. I’ve been a seamstress since age seven. My mom taught me how to sew. I won several awards for my clothing design when I was in high school. ⁓ and I really thought I was gonna go into fashion and clothing and but I had the big disruptor, which is starting to have a family.

William Hanke (02:30)
wow.

Karen Lander (02:49)
And I was doing my traveling job for about nine months after my first child was born. And I realized I was missing babyhood. ⁓ and so I decided to quit that job and open a business. And I knew I wanted to open a business. I had no idea what it was going to be. Both my parents had their own businesses.

So they were a role model for me. And also I had managed, you know, district managed ten retail stores. So I had that background. So I felt like I could pull everything together. And I decided to ⁓ figure out what my passion was, which was sewing and textiles. And I got into window treatments because I made my own and I knew of a person who

sewed window treatments for designers and I thought, well I can do that. and stay home with my children. And so it started. I’ll do it for a few years. When they’re in school I’ll go back to the corporate world and the rest is history.

William Hanke (03:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome. So you started as a one person workroom basically. ⁓ what did those

Karen Lander (04:03)
I did in

my basement. Very low entry money needed if you are a seamstress and you have a sewing machine. my dad was a builder who had a lot of carpenters who built me tables, you know, a lot of the furniture that I needed. He got all that built for me, so it was

It just seemed like the thing for me to do at the time. And again, I thought it was temporary. I’ve never really been a long range plane planner. Everything has evolved

William Hanke (04:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So as you

Yeah. As you were building that kind of one person workroom, ⁓ at what point did you realize this could be more than just a small operation?

Karen Lander (04:52)
I think when I got to the point where I could not keep up myself sewing all the project demands that were landing on in my lap. so I hired some people to come to my house and work in my workroom. And we did that for a while and the

volume kept growing and actually as sales reps heard about me, I guess through designers that I was working for, I was also doing retail. I mean my first client was my the minister wife of my church who wanted to support me in this. ⁓ neighbors, friends, you know, so I was pretty much half

William Hanke (05:34)
Okay. Yeah.

Karen Lander (05:43)
doing it myself and half working for designers. And sales reps started showing up saying, you know, you should carry some lines of things. You’re selling retail, you’re sending everybody, you know, to some other store and then you’re just selling the stuff. But you can make yourself some more money if you can sell products, have some markup, and said okay.

So that’s you know, was another leap in my business in terms of income and vo sales volume. that’s that was the first step.

William Hanke (06:19)
Wow, that’s awesome. I love how you had kind of these people come along the way that help push you and prompt you into ⁓ scaling up. That that helps.

Karen Lander (06:26)
Yes. Yes. And I’ve

always helped others along the way. ⁓

William Hanke (06:32)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (06:33)
was involved in WCAA for many years. I was the local chapter president. I was on the board of directors as the treasurer.

I I did that probably I was really, really visible for about ten years. And I feel like the past ten years I’ve sort of disappeared because my

business has just exploded and I have no bandwidth for anything other than that. ⁓ so now I’m coming back. I’m gonna be more visible again.

William Hanke (06:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s awesome.

That’s awesome. Well, I’m glad you’re on here today. We’ll we’ll help get the word out about you a little bit. so can you walk me through you went through a couple of them, but can you walk me through the different business models that you’ve had over the years?

Karen Lander (07:08)
Okay.

Yeah. so after I was, you know, I got to the point where I had several employees. I was strict workroom working in my basement. and there was a shop, a a home furnishing store in the town where I live.

That was a really interesting concept. The it was a two-story store. It had a restaurant. so it was kind of a place that people on the upstairs, so the people had to work walk through the downstairs retail area to get upstairs to the restaurant. And it was sort of like a community gathering kind of spot. And the owner had her shop, it was I for I don’t remember what the square footage was, but it was big.

William Hanke (07:59)
Okay.

Karen Lander (08:07)
department store size and she leased out like 10 by 10 square foot areas to other businesses that she would curate it to make sure it the look and the product fit in with her concept.

So I ⁓ rented one of these booths as they called it. Put up there was a wall, put up

Drapery, Roman shade, valance, all kinds of window treatments. Put my card out. There’s the store was staffed. I didn’t have to be there. Put my card out, put it made a bunch of pillows from leftover fabric for you know, some pickup s on-site sales. And that just gave me so much exposure. and you know, more and more designers and directors.

clients, would pick up my business card.

And I I can’t even remember when I started having a website. So I started my business in 1991. I mean it was pretty early on. But you know people would go to my website, see what I was all about, and word of mouth, I don’t know, I just kept getting

William Hanke (09:12)
Okay.

Karen Lander (09:27)
bigger and bigger to the point where I wanted my own store. Wanted my own showroom. And so the area I live in is this it’s a suburb of, you know, Philadelphia, a major city. And it’s a very wealthy area. And the rents are very high the commercial rents.

William Hanke (09:32)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (09:55)
Maybe it’s different now with the new the new economy, but

William Hanke (09:57)
Probably not. Probably not.

Karen Lander (10:01)
it was expensive. but I just felt like I was on fire. I had growth, I had, you know, clients, I had trained employees, I felt really

extremely ready for that situation. I had been a district manager. I had run retail stores. I knew how to do displays. I knew the psychology behind it all. so I went for it.

William Hanke (10:21)
Right.

Karen Lander (10:27)
Now I mean I did have to get a line of credit. I did have to borrow money. so it’s a very different animal than working out of your home, you know, staying lean, keeping your overhead low.

William Hanke (10:37)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (10:41)
⁓ but

loved it. I loved s setting it up. I loved doing the displays. I loved having my the clients that came in. It was, you know, I was really thinking this is it. This this is

William Hanke (10:56)
Okay.

Right.

Karen Lander (11:03)
what I’m gonna be doing for the next 20 years. and

Do you want me to go on the next part of the story?

William Hanke (11:11)
Yeah,

go for it. I I I’m interested in all the phases.

Karen Lander (11:15)
Yeah. So the next phase was I decided to close it. And after all this explanation of how much I loved it and how it was increasing my sales volume, why did I do that? Well, being busy does not mean being more profitable. So bottom line, I enjoyed it, but the fact that the overhead

William Hanke (11:24)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (11:40)
stole my profits. Now I had a staff to pay. I couldn’t pay myself until all the bills were paid and all the staff was paid. And my income dropped significantly. And I I really love y you should have somebody on who was successful at this.

William Hanke (11:55)
Interesting.

Ha ha ha.

Karen Lander (12:02)
And made money at it because that is a really hard transition. and I am not that much of a risk taker and never had been in debt before like that, you know, maybe a mortgage. that it just wasn’t my personality to keep pushing and keep pushing and seeing if if I could make this work.

William Hanke (12:08)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (12:29)
when I thought, hey, if it’s just me working out of my house, I’m gonna make the money. I’ll just take on the jobs that I wanna take on. and at this point, because I did scale and I did increase my volume up to a million dollar business, I couldn’t even keep

Up with the demand in my workroom. So I had reached out to other workrooms. So I had a lot of partner workrooms who I subcontracted particular projects to.

William Hanke (12:57)
Okay.

Karen Lander (13:00)
knew th how much bandwidth they do take for me personally. And so I thought, well, if I have a lot of couple good workroom partners, not just one, because the volume and you can, you know, you can have 70 windows in a house and you’ve got to get the window treatments done by a certain day.

You’ve got to spread that across different workrooms. so that became my new business model. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last ten years. It’s been very, very successful. I really enjoy it. I really being enjoy being part of the designer teams. Some of my design clients are firms where they have five to ten designers working for them, some are individual designers.

William Hanke (13:36)
Okay.

Karen Lander (13:53)
working out their homes. but they are all designers, not really decorators, who are doing new builds or complete gut and remodels. So instead of needing a hundred jobs a year, I need maybe ten, a hundred thousand jobs a year to do a million dollars. and again, not that it’s

I’m not working. I’m I’m working a lot, but I’m doing different tasks. I’m not supervising the sewing, which took a lot when you have your own workroom. and I don’t it, you know, took 35 35 years and I figured it out. Making more money than I’ve ever made. And having more freedom, more free time than I ever had before. Yeah.

William Hanke (14:25)
Right.

Yeah.

That’s awesome. I love that you started

Right. Yeah. I love that you

started at home working for yourself, went the retail route, did all that, got a bunch of lessons from that, right? ⁓ and then longed for the old days of working at home, but now you had this huge asset, I guess is a good word, of all those connections, all the clients and all that stuff, and now you can become picky. So the the retail piece.

Karen Lander (14:54)
yeah.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

William Hanke (15:10)
Although it didn’t work out or you longed for something better, it still was a major piece of your overall scaling. ⁓

Karen Lander (15:16)
It

was because it gave me visibility. Yeah. And one of the problems with having that retail space is my designers that had I’d worked for before, they they stayed with me, but it was hard to attract new design clients because you had a retail store and they were afraid their clients would walk into your retail store.

William Hanke (15:19)
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s pretty awesome.

Karen Lander (15:42)
And buy directly from you. I mean, I had a strict policy of not letting that happen. If I don’t think it ever really did. Maybe once somebody asked me and I sent them right back to the designer. I said, you know, you work through her. it it it definitely was a fear though. designers, you know, they’re the front and center person to their clients.

William Hanke (15:53)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (16:06)
I have different relationships with different designers. Some of them, you know, give me a well thought out design that they just want me to implement. But a lot of them that I’ve worked with long term, you know, come to me first, say, Okay, what should I do with this situation? And I literally design it for them and they go and present it to their client. And some of them actually want me to come.

William Hanke (16:29)
That’s great.

Karen Lander (16:32)
You know, but most of them don’t. Most of them, you know, they’re the authority here in ⁓ client facings. So that’s what they want. And like I said, when I stepped back from the retail store, I was real plenty happy to be in the background. I didn’t I didn’t need to be front and center. I’m a I’m a real introvert.

William Hanke (16:37)
Right.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

⁓ okay.

I you’ve seen a lot of different versions of this business, but one of the biggest shifts was moving away from that kind of traditional growth plan. you mentioned you were making less money at that stage than before. What was what was happening behind the scenes that caused that?

Karen Lander (17:14)
well just the paying for all the overhead.

William Hanke (17:20)
Yeah, overhead was a big piece of that. That makes sense. ⁓ and the staff.

Karen Lander (17:22)
Yeah, so there was the

rent and there was the utilities. The showroom was split into three sections in the front were full window treatment samples. so that cost a lot, you know, to make all those samples. Then I had a whole wall of rod samples, so investing in

Physical samples clients could see of rods was a big investment. the middle of the store was a library. So all the sample books from vendors, most of them were free. I think I paid for some some lines. all the blind and shade samples.

You know, so all that sampling, which was constantly changing and the displays and the sampling, and then in the back I had my workroom. I moved it had moved it out of my basement into the back of the store. and had bought more bigger equipment, more professional equipment, you know, so it it took a lot to set it up.

William Hanke (18:33)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (18:36)
If I want to insert here some advice to people, is and my problem is I’ve always been wanting to be all things to all people and doing everything. And segmenting and niching and saying you are a workroom or you are a retailer or you service designers, like focusing on that is probably a better way to go.

William Hanke (18:46)
Right.

Yeah. Well they say there’s

in the nations, right?

Karen Lander (19:05)
You have to experiment

to find out, you know, where where you like, where you fall, ⁓ and in your market where you live, everybody lives in a different kind of area, what’s gonna work?

William Hanke (19:18)
Right. Yeah. Totally makes sense. ⁓ yeah, niching down obviously is is good ⁓ if you have that resource behind you of being able to do that, right? ⁓ I think that’s great. When you decided to close your your retail, what decisions went into that? Like what what made you think this is the right move at this point?

Karen Lander (19:30)
Yes. Yeah.

I think I got to the point where I just wanted to get out of there. number one because I was I wasn’t losing money, but I wasn’t making much money. excuse me?

William Hanke (19:57)
It became a job.

It became a job.

Karen Lander (20:02)
It became a job supervising employees.

William Hanke (20:03)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Lander (20:09)
I don’t wanna s I don’t know how to say this. ⁓ the employee mentality of I show up, I clock in, I get a paycheck. when I started instead of having my own workroom employees, instead in s when I started subcontract c subcontracting to other employees.

the attitude of this was their business. So they had a whole different mentality and I really liked having alliances with other business owners as opposed to having employees. I’ve had, you know, employees in all my different jobs my whole life and I kind of just wanted to be alone.

William Hanke (20:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lander (20:57)
So that that was honestly what was going on in my head for you know.

William Hanke (21:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. How did your definition of success or scaling shift after that experience?

Karen Lander (21:12)
Well, instead of scaling, I remember for a long time before I hit a million dollars, I wanted to hit a million dollars. You know, maybe for probably ten years. And I thought scaling was like getting more and more and more volume. getting bigger and bigger. And I w I once I did that and I I hit those bigger and bigger goals, I hit that.

higher higher volume goals. but now I was like, but what happened to my profit margin? So to me, scaling is figuring out how to maintain the highest profit margin you can and making enough income to pay yourself what you think, you know, you need, you want at that particular time in your life.

William Hanke (21:42)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lander (22:04)
So yeah,

I have a completely different thought about what scaling is. It ⁓ and more tied into profit margin than sales.

William Hanke (22:10)
Sure. Yeah.

Good point. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t you don’t want it to turn into a job, right? Then it becomes monotonous and it’s no longer fun. The fun that you thought it was gonna be when you got there, right?

Karen Lander (22:26)
Yeah, well I started

out a creative person sewing, which was my passion and my hobby for my whole life. And I literally gave all that up to manage people, to manage a a space that had to be maintained that the public could walk into. Yeah. But I mean it’s I loved it in some ways.

William Hanke (22:36)
Yeah.

Right.

Karen Lander (22:51)
And I didn’t and others.

William Hanke (22:52)
Yeah. Yeah. Well let’s shift gears a little bit. today you’re working mostly on full home projects and you mentioned some of those started coming in near the end of the retail piece of that. How did you really first break into that level of client?

Karen Lander (23:00)
Yes.

⁓ through designers that I had worked with for ten plus years, and they had clients that were gaining in their net worth and were starting to build bigger and bigger homes. And so we naturally evolved, and I’m gonna say it was three or four particular clients that I’ve had.

For 30 years and probably done five or six houses for each of them because they started, you know, in a four-bedroom colonial in a regular neighborhood. And they they kept scaling. they kept moving up to the next level, and they brought the designer who brought me with them, and that introduced me.

to the one bought a 40-acre property and built many buildings on that property and got one of the top architects in the country who happens to be based in the Philadelphia area. And then I start you know they started to get to know me because I would show up at some of the meetings. and

I would say at that level it is building relationships. And it’s slow. I think if you, you know, approach an architect and say, I do window treatments, will you hire me? If if you’re an expert in motorization, they might, because they need whole house integrators, and the architects and the builders might hire them directly, but they’re not going to hire a soft window treatment person. but they understand the need for it and they’re

they’re going to recommend you to designers who they work with. so it’s a it’s a very slow building thing. I would say the first thing that you need to do is understand the difference in the product you’re offering. Because there are different

William Hanke (25:01)
Okay.

Karen Lander (25:18)
construction techniques, there are different philosophies, there are different mindsets for the high-end client. I mean, these people they import stone from a cave in Italy to line their pool and, you know, crazy stuff. And the window treatments have to meet that level that’s throughout the entire home. So

William Hanke (25:45)
Right.

Karen Lander (25:46)
That’s what I had to learn that I learned through working with a lot of these high-end designers and through following a lot of the bespoke type designers in Europe. kind of the the the techniques originated there. I mean, they’ve been doing it for centuries, right? In the palaces and everything.

So I learned all that, how to apply it to the American market. And that was probably the first thing. to make sure, you know, I d I don’t think it’s something you can do right out of the gate and say you want to be work for these types of clients. You have to build your business. I don’t know if you have to wait build it for thirty five years the way I did, you know. but it’s

William Hanke (26:28)
Right.

Karen Lander (26:37)
It takes time. Mm-hmm.

William Hanke (26:38)
Yeah. Yeah. Well we’re going to talk about some shortcuts people can take ⁓ a little bit later. ⁓ what’s the biggest misconception that dealers have about attracting high end clients?

Karen Lander (26:43)
Yeah.

William Hanke (26:52)
All right, cool. all right, I’m gonna pitch the question again to you and then you can go into answering, okay? You doing okay? Okay, good. Yeah, great, awesome. all right, let’s go. So, Karen, before the break, we’re talking about high-end clients and how to attract them. ⁓ what’s one of the mega big let’s try that again. So, Karen, before the break, we were talking about attracting high-end clients.

Karen Lander (26:58)
Mm-hmm. yeah, fine. This is fun. ⁓

William Hanke (27:21)
What’s one of the biggest misconceptions that dealers have about attracting high-end work?

Karen Lander (27:31)
that you can’t really go to the clients directly. They you know, they are working through their architects, their builders, their designers. So it’s building relationships with those professionals in order to get into that market is

Probably

you know, probably if you’re trying to, you know, approach and get into that market and you’re just getting shot down, it’s not you. It’s that’s not their system. They they work on it’s all referral. They ask their fellow high end clients who might have built a house who they used. and they

William Hanke (28:03)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (28:18)
they just do referrals and I think that what they’re thinking is, well, if this person was happy with this window treatment person and their house is beautiful and I know their standard, I think that person would be good for me. So you you’re kind of in without having to go through any kind of interviewing or I mean those referrals are just golden. And that’s

William Hanke (28:42)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (28:44)
Pretty much how my name got passed around and even like a designer. So I ended up doing designers all over the country because they might have a client that has a house wherever they’re based, but also might be building something in the Philadelphia region. And so they come in.

And this is where the architect comes in and they say, okay, I’m the designer for this project. I’m out of town, but I’m gonna be working here. I I need workrooms, I need upholsterers, you know, like who can you refer me to? So because of the relationships that you build with the art architects, because they’re often on site when you’re on site, you get to know them, they’re like, yeah, you know, call drapery design.

She’s done a lot of art jobs. And then when I say to these new designers who don’t know me from Adam, you know, yeah, I’ve done four or five jobs for that architect, you know, in the past two years. And they’re like, Well, it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. I’ll hire you. So it really builds on itself. Probably the hardest part is getting that start, that first foot in the door. And for me it was

William Hanke (29:48)
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Karen Lander (30:03)
Growing with a designer who got her first foot in the door because her client evolved to that level.

William Hanke (30:10)
Love that. So for somebody that’s doing a lot of these mid-range jobs, your recommendation, your advice would probably be to start, you know, getting in with some of the designers and building those relationships. Would that be fair?

Karen Lander (30:22)
Absolutely. Yeah. Now, I could have some advice for how do you find those designers. ⁓ if you don’t really know, I mean, how do you know? You you Google designers, you get a lot of names, but how do you know who’s doing those types of jobs? so I would say number one, go to their website. Their website

William Hanke (30:23)
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome.

Yeah.

Right.

Karen Lander (30:48)
should where they have their portfolio should show you what kind of jobs they’re doing. and it’s also helpful to go to the architects’ websites because they will often, when they show their portfolio, they will often cite the designer on that particular project, the design firm, the builder, you know, they’ll give credit, the photographer,

They don’t usually tell you who the window treatment people are. But ⁓ that’ll give you some leads of some designers to approach. And at that level, even if designers have a workroom, they need more than one workroom, you know. If if like I said, if they need 70 window treatments delivered on one particular date, they’re gonna need they’re gonna need to break that up somehow.

And I did first start with a lot of these big firms as one of their workrooms. and eventually they use me a lot because, you know, we can get into the whole what kind of service you have to give them and how it’s different working in these types of projects.

William Hanke (32:01)
I love that you’re building those relationships. ⁓ Karen, what is it like working with those types of designers?

Karen Lander (32:09)
⁓ it is different. So I kind of break the window coverings industry into three segments of clients.

There’s your entry-level clients, they want affordability, they want speed, you know, they might have purchased

mass market online, you know, curtains that might be hemmed to their length or something bit which I call semi-custom, but entry level real custom products, they still expect that speed and simplicity, and affordability. And that’s, you know, newer homeowners, people

in their thirties, their forties, maybe just, you know, setting up their homes for the first time. and realizing, you know, their pottery barn draperies they had in their apartment are not gonna work in their new home. then I would say they move into more of the premium client level where they want

They’re they’re recognizing expertise, so they want somebody who has some expertise. They want personalization, they want some more bells and whistles, they want elevated service, but they don’t want three hundred dollar a yard fabrics. They don’t want linings, inner linings, micro L like all the couture little detailing.

⁓ that you can put on a drapery. And then I would say you get into what I call the bespoke level, where you have you know dressmaker couture kind of detailing the construction techniques get very much more hand sewing. You’re never going to want

⁓ blind machine blind stitch hems showing so you’re gonna hand stitch all your hems you’re going to always want to interline blackout becomes what’s called French blackout where you put a layer of black interlining in it a sateen so you don’t have the pinhole problem you don’t have

the stiffness and the lack of pliability the blackout lining has. So we definitely do a lot of French blackout as opposed to blackout, three pass type blackout. and like I said before, the bespoke clients have very high standards for everything in their home.

William Hanke (34:52)
huh.

Karen Lander (35:01)
And they might not know what those standards are for window treatments, but they know the difference when they see see it. They don’t know how you did it, but they know how you know they know it when they see it. And so they have those expectations. so and they also they’re very demanding. They expect, you know, the the day that

All the furniture comes in, the rugs come in, the window treatments come in. It I it’s not really just a day, it takes a week to two weeks in these big homes. they don’t want problems, they don’t want to hear. we don’t have enough drapery rings, you know. So you’re a problem solver before a problem even occurs. You know, you are

Opening every box, you are inspecting everything. the process, even way, way before that, you think through every decision, you weigh any possibilities of what could go sideways here. ⁓ you spend a lot of time on the proposal process. visuals and renderings are done for every single job.

I’m now learning how to use AI to do that because that is becoming the new standard to have realistic renderings. you’re a project manager, you’re keeping track of all the rooms, the fabric, and the design selections. you’re a liaison between the designer, the architect, the builder.

The GC on the job. And for me, the liaison between the whole house integrators, the motorization people, I personally don’t want to sell motorized products. So I But if they need motorized drapery or motorized fabric Roman shades,

William Hanke (36:44)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (37:04)
I have to work very, very closely with the integrator on the job because they are programming everything to a central system. And even if I wanted to, I can’t put a brand in that’s not in alliance with the brand that they’re using throughout the house. And so they they don’t really know much about soft window treatments.

So I have to we have to measure together, we have to discuss mounting together. what I do is I have I I I give them all the specs, I tell them what motors I want, I tell them what size rods I want, and they purchase them, they give me the motors, they install the rods, and then we build our Roman shades.

using the motors they gave us and then we need to be with them on site at the installation to get everything programmed and hooked up and working properly. So a lot of coordination happens there. you at installations you bring a big team. I mean one installer be there for a week or two weeks sometimes. So I bring

William Hanke (38:14)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (38:16)
teams of installers. Each installer has a steaming person, a seamstress who can fix on the fly anything that might need to be fixed. But for the workroom we do hang everything and steam it before we even take it to the job because anybody in this business knows that when you steam a drapery, no matter how many times you measured it and made it perfect, it oftentimes gets longer.

And so we, you know, steam it. If it gets longer, we’ll re-hem it, or adjust the top, like not quite totally finish off the top, so we can go back and adjust it if we need to shorten it a little. So that when we do that final steam, we know all that fiber and twist in the yarns that needs to relax has already relaxed. and

William Hanke (39:10)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (39:13)
Like I said, we’re we’re just

trying to prevent anything from going sideways. ⁓ so it’s a very different thing than managing a workroom or ⁓ managing in a retail store and selling to retail clients all day where you just go on site probably just to get measure.

William Hanke (39:19)
Yeah. And I love

Right. Yeah. I love that you said you’re a problem solver before the problems even happen, you know, and part of that is experience, but I think the other part of that is you relying heavily on systems, right? And the project management piece of that. so how does that play into your typical day-to-day?

Karen Lander (39:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

So systems mean organization. and doing each thing one this the same way each time, doing it one time. Before I had systems in place, one of my biggest bottlenecks was doing quotes. I would do a quote.

half in my head, half scribbling the calculations on a piece of paper. And then I would put that final number into my quote. And I had no record of how I got that number. I probably did that for ten, fifteen years. Until I thought, I have to start writing this down. So then I started writing it down and then I could never understand my handwriting or understand what I did. So I started building spreadsheets to do all this to calculate.

William Hanke (40:32)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (40:46)
For me. And that led to more and more sophisticated spreadsheets. And now I do a quote in my system that I built, which is basically spreadsheet-based. And if I need to go back and see why did I make that the finished length, I have got all my calculations that I just have to type.

In to my formulas and they automatically, you know, me giving it information, which is going to be different each time you do a calculation, but it has all the formulas in there that it automatically gives me the price, it gives me the yardage. and I can always go back if I need to, where that information is. So systems meant saving a tremendous out of amount of time.

William Hanke (41:29)
Love that.

Karen Lander (41:35)
in that particular process and not having to redo it over and over again. It also captures all the details in one place. So a a project management system is going to take you through all the different stages from proposals to presentation to getting the order to doing your purchase orders.

William Hanke (41:41)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (42:00)
And again, it’s all in one place. You see where you’re at. and it just saves so much time from you know, what do I need to order? You know, what have I ordered or how you know, you rarely can you sit down and you get a job and do all the purchase orders for every single product and component that you need for the workroom.

you know, for the rod hardware, for the blinds and shades, you know y usually you’re distracted. You’re doing other things. So when you go back to it, you have a system and you know exactly where you left off and where you need to continue.

William Hanke (42:36)
Yeah.

Love that. I’m a huge fan of systems too. That’s I’ve built my business highly on that. ⁓ for for creative business owners with that type of personality, maybe they hate systems. ⁓ how do you help them understand the value of a system?

Karen Lander (42:43)
Yeah.

Right.

Well, beautiful design might attract clients. A beautiful website attracts the clients, but the systems ensure that those designs are delivered accurately and profitably. I think that’s the bottom line. and you can go into a lot of different scenarios of where it helps in different things, but that’s kind of the bottom line.

William Hanke (43:20)
That’s a great way to say it. I love that. if if somebody listening ⁓ improved maybe just one operational area in their business, what would you suggest they start with?

Karen Lander (43:31)
I think number one is a project management system to get you organized and to have a place to keep everything. I know for a lot of time a lot of people I went paperless probably 20 years ago. And I know when I did it, was active my WCCA group at that time and people are like, no, no, no. I need my files. I need

William Hanke (43:47)
Okay.

Karen Lander (43:57)
my papers and my files. and that’s fine, but you also need a good computer online on your computer project management system that helps you get organized and stay organized.

William Hanke (44:17)
Yeah. Is there any particular project management system that you like?

Karen Lander (44:22)
I have played around with different ones. now when I started them, the first one I used was called Monday.com. And when I started it and I bought the system, I’m like, this is Greek to me. And I do not have time to set this up. So I

I hired a Monday.com expert, you know, who had a business, a consulting business to help other businesses set up that system. So that’s what I did. I think we worked with her for about six months, once a week meeting and you know, going through how to set it up. She didn’t just do it for me, she also taught me how to do it.

⁓ so that was really the way to onboard myself into the to that. I worked with that for a few years and then I felt like I hit some limits with that system. So I learned about one called Notion.com and I

Got another consultant and I set up another system with Notion. Notion goes into more levels. It’s actually a lot more complex and harder to learn than Monday.com. I know there’s Asana. I mean there’s I think what’s it called? There’s one that’s pretty simple and it’s a good place to start.

William Hanke (45:48)
Okay.

Karen Lander (46:02)
I’m sorry. It’s blanking on the name of it. ⁓

William Hanke (46:02)
Yeah, there’s there’s there’s teamwork,

there’s ⁓ we use clickup in our in our world. ⁓ there’s a

Karen Lander (46:10)
Yeah, there are so

many of them now. But they are s vital, I think, to a business. Even if you’re a sole proprietor working all by yourself, I think you need a system. You need a a project management system. if you’re a workroom, you need it. If you’re retail, you need it. So that’s absolutely the first thing.

William Hanke (46:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that’s great advice to find somebody. When I first got into starting to systemize everything, and I signed up for I don’t remember teamwork or one of them, ⁓ my gosh, it I I didn’t understand it. I I knew what they what the outcome would be, like at the output would be me able to be able to check boxes and do things. But putting all that together, my gosh. So the advice you said about hiring somebody that’s an expert to come in and start quizzing you and building out a structure.

Karen Lander (46:43)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

William Hanke (47:03)
That’s priceless. It it was I didn’t I don’t care what it costs at this point. Let’s get it done, right?

Karen Lander (47:04)
It is. It’s money well spent.

Yeah, yeah. You’ve got bigger fish, you know, to fry, so to speak.

William Hanke (47:13)
Yeah. And if you want the output to always be the same, you know, if you talk about the E-Myth and McDonald’s, every hamburger is always the same, right? If every drapery or Roman shade is always the same and to that same quality, you have to have those things in place.

Karen Lander (47:30)
Yes, absolutely.

William Hanke (47:32)
Love that. So let’s talk a little bit about what you’re up to now. ⁓ you’re kind of entering a new phase, turning a lot of this experience that you’ve done into courses and tools. What sparked that decision?

Karen Lander (47:37)
Okay.

I am

probably my age might stay I’m a lot older than I look. And I have I’m a grandmom now. I have grandchildren and I used to work a lot on weekends and now I spend my weekends with grandchildren. And I I’ve always wanted

William Hanke (47:52)
Okay.

Okay.

Love that.

Karen Lander (48:14)
to write a book, do something, and as technology has evolved, it has turned into course courses and templates and online digital products, which I didn’t even dream was a possibility probably even fifteen years ago. and I’m I’m techie and I love all that stuff. So

⁓ you know, I’m trying to channel everything I know into that these products. over the years I have a lot of people have helped me. I have helped people launch their own business. and they’ve always appreciated my help and my support. And some of them still come to me with questions and I’m building a community.

You know, we’re all be and I can answer questions for people who want to join the community. And I don’t wanna just retire and go have lunch with all my lady friends who were retired. I still wanna do something productive and but I want, you know, a little more freedom.

William Hanke (49:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Karen Lander (49:24)
You know, I just think it’s time for my next era.

William Hanke (49:26)
Yeah.

I love that you’re paying it forward. I think that’s great. who are these resources that you’re putting together? Who are they really for? Beginners, experienced pros, or maybe both?

Karen Lander (49:37)
They are for both, but every product is not for both. So there are a couple products up on my website now. And one of them is pricing for pricing guidelines for workrooms only. This wouldn’t really work for retailers or for designers.

William Hanke (49:40)
Okay.

Sure.

Karen Lander (50:01)
⁓ so it specifically explains that it’s for a workroom. but there are everything I’m starting, so I’m just you know, starting to roll these things out, and I assume I’ll be doing this for about five years, building all this stuff. so I’m starting w appealing to beginners, but the pricing thing actually the way I build it.

could be to anybody, any level. and some products are towards strictly for window treatment specialists. Others are for interior designers. Having worked with so many interi interior designers and different types of interior designers, I know where the holes are in their knowledge. So I’ll be building products specifically for them.

William Hanke (50:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Karen Lander (50:58)
and it’s again an evolution, you know. I have an outline, I have a long list of course titles and template titles. But when I actually go in and start building these things, even if it’s something I built for myself 20 years ago and I’ve been using it for myself, I’m thinking, okay, I’m thinking I’m a brand new person, you know.

William Hanke (51:03)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (51:24)
what works here for me and what doesn’t work for me. Can I use this product for both markets or do I have to have one for designers and one for workrooms? ⁓ so again, I’m kind of doing what I learned to do and find any problems before they occur.

William Hanke (51:43)
That’s awesome. you’re also basically shortening the learning curve for newer people that are coming along or people that are maybe struggling, been in the business for 10, 15, 20 years, but are struggling, maybe like the pricing for workrooms, maybe that’ll help them, you know, change.

Karen Lander (51:55)
Yes. Yes. I am trying

to shorten the learning curve and I’m trying to simplify it. this is a very complicated business, which all the people who helped me set up my project management systems were like one of them literally was like, Whoa, this is the most complicated business I ever set up and she’s done all kinds of things. I’m like, Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s a lot going on here. ⁓

William Hanke (52:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Karen Lander (52:24)
So it speeds up the learning curve. I know when I came into the business in 1991, there wasn’t really anything. It was three or four years later a woman named Cheryl Strickland started ⁓ putting together a so what newsletter and she started traveling the country with seminars. And I remember I was five years in and I went to her

first seminar and she came to the Philadelphia area and I was just like, my God, this is so fabulous. ⁓ ’cause I it was like book learning before that. Literally you went to somewhere and bought a book. And I like I said, I bought a lot of books written in Europe. you know, where this skill developed and then was brought over to this country.

William Hanke (52:56)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (53:16)
Only two hundred years ago, but it’s been happening over there for thousands of years.

William Hanke (53:20)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

So Karen, what’s what are you most excited about in this new chapter or new phase of what you’re doing?

Karen Lander (53:29)
⁓ I’m excited to get back into having a lot more interaction with my fellow window treatment people through my community and through the courses. Each each course and each template actually has its own community. so people can ask questions, I can be in there and people can help each other and give each other ideas of how they’re using the product, and so I can get feedback.

⁓ to you know do any tweaks that I need to do for the products. so I’m really looking forward to that interaction but also looking forward just to seeing the results to seeing how people can grow more quickly than I did over the years and having a lot of tools at their fingertips. Also trying

to at first I was like you build one big course all about you know take you from soup to nuts of how to do windy treatments and then I was like this is overwhelming this this is this course would take you a year like college to get through so I’m segmenting it down so it’s more a la carte people can buy what they need so if you’re brand new there’ll you know be a package for brand new people.

William Hanke (54:33)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (54:48)
If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you know, then you can say, ⁓ I need help with my product knowledge. I need help with, you know, my systems. I’m trying not to duplicate things that are already out there. There are fabulous, fabulous people out there teaching how to sew and how to make these things. And I’m

I have all that knowledge, but I don’t feel like I need to duplicate any of that. so but there’s not much out like what I learned in college as a textile major. there’s not a whole lot out there about that. And also for designers and how to specifically specify and design window treatments beyond the pretty.

William Hanke (55:19)
Right.

Karen Lander (55:42)
I think that’s a niche that I’m a really good at and that I can contribute some things that aren’t out there. sales and marketing I think is covered again by a lot of people. I’m not going to really focus on that much. but I will say that I think your website is one of your most important marketing tools.

And that your website reflects exactly who you want to attract as your client. yeah.

William Hanke (56:16)
I would agree with that. you mentioned very early on about ⁓ high-end clients, right? They’re not going to Google and looking for designer. They’re getting those referrals from friends, family, neighbors, that side of stuff. But once they get that referral, they’re definitely going to go online and start investigating, right? ⁓ yeah, yeah. So that’s where the website piece comes in and making sure that you look high-end. and ⁓ and

Karen Lander (56:29)
Right.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yes.

William Hanke (56:43)
you know, filter out the the Craigslist shoppers and the tire kickers and that kind of stuff. So fantastic advice. ⁓ couple rapid fire questions for you. ⁓ what’s one business model in this industry that you would never go back to?

Karen Lander (56:53)
Okay.

⁓ I think what I said before, trying to be all things to all people and serving many markets at once. ⁓ you know, ⁓ th that’s confusing, that’s time sucking, it’s costly, you know, to have samples, just for instance, blind and shade samples, you know. Have your high-end samples, have your budget samples.

William Hanke (57:07)
Yeah.

Right.

Karen Lander (57:25)
It costs a lot of money. and your brand positioning can be confusing to a client. yeah, when your ideal client goes to your website, they need to understand who you are and who you serve. And if they feel like you don’t serve them, they’ll leave and that’s actually what you want.

William Hanke (57:31)
Great point.

Karen Lander (57:48)
If it looks like you might serve them and they call you and you spend time with them and then you really don’t, you’ve wasted that time when you could have been serving the clients that do want you.

William Hanke (57:58)
Right.

Yeah, great point. what’s something about high end clients that would surprise most people?

Karen Lander (58:11)
my gosh, they’ll spend like ten thousand dollars for a window treatment and they won’t buy a custom pillow because they think you’re overpricing it. they have no limits financially, but they have mental limits of where they feel like they’re being taken advantage of and overcharged.

William Hanke (58:35)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (58:35)
So

it’s kind of a fine line. They know when you’re just jacking up everything. And it’s a fine line between making sure you’re well covered and well compensated for what you’re doing and not appearing that you’re really overcharging.

William Hanke (58:53)
Yeah, that’s great. and I’ve experienced that for sure. ⁓ what keeps you excited about the industry after thirty-five years?

Karen Lander (58:56)
Yeah.

Well, I love that we’re creating one of a kind items that don’t exist anywhere else. So really I say everything is a prototype, you know? you’ve never used you might have made a million Roman shades, but you’ve never used that particular fabric and that particular style and size of shade. and it takes your knowledge and your artistry.

to make it work. But as old school and artistic and creative as it is, it also embraces technology. So it’s rooted in the past, but you’re also moving into the future with it. So the the that whole combination of function, craftsmanship, technology and

Beauty, gorgeous. my gosh, look what we created. Things I love about this industry. I had a sister-in-law once who was ⁓ you know, worked in an office with you know, not not physical products, and she came over to my basement and saw all my stuff. I was like, my god, you need so much stuff to do your job.

William Hanke (1:00:23)
Ha ha

Karen Lander (1:00:23)
And it’s like, yeah, I like all my stuff. So yeah, I’m still excited. and still contributing after all these years.

William Hanke (1:00:26)
Yeah. That’s great.

That’s fantastic. if someone’s feeling stuck in their current business model, what would you tell them to consider first?

Karen Lander (1:00:41)
Okay, the one thing that I had trouble with, I’ve you know, alluded to this a little bit, and I would say is number one, define what your perfect business would look like. So I kind of knew what it what it would look like 20 years ago, but I was afraid that if I moved into the high end.

I had a lot of, you know, mid-level clients that I would lose them and I would stop making money altogether. so if I were to go back and if I were to give someone who’s stuck and feeling like they’re not moving forward, I would say to take a really big personal inventory and just don’t hold back.

Don’t give yourself a reality check in your brainstorming process. just dream about what really where would you like to go? What would your perfect business look like? Who is your client? What products and services do you sell? and then I would say tweak your website, build your website to start moving towards that. post on social media.

you know, trying to speak to that particular client. and you know, do all your marketing and your image building and you know, unless you can shut down revamp and then reopen, I just think it has to be a gradual thing so you don’t alienate your current clients.

William Hanke (1:02:24)
Yeah.

Karen Lander (1:02:24)
⁓

and but you attract your new client that you want. And just really defining I think a a lot of people like me, I kind of well, drifted and what comes next. And once I finally closed the showroom and I said, you know what I really want to do is work with work in these giant homes that I see being built around here. once I really defined that and really

Focus solely on that. That’s when th and it’s funny because that’s when things really take off. ⁓ but there’s a definite fear in letting go of what you’ve had.

William Hanke (1:02:54)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah. I love that. I think that’s pretty smart to to ⁓ start to define what’s going on. Let’s see, we got somebody else talking here.

Karen Lander (1:03:14)
Not here.

William Hanke (1:03:16)
Maybe it was Liz. All right. All right. We’re about done here. let me see where I’m at. okay.

Karen Lander (1:03:21)
One piece

of advice.

William Hanke (1:03:23)
Yeah. Karen, what’s one piece of advice you would give to somebody who’s trying to grow but without burn without burning out?

Karen Lander (1:03:33)
I think keep your business as simple and as lean as you can. Really take a look at everything you’re doing and say, okay, if I stop doing this, would my business suffer? and I think everybody will find things, the busy work they’re giving themselves without even realizing it, that’s really not necessary.

and just getting getting rid of the clutter. ⁓ ’cause that’s what keeps you burning out and that’s what makes you go in circles.

William Hanke (1:04:09)
Yeah, it’s good for your mind too to get rid of some of that clutter, right? Just ⁓ definitely. ⁓ well Karen, thank you so much for being on today. ⁓ you’ve you’ve given us some awesome advice. I’m sure it’s gonna resonate with the with the listeners. if somebody wants to learn more about you and especially the courses and things you’re up to now, where’s the best place for them to go?

Karen Lander (1:04:13)
Absolutely.

⁓ the best place is really to go to my website, which is drapery-design.com And I like I said, I have my community is up there. You can join my community. You get two weeks free to see if you want to do it. And then it’s just forty-eight dollars a year, so it’s low, low entry point. and there’s two

William Hanke (1:04:48)
Okay. Yeah.

Karen Lander (1:04:59)
template systems up there. One’s about pricing and how to build your pricing structure and how to present it to your client. And the other one is about I call it a welcome guide, a guide that you build to give your client, which again is a qualifier for your client, to make sure they really want to work with you and they understand how you work and all that.

William Hanke (1:05:21)
Okay. Yeah.

Karen Lander (1:05:22)
⁓ everything

that I do is customizable. You can brand it yourself, you can put you know your own text in, although I do pre-populate it with text. I even pre-populate my pricing system with my pricing system. So you it you gives you, if you are brand new, it gives you a springboard and a starting point. so anyway, you can go to my website and see those, and also sign up for my email.

email list because I will be really communicating with my email list and you know rolling out new products but also giving advice and teaching through the emails which is also tied in with my blog and I’m pretty bad about posting on social media but I’m gonna try to get better at that.

William Hanke (1:06:09)
That’s okay.

Yeah. I’ve joined a lot of coaching programs, courses, things like that. And for forty-eight dollars a year, ⁓ one small tweak to your business, you should be able to make that money back pretty quickly. So that’s fantastic. And I love that you’ve got plans to roll out a whole bunch more stuff, which at some price, so at some point your price will probably go up. So ⁓ great time for them to jump in now. ⁓ I really do appreciate you being on today.

Karen Lander (1:06:31)
Mm-hmm.

William Hanke (1:06:37)
thank you so much for sharing all this information. ⁓ we’ll make sure to to link to your website in our show notes along with some of the other things we talked about today.

Karen Lander (1:06:46)
thank you Will. It was really fun. I was glad glad to be here and hopefully somebody got some sparked some ideas in some people.

William Hanke (1:06:57)
Yeah,

yeah, thanks so much.

Well, wow, what a conversation. Karen just walked us through something we don’t talk about enough. That’s there’s no single right way to grow a window treatment business. It really comes down to what kind of life and business you want to build from evolving through five different business models to building a high-end consulting niche. There’s a lot to take away here, especially if you’re thinking about moving up market.

or simplifying your operation. If you got one useful idea out of today’s episode, share it with someone else in the industry who you think could benefit from it. And as always, make sure to follow marketing Panes for real conversations with people who are actually in the trenches doing it. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Guest Profile: Ann Johnson

Ann K. Johnson’s wholesale workroom, Sew Easy Windows LLC, Avon Lake, Ohio, was established in 1992. She is the author of The Professional Workroom Handbook of Swags I & II, and publishes Kitty Stein’s Price Your Work With Confidence! Ann offers private workroom training and consultations. She is a dynamic instructor for seminars and hands-on classes in workroom fabrication, pattern drafting, efficiency and pricing. She is a popular instructor for CWC, IWCE & WCAA.

Other Notes/Links:

Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Ann K. Johnson – https://annkjohnson.com
Curtains & Soft Furnishings Resource Library (CSF Library) – https://csfrl.org
The Workroom Channel – https://www.theworkroomchannel.com
The Workroom Channel (YouTube) –  https://www.youtube.com/@TheWorkroomChannel
Window Coverings Association of America (WCAA) – https://wcaa.org
WCAA Virtual Chapter – https://virtualchapterwcaa.org

Educational Resources Referenced
CSF Library Archived Webinars & Industry Resources – https://csfrl.org
WCAA Educational Webinars – https://wcaa.org
Workroom Tours & Method Shares – https://www.theworkroomchannel.com

Follow Sew Easy Windows LLC On: Facebook

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TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:00)
to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is someone who spent over three decades inside the workroom, not just working in it, but constantly refining how it runs.

She built and operated her own workroom for more than 30 years before recently stepping away from production to focus fully on what she’s become known for in the industry, helping workrooms become more efficient. She’s taught at major industry conferences, developed training programs, and works directly with teams to improve workflow, reduce wasted motion, and ultimately make businesses more profitable and sustainable.

If you ever felt like the workroom is busy all the time and you’re still struggling to keep up, this conversation is going to hit home.

Welcome to the show, Ann Johnson.

Ann K. Johnson (01:02)
Thanks, Will. I’m glad to be here.

William Hanke (01:04)
Yeah, appreciate you coming on. So let’s jump in. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what’s keeping you busy right now.

Ann K. Johnson (01:10)
Okay, well, history

what gives me license to teach other workrooms. I started in ninety-two. I worked and I’ll tell you what, there was I didn’t even know I was a workroom. Had no idea, didn’t have the right equipment or anything,

kept thinking I was gonna get out of this business because I fell into it and didn’t choose it. in 2006 I had been going to a workroom networking group, and the owner of the place who always hosted us

Asked me to come work for him as workroom manager. And I thought, hot dog, no more cutting and covering boards and work, you know, on Monday through Friday, nine to five.

And after two years, I realized that I just wasn’t employee material anymore. You know, you work for yourself, it’s hard to go back. So what I learned in that two years, because he had five sewists and a whole staff behind that, so they were

William Hanke (01:56)
Yes.

Ann K. Johnson (02:07)
putting work through this custom workroom, unbelievable amounts of work. And he was all about efficiency. always, well, how he put it, tweaking, you know, processes. So when I walked away from that business, from him, still friends, I developed the class on efficiency because it just it brought it home. And then

the more I teach it,

The more it brings it home. it also keeps it in my brain so that when I was working, I was on top of all this, but I was always grabbing other people’s ideas.

You know, this workroom did this. Well, that’s intriguing. Let me try it. ⁓ I like it. I’m going to include it, or doesn’t work for me, but I might still include it and say pros and cons, right? So

William Hanke (02:53)
Fair

enough.

Ann K. Johnson (02:53)
Because the way I do

it isn’t necessarily the way somebody else wants to do it, right?

And so I’ve just built up the reputation as an efficiency expert in the workroom.

when I give a class and the whole class gasps, ⁓ that’s my moment. yeah. And I’ve taught workrooms that have been in business long longer than I have, 35 plus years.

William Hanke (03:10)
awesome.

Ann K. Johnson (03:19)
And they always walk away and say, wish I’d known that sooner, right? So that’s where I’m coming from is efficiency, intentional efficiency, thinking about it every day and constantly looking at your processes and seeing what can I do to make it better.

William Hanke (03:23)
Right.

Yeah, that’s awesome. We’re gonna dive into some of that today, by the way. so I’m excited to hear a little bit more. Now you spent decades actually doing the work before stepping into the teaching side. And I think a lot of our listeners are kind of in that phase, you know, where they’re listening.

Ann K. Johnson (03:41)
I know.

Yes.

William Hanke (03:54)
When you look back at the early workroom days, what were you doing the hard work way that you see different now?

Ann K. Johnson (04:02)
everything every stinking thing I didn’t have the table the machines the tools right and because those first 15 years I kept thinking well maybe I won’t stick with this right I wouldn’t invest and it wasn’t until I was meeting other workrooms or going to George’s workroom meetings and seeing what he had then I

William Hanke (04:03)
Okay.

Right.

Ann K. Johnson (04:27)
Picked up a couple of machines, but I still, again, back then, workrooms were not charging what they needed to charge, right? So I never had enough to go out and pay for, invest in. And I just kept thinking, ⁓ next year I might not be in this anymore. So why get into it? It wasn’t until I left Georgia’s. I’m like, okay, I’m stuck in this. I now need to make the investment. There were no

Professional patterns when I started, right?

Everything was singer-sewing for the home and the library. doing everything the hard way.

And then my first client who got me into this was a designer who was extra creative. So there was no references. And so it was all doing it the hard way. And and a lot of times

I will take

my mistakes, my struggles, and turn those into lessons because I don’t want workrooms who are coming into the business to suffer the same thing, right?

So yeah, I pretty much did everything wrong for the first 15 years.

William Hanke (05:32)
⁓ too funny. ⁓ you mentioned

not having the right tools early on. ⁓ how much did that affect like the overall efficiency day to day?

Ann K. Johnson (05:42)
everything. And I had no idea, right? I was just struggling. Okay, so you know, the right tool is your table, a padded table. You can pin things into it, it’s at your the right height, it’s the width, it’s 60 inches wide for a width of fabric, and it can be as long as you can make it. And so

I started out on a ping pong table and then it collapsed on me, so I took half of it and propped it up on a couple of folding tables and I was making full length wide panels on a half a ping pong table with no padding. So you can’t get any more inefficient than that. totally. Because I refused to take and invest the money, right?

William Hanke (06:25)
Yeah.

Makes sense. Yeah.

So before we get too far, how do you define efficiency in a workroom beyond just like moving faster?

Ann K. Johnson (06:39)
Right, right. So efficiency isn’t necessarily going as fast as you can. It’s better quality for sure. because you’ve got a happier client. You put out the same product every time, you know, you get the same details. your clients know what to expect.

That’s what they get, right? That’s efficiency, having standards and that sort of thing, and also keeping your error rate low, right? There’s so many details and numbers that go through the workroom, and especially if you’re handing stuff off to employees or subcontractors, there’s even another level where things can go wrong. So setting up processes and all to keep those things moving,

through the workroom. So what did I say? Quality, continuity, low error rate, that’s efficiency.

William Hanke (07:27)
Yeah. And that’s I mean the what’s the very well known book, the E-Myth right? That was that was all about McDonald’s, for example, always making the same burger the same way every time and the output’s always the same. So yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (07:33)
Yes. Yeah.

Exactly. And they had processes for it. And

as far as I’m a aware now, Amazon does the same thing. You know, they’ve got processes and they’ve got things set up so that the workers don’t have to go hunt the right box or bag or whatever. You know, it’s all folded into that.

William Hanke (07:47)
For sure.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So

for somebody that’s listening who maybe feels like they’re constantly busy but behind, what’s usually the real issue here? Is it workload or workflow?

Ann K. Johnson (08:05)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, I’m gonna go with workflow on that because workload is controllable, quote unquote, because you can say no, right? You can back your clients up. They might squawk, but then send them on their way. They’re not your client, right? ⁓ yeah, no. ⁓ you never hire somebody new when you’re under stress.

William Hanke (08:27)
Yeah. Or you can hire more people, right? I mean that’s it’s a solvable problem.

Okay, fair enough.

Ann K. Johnson (08:38)
Ask me how I know. ⁓

it’s it’s just too hard. because bringing somebody in under stress, if you don’t have documentation and processes in place, you can’t teach them, right? And then you’re constantly overseeing them. And ⁓ there’s only one employee that I always recommend hiring, and ⁓ because a lot of employees

work at their own most employees they work at their own speed and i’ve seen this in workrooms right people are like i don’t know how to make them work faster you either have a little buzzy bee who is just so fast and loves what they’re doing and wants to do more rare that’s very rare ⁓ you’ve got the good steady workers in between

But more often than not, you’ve got the ones that are just gonna work at their own pace and they don’t care what the schedule is or anything. So that gets frustrating if you’re a very ⁓ high energy person, right? ⁓ did I get off the question there? So with work, yeah, with work load though, you can you can ⁓ like say no or back them off or whatever, but work flow is always there.

William Hanke (09:41)
No, you’re good.

Ann K. Johnson (09:54)
And if you have bottlenecks or whatever, then you’re always going to come up against those, and they’re always going to slow you down ⁓ at the bottlenecks, and those are what you need to. Andor an underreported or thought about is error rate. That’s really quite important because that’s a huge bottleneck.

If you’re having trouble.

Moving stuff through the workroom and you get a lot of errors either in the workroom you’re having to redo something or you go to the install and there’s something wrong and you have to bring it back and redo it.

That’s all the worst thing, right? Right. So studying your error rate.

William Hanke (10:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (10:37)
will help you, you know, catalog them and analyze them and figure out where your weaknesses are. And that helps too. You can target them.

William Hanke (10:46)
Yeah, yeah. Very good. let’s get into the real day-to-day stuff. I think a lot of people don’t realize kind of where they’re losing time. so imagine you walk into a workroom for the first time. What are the first inefficiencies you usually notice?

Ann K. Johnson (11:01)
Okay, let’s talk about drapery panels because that’s the most common thing everybody does. And and I used to do it this way. they cut all their panels and then they split the ones they need to split, and then they spend time shuffling everything back together into panels, right? And

William Hanke (11:03)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (11:19)
Then you can that’s number one, that’s a lot of extra work doing all that shuffling. And number two, now you’re setting yourself up for an error of two right panels or two left panels because you didn’t put them back together in the right order. ⁓ and then bringing it back to the table after you ⁓ shuffle everything, bringing it back to the table, and then going along and glue basting or taping or pinning to pattern match.

Right, so that you can sew your seam. Whereas if you simply cut your whists in the right order, split them in the right order, and stack them, you go straight to the machine, and there’s a method to pattern match right at the machine without doing all that pre-work. Every time you take that treatment back to the table, you are handling it.

Too much, right? So if we can eliminate some of those steps back, and that’s been somebody once said I just took 30% of the time off of their making panels with just with that. ⁓ workrooms also, I call them crutches, time wasters. somewhere along the line, something

William Hanke (12:26)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (12:38)
Catastrophic happened, right? And it it caused all sorts of trouble. Now they worry. And one of them is length of panels, right? They went to hang them, they were too long, they were too short, they grew or whatever. And so now they hang up every panel that they fabricate. That’s a waste of time, you know. And this is where I have to go to them and say, no, you’ve been doing this long enough, you know which fabrics are good and which fabrics are bad.

William Hanke (12:55)
Okay. Yep.

Ann K. Johnson (13:04)
Right?

So the fabrics that you know are good and stable and all make up your panel, trust your work and get it out. If you have a fabric that you’re not too sure of, go ahead and hang that one. Right.

But we clutch sometimes these crutches because we’re afraid because of something that happened in the past. Mm-hmm.

William Hanke (13:23)
Right. Yeah.

Definitely makes sense.

Ann K. Johnson (13:26)
and and you know, you could probably look at just about every type of treatment out there. In the last, I’m most familiar now with drapery panels, Roman shades, various versions, and box bleated valences, simple box bleeded valances, because that’s all anybody’s made in the last six, eight years, right? So if you go back to swags and kingston valances and the frufru stuff.

Those aren’t gonna be as efficient because you don’t do them as often, right? And you don’t have that, but you can really get those core treatments down. Panels have often been thought of sometimes as a lost leader, and they shouldn’t be, right?

William Hanke (14:06)
Yeah. Yeah, those are some great tips. You’ve already affected a couple hundred workrooms, I think, just with this.

Ann K. Johnson (14:12)
We’ll see.

William Hanke (14:15)
So what are some common habits that feel normal to owners but are actually killing their productivity?

Ann K. Johnson (14:20)
hoarding fabric and you know they have leftover fabric they don’t know what to do with it or they’re always someday i’ll make pillows out of this right and it piles up around them and so

keeping

Extra leftovers in your workroom, in your actual work area, slows you down because you’re working around it. It’s also eliminating space for your tools and materials that you use on a daily basis and keeping them near you, right? And then another one of the biggest things is perfectionism. If you go to any group and you say who defines himself as a perfectionist,

You know, ha more than half the hands go up, and it’s like, no, don’t do that. By definition, perfectionism is not attainable, right? And this is fabric, it’s not even like stone or wood, it’s fabric, it has a life of its own, and it’s gonna do what it damn well pleases. Sorry about that. And ⁓ so I’m trying now to get people to look more to to to get perfectionism.

how do I move forward on this? I can’t make it perfect, or I can’t follow this standard or or whatever. And then they freeze up and they’re not happy with what they did. Whereas if you tell yourself, I’m striving for excellence, okay? It gives you it literally just that word takes a load off your shoulders. And you say, Okay.

William Hanke (15:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (15:55)
I’m doing the very best I can. I’m putting out an excellent product. People love my work. They keep coming back. Perfectionism isn’t gonna do you any good. You have to change your mindset.

William Hanke (16:10)
I like that. I’ve heard the phrase done is better than perfect. ⁓ you know, that’s yeah. Yeah. But I do like excellent is better than perfect, right? That’s that keeps that excellence in mind. I like that. That’s really good. So are there any specific workflow breakdowns you see over and over again across the different shops that you visit?

Ann K. Johnson (16:13)
yes, love that phrase, yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

the shops that I go into, and lately I’ve been going into more that are multiple employees, and a couple last year were designers bought their workroom because the workroom owner was tired and wanted to quit, retire, but the designers didn’t want to lose them.

William Hanke (16:49)
Okay.

Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (17:00)
Assuming that the workroom has two or three employees that know how to do the work, right? And so, but the ⁓ designers would then call me because they were like, I can’t believe how slow these people are, right? And a lot of it was because the workroom owners had been in the business too long, were tired, and weren’t out there learning new.

Right? They were just like caught up in their own. So I would say the most common thing is is doing it the way you always did it. Okay. And and sometimes that’s almost inevitable because you have it it’s like a spiral, right? You’ve you have this huge workload and you’re just killing yourself trying to get it done.

And you know there’s gotta be a better way. You go to conferences, you come home, your head’s ringing, and you’ve got all these great ideas, but my gosh, you got those deadlines, so you jump right back in to doing it the way you always did, and so you never quite get and and you don’t give yourself permission to step back and take a week off or a couple days, and you get so overwhelmed you just don’t even know where to start. That’s where sometimes whenever I teach.

William Hanke (18:21)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (18:25)
Here we go. I’m gonna assign your listeners homework. ⁓ whenever I teach a class, any class, and the four-day workroom hands-on class, they have to do this every night, is through the course of the class write down three things. I don’t care if it’s tips, it’s a technique, a process, a tool, that you’re going to immediately.

William Hanke (18:28)
Okay.

Ann K. Johnson (18:51)
⁓ use when you get back to your workroom. You’re gonna order it, you’re gonna practice it, and you’re going to make it happen in your workroom. If ⁓ this way they go home with a targeted list, right? And if they have more, then make two or three one one lady said, can I make a list for my husband? Because he worked with her. And I was like, yeah, go for it. But ⁓ this helps narrow your brain down. You’ve learned so much

William Hanke (19:11)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (19:19)
You don’t know where to start. You’re you’re overwhelmed. You have to just jump right back into that gopher wheel again. And and and you don’t give yourself time to learn something new.

William Hanke (19:31)
Yeah.

Yeah. There’s something to be said for speed to implementation, right? ⁓ just and and just like mentally having some sort of a win, you know, when you’re trying to improve something, if it’s just little, it it invigorates you to then do more.

Ann K. Johnson (19:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes, it does. you don’t have to write all your documentation in two days, right? You just you’re working on a job, just jot down the steps as you go along and take pictures. You just created documentation, right? numbers. I just did a class in Massachusetts on

William Hanke (19:56)
Right.

Ann K. Johnson (20:09)
numbers through the workroom.

And at first I struggled, you know, I was like, I’m going to give them this whole package so they can just use my forms. And the more I worked at, the more I struggled because there are so many numbers that come in from different directions that go into every job.

And everybody thinks differently, right? So all I could do was show them samples, talk about the steps,

William Hanke (20:29)
Right.

Ann K. Johnson (20:34)
Along the way and have them go back and step back and study. I mean, we’re all doing it. because I started before forms and everything, it was always that scribbled out. I’d take a piece of paper and I’d scribble out the specifications and I would had a

Measure sheet that was just a drawn window and numbers that I

you know, missed measuring half of them. and you know, then I’d calculate how much fabric on this piece of paper and I’d calculate my labor and the final cost. And usually, especially if I was on the road, forget something and keep telling myself, I need a checklist.

William Hanke (20:59)
Okay.

Ann K. Johnson (21:13)
Why am I not using a checklist? But I was always so charging ahead.

Even as a teacher, this is a do as I say, not as I do thing, right? Because, but if you go back and you look at the way that you receive the quote, you calculate all the details for the quote, however, you’re doing it now on paper by hand, you could start, you could lay this out and realize you’re doing it the same way for every job. Now.

Let’s just take this one part of it where we have the most errors and make it a checklist or make it a form we fill out. Well that worked. Let’s do another one, right? it is baby steps.

William Hanke (21:57)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.

For somebody who maybe hasn’t taken your course or any course lately or been to a conference, if if they want to improve efficiency, what’s something they should evaluate first?

Ann K. Johnson (22:12)
Errors, error rate. Evaluate your error rate and how your numbers and your information flows through your workroom. Okay. that’s where you spot your weaknesses. And then from there, there are so many ⁓ opportunities out there. If they go to the curtains and soft furnishings library, they have ⁓ all the old webinars from the ⁓

The old custom furnishings academy. You know, they used to do webinars every month. And they have those archived in the library. You’d for I don’t know what the Pro Plus level costs, but I know it’s very reasonable for the information there. So you go and you start watching those webinars.

So you’re going to get lessons. The Workroom channel has online classes, very reasonably priced.

Go and take those, you know. If you’re part of WCAA, they have years of webinars, their lunch and learn webinars. They archive all of those, and I’m in a lot of them. And ⁓ the WCAA virtual group does their own monthly webinars and they archive those. So you can go, there is so much information out there.

the workroom channel on YouTube, method shares, they’re short videos, but they give you short, they show you how to put a zipper in a pillow. They show you how to pattern match the machine, little things so that you learn it and incorporate it and then move forward to the next one, right?

William Hanke (23:56)
Love that.

Yeah. And you mentioned earlier on getting the right tools and investments that counts as tools and investment for your business. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. what does a well-designed workflow actually look like in practice? Is there a way that you could verbalize that?

Ann K. Johnson (24:01)
Mm. Totally, totally. Mm-hmm.

Maybe. so a well-designed workflow is work we could do workflow or workroom. well designed. let’s go with workroom. When you receive

William Hanke (24:15)
Okay.

Okay.

Ann K. Johnson (24:30)
materials, supplies, hardware, that sort of thing, having one place for them to go into. And I had created and I used, I I did have a couple forms I used. And I had a receiving form so that I knew what, you know, I could fill that out for every job for everything coming in for a job. And then kept that binder next to where I received things, right? And I always insisted that all hardware came to me also so that I could unpack it.

And make sure all the pieces parts fit together that I’ve got the right finish, that sort of thing. So there’s that’s a checklist, a quality checklist thing, ⁓ so that there’s not that error. And same with the fabrics and everything. And then I had a method to store. Once everything was checked in, there was a place for trims to go, right? They would be labeled as to the client and

everything. And those trims would go on a special shelf.

hardware, the long poles, would go back out on my studios in my house. So they went back out on tables on the gr in the garage because they were long. They took up too much room. But the box with all the brackets and finials stayed in the workroom on the shelf, off to one side, so I could pull them when I was actually doing fabrication to double-check returns and number of rings and everything.

So

You have a receiving space. That’s important. And at the receiving space are the scissors and the tags and the marking pens and everything you need. And then once you receive, it goes into very specific space, fabric under the table, trim on the shelf, brackets on the shelf, and poles out in the now. This all sounds well and good, but you can get overwhelmed in a hurry, right? and then

at your table where you work and if you have multiple workers each one of these should have under my table was the fabric pending right waiting to be fabricated but also we tend to stand in one specific corner of our tables just whatever our setup is its habit right so right there is my rulers on a shelf under the lip of the table

William Hanke (26:43)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (26:50)
All the tools and supplies I use on most jobs right there and smaller stuff a step behind me, right? On the shelves behind me. So having all your everything that you work with on a daily basis right there. And anything you don’t work on with on a daily basis set to one side makes a big difference.

And then there was a place to put the finished treatments. After they were bagged and tagged, there’s a place for them. So that’s a that’s a good workflow. I could tell you about a a workroom in I want to say Boston, but or New Jersey, and it used to be a slaughterhouse, right? And they had several rooms downstairs where these people worked.

And they had UPS stuff coming in over here and they had UPS stuff coming over here and you know when it was ti they just they had no plan. They didn’t have, you know, you you had to go around hunting for everything. And that’s ⁓ that’s not a good workflow. ⁓ other than that, like I said, ⁓ the ⁓ forms and the numbers catching.

William Hanke (28:00)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (28:10)
And the that you carry from one step to the next is important also.

William Hanke (28:15)
Yeah. As I said it before, but I’m sure you’re affecting workrooms that are listening to this just with just with these great tips. So I appreciate that. that’s great. And and it’s funny how you know somebody could be listening that’s been doing this for 20 years, like you said, 15, 20 years. I never even thought of that. Why didn’t why don’t we do that? You know, and just making that one little change improves their profit. It improves their bottom line at the end of the day.

Ann K. Johnson (28:29)
Mm-hmm.

Right, we don’t.

It reduces their stress, you know. One of the things I do is I give them permission, you know, to not be perfect, to go ahead and do it this way, even though everything they ever read said you did it that way, it’s okay to do it this way. Because that is faster and it’s causes you less problems in the long run or whatever. And and you know, I’ve often been told that it’s like, you give me permission, right?

William Hanke (28:56)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (29:08)
I kinda, yes, anytime I teach, I mean what I’m giving you now is like high level tips and techniques. When I teach, whether it be a one and a half hour class or four days of fire hose, I give a lot. And yes, I overwhelm, especially that four day class. By the third day, they’re all like,

William Hanke (29:15)
Right.

Ann K. Johnson (29:35)
You know, I’ll say, do you want make a sample of that? And they’re like, no, just keep teaching. And but I also give documentation and follow up, you know, with reference and stuff. The four-day class is a 160-page student manual. That was literally a brain dump when I first made it up. It is not publishable, it is ugly.

You know, but they’re like, yeah, I reference that every week. So as long as, you know, I can give lots of tips and techniques and and processes and that sort of thing, but I need to follow up with documentation links to the what I referred to before, the method shares, or go watch this webinar that’ll, you know, flesh it out even more or something. So that’s important.

William Hanke (30:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Very good.

in the world of personality tests, I’ve been labeled as a quick start. And a quick start is somebody who sees the new object and they go after it,

right? So I think it would be good for people that are like that, that hear about all these efficiencies and like, we got to go implement all these. How did how we need to talk about balance, right? How do they balance efficiency?

Ann K. Johnson (30:45)
Right.

William Hanke (30:47)
Keep quality and especially if their teams are already under some stress.

Ann K. Johnson (30:54)
Right, right. So if especially if you have a team, you have to take the stress off of them as much as you can. hourly workers are not paid to take the stress. That’s my thing. like I said, baby steps, getting started,

how to balance the stress and the qual and the efficiency. you have to set boundaries, okay? A lot of workrooms don’t set boundaries. They’ll answer the phone or reply to emails at any time during the day.

William Hanke (31:12)
Yes, yes.

Ann K. Johnson (31:25)
Laura Nelson, we just came from her workroom on that workroom tour that I did with Chanel. And her workroom tour is going to come up on the YouTube channel somewhere soon. And ⁓ she has hours, 10 to 4. She doesn’t, you know, she she gets up, she starts working at eight and she might work past four or whatever, but 10 to 4 is when she responds to emails for her clients and that sort of thing. Not before.

William Hanke (31:34)
Okay.

Ann K. Johnson (31:54)
not after and i have found when there was couple of years and 2015 is my biggest learning year let’s put it that way that that created a whole webinar on what not to do because i was just inundated with work right and instead of making good decisions see when when you get under stress you stop making good decisions

William Hanke (32:07)
Okay.

Ann K. Johnson (32:20)
You’re like, I’m in a hurry. I don’t have time to do right now. we’ll just wing it. No, you don’t wing it. You know, that just that just my gosh. So I I did a whole webinar on that. So

William Hanke (32:27)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (32:33)
You have to give yourself boundaries. You have to say, no, I’m not gonna work all night. I am not going to work on weekends. I am going to work, and everybody’s different. You know, if you have young children in your husband’s home on Saturdays, yeah, maybe you’ll work while the kids are at school and then on most of Saturday, right? Everybody works out their own, but you have to put those hours on your wall.

You know, you have to post them. You have to put them in your contract with your client. Post them, right? And remind them over and over again because and and people start to res they will respect that, right? But if you don’t respect yourself, then they’ll just keep coming at you.

And so that’s where you get your balance and your stress by taking care of yourself, by setting boundaries, setting hours, giving yourself time away. Maybe even Laura was.

She will work three weeks a month and take the fourth week off, but that’s her week for playing ketchup, that’s her week on you know, book work or whatever, or experimenting with something new or

whatever. So that’s her way of maintaining her sanity and growing because she gives herself that time off.

But you have to discipline yourself for it, right? Because we all wanna like, ⁓ they want that, they’re moaning, you know, they it’s just like, I hated that question. And I could always see it coming through the phone. So no pressure, but you know when it might be done? It’s like in my last three or four years or so, you know, I was helping take care of my folks, you know, as as they neared end of life and stuff.

William Hanke (33:51)
I think that’s important. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (34:20)
And so you never knew when you had to drop everything and go to the emergency ward or something like that, right? And I was very, very lucky to have a very strong support system here, but I was I was the key person, you know, who handled their.

William Hanke (34:35)
Yeah.

Teams are under pressure.

Ann K. Johnson (34:38)
I started answering with the question, well, do you have a date? Do you know when it’ll be done? Or can you have it done by this date? My answer was always, sure, pending on foreseen circumstances. I just always

William Hanke (34:53)
Two, no?

Ann K. Johnson (34:54)
put that on there, pending on because you never know what life’s gonna hit you with. So you you have to if you always jump for your client.

Then that’s what they’re gonna expect, right? You need a jump for yourself. So that’s handling stress and quality and efficiency.

William Hanke (35:04)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah. You mentioned hitting that burnout at one point. And I think that’s something a lot of people in our industry, you know, quietly deal with.

Ann K. Johnson (35:16)
yeah.

William Hanke (35:20)
What led to that burnout for you? Was it volume, lack of systems, or something different?

Ann K. Johnson (35:20)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, yes, yes. ⁓ and

yes. So I took on a new designer the fall before that, in twenty fourteen. And she’s a nice lady, a little manipulative, right? But I could handle her, right? and so as we flowed into January, she had three houses that we were doing. And this is on top of my regular workload, but I wanted to impress her and

you know, draw her in is so that could keep her. And so also at the time my kids are gone, my husband doesn’t need me to fuss over him for dinner or anything like that.

So I’d say, well, I could work a little later every day. And she was constantly calling up and well, you know, can you have this two weeks from today?

And I’d be like, ⁓ she’s and and ⁓ my client’s gonna be so upset. And so I would like, yeah, okay, two weeks. That’s plenty of time. And of course it wasn’t.

But I’m, you know, was managing them and the and I was also because I was under so much stress, and the all three houses were on the east side, which is over an hour away, right? So just popping over there to check and measure or something was

Would have taken some time. Now, if I had been smart, I would have taken a day and gone over there and double checked all the measures through the house. I had sent somebody else to do the measures, and there were a couple that were wrong. So a couple things started coming back.

And I had a job that four long cuts of scalamandra fabric folded on my table between my machines.

Where it was safe and out of the way until I could work on it. My oil can fell over and I didn’t know it. And I had a huge oval grease ring in the middle of those four. Panic, panic, panic. I figured out how to salvage two, but had to spend eight hundred dollars buying more. so there come the hits, you know, and the stress.

Things start coming back, they’re making mistakes, and then

Boom, like in September, I just ran right into a brick wall, metaphorically speaking, of course, and spent most of the rest of the year chasing errors, chasing problems. So when I went back and I looked at my net income from 2014 and my net income from 20 ⁓ 15, my gross was like 25% higher. My net was only about five grand more.

William Hanke (38:04)
Hmm.

Wow.

Ann K. Johnson (38:05)
for all those hours and all that stress. It’s not worth it. You have to take care of yourself and not let other people tell you how to run your business or what your hours should be or when you should deliver. ⁓ that’s for you to choose.

William Hanke (38:22)
Yeah. Yeah. How often do you see burnout tied directly to the inefficient processes?

Ann K. Johnson (38:29)
⁓ yeah, you see it. You talk to people and and you see it. ⁓ and and some of it too is life, what’s going on in their lives doesn’t help, right? which is all the more reason you have to sell set boundaries with your clients, right? and get the help you need if you can’t. And this goes back to charging enough.

To be able to bring in somebody to clean your house for you or mow your lawn, right? And the one worker that I tell every workroom to hire. I hired her, I hired a friend who needed money, right? she struggled to work in the real world because of AD, HD, or you know, whatever. She was just

Flighty is all get out. You gave her a list at the beginning of the day, and then you didn’t pay attention to how she got it done because she’d be all over the place, but she’d get it done. She was proud of what she did. The years that I had her working for me, my productivity skyrocketed. Because an unskilled utility worker, that’s what they call them a utility worker, an unskilled utility worker.

paid at hourly wage can do everything right up to the point where you pull the fabric out and start fabricating the skilled part. And then when you get to a certain point in the fabrication process, you can hand it back to them to finish it off.

Right.

So I think workrooms, I keep trying to tell workrooms that, and I don’t think they truly understand that. And that could be somebody, a mother who sends her kids off to school every day, right? And just comes in for three or four hours for three days a week or something. It’s unbelievable. And then maybe if they’ve got a little skill, you can eventually train them and bring them up to a skill level that would be valuable in the future.

So

William Hanke (40:22)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I I’m a huge systems guy. I love building systems and having them in place and then figuring out ways to ⁓ you know make them better, make them more efficient, as we’ve been talking about. ⁓ so so I love that the I love what you’re saying. So so now that you’ve stepped away from the workroom, your focus is on helping others improve theirs. ⁓ when you go into a workroom to train a team, what’s usually missing?

Ann K. Johnson (40:34)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

⁓

I don’t know, that’s a blank. I mean, every workroom’s different, but it’s and it depends. So, like the class I’m teaching, those are workrooms coming to me. They are ones who are already learning. You know, they’ve got their finger on the educational ⁓ opportunities out there. The workrooms that I go into with hired help and new management.

William Hanke (40:56)
Okay.

Ann K. Johnson (41:21)
they are missing current. ⁓ they’re still doing it the same way it’s always been done and haven’t kept up with ⁓ processes that could be ⁓ help to streamline things.

William Hanke (41:38)
Yeah, yeah. How do you ⁓ how do you approach teaching efficiency without overwhelming them? You mentioned the fire hose earlier.

Ann K. Johnson (41:46)
yeah, I overwhelm them right from the

start. ⁓ it’s it’s a given. ⁓ but we use the student handbook. That’s my, you know, st ⁓ stylus or whatever they call it. ⁓ you know, I just go through page by page to the handbook and then we stop periodically and I encourage them to just make small samples, practice this, you know. a lot of them

You know, some will already know this and some will already know that. And ⁓ depending on how much they’ve had their finger on or been watching me, they might know a lot. But still I and and also is the discussions. You know, somebody all pipe up and say, Well, I’ve been doing it this way. And everybody so ⁓ so we do homework every night, those three things, right, that you learn today, and I’m always praying they find three.

William Hanke (42:40)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (42:41)
They usually find 10, but we go around the table the next morning and it always fascinates me. There’s a certain few favorite, you know, tips or techniques that everybody does, but this one might write down something that that one said, right? So we learn from each other too. There’s I want to publish that student manual that’s in my that’s

William Hanke (42:57)
Mm-hmm.

That yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (43:06)
my goal to do in the next year or two, but it won’t quit changing. Make that I just keep adding to it. So I don’t I gotta figure out how to cut it off.

William Hanke (43:10)
No

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. so far, fantastic tips. I really do appreciate it. I wanted to zoom out before we wrap up and talk about kind of the industry as a whole.

what do you think the window treatment industry gets right when it comes to

workrooms?

Ann K. Johnson (43:33)
I think we can thank Cheryl Strickland for bringing work rooms out of their basements.

And getting and and opening up discussions on the ⁓ gosh, the for very first forum she was there. workrooms, they they work by themselves, you know, they don’t have often don’t have somebody to bounce ideas off of or whatever. So she brought the conversation out into the open.

And got us to looking around and realized, I mean, for a long time there, you couldn’t get if if a woman was charging ten dollars a width to make a panel, now gosh, those a panel cost you a hundred to end up, depending on who the designer, you know, the workroom is and all.

And and so they weren’t making any money. And so they were like hoarding their information because, no, you know, you might take my clients if I teach you this, right? And I think there was a lot of that for generations. And if you look back at books from the late 1800s, the techniques in those, if you can figure out what they’re talking about, are ⁓ were lost for

William Hanke (44:43)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (44:48)
Just just basic techniques for controlling fabrics from flare and and how to cut to create a pattern or whatever. Those were lost because nobody would share it. Now they share everything. So Cheryl opened that up, you know, with her magazines, with her school, with her forums. and then Kitty Stein ran with it with her pricing book, right? And got people to start.

Realizing that they’re worth more and they can charge more and they should. Michelle Williams took that even further with her classes. so doing it right, if you are a workroom who is tapping into education in the industry and paying attention.

There’s so much information out there, so much being shared, and at such a reasonable price, right? So I would say they are getting that right.

William Hanke (45:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s great. Couple rapid fire questions for you. what’s one tool or setup change you wish every workroom would adopt?

Ann K. Johnson (45:57)
I wish they’d all hire a utility worker. An unskilled utility worker. their productivity would go through the roof. And it gives them a potential line towards some you know, a skilled worker down the road.

William Hanke (45:59)
Okay.

Yeah. I like that one.

what’s the most overrated practice in a worker?

Ann K. Johnson (46:15)
perfectionism and unnecessary handwork. There’s a lot of workrooms I still see, you know, they they do little videos on there and that there they are sewing away. It’s like you could have done that with a machine, you know. and so, okay, so I don’t want to disparage somebody who puts that kind of personal touch, but you better be charging for it.

William Hanke (46:28)
Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (46:44)
And you better be letting your client know this is what you’re doing for them. I have a colleague here, she was both designer and workroom, so she would go out and you know, sell the job and then she would make it up. And she had incredible creativity and she would do her own installs. So she was incredible. But what she would do is after she installed something and dressed it out, she would then take her client over to it and say, Look, isn’t this gorgeous? Look at this detail.

Look what I added here just to make it look better for you. She would resell it to her client. So, what’s her client gonna tell all her friends and family when they come through? Look what she did for me, right? I think they do a lot too much handwork sewing on trim and stuff like that. but if you are doing it,

William Hanke (47:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ann K. Johnson (47:32)
then be sure to charge for it and let your client know this is what they’re getting for that, right? Don’t go telling other workrooms that this is the only way to do it, because that’s not true.

William Hanke (47:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. I

like that. thank you again so much for all the awesome tips and wisdom that you’ve given us. last question. If somebody listening takes just one action after this episode, what do you think it should be?

Ann K. Johnson (47:57)
And I’ll pull out your work, your paperwork, see the continuity and how you do each job, whether you do it with forms or you know, scribble, and start identifying the weak spots or the where where the bottlenecks and just take that little spot there and make a form, make a checklist or something.

And also start looking at the go to the curtains and soft furnishings library and start looking at those circle time. They’re constantly creating new content as well as the old webinars that they have. And WCA has all those webinars. The workroom channel on YouTube has an incredible amount of information on real workrooms, workroom tours.

they go into small little tiny rooms where people are or you know, have a workroom into these large commercial spaces and do a tour. They’re amazing.

William Hanke (48:55)
That’s great. ⁓ well, thank you again for everything that that you’ve added today. if somebody wants to learn more about you, where should they go?

Ann K. Johnson (49:04)
annkjohnson.com That’s my website. Yeah. I developed that when I was easing out of the workroom and easing more into the teaching part of it. So

William Hanke (49:07)
love that.

Love that. They can go there. They

can learn about your classes, about the different things, and obviously contact you as well. Perfect. That’s great. Well, thank you again for for being on today. I do appreciate it.

Ann K. Johnson (49:22)
Contact me too. Yes, definitely.

I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me, Will.

William Hanke (49:32)
Yeah, no problem.

So that was such a practical conversation with Ann and honestly a bit of a reality check for a lot of us. If you’re running a workroom and constantly feeling like you’re busy but not making progress, there’s probably something in your workflow that needs attention, not just more hours in the day. If you found this helpful, share it with somebody in the industry who’s in the trenches right now. And as always, follow marketing pains for more conversations like this.

Where we break down what’s actually working in real window treatment businesses.

Guest Profile: Anthony Ngucaj

Anthony Ngucaj is the founder of Skugga Blinds, a custom window treatment company serving both residential and commercial clients. With a focus on clean, modern solutions, he has successfully completed projects ranging from private homes to large-scale commercial installation, including projects with up to 1,000 roller shades.

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TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is the founder of Skugga a custom window treatment company serving both residential and commercial clients. He built his business from hands-on experience in construction and installation and has grown Skugga into a company focused on clean,

modern solutions. He’s worked on everything from smaller residential projects to large scale commercial installs, including projects with up to a thousand roller shades.

What makes his story especially interesting is the evolution. He’s gone from competing on price through platforms like Thumbtack to developing a more strategic approach around pricing, efficiency and scalability with clear goals on building a business that doesn’t rely on him being on site for every job. At the same time, he’s balancing that growth with family life.

including being a dad and thinking intentionally about what kind of business he wants to build long-term. This conversation is about growth, mistakes, pricing reality, and what it takes to transition from installer to business owner.

Welcome to the show, Anthony Ngucaj

Anthony Ngucaj (01:26)
hi, how are you?

William Hanke (01:27)
Fantastic, I’m really happy to have you here today. Let’s jump in and talk about the beginning, like the origin story. How did you get into window treatments from a background in construction?

Anthony Ngucaj (01:40)
I have necessity to be honest with you. Our shade guy, Steve, who’s my mentor now, whether he realized it or not, but he is. so we will finish our projects and my dad’s name is Bill and the interior designers say, okay, Bill, you did a great job. Now we need shades, we need to sleep. And so my dad be like, okay, let me call Steve. Steve will be…

available and everything and, and, but I guess he grew. it came to a point where Steve wouldn’t just be like, okay, I’m coming. He’d be like, wait a minute. How many shades are and how many are motorized? You know, he will have a minimum. then once the, if everything went okay, he’ll come. So at a time came where he wasn’t available, nobody was available. And then, I spoke to him and I said, Hey, we’ve got a problem here. You know, you know,

William Hanke (02:18)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (02:30)
we’re completing 99%. We gotta take the extra 1%. I have some experience, I worked in hotels, you know, and they teach you everything, shades, AC, elevators, whatever. And I said, you know what, I’m gonna do it. And so that’s how I got into it, necessity.

William Hanke (02:45)
Nice.

Yeah, that’s great. You mentioned working with your dad before you started your own thing. What made you want to branch out and kind of start your own business?

Anthony Ngucaj (02:57)
⁓ well, I did have an honest conversation with my dad because I’ve been with him since I was 15 years old, know, immigrant family, know, home, what you call it, family business. And I started as a translator. Okay, dad, you know, the customer said this, this, this. Okay, miss, my dad is saying this, you know, it started like that. then

William Hanke (03:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (03:22)
I

passed, started managing multiple projects at the same time for everything, everything. And then before you know it, I graduated my college in 2014 or so. So I was maybe 22 or something like that. And then some more time passed. The problem with having a family business is you get comfortable fast, you know, because you get into this assumption that, okay, I’m going to take over.

But as time passes by, it’s kind of like, okay, I need to do my own thing. Do I have a future here? I had a conversation with my dad about this. It was uncomfortable. And we got to a point and we said, listen, you know what? I got to do my own thing. I’m married now. And so, that’s how I got started. It was a little uncomfortable in the beginning for sure. Because as you know, I started from thumbtack and it was just these…

Tiny projects, one shade here, 50 bucks there, you know. And, but over time it just, as you said, evolved.

Yeah, that’s how I got started. You were about to mention the early grind. Then it was, it was tough because my first customer, I lost her because we had completed the project. did an entire renovation, entire house, beautiful house. And then I go up there and I’m like, Hey, how are you guys doing? I’m here to do your window treatments. They looked at me like I came from the moon. They’re like, Anthony, what are you doing here? Yeah. I’m like, what I’m.

William Hanke (04:53)
Thank

Anthony Ngucaj (04:56)
I mean, here, do your window treatments. They’re like, okay, I guess do your thing. I don’t know. You know, and they were telling me stuff I’ve never heard of cellular shades. All I knew was roller shades. That’s all I knew. They were telling me cellular shades, Hunter Douglas, Gerber, something like that. I’m like, wait, what, what is cellular shades? I thought, I swear to God, I thought cellular shades was with the phone. I said, it must be something you can control from your phone. You know, but,

William Hanke (05:09)
Okay.

What the hell?

Fair enough.

Anthony Ngucaj (05:25)
I lost her because to be honest, she could tell that I had no idea what I was talking about. So that was embarrassing. But then some more time passed and I met and I had my first customer and I don’t remember her name, but she was maybe in her sixties who had been in early seventies and she had a problem with her vertical blinds. Right. And still, I mean, I was just like figuring it out and

And I had told her, listen, miss, you know, I’m all about customer service and I’m trying to save you money. And I’m going to do the minimum that I can, you know, so you don’t have to buy a new shade or something like that. Cause I’m not here to upsell. I’m here to take care of you and your needs, you know, as I went by the time I, by the time I went through, had gotten there three times. Very nice lady paid me every time.

And then it got to a point where I called Steve and I said, Steve, man, listen, I’m trying to fix this vertical line and it’s giving me a freaking headache. And then Steve was like, we should have come in sooner. I will tell you, waste your time. Just tell her, buy a new track. It had head rail. And then that’s it because, the clips, the carriers, whatever that carried the vines, right. They were broken. And because these were old fashioned ones to replace them.

It was it just it was impossible, you know And so by the time I told her this she said okay send me a quote and like I didn’t add anything on top I just told her listen this size cost this much. just sent her a link and everything And then she said look, you know what to be honest you we spent so much money at this point that We’re just gonna leave it as it is, know what?

William Hanke (06:54)
Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (07:18)
Thursday, I, to be honest with you, if I could have not charged her, it would make me feel so good. You know why? Because she reminded me of my grandma who had passed away maybe like two, three years before her. Very nice lady. but everything’s a learning experience over time, you you evolve and you got to adapt that business to be honest with you. ⁓ well, business like that. ⁓ I know, ⁓

since a very young kid I’ve been in the business world. And I’ve seen two different types of business professionals, business owners, right? There’s the first type where it’s they’re strict. It’s, this is what I do, know, have a nice day. I’ve been doing it for 30 years, have a nice day, right? And then there’s the other one, which I’m not gonna lie, it’s more of the modern generation, right?

where they analyze trends and they see, okay, I spent X amount of time doing this activity. Maybe I should switch around and do something else instead within the same market, To be honest with you, the way that things are flowing, things are changing so fast, technology, AI, you have to.

you will be left in the dust and they’re gonna be like, what? Skugga who? You know? You know? They’re gonna be like, what? Nah, must adapt. You have to go with the flow. And I don’t remember the scientist’s name, but he said, survivor of the fittest, Charles Darwin. Talk about evolution. He said survivor of the fittest. When he said that he didn’t mean the strongest or fastest, he meant who can fit into any given…

William Hanke (08:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (09:08)
situation best. That’s what that means. It’s about adapting to any situation, to your customers, to the market. It’s a lot, you know, it’s been a man. It’s been a journey.

William Hanke (09:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So speaking of the early grind and kind of getting those first customers, ⁓ tell me about the name Skugga. Where did that come from?

Anthony Ngucaj (09:31)
Gosh, that’s hilarious. First of all, that’s where when I first got the idea of opening a window treatment business, I told my wife and I said, you know what? ⁓ That’s it, I’m done. I got to do my own thing. And what I do know is Steve, he makes a lot of money, know, he’s not very rich, but he’s doing okay, you know? Maybe I should do that. I’m good with my hands and this and that. We had a little discussion and then she said, you know,

don’t know what you’re gonna do you’re gonna sell shades Anthony you’re a nerd what are you gonna sell? said listen man I gotta make some money and you know what whatever and whatever whatever she said you know all right you know what if you’re gonna do this let’s do it properly set a name I said I have no idea what I’m gonna do to call it Anthony’s blinds you know there’s so many Anthony’s out there and and then it came to us just so random

William Hanke (10:20)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (10:25)
I said, yo, you’re taking a master’s degree in Sweden, kind of, right? And she said, yeah. I said, what’s shade or blind in Swedish? know, it’s so random, you know? And then we looked it up and she said, oh, it’s Skugga I said, oh, okay, you know what? That sounds kind of weird, but it sounds unique because what does Google it? What’s Google? It has no meaning to it.

William Hanke (10:40)
Yeah.

Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (10:52)
Right? What about

William Hanke (10:53)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (10:53)
Yahoo? It’s Yahoo. It makes no sense. Right? It’s actually kind of funny. Right? So I said it doesn’t need to mean anything. Doesn’t have to sound cool. It just has to stick to somebody’s brain. And it’s short. And we say, hey, let’s do it. And Skugga means shades in Swedish. So if you see Skugga blinds or whatever, a Swedish person is going to be like, what? Did he really name his company Shades? That’s where that name came from.

William Hanke (10:57)
Yeah.

That’s great. Yeah.

That’s awesome. I love that. I love that. It’s original, which is great. Easy to remember. It’s fantastic. So

I know that you’ve worked across thumbtack we mentioned, getting referrals, and even some large commercial jobs. How do you think about pricing differently depending on the type of customer?

Anthony Ngucaj (11:43)
Well at this moment I’m still in the growth stage and And so what from what I’ve noticed there’s almost two paths that you kind of have to take when it comes to growing You know what window treatments right you have for one path which is to

Do it individually, right? You talk to them individually and you say, hey, what’s your budget? And read the personnel, you know, kind of get a feel and give them a range and, you know, and see if you can hit some kind of middle ground, right? Or there’s option two, but that’s when you’re larger, right? You can say, hey, this is our prices. We can give you a small discount for that. You know what I mean?

Right now, I’m not at a point where I can just say, hey, this is our price, we charge whatever, Have a nice day. You know, I’m at a point where I’m still trying to make connections. so because that’s to be honest to you, to have any business sustainable, it don’t matter, podcast, supermarket, construction, it don’t matter. It’s about relationships. Right. Because, you know, you can only get so many customers, you know, I don’t know.

passing out ads, right? But you gotta get like in our instance, right? In the window treatment, you gotta get a contractor. You gotta get deals with designers or maybe window companies. man, if you can hit a window company, because as soon as you install in your window, guess what? You need new shades, right? It must have, it’s about relationships. That’s what it’s about. So right now I’m in the phase where I’m trying to establish relationships.

William Hanke (13:04)
Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (13:30)
And then I can maybe get to a point where I can say, okay, this is our prices, you know? That’s where I’m at right now.

William Hanke (13:38)
Yeah, definitely makes sense. know that you mentioned thumbtacks, some of those types of things. How do you decide which jobs are worth taking and which ones are not?

Anthony Ngucaj (13:49)
You know what, I would say experience because when I first started, I would just take anything, pretty much anything. I would say out of whatever one shade, 60 bucks, that’s $60 and a half. Right. Well, now I have a lot going on, a lot. I’m a first time dad, right? Generally I’m running on what? Four hours of sleep.

man, if I get six hours sleep, that’s almost like vacation, you know? And so, said to myself, okay, so let me get something right. First, I have my son’s unpredictable sleep schedule, right? Which sometimes he sleeps at 9 p.m., sometimes he sleeps at 2 a.m., right? And so there’s that. And then there’s this, trying to grow this business, right? And then there is…

William Hanke (14:14)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (14:42)
Now I’m training for a New York City Marathon. This year, I’m running it this year. And so I have been training for a while now. When I first started, was like one mile here, two miles there, which is like, whatever, 15 minutes, 30 minutes max, right? But now I’m at a point where I’m doing seven miles, eight miles. And so my work day will start eight, nine AM, something like that.

And so if I’m doing six miles, that’s an hour, right? So if I gotta be somewhere eight, then that means that seven, I gotta be on my way anywhere. So that means that maybe 5.30 in the morning, I gotta be up, spend an hour, 6.30. Disgusting, I know, forgive me. No shower, no breakfast, nothing. Just change the shirt, you know, and maybe my face a little bit and then continue. And so…

William Hanke (15:31)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (15:39)
What I’m getting at is that I realized with all this going on, time is so valuable for me. I’m not like an important guy. not trying to make it, but it’s just, I got to make it count. I got to make it count. You know, ⁓ especially now that I started selling, I guess with our language, it’s, I’ve become a dealer. I realized that there’s significantly more money when you do provide.

and install, right? Because you can easily go to one job and I’ve done a project, just one shape and made $300 profit, right? Because I provided the product and I installed, right? Because if I just did installation, how much I’m gonna charge? How much, how high can I go for one shape? You know what I mean? So I gotta justify, right? You gotta provide the product. And so…

William Hanke (16:25)
Right.

you

Anthony Ngucaj (16:38)
I said to myself, okay, so I can spend a day, even one day, telling you, it can take five minutes, right? Or it can take two hours. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know, you know, until you get there. I have a customer tomorrow. Yesterday, he texted me, hey, how long is it going to take? I said, I don’t know. It’s going to take anywhere from one to three hours. I don’t know until I get started, right? And so now,

What happens is that, okay, even once you can take me one to three hours, do I really want to spend one to three hours for $60? Right. And so maybe I don’t, maybe I use that time to stay home or go outside and just make phone calls or go on social media, reach out. Hey, does anybody has any extra work or just get on the phone and maybe optimize the business internally.

Right? Maybe mess around with the profile or make some focus of designers and techs. Hey, I just want to say hi. Let me know if you need something. But even though it’s not physically working, all that takes time, you know? And so within one hour, it’s either make 60 bucks or make nothing that day. that one conversation could land you hundreds of dollars or in the thousand.

William Hanke (17:35)
Yeah.

Sure. Yeah.

Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (18:04)
You know, it be like, you know what? Yeah, it’s nice time to you. Why don’t we catch up? I actually have a project I want to bring you on board. You know, I don’t know, shades or whatever. And so, yeah, that day you didn’t work, but that day that you spent on the phone made you like a thousand dollars, $2,000 where you will be spending that time making 60 bucks. You understand? So time is very big, man. You’ve got to choose your time very carefully. Absolutely.

William Hanke (18:21)
Right.

care.

Yeah, for sure.

Along those lines, any mistakes that you’ve made around pricing that you’re willing to share?

Anthony Ngucaj (18:37)
Hey

Yeah. You

guilty.

fell into the trap of AI. I started using AI. ChatGPT is my best friend. I’m telling you. Because now…

I have to do a quote for example, right? And if I’m mid install, I can’t do that quote. And so I have already contacted my suppliers and they give me price lists, right? And then before it was just like, I don’t know, 20 bucks per shade, just install, right? And then as I grew, I said, wait a minute, hold on.

Sometimes I’ll do work for my suppliers, right? To, you know, if they have too much work, I’ll take it on. And then I would say, hey man, like, so how much you pay? You know, I don’t really care. He’s my, he or she is my supplier. I’m not going to nickel and dime them, right? Whatever they can pay. And so they’ll be like, Hey, we’ll pay you $30 per shade. And I’m like, wait, what? mean, thank you. But what? You pay me $30 per shade. So then in my brain, I’m like, wait a minute, I’m charging people 20 a shade, you know?

William Hanke (19:44)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (19:50)
So what advice can I give? Do your research. And you know what? Don’t be scared. Use ChatGPT. Use whatever you got on know Gemini or whatever AI you got. Do your research because you know what? Before you know it, you have done, I don’t know, you could do say, you just say, okay, you know what? $20 per shade. I do five shades, whatever. takes you an hour or so. You made, what’s that? A hundred bucks or whatever, right? Where the…

Another individual who’s done a little bit of research, right, who had made two, 300 just because they priced it properly. And another thing, reach out, don’t be scared, don’t be ashamed of reaching out. Steve, going back to Steve, can’t stop talking about him. I call Steve and he says, Steve, I got this project. What do I do? And I said, how much would you charge?

Steve doesn’t care because he’s been doing it 40 years. He’s not scared of me taking away his business, you know. So he tells me, okay, I don’t know what you have in mind. I told him, oh, $20 per shade. He’s like, please don’t tell these prices to nobody. You’re gonna kill us. Don’t tell nobody $20 per shade. You’re gonna kill us. You’re gonna kill the industry. And I said, what am I supposed to do? You know? And he’s like, no.

William Hanke (20:50)
Sure.

Hahaha

Anthony Ngucaj (21:12)
You’ve got to be realistic. You’ve got to get on the target on the market. And I charge I don’t know whatever you charge like $30, $40. You know what I mean? And so reach out, man. For sure. Reach out. Don’t be ashamed. You know, don’t be like, you know, especially if you’re somebody that’s intelligent, intelligent people. have a downside because we think we know everything. So we don’t reach out. You know, we’re like, yeah, whatever. I can figure this out.

William Hanke (21:20)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (21:41)
But you know what? No, you don’t know everything. I’m sorry. That’s the most realistic thing. It don’t matter how many degrees you have, right? There’s always somebody out there that knows more than you. It don’t matter. There’ll be 40 years in the business or 10 years in the business or one year in the business, right? Just reach out, you know? It’s gonna be all right, you know? And in…

William Hanke (21:46)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think smart

business owners have coaches. All smart business owners have a coach, right? There’s some sort of coach in the background helping them make decisions, make smart decisions. And the smart ones are definitely seeking out those types of people.

Anthony Ngucaj (22:08)
Absolutely.

William Hanke (22:18)
Yeah, very cool.

when did you start to feel like you finally figured out the pricing for your business?

All right, Anthony, before the break, I asked you, when did you start to feel like you finally figured out the pricing for your business?

Anthony Ngucaj (22:36)
let me think about this very fast. Maybe you’re going to laugh this year, this year, January, right? Because of I started selling, I started selling products. My manufacturer told me in my supplier to me, you got to start selling, man. You want to make money, you got to start selling. Bob was another one of my mentors.

William Hanke (22:45)
It’s okay. Yeah, that’s okay.

Anthony Ngucaj (23:01)
I’m new with him, right? But he told me the same thing. He’s like, listen, you sound like you got

with installs. You got some kind of network going on. If you want to upgrade, you got to start selling, you know? So obviously when you start selling, it changes the game because then you’re like, wait a minute. What do I do? Right. A customer asks, hey, send me a call for this. And you say, okay. ⁓

Sure. Not a problem. Step aside or whatever you do or the next day or whatever. And it comes down to crunch the numbers, right? You say, okay, wait a minute. ⁓ Okay. So how much do I charge for product? How much do I charge for install? Right. And, and then you have, I’m experimenting. There’s two ways to go about it. You can include the install into the price, like a bundle, right? And just be like, ⁓

product is 300 bucks installed, right? Or you can separate it, right? Which I’m kind of more of a, I’m leaning more toward this way. I’m not going to let you. You can say, okay, this is the cost of our product and this is the cost of our installation, right? I’m leaning more this way, right? Because this way, I just want them to buy my product, the Bansi. You don’t gotta use me for installation.

Right? We’re all professionals here. Anybody listening, they know it’s the truth. If you sell, The installation fee is already included in the product. It’s already included. So when you can go even Home Depot, the large pick box stores, they will do an entire house for like a hundred bucks. You ask an installer to install, I don’t know, 25 sheets for a dollars. They’re going to be like,

Have a nice day. You know what? You can do that. If your margins are large enough, you can do it. You can say, you know, sure, I’ll include installation to help you out. Right. But all that comes out in the very end of the day, you’ve got to get those numbers on point. Right. And that’s what it is. You’ve to do your research. And if I can say when? Now.

William Hanke (24:55)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (25:22)
this year, January, I’ve become more aggressive in selling. And that’s when I can say, okay, my numbers are almost on point for sure.

William Hanke (25:30)
that. You’ve also talked about wanting to grow the business beyond being physically present, And having requiring you to be part of it. What does that next version of your business look like to you?

Anthony Ngucaj (25:41)
I’m a people person. I love people and every day, even when I go to any one of my tools, doesn’t matter if it’s, if it’s, I don’t know, even like one vertical blind, anything doesn’t matter. The profit is almost non-existing to me. I will always treat each and every, customer the same way I want to go to sleep.

without a in my mind that I have done the best that I can in this project. But I’m a business owner. This is my business. I know what I want. And only I can deliver what I want. The thing is now when I’m trying to get away from being a physical business, ⁓ I want to, at end of the day, make money.

but I can only install one place at a time perfectly, right? I can’t split myself into two, But I can sell 10 shapes to 10 individual people. And even if I make only a hundred bucks per transaction, that’s already made a thousand OPS. understand what I mean? So just for me, it’s better. I decided that, you know what?

William Hanke (26:38)
you

Anthony Ngucaj (27:01)
That’s the way to go is to, you know, selling. So, but that’s where I started joining Facebook groups. And I want to go national to be honest with because I can say, hey, I want to sell somebody in, I don’t know, don’t know, California, whatever, right? Why not? And just reach out to anybody over there in groups or anybody in the network, say, hey, I’m bidding on the project in this area. Is anybody interested?

William Hanke (27:15)
Okay.

Anthony Ngucaj (27:31)
Right? And if I see that the mark, this is why I’m more of a family separating product with installation costs. Right? If I see that the budget is kind of tight, right? And I like the installer because they do good work. You never want to undercut your installers like ever. Right? If I see that there’s no room for me, right, to add on top for installation, I’ll say, you know what? I’ll go to install. You know what? Just give me your price.

And it is what it is. I’m making my money from the product. You make your money from the installation. You know what I mean? And that’s, I think that’s the goal to be honest with you. Yeah.

William Hanke (28:09)
Yeah. Now I know that

you’ve tried to bring in installers before, and it didn’t go over as well as you wanted to. Tell me a little bit about that.

Anthony Ngucaj (28:18)
Yeah, for sure. you know, here’s the thing, because one more time it does go to being a business owner. You know the results and the quality that you want, right? And you will be and provide the best that you can because you have a lot to lose. Okay. That’s a lot to lose. ⁓ But as an employee, doesn’t matter if that employee is the best of the best. What they got to lose. You know what I mean?

They got nothing to lose. And so ⁓ I used to pay people per day because, know, from construction background, right? I used to pay per day and I would say, hey, man, listen, I paid you this much money. That’s it. And I will have discussions, the goals and say, hey, listen, we’ve got to meet a quota. 30 shades per day, 40 shades per day. I don’t care whatever time it takes you, two hours, takes you 10 hours. don’t matter.

Just meet the quota and you can go home. It’s not a problem for me. I’m not like a super greeted guy, right? And so time had passed, time passed. And this guy was like very smart, very smart, very efficient. But when I was there, you know, because I do the installs myself, right? I hire when I need to, right? And so when I’m gone, because I had trained him, spent so much time together, I said, listen, I can’t be here.

But I brought you a helper, right? You guys can work together. You know the building already. We’ve done 600 plus shades of that same thing. You’re basically a robot. You don’t need to think, you just do it, right? And you know what we’ve got to do. You know the quarter, you know everything, right? And that’s fine. But I have had days where the quarter might be 30 shades per day and he’d be like, I came late, I’m sorry. And I had to leave.

So I only did 15 shades, you know? And I’m just like, man, like this guy’s good, but when I’m there, no? So even Steve, he says, you pay them wrong. You cannot pay per day because they have nothing to lose. One shade, 10 shades, he still make the same amount of money. You gotta pay them on performance, you know? So that’s what I’m gonna do going forward.

William Hanke (30:21)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (30:42)
downscaled, right? Because I’m trying to optimize everything. And now I will upscale again. But I’ve noticed that follow installers, I’m not gonna tell them, hey, you know, I pay you 200 bucks a day. No, no, no. I tell them, listen, this is how many shades, right? You give me a price, right? They have a lot to lose. know, if they don’t do a good job, they lose me.

One more time, I’m a nobody, but I’m just saying, right? In the network, right? And they look, say, for example, a customer, if that was only their customer, you know? And so it’s different. So that’s why I’m saying it’s a little tough to bring people on board and expect them to give you the same quality that you expect because it’s not their business. It’s just how it is. It’s a fact. It’s sad, but it’s the truth. These are the facts. Yeah.

William Hanke (31:41)
Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re wanting to move towards a national approach, you know, you kind of have to have those expectations in there from what your costs are going to be, as well as the expectation of what they’re going to output at the end of the day. So, especially when you can’t physically be there because it’s on the other side of the country or something like that. What challenges do you think that you’re going to run into beyond that?

Anthony Ngucaj (31:53)
Yeah.

William Hanke (32:07)
as you try to scale beyond just the local and towards the national side.

Anthony Ngucaj (32:12)
and trust. Trust is big. Trust is big, you know, because my dad was living business for so many years and every other person every now and then say,

how do you know they’re not going to take your customer? You know what I mean? How do you know they’re not going to undercut you and just take your customer away? Yeah, that’s a risk. It’s the truth. It is a risk.

But you know what’s the risk of business, you know? And the thing is that, so say I were to, I don’t know, I don’t know, undercut Steve, for example, right? Say I went to meet one of Steve’s clients and just be like, hey, you know, I know he’s charging you this much, but would you give me the job, right? I’ll give you a lower price, right?

Sure, maybe I’ve gotten that job, but I’ve lost Steve. Invaluable experience, crazy connections. He brings me on to large scale projects when he needs help. You know what I mean? So yeah, maybe I made a little extra money here from this person, but I’ve lost thousands of dollars, you know, and hours of mistakes, you know? So yeah, that’s a real thing,

There’s a lot of risk.

William Hanke (33:33)
I wanted to ask you while we’re on this subject around your mindset.

So how has your mindset changed when it comes to control versus delegation?

Anthony Ngucaj (33:43)
if I am, I believe that let me try to answer in a belief, in a way that I think you’re saying it. first of all, control. You can only control so much. I’m not going to allow you. You can only control so much. can tell somebody, Hey, I want you to do this, this, this, this. And they’re going to say yes. Right. But we thought you being there. Right.

What you’re going to do? You’re not present. You’re not there. You can only do so much. Right? So you’re going to have to take that responsibility upon yourself and say, Hey, if this person messes up, hopefully I have one or $2 extra in my bank account to maybe refund them the whole service. You know, because reputation is massive in any business. You can, it’s okay to lose money. You’re going to lose money.

But you can always make it for men when your reputation goes down. Very hard to get that back. Very hard.

William Hanke (34:41)
Yeah,

yeah, definitely makes sense. And it’s something that every business owner struggles with, I’m sure.

a

fun questions for you. What’s one tool or habit that’s made your life easier since you started your business?

Anthony Ngucaj (34:52)
hehe

it one more time. can’t say enough. not going to let you. AI chat GPT. I’ve been driving. I remember driving back from a customer’s house to my house. And I believe or not, I lot of jobs in Jersey, which is hour to two hour drive back home. And within that hour remaining time that I had to get back to my house, there was times where I have like three customers contact me at the same time. You know, send me a right?

And I say, okay, so now what I’m going to do if I’m driving, right? It’s impossible, right? But I said, within that one hour, a lot of things can happen. So why would I lose that opportunity? I’ve already uploaded price lists into my AI. And then I just copy and paste or screenshot, whatever, because sometimes the customers give us dimensions, right? And I would say, hey, these are the measurements. They’re looking for this. Give me a quote based on this person’s price list.

You know? And then so that’s it. Copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste. know? Three quotes within 30 minutes. That’s it. Done. You know? AI, you got to get it. It has to happen.

William Hanke (36:06)
You

Yeah,

that’s great. I think most people are probably at least starting to dabble in that world now. And it can definitely really make things a lot easier if you’re careful, right? What’s something that you think most window treatment pros over complicate?

Anthony Ngucaj (36:27)
know what, ⁓ I don’t know, but my gut is measurements. You’re gonna laugh, but it’s the truth, Measurements. When you go and you take measurements, you’ve got to have confidence in yourself, right? Because there’s 10 million reasons, you know, that can go wrong. And you can say, if you get distracted, right, or

you’re driving back home and you already got your measurements and everything and then you say, ⁓ what happened if, man, did I forget this? Or maybe I took the measurement from the wrong, maybe if I had moved and maybe one eighth, what about that little crack up there, you know? And it starts messing with your mind, you know? And then you’re like, wait, maybe I should go back and take those measurements again, right? But you’re gonna go crazy, no.

William Hanke (37:14)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (37:23)
You take your measurements, you double check and that’s it. Move on to the next window or whatever. And the next and next and next, because there’s 10 million things to be honest. They can go wrong and so many factors, you know, but whatever it is, that’s it. It is what it is. Have confidence in yourself for sure.

William Hanke (37:42)
Yeah, yeah,

that’s great. That’s great. Yeah. What’s one thing that people would be surprised to learn about you?

Anthony Ngucaj (37:51)
About me, I don’t know, actually, but for whatever reason, a lot of people are surprised. My wife is Peruvian. They expect another Albanian girl, you know, and I’ll tell people, yeah, my wife is Peruvian. They’re like, what? And they’re like, you speak Spanish? I’m like, I don’t really have a choice. When I go to her family Christmas, all I hear is my name in Spanish. And I’m just like, what are they talking about?

William Hanke (38:03)
Hahaha

Anthony Ngucaj (38:19)
so i gotta know you know yeah yeah it’s a silly thing but yeah

William Hanke (38:25)
love that.

That’s great. That’s great. You’re dumped into it whether you like it or not at that point. Anthony, where can people learn more about Skugga Blinds if they want to connect with you?

Anthony Ngucaj (38:38)
You know what, you could just go check out our Instagram and over there you see pictures of photos and I think I have some videos up there, right? And you could just message us and just say, hey, reaching out, we’re interested or maybe collaborate and we’re here, whatever, know? Reach us over there and it’s not a problem. We will help you to the best of our ability for sure.

William Hanke (38:48)
Okay.

Yeah.

I love that. We’ll make sure to link that in our show notes as well, just so everybody can connect with you easily. ⁓ For someone that is listening and maybe they’re stuck in that installer mindset, what’s a piece of advice that you’d give them to help them start thinking bigger?

Anthony Ngucaj (39:19)
I’ll tell them

my supplier told me and what Bob told me. You gotta start selling. You gotta start. I’m so serious. It has changed my life and I’m still new. But I see a pattern. I’m telling you, It’s very hard to scale with an installation only, right? Because that would mean you would need an installation team.

and installers to find good installers, it’s not easy. It’s not easy, telling you, because in one hand, what are you doing? I’m coming from a construction background, right? What are you doing? You’re putting brackets from one side. Like it looks like a joke, right? Brackets, right? In the construction industry, if you can’t put up brackets, maybe you should stay home, to be honest with you, right? But it’s more complex.

William Hanke (40:14)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (40:18)
I’m telling you, I’ve brought in team members from my construction side and they’re just like, wait, what? This is not as easy as I thought it was going to be, you know? And so it’s tough, you know, you’ve got to find somebody that’s, you’ve to be patient, you’ve got to be technical, but you’ve got to be, you know what? Not just that. You’ve got to learn efficiency, The instruction manuals, I’m not going lie to they’re not always very, very helpful, right?

William Hanke (40:18)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (40:45)
you’ve got to be able to notice patterns as an installer, you know? And I’ve learned that from the large scale installations, right? In the thousands, right? Because to be honest with you, look, you won’t feel it if you save a minute here and there in 20 shades, right? But when you’re doing the hundreds of shades, I’m telling you, for example, 1,000 shades, right? If you can save one minute, just one minute per…

installation per shade installation, you have saved 1000 minutes in total. And that’s a lot of time. That’s a lot of time and therefore a lot of money extra to go in your pocket. But you gotta stop, man. It’s tough to scale just installations only. It’s very tough. Very tough. Yeah.

William Hanke (41:35)
Yeah,

yeah. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insight today. I appreciate it. It’s been ⁓ a pleasure speaking with you.

Anthony Ngucaj (41:43)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s really, it was a pleasure and if anything an honor. I appreciate it so much.

William Hanke (41:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (41:52)
Thank you.

William Hanke (41:52)
Well, that’s

a wrap for today’s episode of Marketing Panes. Anthony shared a real look into what it takes to grow a window treatment business from pricing and competition to scaling systems and thinking beyond the job site. If you’re in the industry and thinking about your next step, whether that’s improving your pricing, building systems, or just getting more control over your time, this one should give you something to think about.

If you found this helpful, share it with someone in the industry who’s in the trenches right now. And as always, follow Marketing Panes for more conversations like this where we break down what’s actually working in real window treatment businesses.

Adam Culbreath

Adam Culbreath, co-owner of Made in the Shade St. Louis, was raised in Wildwood, Missouri, and graduated from Eureka High School. He developed a passion for soccer early on, which he continues to enjoy today. Adam pursued a degree in finance at Murray State University, where he also strengthened his bond with his brother through shared experiences, including fraternity life.

He has a strong sense of adventure, highlighted by studying abroad in Alicante, Spain and traveling to over 20 countries. After college, Adam returned to St. Louis to start a business with his brother, combining his entrepreneurial drive with a deep connection to his hometown.

Dustin Yocum

Dustin Yocum is the owner of World Class Window Coverings, serving Contra Costa County, CA. With over 20 years of industry experience, from manufacturing to retail, Dustin leads a team dedicated to building personal relationships, listening to clients’ needs, and delivering “World Class” Red-Carpet service. His hands-on approach ensures homeowners and businesses get creative, high-quality window solutions every time.

Other Notes/Links:

pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?

Adam Culbreath
Made in the Shade St. Louis: Visit Website

Dustin Yocum
World Class Window Coverings: Visit Website

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TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:00)
All right, welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working, what’s changing and how they’re growing their business. I’m Will Hanke and today’s episode is our quarterly check-in where we zoom out a bit and look at what’s actually working in the industry right now. Today I’ve got two guests.

First of all, Adam Culbreath

Adam is the co-owner of Made in the Shade St. Louis, a Wildwood, Missouri native and a finance graduate from Murray State University. With a background shaped by travel to over 20 countries and studying abroad in Spain, Adam brings a global perspective to his work. Today, he runs the business alongside his brother, combining his entrepreneurial drive with the strong roots in his hometown.

Dustin Yocum is the owner of World Class Window Coverings, serving Contra Costa County, California. With over 20 years of industry experience from manufacturing to retail, Dustin leads a team dedicated to bringing personal relationships, listening to clients’ needs, and delivering world-class red carpet service. His hands-on approach ensures homeowners and businesses get creative, high-quality window solutions every

single time.

Guys, welcome to the show.

Adam Culbreath (01:21)
Thanks for having us.

William Hanke (01:22)
Yeah, appreciate you guys being here. let’s start with something simple. How has Q1 felt for you guys so far? Adam, you want to start?

Dustin Yocum (01:22)
Yes, thank you. Pleasure.

Adam Culbreath (01:31)
Sure, it’s been kind of odd. It was a little bit different than last year, but kind of a more seasonal, know, kind of went back to the general season that I think window treatments have where January, February is generally a little bit slower. And then it picks up once the warm weather hits with, you know, the early spring stuff. So, you we had a pretty slow January, February, but we’ve since made a lot of that up just with the business from this month and last month. So, which is…

William Hanke (01:47)
Yeah.

Adam Culbreath (01:57)
Pretty similar to how we started when I first started the business, know, the first several, couple of years before COVID and all the craziness of the, you know, all that brought, but I would say this one was pretty standard.

William Hanke (02:08)
Pretty standard.

And you’re in the Midwest, so we have four seasons in the Midwest. How about you, Dustin? I know California has one season, Summer.

Adam Culbreath (02:13)
Yeah, all the seasons.

Dustin Yocum (02:17)
Pretty much the weather was pretty consistent. Although we’ve had a lot of rain You know, which is great for us, but a little unusual. But yeah, similar like quarter one’s always a little slower And you know Right now we’re picking up so as it’s getting warmer people are wanting more exterior products We’re getting getting those calls coming in. So actually this month is we’re doing very well

William Hanke (02:24)
Yeah.

Okay, that’s great.

I’ve also heard it’s been really warm in California, unseasonably warm, so that probably drives a lot more of the exterior stuff.

Dustin Yocum (02:46)
Yeah, for March it’s been it’s been insane. yeah, it’s it’s the warmer weather brings brings people out wanting them to spend some money. So it’s been it’s been a good thing.

William Hanke (02:55)
Yeah. How does

your Q1 this year compare to your last year?

Dustin Yocum (02:59)
Well, it’s very different for us just because we merged with a new company. we got, I can’t even compare any numbers to any season we’ve ever had. this is all brand new us since we’ve merged with Winduology.

William Hanke (03:06)
Yeah.

Fair enough, that’s great.

Congrats on that growth, by the way, that’s awesome. What has been taking up most of your attention lately in the business?

Dustin Yocum (03:13)
Thank you,

Most of my attention, honestly, is just trying to generate leads and then put a system in place so that way we could nurture those leads and then handle those leads as they come in. So I think it’s mainly just working with the team and figuring out what we need to do so we can be consistent from start to finish for everybody. And we finally now have that team in place where we can do that.

William Hanke (03:37)
Nice, that feels good.

You got the hiring out of the way, now you just have to work on systems. Perfect.

Dustin Yocum (03:42)
That’s right. That’s right. Every day it’s just improving. That’s I mean, it’s never going to stop.

William Hanke (03:46)
It never does

stop. Yeah, the systems get better, but there’s always some sort of tweaking or update or something changes where you got to go back and redo something. How about you, Adam? What’s been taking up most of your attention lately?

Dustin Yocum (03:55)
That’s right.

Adam Culbreath (03:55)
yeah.

Right now, I would say we actually have kind of been actually hiring some installers. So we’ve been trying to implement a little bit more systems with that, trying to train new people for installation. It’s the hardest position we found to fill consistently and to have, you know, redundancy and quality. you know, we’re…

We’re actually losing my installer, which is my dad. He’s actually, he’s been working with us for, he joined us a couple of years after we started our company with my brother and I. And now he’s kind of moving on to another role kind of in the early stages of retirement, which is pretty exciting for him. So now we’re moving towards less family members into the business, which is nice, but also, you know, trying to create some processes where we can actually have people that are, you know, quality installers that can

join into the business, know what to expect, know what to do. So kind of starting to build those processes around them so that way we can grow. Because we’re getting a lot of leads and we have a good salesperson, a couple of good salespeople now, but we’re starting to need to focus on the supply part of the business rather than the demand.

William Hanke (05:05)
Nice. That’s great.

A lot of window treatment dealers are struggling to find installers. How did you guys find yours?

Adam Culbreath (05:12)
We’ve always found them from different methods, but for one, we actually used Indeed for an installer that we’re actually going to be hiring here at the end of this week, actually. But I found them through multiple different methods from other installers just referring us, as well as taking cards from handyman contractors that we liked. Sometimes when you show up to some of these jobs, you’re like,

you know, the fourth or fifth guy that is working on another project in that house while they’re finishing, you know, some space. So, you know, with that, we’ve always just asked for leads and are also just asked for referrals from the client themselves. You know, did you like your guy? Did you like how they did this or that? And a lot of these guys know how to do and install a lot of different products. They actually don’t really mess with window treatments too often is what we find, but they are willing and interested because you can make a lot of money doing it.

You know, and so it can be just a little add on. already have a lot of the tools. So we’ve been kind of pushing people that ultimately have some of have their own business and just want to grow, you know, an extra, you know, an extra thing that they can install to make some additional money. It’s a one day job. so it’s not something that’s going to totally rock their world. They can fill in, they can use it to fill in, you know,

kitchen remodels, bathroom remodeling stuff, if they have a couple days while the drywalls, butters, they’re in or the painters are finishing. So, found that to be kind of a unique fit. We found some really quality guys to do it.

William Hanke (06:31)
That’s a great way to do

it. Are you just 1099 those guys?

Adam Culbreath (06:34)
As of right now, yeah. So, but you know, as they grow and I think a lot of them like it, they see it can be simple, but there’s still enough challenge to what has to be done that there’s a decent amount of experience that needs to know like what you’re drilling into, how to fix stuff, how to cut things down if it’s needed to. But ultimately it’s a lot easier than remodeling a kitchen or a bathroom, you know? So it can be a good fit for a lot of people depending on at what point they’re at in their careers.

So, but yeah, that’s very nice.

William Hanke (07:01)
Yeah, really good. Really

good. Dustin, how about you on the hiring side? Anything going on there?

Dustin Yocum (07:05)
You know, I can relate to the Indeed theme, Indeed thing, and I can also relate to having a struggle finding qualified installers. That was our biggest challenge, I would say, more so two, three years ago, for a good stretch there, maybe four or five years, was hard for me to find anybody of quality that just had the integrity that we expect and the work ethic. So this year, the last couple of years, we’ve…

Adam Culbreath (07:26)
Yes.

Dustin Yocum (07:30)
We have some great installers, even the ones that we took over Windowology, they have a great installer. He’s a lead. Anything we throw at him, could be a high tech motorization job, hardwired, all the way down to drapery. He can do it in exterior. So we actually have a great team right now, a couple great in-house guys, and I use subs as well.

for overflow and actually to handle a lot of our exterior stuff. I’d rather have the guys, if they’re gonna do exterior work, I would prefer them to do exterior work every day. You learn all the tricks of the trade, you can be more efficient, you’re on autopilot with it. So that’s pretty much what we’re doing. We’ve got in-house guys to handle everything we can and then we sub out some of the overflow.

William Hanke (08:09)
Do you guys

tend to see it’s a breed of person that does exterior versus interior?

Dustin Yocum (08:14)
Yeah, yeah, know guys that put up pergolas and do some construction work, usually, that goes hand in hand, the awnings and the exterior screens. But yeah, but our in-house guys can do the exterior. So, I mean, I think it’s just a matter of them seeing it a few times and, you know, doing it wrong enough, long enough, you tend to figure it out.

William Hanke (08:32)
Yeah, yeah,

Adam Culbreath (08:34)
Yeah, I’d agree.

William Hanke (08:34)
go ahead.

Adam Culbreath (08:35)
lot of it’s like tools for us. It’s like what tools they have access to, what tools they bring. It’s a totally different subset of tools sometimes for some of those patio shades or the exterior projects.

William Hanke (08:45)
Yeah.

And I guess the training is a little different as well. How do you guys handle that?

Dustin Yocum (08:50)
I got, we actually have a manager that goes out on site and he’ll oversee everything and he’s seen it from start to finish, you know, for 10 years now. So there’s not a whole lot he hasn’t seen. So that’s usually how it goes. We hire a new guy. We’ll just send him out there for the first, you know, five, 10 installs just to make sure he can oversee everything. And the other ones doing, you know, the heavy lifting, because that’s the main thing with Onyx is.

And exterior is just how heavy those things are. You know, lift them up and over your head so you can be a great installer. But if you don’t have that strength, it’s going to be a challenge. So not anybody can do the exterior work or are willing to do it, I should say.

William Hanke (09:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Very good.

Adam Culbreath (09:30)
Right? Yeah,

we’ve had, we have same kind of deal. Originally it was my dad that was kind of in charge of the installation stuff. So he would go out and kind of get the guy started, tell him where he needs to be, where he needs to go, what needs to happen, stuff like that. But eventually they get to the point pretty quickly, especially if they’re used to doing a lot of exterior installations that they’ll be able to pretty much look and see where, you know, generally where it’s going to need to be going. And so they get a pretty good idea as to.

how it needs to be mounted and stuff like that. But as far as the weight stuff, actually, we found a mechanical motorized lift actually. I haven’t purchased it yet, but I have some of our other franchisees have actually been working with it they really, really like it. I can post the link or send a link to you Will on it. But it’s a pretty large lift that actually will raise the awnings or the patio shades to

think it’s like 16 feet too if you want to get a big one. That has totally changed a lot of people’s business. It’s a couple grand though, but if you do a lot of exterior projects, mean, especially for a few years, I mean, that can be worth its weight. Honestly, it could probably pay for itself by just avoiding having an extra person on site to have to lift it on both sides. You could have one guy do a lot of it itself.

William Hanke (10:39)
Hmm. Interesting.

Yeah. Send me that link. I’ll put it down in the show notes for sure. Yeah. That’d be great. All right. So Q1, we’re pretty much at the end of Q1 when we’re recording this. It’ll probably go out a couple of days after we’re already into Q2. So what are you guys leaning into more as a business owner in Q2 than you have maybe in Q1?

Adam Culbreath (10:59)
For us, we’re actually really trying to build out our lead boomerang actually. we’ve been with lead boomerang now for about two years, I want to say. And we really want to get the workflow side of our business actually built out more so that we can automate a little bit more too. We’ve actually been incorporating as well lot of AI into our business a little bit. So, we do a lot of our order entry and

I’m quoting to with different softwares, but we’ve never had a real way to make it accurate and to make it where we can double check ourselves. So we’ve built actually an AI tool to basically where we can send reports and use that to cross check basically what we’ve been doing. So, and it’s already saved us a little bit of money just in the beginning, since we’ve just started this, it was like last week is when I built it. So.

It’s pretty exciting stuff, so I’m excited to continue to build it out. There’s a lot of tweaks that come with it, but it’s overall pretty simple.

William Hanke (11:53)
That’s awesome. What tool

are you guys using? What language model are you using for that?

Adam Culbreath (11:57)
Originally I built it with Chat GPT, but I actually switched it to Gemini. Just because we’ve, I’ve just saw, mean, Gemini is pretty interesting not to make it just like an ad for Gemini here, but I do really like having the multi dashboard usage. If you’ve experienced that where it actually will look at the different pages you have open on a website, which is the most integrative that I’ve seen AI be with how you use like an internet browser. So.

It’s amazing. Like I could have a picture of my drawings of a measuring sheet and my brother has done some, he doesn’t have good handwriting, I can be honest with you there. But the language model will look at the drawings and it will actually cross check and implement all the measurements into an Excel doc or into a report if you want it to. And then it’ll just automatically cross check what you have as well in the quote or what you’re gonna order on the.

Dustin Yocum (12:42)
and

Adam Culbreath (12:50)
dashboard or just on your page of the ordering software for the manufacturer you choose. it’s pretty amazing what’s coming, I think, or how it’s going to continue to be built out. It’s obviously really in the early stages of a lot of it, but I’m at a point now where I really don’t want to make any mistakes, any of these dumb mistakes that we have for ordering that come up. there’s so many buttons, there’s so many ways to mess this stuff up. And we found that if I could just have another way to, another set of eyes constantly.

to double check on and maybe just flag things that look odd or different or you choose the wrong color somewhere. There’s just a million ways to make it go wrong. So if we could do anything we can to help save us some money and it already has, it’s amazing.

William Hanke (13:32)
That’s great. I love that you’re

leaning into AI. love that you’re leaning into Lead Boomerang. Lead Boomerang is our CRM on steroids that we’ve built specifically for the window treatment industry. And Adam and Dustin are both our clients, so they get access to that as part of our program. So that’s awesome. I love to hear that. ⁓ Dustin, what is it that you guys are leaning into more this quarter?

Dustin Yocum (13:55)
You know, follow what Adam said along with lead boomerang. That’s the same idea. We’re trying to get more and more, get the team more more comfortable with it. So I know they’ve been meeting and getting more comfortable with it because we actually use lead boomerang to capture the leads, but we use HubSpot for nurturing the leads. we’ve always had HubSpot, so we’re kind of afraid to jump to all in with one and until we’re real comfortable with it know how to have it built out exactly the way we need it. But anyhow,

That’s, you know, as far as nurturing the leads and all that kind of stuff. But more in-house builds is my focus. I’m excited about, you know, we manufacture our own roller shades and we do it right in Pleasanton. So Pleasanton, California. And we have full control over the quality there and our guys are true craftsmen, you know, that build. And so that to me is what we’re.

Focusing on we’ve got a few good jobs We’re doing right now that we’re building but just getting that get that in the hands of our designers So they could start pushing it more. That’s that’s been my biggest focus for this year as well as just you know, selling our main vendors the Graver and Hunter and all that stuff

William Hanke (15:02)
⁓ We’ve seen

an increase in the amount of clients that we have that also have a manufacturing segment. So that’s interesting that you guys are doing that as well. And like you said, you can control the quality. You can control most of the entire process at that point.

Dustin Yocum (15:18)
Yeah, we, know, our minimums and maximums are going to be different than the large companies. So again, we just have more control and we build a great motorized shade. We could put any motor in there, but also repairs. Repairs is also a nice thing for us. And just having the capability, if we make a mistake, I could bring something back like a shutter and we could fix it right there in house where before we didn’t have the capability to do that. Everything was just reordered.

And if you don’t have the staff for that, that’s kind what we have to do. And it’s just a better service for our customers.

William Hanke (15:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Is there anything in your business that was maybe a small change that you made that had a big impact?

Dustin Yocum (15:52)
Small change.

Honestly, mean, I don’t know. can’t answer what small change we made. I think it’s pretty much a big change, but just having a big enough team to build to operate the way I’ve always wanted us to operate. So I guess a small change would be sure to take and partnering with another company and now taking over Windowlogy where we have a much bigger team. That’s the biggest change.

William Hanke (16:14)
Okay, how about you, Adam?

Adam Culbreath (16:15)
would say probably that AI tool built, We calculated just from last year that we had probably close to $15,000, $10,000 of just remake orders, labor, additional costs of just lost product or damaged product or misordered product. So our goal right now is to get that to zero, obviously, as close as we can.

trying to use AI, I’d use a few different features to just get us to that zero number so we can really hone in our processes so we’re not wasting so much and really can overall just make us as lean as possible.

William Hanke (16:51)
Yeah. Yeah,

I really like that. I mean, that can be a really big impact at the end of the year, right?

Adam Culbreath (16:58)
Yeah, huge. mean,

William Hanke (16:59)
Yeah.

On the flip side of that, is there anything that you guys think is not working anymore?

Dustin Yocum (17:01)
off.

Adam Culbreath (17:04)
I’m a little bit worried about Google itself and how that’s being used now. It’s amazing how many clients we have too, that are using AI and that like are finding us sometimes through AI, but I don’t know. It’s a little scary because if you know, if you’re not the one that’s getting recommended, sometimes you’re not the one getting called. So I’m curious as to how that’s going to go. It’s not that it’s not working though. We’re still getting a lot of leads thankfully, and it’s still, and you know, I haven’t seen anything totally drop off yet, but I just foresee.

I’m curious as to how you’re, what you guys are thinking, Will, about that part, because I’m sure that’s stuff that you guys are experiencing already, maybe to some extent, maybe in some other areas too.

William Hanke (17:43)
for sure.

I would say month over month, our clients are slowly getting more referrals from chat GPT mostly. That seems to be the platform that most consumers dive into first. And I always like to watch my wife because I’m like super nerd into all this stuff, but she’s not, right? She’s like last week, hey, can you help me get GPT installed on my phone? I want to try it out. So I think that’s pretty common across the board.

Adam Culbreath (18:06)
Right.

William Hanke (18:10)
that people are starting to do that. And overall, it’s still three or 4 % of all search volume. But I see that growing. I saw a commercial on TV for Gemini over the weekend. So they’re really pushing it hard. Google’s also starting to add in some different, I guess I shouldn’t call them policies, but different things like if you do these things, AI is going to love you more and you’re going to be more recommended.

Adam Culbreath (18:10)
Thanks

William Hanke (18:34)
So that’s an interesting side of things as well, that they’re admitting basically that the AI machine is coming and we need to conform. I don’t know how else to say it.

Adam Culbreath (18:45)
Right. It’s similar because I mean, even with Google, how Google works now just for the general search feature. I mean, they’ve been doing that the same way since the beginning, you know, how you set up your website in a specific way for the crawlers to find this and that to help people, you know, get their answers. You know, it’s they’ve been playing that game of if you can make it and set it up and put it in the best pretty box that’s possible, you know, they’ll put you at the top. So, I mean, it’s probably not going to change, you know.

Dustin Yocum (18:46)
Okay.

William Hanke (19:13)
Yeah.

Yeah. Dustin, anything that you’re seeing that maybe isn’t working anymore?

Dustin Yocum (19:18)
No, because honestly, this is the first year in a while where things aren’t working well. Because we, you know, we rode the Costco train for so many years and really weren’t putting a bunch of time and energy into marketing. We just didn’t have a big enough team to get to it on time. So any money I would spend, was like almost like a waste of money. It felt like it would take two weeks to get to them. But now we’re starting to see a lot more leads come through both the website and

Adam Culbreath (19:23)
you

Dustin Yocum (19:46)
And I don’t know if it’s trying to pinpoint where exactly they’re coming from online, but we’re getting a lot more at least than we’ve had in the past. And I’m trying to get a few other things with direct mail, postcards. We’re going to be doing some trade shows and things like that. So I can’t answer that question. What’s not working? I haven’t really thought about that one yet.

William Hanke (20:03)
Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting you

bring up direct mail. We’re actually getting ready to launch a direct mail service because I think there’s still some viability there and it’s not an expensive proposition if you do it correctly, right? Something like the money mailer, probably not the best only because there could be two or three competitors in there as well. But some direct mail postcard or even a letter, those kinds of things can still get consumers attention.

Dustin Yocum (20:25)
staff room.

William Hanke (20:25)
Very cool.

So I want to talk also about emerging trends, customer expectations changing. Let’s talk about the emerging trends. Dustin, are you seeing any new trends right now that you can maybe align with and start to stay competitive?

Dustin Yocum (20:41)
Just a lot of motorization. feel like now since they took away the cords, we sell a ton of motorization. So that’s definitely a trend. A lot more exterior products. feel like clients are becoming more familiar with it. And so we’ve been selling a lot more of that, a lot more awnings and screens.

garages and stuff like that just to kind of seal off those garages to keep the bugs out but that’s all I can say with the trends that I’m noticing.

William Hanke (21:09)
Yeah, okay, how about you Adam?

Adam Culbreath (21:10)
would definitely agree on the exterior side. seeing it. We’ve probably doubled our exterior business in the last year or so. It’s pretty amazing how many people are learning about the screens and using basically just investing in the house outdoor spaces. That seems to be a big, big point of, you know, it’s almost an element of remodeling for people to where it’s a whole space that they can really use almost all year round if you design it correctly. So a lot more thoughts going into that stuff.

and planning and making it look really custom. We’re spending a lot more time on the custom looks of those two. So I would definitely agree with that. I’ve actually also, we’ve hired a designer that is, and there’s, we’ve hired a designer basically to solely focus almost on soft treatments too, which is not something that we’ve ever done. It’s before just been my brother and I, and we’ve been able to stay busy enough with just the shade part. But now that I have a full-time soft treatment designer for it, ⁓

She’s been just killing it. You know, I think there’s still a need and there’s still a huge amount of people that want something. I think a lot of people just write it off and say, you know, it’s not that popular anymore. It’s not that it’s not and it’s really not the case. Honestly, I think a lot of people still want soft treatments in the house, but they want them to be maybe not so dark or heavy and they don’t want it to be so obtrusive how that maybe how they used to be. Now it’s about kind of like lighter airy flowy types of feel.

And you know, I was just watching some HGTV actually last night with my wife and I watch it sometimes very sparingly, but I need to watch it more. But it’s amazing what you can learn still just from the window treatment side. Like they all, every window has draperies with it. And it’s not, it’s kind of something I wrote off for a while, but it’s still in all the design magazines, all the shows, those pieces. mean, it’s still something heavily implemented and people are looking for. And so if you can…

consider to be a big part of your offering, you can make a lot of money doing it too. So you just can’t shy away from it.

William Hanke (23:00)
Yeah. Right. If you

go down that road and start to offer that, are you going to look for a work room in your area to kind of help partner with that? Would that be how you would approach it?

Adam Culbreath (23:11)
Potentially, yeah, there’s a lot of steps and like different ways you could elevate it to Right now we’re kind of doing it in the simplest fashion working with horizons. They have a designated workroom already out in Chicago So we basically send all of our stuff to them They make it and then we’ll install a forum from there, but we’re able to take over at least the design portion They have a lot of great fabrics You know, and then we also mail you can do a huge portion of their product is actually customers own material, which is where they’ll

Basically a customer will just give us the material that they wanted to be a draper, to be a pillow or whatever and then have them make it from there too. but yeah, that’s, there’s a lot of opportunity with it. There’s actually, there’s several workrooms just in St. Louis. So mean, there’s, there’s a need.

William Hanke (23:54)
Yeah, definitely,

definitely. Are there any products right now that you think are overhyped and not what people should really be paying attention to right now?

Dustin Yocum (24:02)
Mmm.

William Hanke (24:03)
No.

Adam Culbreath (24:04)
That’s a tough

one. would say like vertical blinds, maybe I really wish people would stop buying them. Cause all I do is replace them. But you know, people buy them like crazy and I just can’t stop replacing them because they just break in a week. And it’s like, I don’t know how to tell somebody that I’m going to, I can replace them, but it’s going to break in a week just like this one is. So, yeah, I mean, there’s just, there’s when there was the stuff that’s junk is still junk, you know, ⁓

Dustin Yocum (24:06)
That’s a nice start.

I didn’t know those were overhyped.

Adam Culbreath (24:30)
And but sometimes people that’s what that’s what you want. That’s what they like. Can’t convince them otherwise, but

William Hanke (24:36)
That’s interesting. Anything on your end, Dustin?

Adam Culbreath (24:37)
I don’t know what you think of anything, Dustin.

Dustin Yocum (24:39)
No, I think it’s just I can tell you we sell a lot of lot of roller shades that’s probably like our number one product right now in-house and Still a good amount of shutters surprisingly even though shutters aren’t as popular as they were you know ten years ago We still sell a good amount of shutters

Adam Culbreath (24:58)
know, shutters are one of the only products that I really never replace, actually. It’s really odd. We basically will, we actually have a service too, which has been a kind of unique connection for us, but we help window replacement companies actually will go in and remove shutters for the replacement companies so that way they don’t have to touch them and then we’ll replace the windows and then we’ll go in and put them back in for clients.

It’s been a great referral source for us and a great lead source for us. Not necessarily a huge moneymaker, but it keeps our guys busy and it’s overall pretty easy work. that’s the only product that I can, it’s amazing that you can charge for that service for that product is that people still want their stuff even when they get a brand new Windows. And that’s pretty much exclusively Shutter almost.

William Hanke (25:44)
I like that.

Are you guys asking for reviews when you go in and do that?

That would be a great way to run up your reviews without a ton of work.

Adam Culbreath (25:47)
yeah.

Dustin Yocum (25:49)
yeah.

Adam Culbreath (25:51)
Yeah, yeah, we do. We’ve gotten a ton of repeat business from it. It’s amazing. Once they once they like you get to know you and trust you, know, I mean, doesn’t matter what you did for them. You know, you can you can get make it into a warm lead and some future business.

William Hanke (26:04)
Great,

that’s great. All right, let’s talk a little bit about tech and tools. Adam, you’ve already mentioned that you guys are starting to use AI more in your business. And Dustin, you mentioned motorization. Do you think motorization in particular is now becoming expected instead of optional?

Dustin Yocum (26:24)
I would say yes. I’d say even though it’s a higher ticket item and not everyone has the budget form, it’s almost necessary in the home now without courts. I don’t know. It just seems like a lot of clients now are requesting that. I’d like to get a percentage there, but I’d say it’s a good 50%, 60 % of our jobs have some kind of limitation.

William Hanke (26:42)
Okay. Yeah, nice.

Adam, are you seeing something similar in the Midwest with the motorization?

Adam Culbreath (26:48)
I would say so, we have, it just depends. But for anything high up, it’s pretty much always default now to motorization. Sometimes before, they would, you would almost try to implement some sort of like cord or rod. I mean, sometimes they try to get away with it, for the most part, think people are generally pretty accepted now with the motorization stuff. They’re still pretty blown away too by the chargers that they’ve, there’s still a lot of people learning about this.

the lithium ion that it’s changed over to that. So once you kind of educate them a little bit and they realize they don’t have to recharge it every month, you know, or every couple of weeks, it’s a kind of a game changer for them and they will generally go for something like that.

William Hanke (27:28)
Are you

guys seeing any ⁓ AI integrations with what you’re doing in the home?

Adam Culbreath (27:33)
I have not, we still just have the same smart home systems. It’s just still so early. You know, I think it’s coming though. I mean, this stuff is going to just totally change, only, I mean, more, tons of industries, but ours as well. I mean, it’s going to be coming because of the smart home stuff, I think, especially. Cause there’s going to be a lot that like, especially with Google and like how they have, or even at Amazon, how they have.

the devices that you can talk to in the house. A lot of them don’t have the AI so much built into them yet, but it’s coming. I’ve been learning a lot about how they’re getting to that point and it’s going to help make the process a little bit more seamless. So the manufacturers are gonna probably be developing maybe another kind of motor too. There’s gonna be more coming down the pipeline. So hopefully that makes the setup a little bit easier too.

The motorization setup stuff has gotten simpler over time here. And actually I even use AI just to ask it questions when I don’t want to call into the manufacturer to figure out how to program it. You know, sometimes that’s just faster. but I’ve asked a few as they go, but I think they’re still, they still got a little bit to go.

William Hanke (28:37)
Yeah,

that brings up an interesting point. You there’s a big joke about YouTube University is where a lot of people would go to learn how to do stuff. I wonder if that is shifting to a GPT University now.

Adam Culbreath (28:49)
It can easily be done. Yeah, it’s all on there.

William Hanke (28:49)
Yeah.

Dustin Yocum (28:51)
Guarantee

that yeah, I know I use it for that way more than YouTube. I rarely go to YouTube anymore

William Hanke (28:53)
Interesting.

Interesting. Okay.

Adam Culbreath (28:57)
Yeah, it takes longer, you know, where you get the answer in two seconds from chat. The only difference is that sometimes it may not be so accurate though. You may have to troubleshoot it a little bit. So, but you know, if you get it right, then it’s worth it. It saves you a couple of minutes.

William Hanke (29:08)
Yeah. Yeah, it brings

up a good point about maybe using GPT and then checking with Gemini and see how the answers work together or if they’re totally different.

Adam Culbreath (29:17)
A lot of these companies now are almost like adding their guides and things to the softwares too. like the AI agent I built, I mean, you technically could build another agent and just put in all the remote guides into the agent. it literally takes like 20 minutes to do now. It’s amazing how fast it can be done, but you just drop in the guides. I dropped in all the guides for my shutter stuff. So it like cross references all my shutter orders, you know, and

And it’s pretty amazing. mean, that’s is going to be pretty easily accessible and just get more accurate. So yeah, it’s going to make it even more efficient.

William Hanke (29:50)
Yeah.

Adam, I don’t want to take this off too much of a tangent, but I think a lot of people would be curious just about how you got started. Like what did you do to get started with the AI to start building an agent?

Adam Culbreath (30:03)
It’s so simple. know what? I think a lot of people try to make it more than it is, but I’ve actually just, if you change your brain to think, if there’s a question that you don’t know the answer to, who would I ask? Well, just asked Chet, I just asked Gemini, how do I build an AI agent? And it literally gave me a whole step-by-step process on how to do it. And I’m not kidding you, it took me 20 minutes. At least for Gemini, that was pretty simple. I can’t vouch for the other ones. I don’t know.

There are a lot of other options and other ways to do it and they will tell you too how to do it on their software is because they want you to stay on their software. But for Gemini at least they have Gems which a Gem is just what they call their AI agent basically. It takes five seconds to build. It’s included in your monthly subscription basically. You can build I guess as many as you want. I haven’t maxed it out yet. But you basically tell this Gem you say and it

William Hanke (30:47)
you

Adam Culbreath (30:52)
And you prompt it and say, you are a professional, you know, quote auditor, like it’s one I built. So you’re going to audit all my quotes. I’m going to send you my quote and I’m going to send you my measuring sheet and you’re going to have all the information of all my manufacturers. And I want you to recognize or flag any details that are wrong or that could be mistakes. And it looks at every single line item and it does it in like 10 seconds and it’s flags my few things. And then it tells me.

here’s some major things to identify and it’ll give me like, this has been approved. This one looks good. Or it’ll say this, this failed, you know, as an auditor, that’s just one way to do it. You know, I mean, and it’s, it’s free and it’s so easy. I mean, and then it’s amazing too, because even in the gem of the AI auditor, you basically say like, as an AI auditor, what do I do? Well, I want you to do these things, right? You make a list, but then you can use AI to also make that list. It’ll say,

Dustin Yocum (31:27)
Awesome.

Adam Culbreath (31:43)
you put the list in, then you can run, press a button that’s built into the gem. And it says, make this more robust, make this like something that’s more functional and maybe a prompt that’s gonna be better. And it just takes what you wrote and makes it even more robust. So it knows how to do even more. It’s only gonna do ultimately what you tell it. So like in some ways, the more you tell it, you know, the more accurate it can be. So, and it’s, can do anything. I mean, it’s…

William Hanke (32:06)
Yeah.

Adam Culbreath (32:09)
It’s gonna be, it’s pretty crazy. I’ve really enjoyed messing around with it.

William Hanke (32:10)
Yeah, very cool. That’s

cool. Dustin, any tools that you’re using to make your business run a little bit more efficiently right now?

Dustin Yocum (32:15)
Okay.

⁓ SOP’s we’re building out SOP’s for about every process, every, every part of the business. so that’s one, helps a lot when you’re bringing out someone, you bring onboarding somebody, cause then we have an S O P both written and a video of a hiring process and all the steps that it takes and what they’re going to need to get up and going. Same thing with, you know, off boarding somebody at the same, same process, but, I’m still

The thing is they just keep building out, building out, building out. I’m not even caught up to looking to see what we have yet. So I’m just now really starting to dissect it and seeing what they’re doing. We have an internal website that’s been built that’s just everything from the SOPs to our numbers to you name it, like anything that’s part of the business, it’s all in that internal website. And again, I’m still dissecting it. So I couldn’t even speak too much about it, but it’s pretty darn cool. And now I see where all the time has been.

spent on the last six months. Other than that, haven’t done a whole lot of AI stuff, although I’m excited about it. We have done a lot with chatgpt and use that for conversation and just if we need to respond to a client or just something just to kind of help give us more information than we may have on our own.

So AI I’ve used a little bit but nothing too cool. I would love to get more familiar with it. That is the direction we’re going. I know that.

William Hanke (33:35)
Okay, I love the idea

of adding video to an SOP. And we do that. Obviously we’re very technical. So it’s not just a list of things, click here, click here. But if you have a video attached with it to also do that you’re showing the thing that you’re trying to teach, it really improves the quality of the output, obviously. And I think a lot of people learn better from the visual side of things versus just reading something.

Dustin Yocum (34:02)
Absolutely.

William Hanke (34:02)
Very cool.

That’s great. All right. Let’s talk about external factors. Anything that you guys are seeing related to seasonality, pricing, supply, anything along those lines that have impacted you lately? We’ll start with Dustin.

Dustin Yocum (34:17)
Yeah, we’re just shocked by how cheap everything is these days that you know the cost from vendors and it’s just great No, it’s just the inflation is insane. You know what we sell a sell shape for these days versus back when I was selling You know 10 12 years ago a couple hundred bucks two to three hundred bucks and now it’s like 1200 bucks for a window but I think that’s the biggest thing is inflation

cost of and it’s across the board. We know this in all industries. So people are starting to expect it now, but it’s it’s I’m curious when this is going to stop, you know, when are we finally going to, you know, say enough is enough and start pushing back and get these costs down. So I think that’s the biggest driving factor. Although people are still buying. I don’t know how they’re affording everything, but ⁓ yeah. That’s right.

Adam Culbreath (35:02)
credit card

William Hanke (35:05)
Yeah, credit card companies are

the winners here, I guess. Adam, anything on your end that is impacting your business right now?

Adam Culbreath (35:12)
⁓ I would say, I mean, definitely, obviously costs, everything’s gone up so much. And then just like recently with gas stuff too, there we’ve seen a couple, you know, a couple of increases as well with, for manufacturers, just these service charges that pop up with gas. I’ve only been in the industry though, for about six years. So I couldn’t tell you, I wasn’t here for like some of the other crazy, you know, variations in the economy, but, I think those things are.

William Hanke (35:33)
Yeah.

Adam Culbreath (35:36)
It’s pretty evident that they’re working on margins that are, guess, are pretty fair or pretty thin to where they feel like they still need to increase them, even including gas sometimes, just to continue to make the margin that they’re looking for for some of these manufacturers. So some ways that shows me that we’re getting at least a decent deal on some stuff if they’re still needing to increase their prices and those things. But it’s hard to say.

People are still buying though, like you’re saying. mean, it hasn’t scared off a lot of people. We’re still breaking our revenue records each year, thankfully, at least showing some growth. It’s not going, we’re not doubling it like it was like COVID, but it’s still at least showing some growth. At least in our area, there’s a lot of homes being built. People are still buying homes and wanting to have a house. And so that’s gonna continue to keep us pretty busy if we can always.

William Hanke (36:14)
Yeah.

Adam Culbreath (36:25)
do those projects for people and working on existing homes. So at least those factors and how the cost of the house is at least continue to stay consistent or increasing. I mean, those are all good factors for us. Once, if people stop buying houses, that’s when I start to get a little bit more worried, but with demand being so high, I feel pretty good about it still.

Dustin Yocum (36:47)
See, we’ve noticed a decrease in building lately. And I’ve talked to a brother-in-law who works for a large builder for Lenar. And they’re slowing way down right now. Yeah, I think it does have to do with information.

William Hanke (36:53)
the level of recording of this.

Adam Culbreath (36:58)
Really.

That’s you probably do with your area.

Well, you, cause you’re California. Yeah. So you’re in the probably the, you’re in the most expensive, some of the most expensive area in the entire world, honestly. And it’s funny because I’m in the, one of the least expensive areas in the entire, in least in the U S right. Which in St. Louis and Missouri. So, Oh, really? Okay.

Dustin Yocum (37:04)
Yeah, Bay Area. ⁓

Yeah, I actually live in Tennessee. I live in Tennessee.

This is in Bay Area. But yeah, we left for, you know, for those reasons. You can get a little bit more for your money out there.

Adam Culbreath (37:28)
Gotcha, yeah, yeah, exactly. you’re

back.

William Hanke (37:33)
I’m here. Yeah, I don’t know what happened. ⁓

Dustin Yocum (37:33)
⁓ my.

Adam Culbreath (37:35)
It’s all good.

Dustin Yocum (37:38)
Hey Will, was almost

like you told us to put on a black shirt or something. We’re all in uniform.

William Hanke (37:41)
Yeah, I’m glad you guys got the memo. I appreciate that. All right, a couple more questions and we’ll finish up here. I know it’s getting close to our time. Any specific underrated tool right now that you guys are using?

Dustin Yocum (37:44)
Yeah, thank you. Well prepared.

Adam Culbreath (37:54)
tool.

Dustin Yocum (37:54)
Well, he mentioned the lift. I think that’s an underrated tool because we’re not using it yet. I am familiar with them. But the lift is something that I do want to invest in this year just to kind of take the strain off the guys so we don’t have any worker comp claims. That would be very nice. But little tools, it would have to just be these CRMs, know, the lead boomerang and all that with all the automation. I think that’s.

that’s definitely the direction we’re going and nurturing those leads and having it systematic so you’re not… a human doesn’t have to put all their time and energy into it.

William Hanke (38:24)
I love that you use the word nurturing. think that’s a huge piece of it. It’s not just a one-time transaction, right? People have to be touched on multiple platforms, multiple ways before they decide to engage with your business. So that’s interesting. How about something outside of business that keeps you sharp? Adam?

Dustin Yocum (38:37)
there.

Adam Culbreath (38:41)
Something outside of business that’s keeping me sharp.

basically gone into like a wellness weight loss program. So I’ve actually been working out. The only time I realized that you can really do that at this point in our exercise is pretty much in the morning. I’m pretending to be a morning person, which I’m a very much a night owl. So trying to make that work, getting up a little bit earlier now and it helps a lot. It’s hard though. It’s almost impossible. Honestly, it’s one of those things, like I couldn’t do it on my own. I had to

basically find someone that I was willing to also wake up with me. But I know that about myself and I was like, you’re going to be my gym partner and you know, I’m going to teach you how to lift and he’s going to teach and he’s going to just show up and that’s all I need. And that’s what works for me. I, but it’s helped so much in just my mental state and just general health. mean, you gotta do, you gotta find ways to.

William Hanke (39:18)
You

Adam Culbreath (39:33)
help yourself as well as take a vacation every once in a while. Cause you can spend a ton of time on this stuff. I mean, you could be in it all day and thinking about it all night and all weekend. But you know, one of the best things you can do is just take a couple of days and, and not think about it for a little bit. Cause it makes you, it just gives you, it’s amazing how it’s revitalized me and my energy for this year. I took like a little vacation in January, just cause it’s generally the season of when it’s slower for us. And man, I just, it just.

completely changes you in some ways. mean, it really has given me so much more energy for the year. It makes me more excited.

William Hanke (40:05)
Yeah, that’s great. Your health is your wealth, right? ⁓ And having an accountability partner in anything you’re doing, really, there’s that little thing in there that you don’t want to let somebody else down, right? It really drives you. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. Dustin, if somebody’s feeling stuck right now as a window treatment dealer, what do you think this one move they should make?

Adam Culbreath (40:07)
Yeah.

Right? Definitely. That’s it.

Dustin Yocum (40:28)
Just don’t overcomplicate it. Keep it simple. Sometimes we overthink things and that and just trying to grow too fast. I think you should put the right team in place, the right systems in place before growing so that way when you do grow, you’re able to get position to maintain that and do a good job at it. But that’s it. Just keep it simple. That’s the philosophy I used since we did the merge because we felt like they were very techy, very complicated.

We just like to keep it very simple. that’s my biggest tip is just keep it simple. Don’t overthink things.

William Hanke (41:00)
that Adam, how about you? If somebody’s feeling stuck right now, what do you think is a move they should make?

Adam Culbreath (41:05)
I think a lot of people get stuck in the motion of, I was definitely there for a little while. had like a year or two where I felt like I wasn’t ever making any progress in terms of growth for the company. wasn’t really, it’s like you kind of get in the motions of the day. And I think a big thing that helped push me was honestly finding some mentors or people that

can continue to push you to think about things differently, but also like putting yourself into just more difficult situations into where you can learn. I mean, I think a lot of people get comfortable with what you know and what you do and you can sell the same, you know, roller shade things all day long. But if you’re never really pushing yourself to learn or grow from it, you’re only ever going to know that or do that. And so it’s like, for me,

I really wanted to, I guess you’re going to do it for as long as you’re not sick and tired of it, but eventually you’re going to get sick and tired of being sick and tired. so, until that point comes is when you’re going to realize like, these are one of the changes that need to happen. This is what needs to be, how I can shake up my company and to be kind of more what I want it to be. but it just depends on where your drive is.

⁓ Sometimes it depends on the personality that you have working with you too. It’s a big element of who you’re working with or who you’re around or if you’re just by yourself, kind of what you’re selling, you know. So there’s a lot of ways to get stuck but there’s a lot of ways to get unstuck too.

William Hanke (42:32)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah, thank you guys both for being on the podcast today. Really excited for Q2. I think it’s going to be a fantastic one for our industry in general and really appreciate you guys insight into everything that’s going on has gone in Q1 and looking towards Q2 as well.

Adam Culbreath (42:50)
Thank you, Will.

Dustin Yocum (42:51)
Thank you for having us.

William Hanke (42:52)
Yeah, appreciate it.

Yeah. Wow, what a great conversation with Adam and Dustin today.

We covered everything from what’s working right now to where the industry is heading. If you picked up even one idea from this episode, send it to someone else in the trade who could use it. And don’t forget to follow marketing Panes for more conversations like this. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you in the next episode.

Guest Profile: Lexi Schultz

Lexi Schultz is a co-owner of The Great Curtain Company, a woman-owned, mother-daughter business based in Austin, Texas. With nearly two decades in the custom drapery and window treatment industry, Lexi has built a reputation for blending high-end design with real-world expertise, helping homeowners and designers navigate everything from fabric selection to architectural problem-solving. Known for her candid approach, deep industry knowledge, and concierge-level service, Lexi specializes in custom drapery, shades, and design-driven solutions that elevate how people live in their homes.

Offer:
As a thank you to the Marketing Panes community, Lexi is offering a complimentary Curtain Clarity Call for designers or homeowners who need direction on an upcoming project. It’s a short, high-value conversation to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence. Simply mention the podcast when you connect with her.

Other Notes/Links:

Websites:
The Great Curtain Company

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TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:02)
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals.

about what’s working and marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is the owner of The Great Curtain Company in Austin, Texas, a showroom known to locals as the Disneyland of Curtains. Her roots in the business run deep. She grew up working side by side with her mom. We’re gonna dig into that a little bit.

her mom who ran a decorating den franchise and then co-founded their own drapery business in 2006. Since then she helped grow the company into one of the largest curtain showrooms in the Gulf Coast region expanding from retail into trade services, custom fabrication, and most recently a new educational platform called Art of Drapery Academy.

She’s a savvy sales leader, designer advocate, and unapologetic fan of American-made sourcing.

Lexi Schultz, welcome to the show. Excited to dig into some of this stuff. There’s a lot to unpack here already, right?

Lexi Schultz (01:09)
Hey, well, thanks so much for having me. ⁓

I’m so excited too.

I really appreciate you guys and I can’t wait to tell you more about our story and kind of how we work.

William Hanke (01:22)
Yeah, yeah, well, why don’t you go ahead and take me back? Take me back. How did the great curtain company come to be?

Lexi Schultz (01:29)
Sure.

So my mom, Lauren Schultz, she has owned a decorating den franchise since the early 90s.

So when we moved to Texas, I very, at a very young age was following her around at, you know, site visits and things like that, kind of helping her with books and things like that. And she had this franchise for probably a solid 10 years and she grew her franchise into one of the biggest decked-in franchises in the central Texas region. And after she did that for

long time, she decided that she didn’t want to be a part of a franchise anymore. She really wanted to dig deep and do her own thing. So she did her own interior design for a long time. But as the early 2000s came around, she had decided, you know what,

I want to go back to window treatments. Window treatments were always a passion of hers. And in my entire childhood, we grew up with the most extravagant swag boards and all of the OG 90s stuff that you remember,

William Hanke (02:16)
Yeah.

Lexi Schultz (02:19)
know, wallpapered drapes, wallpapered walls, wallpapered everything and draperies that match.

And so I grew up with a love of the same textiles and just the overall craftsmanship that go into this. So in the early 2000s, she decided, you know what, I’m done with doing interior design exclusively. I just want to do window treatments again. And she built this storefront from scratch in 2006. And as I was graduating high school, I had kind of two paths to choose. You I could either kind of go along with what I thought I was going to do, which was graphic design.

and I’ve been noodling around in Photoshop since I was nine years old. So I had a really firm grasp of design and layouts for magazines and doing all of our advertising and things like that. But when she built this showroom and I did all of that for a couple of years when we first started, I really wanted to get into the tactile beauty of fabric, actually touching and seeing and working with real textiles versus everything being conceptual on the computer all the time.

So I really leaned back into interior design.

but still work both side by side. So in 2006, we built this beautiful storefront. It is not a franchise.

It is family owned still to this day, 20 years later. It’s still the two of us. And we have a great staff and installer on staff and everything to be able to help us make some of the most beautiful treatments you can possibly imagine. Yeah.

William Hanke (03:37)
I love that. That’s great. What’s

it been like building something like this with your mom?

Lexi Schultz (03:42)
It’s been both fun and challenging.

So I am an only child. So she is literally my best friend. She’s everything to me. And so when we built this storefront, was initially her vision of just having wall to wall custom draperies that were ready made. We had a concept in 2006 when we first started where it was dominantly just beautiful silk draperies, because silk was the thing in the early 2000s.

a very Tuscan Italian Mediterranean style showroom for the central Texas region of that time.

And her concept was just, want to have beautiful off the shelf, high quality, handmade in the US type drapery. And we did that for many years until we saw more architects building

and developing bigger homes, bigger windows that required custom. So that’s where we just fully went into custom.

But building a brand side by side with a family member.

It’s been really rewarding, know, her having all of the experience to be able to produce a business model that allows me to kind of pick up the torch now and be a face person for our brand and still be very much in touch with today’s trends,

having all of the knowledge, but also the current foresight of where,

you know, our business model is going. It’s been fun working with her side by side for so long. Yeah.

William Hanke (04:58)
That’s great. So my

daughter Amber works with me too. she so I understand I understand the dynamic ⁓

Lexi Schultz (05:01)
⁓ yeah, for sure. We certainly have

our moments. I’m not gonna lie and say we don’t have an all out, you know, fight over something or a concept both of us don’t agree on. We do a lot of designing for the showroom as far as having display pieces and like what brands to bring on.

William Hanke (05:12)
Right.

Lexi Schultz (05:18)
So we don’t always see eye to eye as like what drapery we want to make on the wall or what Roman shade we want to make for a display for this season. But beyond that, we’ve been working together so long that we really have a very

know,

tandem style of how we’re gonna do the future building of the store.

William Hanke (05:34)
Yeah, it’s fun. The dynamics great. And I’ve given Amber, my daughter permission to tell me no, because as a visionary, you’re like, we should do this, and we should do this, and we should do this, right? So I need somebody to kind of keep me focused. ⁓

Lexi Schultz (05:39)
yeah, absolutely.

Exactly, exactly.

She’s a very, she’s a great idea person and I like to be more of an executor.

So it’s a good combination, but sometimes where it’s like we have so many ideas, but we want to do them all at one time. And it’s not

totally logistical to do that, but we can.

William Hanke (06:02)
Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I know you probably started out in the mail room or whatever and worked your way up. So how have you seen over the last 20 years the businesses evolved?

Lexi Schultz (06:04)
Yeah.

Yes, exactly, yes!

Yeah, so like I mentioned before, we started off,

our concept was strictly just walk-in traffic. We did newspaper magazine ads in the day. We had magazine ads. There was no real internet advertising at this time. It hadn’t become quite a thing just yet.

And so we really relied heavily on being open six days a week, you know, 10 to five, having clients come in and do, you know, design on the fly where they bring pillows or they bring sketches of their window configurations. And

pictures on a camera phone or even print it out at that time. And so people would bring a lot of homework with them just without even making an appointment. It was full walk in and we could sit down and look at things on the wall and go, this is the one. But in the last decade, specifically from like 2013 to 2019,

we saw a huge shift in not only not wanting to something off the shelf, really honing in on customization. So we brought on a lot of different suppliers and vendors when it came to hardware.

when it came to fabric and then ultimately buying in and building our workrooms that can support a much larger scale than we had initially thought the showroom was ever going to be. So in the last 10 years or so, we’ve

William Hanke (07:23)
wow.

Lexi Schultz (07:25)
seen walk-in traffic kind of dip. I’m pretty sure anyone in this industry who’s got a storefront, a brick and mortar has seen the same thing since the pandemic.

But we started to see just a bigger trend at that point of

online people, different vendors from around the country providing things and being able to drop ship. So the world really changed probably after 2013 for window treatments specifically

and having to really cater to more of a one-on-one experience, making an in-store appointment. Walk-in traffic wasn’t the big flow anymore.

We had to spend a lot more on advertising to get calls and build campaigns around that that would support people finding us, not just assuming they’re.

walking by or getting a coffee, which we’re in a coffee shop area, and coming in like they used to and going, this is perfect. Let’s buy this right now. It doesn’t work that way anymore.

William Hanke (08:10)
Yeah, yeah, the audience is still there. They’ve just changed location, right?

Lexi Schultz (08:13)
Absolutely, absolutely.

we change with it. The beauty of what we’ve done in keeping it small, but expanding internally, my mom and I are really good at pivoting. So we can kind of see trends coming at us and go, okay, we’ve seen enough of this as far as it’s shift in our marketing. We’ve seen enough of this type of group of people reaching out. We’ve seen enough of this ⁓ type of product out in the market that we need to jump into, that we need to bring on. So we’re good at adapting.

But it’s certainly, it’s been kind of a Mr. Toad’s wild ride, you know, because up and down with the retail marketplace ⁓ today, can be no one tomorrow, there could be 50 people calling. So it’s one of those things that we just have had to adapt specifically since the pandemic, but even before that, we were seeing walk-ins and the concierge level needing to be more of how we built our brand around. Yeah.

William Hanke (09:03)
Yeah,

what’s one thing you’ve learned working in a family business that others might not expect?

Lexi Schultz (09:09)
probably just the amount of time in your life that you’re going to dedicate to your job. A lot of people and you see the memes online that are like, it must be great to run your own business. And then you see somebody like completely passed out asleep, you know, at the wheel or just waiting for the day to end because they don’t, they’re so tired. And so having people understand that you are going to take your business everywhere with you, whether you are sitting in the showroom, whether you are

driving home, you’re going to be pulling over and sending a text to somebody. Whether you’re on an airplane at an airport and you’re managing an installation back at home, you are texting them and telling them, I can’t talk. I’m getting on an airplane, but I’ll get back to you in two hours. I even equate it to recently we went to Disney World and I’m laughing saying I’m sitting here with Mickey ears and I’m texting on my store phone to clients while I’m on the monorail. You know what I mean? Like this is the level that you take with you and blessing and a curse. But at the same time, you’re

You’re so into your business and

having your connections and your installers. There’s not really any one person you can pass the buck to when

it’s your own business that you independently own and operate with yourself or a family member.

William Hanke (10:18)
Yeah, and it’s hard to separate, right, from the

Lexi Schultz (10:21)
It is super hard to separate.

That’s

what we’re kind of trying to kind of build in 2026, our systems that are going to allow us to not necessarily be more autonomous, but at least have touch points that we can prioritize

because we manage anywhere from 30 to 50 clients a month with 30 to 50 installations happening a month.

And so any point of the day, nighttime, two in the morning, I’ll wake up in a sweat and have a question on an order.

It doesn’t stop. There’s nothing you can do to really like turn it off when you have your own.

business, which makes us very successful. We’re very much all about our clients’

William Hanke (10:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely think that’s a big part of it. You want everybody to have a great experience overall, right?

And you’ll do.

Lexi Schultz (11:01)
service.

I grew up with the mantra of the customer is always right. And then you have just this background of generations of my mom

and her mother being in an industry of customer service like this. So it means a lot to be able to take that and bring it into the

2026 because you don’t see it as much anymore. People who really care about your experience, whether it’s at a coffee shop, a restaurant or walking into a high end furniture store.

The general feedback I feel as a consumer going in is I wish you would service me like I service my people, you know? And so that’s just what we’re trying to keep going with. We’re not going to stop that.

William Hanke (11:32)
Right.

That’s great. What’s one moment working with your mom that still makes you laugh or taught you something big, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time?

Lexi Schultz (11:47)
We used to hours building magazine ads because this is when magazines were the thing. Early 2000s, Texas Home and Living, in Austin we have a company called Austin Woman Magazine. We were in the Austin Statesman.

This is how we had our clients find us was hard magazine ads before the invention of AI or the internet when it came to advertising.

We used to be, because of my graphic design background, I would just kind of take the reins and start building the ad. But then she and I would sit there and start tweaking it. And this would be turned into like, you know, having wine night and making pasta and working on the ads and things like that that were just felt so monumental at the time because they were so difficult. But now 20 years fast forward, we are doing.

such a different approach to advertising that, you I feel like all that work we put in in the early 2000s to build the brand and be able to know what colors work and what stylistically we wanted our ads to look like has made our job a lot easier when telling our

advertisers now, hey, here’s what we want. Here’s our branding. It’s really built this like ⁓ runway for us to be able to not stress about how we want to present ourselves to the public.

So

We spent hours laughing, crying, yelling at the computer, making ads, uploading them at 11:55 p.m. before they were due the next day to go to print. And then nowadays I’m like, I go back and I laugh at it because that was so much physical work that we had to do. A lot of it’s been the relief valve’s been pulled by using AI,

but AI is just a tool you can use only if you know what you’re doing with it. So having all this background as far as how to make this brand feel cohesive through the years,

has been the biggest like,

⁓ I’m glad we put in the time on that, you know? ⁓

William Hanke (13:37)
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. So I want to shift a little bit talk about sales, buyer habits and things you mentioned.

You mentioned retail has changed a lot since the pandemic, especially people are shopping a little bit differently now. Walk us through what somebody sees when they walk into your showroom.

Lexi Schultz (13:52)
Mm-hmm.

William Hanke (13:56)
What’s the first kind of like wow piece that they notice?

Lexi Schultz (14:00)
Absolutely. So I know we’re a little cropped right now, but we have about a thousand square feet of a very long showroom. So when they walk in, I have these stunning velvet draperies with a big set of trim on them. And they kind of set the tone because they’re oversized, they’re 14 foot tall, they’re on a gorgeous rod. And they kind of separate the front half of the showroom, which is dominantly display product and Roman shades and a tactile finished product. So they can see what a finished drapery or cornice box looks like.

And then as they kind of like explore the rest of our showroom, we’ve got all of our fabrics. We’ve got shelving units.

We’ve got everything back here that feels more curated and more come sit down and explore the materials is kind of the feel in the back of the store. That’s more of the studio. This is more of the front facing part of the store where people can touch and feel and see a pinch pleat and pull it on a track system. So having a really dynamic amount of visceral.

reaction when people walk in to see textiles from silk to linen to velvet, everything, and then really knowing they can step back here and, my gosh, look at all this choice. That’s where we come in and really provide that concierge service of pairing what they want with the right fabric. So we’ve got studio and then we’ve got like actionable, visible workroom in the front.

William Hanke (15:10)
Yeah. Is the, is the showroom continually changing? Are you guys pulling stuff down, putting new stuff up?

Lexi Schultz (15:18)
my gosh, yes, Will. I mean, after this call, I literally have to like, you know, go take my jacket off and move a drapery two feet to the right, because we just got some new stuff. So I’m always up and down on a ladder. We’re always here after hours rotating and changing things, especially if we bring on a new vendor. And it’s really hard to room in a small amount of square footage to keep bringing on bigger and better things. But we do really drill down on what are our top sellers. That’s been the most important thing. I do not keep in my showroom anything that I don’t actually sell.

William Hanke (15:20)
Thank

Lexi Schultz (15:47)
because every inch of square footage is profit. It’s also ⁓ a vision to show my clientele of what is the latest and the greatest. So anything that doesn’t meet a lot of standards for us, we’ve been able to just kind of trim the fat over the years. But we will always sit down and probably rotate at least once, if not twice a year, major display products. ⁓ And then we have kind of a big clearance sale seasonally so that people can come in and buy one off display drapery or a beautiful mock Roman topper or something so that it doesn’t just go to waste.

William Hanke (16:17)
I think you’ve got great energy and I think obviously that plays into all of this as well. So what role does story playing, inspiration play in closing a sale today?

Lexi Schultz (16:27)
Yeah, mean, just what we just talked about having the storefront when a client walks in makes them feel like, wow, these people know what they’re doing. They’re going to know how drapery is supposed to hang. you know, what every section of my store kind of has a slightly different vision. So there’s kind of a neutral version of the of the linens and the shears and the things that are very now, you know, very background oriented. And that section of the store shows a story of neutrality and how you can use that as a backdrop.

but there are some wildly flamboyant birds and geometrics and things like that as you continue into the storefront for the person who’s more of the maximalist. I’ve just felt that.

William Hanke (16:58)
.

Lexi Schultz (17:04)
having so many products on display of so many different styles, never just drilling down and doing, I’m doing my whole store in white, or I’m doing my whole store in black and white. It just doesn’t work because in drapery, no two homes are the same. I almost never sell the same thing twice the same way. So having people come in and see the storytelling that I can build for them, this is the neutral. See how this resonates with your home after I see photos of the space or if I’ve made a house call.

⁓ No, you have all these beautiful wallpapered pieces you brought with you. Let me show you what you can do over here with grasscloth textured and all kinds of cool embroidered silks to really bring their space to life. So mixing and matching and never having a limited amount of things to show has really played well to the storytelling and the support of the sale. Because if the client can’t touch it and they can’t see it and they can’t actually walk in and go, that’s what my house can look like. I found that almost instantly they lose

the ability to understand what drapery’s value is in a space.

William Hanke (18:04)
I love that you’ve turned it into an experience. ⁓ And I think for like me as a husband going to something like that with my wife, because she’s got a vision, she’s got the ideas, and I’m like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. ⁓ I can see having that kind of an experience kind of, you know, making us get it a little bit. ⁓ And she would have a great time.

Lexi Schultz (18:08)
yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep, yep, absolutely, absolutely. We always joke.

I always have so many different couples and different dynamics that come in our showroom.

and we have a fun Mexican restaurant kind of in our shopping center and I always laugh and say, okay, if the husbands don’t want to deal with it, they can go next door and have a taco and a margarita and come on back when we make all the decisions. So it’s fun to have the ability for people to be comfortable in a space where they don’t feel like, my gosh, I don’t know what I’m doing here. Someone’s gotta take the lead. So I try and really embrace everybody’s ability that whether you know everything that you want for your house or you know nothing, I definitely can relate to you on those levels.

William Hanke (18:40)
Yeah, yeah.

What are some of the biggest mistakes you see buyers make when it comes to drapery?

Lexi Schultz (19:04)
Well, there’s a lot, unfortunately. ⁓ But I can definitely just highlight one or two that I’m seeing a lot recently. Buyers, again, without having the knowledge of what custom can do for your home, that only comes with years of experience, someone like me to come in and go, OK, here’s what is going to happen when you do custom. But in addition to that, having the storefront touch it, see it, actually experience it, and put your hands on it.

Because buyers are making

huge amount of investment right now in these kind of semi-custom drop ship type draperies from online.

And while there’s certainly a marketplace for that, I feel like if we’re comparing apples to apples, and that’s a lot of what I’ve had to re-educate and re redirect the language and the voice with my client is you’re showing me an Amazon drapery or you’re showing me something from a drop shipping company overseas.

and you’re bringing it in and assuming that this is going to look exactly like what my showroom looks. Why doesn’t my showroom cost what this costs? And so I’m finding clients are even making those decisions on their own. They’re not spending small amounts of money. They could easily still spend five, six, 700 bucks on a ready-made set they’ve never touched, they’ve never seen. There’s no representative to sell it to them. They’re gonna get it and then they’re gonna call me because perhaps the hardware fell off the wall or it didn’t support the weight or it wasn’t at all what they wanted. And I gotta come in and save the day, whether it means rework.

which we do a lot and we offer that. I don’t judge. I’m happy to hem, alter, pleat, do whatever you want with your existing stuff. But sometimes we got to go from full scratch where you made an investment that just did not work. And if we can’t repurpose it somewhere else because I’m a good guy and I want to help you, we got to start from scratch with what you really needed, which was custom from the beginning. So people not fully exploring the options and just assuming.

William Hanke (20:40)
Yeah.

Lexi Schultz (20:44)
Amazon can take care of me or this site that I got retargeted by on Instagram can take care of me and then they’ll make an investment and then go, gosh, what I’d spent on this, I wish I had just put a little more in doing it the right way. So that’s what I’m seeing a lot of right now and trying to actively educate everybody the difference of it.

William Hanke (20:56)
Yeah.

That’s great. Yeah. You run into that. I think it’s called sunk cost fallacy, right? Where they’ve sunk all this money into something and they don’t want to scrap it and start over because I’ve already put all this money into it.

Lexi Schultz (21:12)
Exactly. As we

say in the South here, you’re spending good money after bad. You’re literally spending good money and then all of a sudden you’re like, I have to do this again because I didn’t pay attention to all the nuances behind it. So yeah, I totally get it. It happens a lot. It is a learning curve. I’m trying to save people some money here because if you just skip that step entirely and talk to a real person like me, I’m going be able to tell you 10 reasons why that will work or that won’t work kind of installation.

William Hanke (21:18)
Yeah.

learning curve. ⁓

Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk American made.

Work behind your commitment to sourcing domestically.

Lexi Schultz (21:47)
Yep. So this is something that I felt really passionately about. ⁓

About maybe eight to 10 years ago, we started really seeing just the lack of quality and products and manufacturing that we were having that was imported in second or third generations kind of re-tagged and sold to me through a high-end brand.

And I’d go, OK, you know,

this product doesn’t meet the standards of what I’m selling. I’m selling a high-end luxury experience to this client.

This product has is riddled with flaws. This product doesn’t work or support. It’s not consistent enough.

So we actively in the last five years and even before this tariff nuttiness, which we’ve really amped it up in this past year, ⁓ have tried hard to source not only local to Austin, we have several companies that are ⁓ steel makers that do like wrought iron fences and things like that in our community that we work with to make some of our in-house ⁓ private labeled brands of drapery hardware so that we can skip over a lot of steps when it comes to shipping or dealing with customs or any of that.

William Hanke (22:37)
⁓

Lexi Schultz (22:45)
Now I’m not saying there’s not a part or two that’s just impossible to make because the US is really, is really lacking a lot of infrastructure when it comes to mills and supplies that we need in the drapery industry. So there are some rings and components that I’ve started sourcing from Europe or Canada and other suppliers around the country and around the world. But as far as the guts of it, having a manufacturer that is always sewing my product here in the States, we have three workrooms that we’ve bought into. Local,

in North Texas and then in another state.

So I have three workrooms working simultaneously to sew all my product by hand in addition to making sure that it’s inspected and shipped and all made within the states. The hardware we stock here in our warehouse here in Austin to avoid a lot of freight issues around the country.

So we’re just making it and stocking it. In addition to that, having materials.

with base cloth ability for me to print onto is kind of been something we’ve started dabbling with in the last five years because of supply chain issues and with COVID and everything,

was sometimes you’d find a pattern you love and it just immediately got deleted from the mill or you’d never hear from that mill again. So we’re starting to develop in our graphic side of things, a line of custom printed materials where the base cloth is here in the States, it’s woven here, it’s stocked by the thousands and we can just cut it.

literally have it printed with a pattern on it that’s never going to get discontinued.

So we’ve really tried to build our own infrastructure to allow us to be nearly pandemic proof as they say, to be nearly tariff proof to the most ability that we can.

William Hanke (24:17)
That’s great. Can you walk us through how you balance the custom printing in stock goods and the mills little fabrics?

Lexi Schultz (24:23)
Yeah,

absolutely.

So we have kind of tiers of price points that I present to my clientele. It just depends on what the project requires.

Sometimes people are looking for a basic off-white linen or neutral, and that’s something that I stock here in the States. And I’ve got maybe eight to 10 fabrics that we keep on hand at all times to be able to manufacture and make huge size draperies in a super high quality fabric. So there’s kind of tier one.

Perhaps I’m in a project scope where we need a really specific stripe and it just doesn’t exist in any of the already prefabbed collections. You know, you’ve got your fabric cuts, you’ve got your trend fabrics and some of the bigger names out there, but perhaps the actual print just doesn’t exist.

So we will pivot to a custom print job. Yes, you’re going to spend a little more, but considering what you’re getting, no one else is going to have this drapery on their walls. We are

making the materials design online, we’re getting the color dyes to

match your Benjamin Moore or your Sherwin Williams paints, and then we’re going ahead and doing test printing and then ultimately printing the full design. So we’ve got kind of tier two if it ends up where we can’t find what we’re looking for elsewhere.

And then tier three, I have a lot of suppliers actually right now out of Belgium and Europe that are building and making beautiful linen textiles for me to bring into the States.

that I’m

by the bulk to be able to keep here and never have to have anyone else have access to their exact exclusives for our company that we can print on, that we can actually store here, and then ultimately sew and fabricate with our local workrooms.

So we’re working hard to make sure there’s a budget and a price point for everyone, but still with the forefront idea of keeping stock in the States, making sure it’s made for the customer at the level they need.

William Hanke (25:51)
Wow.

That’s great.

Lexi Schultz (26:03)
Yeah.

William Hanke (26:03)
have tariffs and supply chain issues kind of affected your overall decision making?

Lexi Schultz (26:09)
Specifically this last year, huge. Like I said, we are trying really hard to stock the product so that we are not having to bring in, you know, 100 yards here, 100 yards from over here and make sure that we’re always staying in a price point that is comparable to what clients are expecting these days.

Prices have risen and we’ve had to have those conversations. They’re hard conversations to have with people.

I have previous clients from 10, 15 years ago where maybe they just want to match a product that I made for them and I can no longer do that because of what happened with

COVID and vendors fell off and things like that. But they’ll come to me and go, fine, let’s make a new set. And they’re kind of wildly surprised at how things have changed. We are still the most competitively priced custom workroom in my area.

But at the end of the day, things just aren’t what they were in 2006 to 2013. So making sure that I have a large amount of inventory,

William Hanke (26:57)
Sure.

Lexi Schultz (27:00)
⁓ local suppliers that can build and make the hardware, because the hardware has been the hardest part, honestly, out of all of this.

Manufacturing thousands of little drapery carriers isn’t just something that you can go on the street corner and have somebody do.

So having a vendor and a supplier in the States that keeps them in stock, or not bringing stuff in from overseas or dealing with customs when we can avoid it, has been a huge driver for me to keep costs down, but also make my client happy.

So we’re not waiting months and months for something to get made, drop shipped, and then ultimately stuck in customs for an infinite amount of time.

So really honing on the products that are our top sellers and keeping them here in Austin.

William Hanke (27:36)
Yeah, I’m getting a lot more calls from manufacturers and vendors because they’re suddenly competitive, right? They have the things that you mentioned are causing problems ⁓ and they want to be in front of more dealers, obviously. For listeners that are shifting more sourcing stateside, what advice would you give them?

Lexi Schultz (27:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly!

Yeah!

Yeah.

But

to be open to your local radius, like I said, I didn’t realize that we had any kind of manufacturing ability here in the Austin area until I spent time looking and going, wow, these guys did a great job doing the fence for me.

Would you be able to powder code and make all this custom hardware? The short answer is yes. You just got to ask. You’ve got to see if you’ve got local ⁓ contractors or GCs that can build these track systems for you. A lot of them can if they have the right components from the

the manufacturing or the steel manufacturer.

When it comes to sewing, always open your eyes and see if there’s somebody in your local community that might be able to pick up the complexities of drapery because unfortunately, sewing a fabric and drapery is kind of a dying art and we’ll get into that I’m sure in a minute.

But as far as having local people that have generations behind them, putting ads out in your local next door neighbor apps, that’s where I’ve found a lot of really great installers or people that had background in this industry.

But just

weren’t advertising it openly, you know, on LinkedIn and stuff like that. So being able to kind of dive deep into your local probably 15, 20 mile radius doesn’t have to be far.

I know a lot of people aren’t as populated as Austin, but having resources that make sense that are parallels to this industry, you might have somebody that can help pick up a lot of the ⁓ anxiety you’re having about not having to ship stuff from overseas if you can avoid it.

William Hanke (29:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s where my mind was going was the shipping costs. You’re going to save a ton in shipping just by finding local.

Lexi Schultz (29:21)
Yeah. yeah.

Insane, insane amount of shipping. I

get 18 wheelers on here. Just state to state right now is sometimes crazy expensive,

but having shipping from overseas and customs and then tariffs at the bottom end of the day, you’re like, this product cost me $10 a yard. Now we’re up at $45 a yard. I might as well have just picked something that was right here in the States or made in a manufactured mill in the States.

So it is, they’re at the same rate at this point. And now it’s just a matter of opening your eyes and spending the time because what I’ve found with window treatment experts,

⁓

Like myself and other designers is we kind of get in a rut We only want to do what we know and so having to learn something new Midgame after so many years in and going. Okay.

This isn’t working. How do we pivot? Because again, we’re really great at pivoting but

we spend the time to we let the mistakes happen and then Spend the time to find the right direction

if you do that now you’re saving yourself years of pain of just struggling through low profit margins issues freight ⁓

damage that happens all the time. yeah, really just opening up and seeing what’s in your immediate vicinity. You might be surprised.

William Hanke (30:28)
That’s great. I love that. Great advice, too. Thank you for that.

Lexi Schultz (30:32)
I try, I’m trying to make sure everybody

knows that there is a path forward for window treatment experts in the US. You’re not having to rely all over the world if you don’t want to.

William Hanke (30:40)
Yeah, yeah. So you’ve launched something new, Art of Drapery Academy. What inspired that?

Lexi Schultz (30:46)
Yeah.

Well, I think it came from just years of watching.

This is, by the way, this is specific to interior designers. This is my passion project for them because it’s a love letter to drapery being a dying art.

so having it be something that isn’t, isn’t wildly chosen as an industry, you know, it’s, a very niche market these days. A lot of window treatment experts like my mom.

are kind of generationing themselves out. They’re starting to retire. They are not wanting to pick up the torch and keep doing this anymore in a front-facing retail way.

So the academy I built from both sides of the fence when I was in the mail room in the beginning, essentially, scrubbing and cleaning and putting all the fabric books away and really listening in the workroom, like what we can and can’t do with fabric and picking up tips and tricks from her at job sites and watching installers for years.

So having that side educationally, but in addition to that sales side, there’s almost no sales ability these days.

Everybody who just wants it to just work or put it in an online cart. So having the ability to have drapery and sell it is one of the biggest arts that is such a lost art. And so being in retail sales for so long, I’ve got 20 years of experience to tell you why this is going to work, why this isn’t going to work. And I’m trying to really open the eyes to the current designers that are in those

William Hanke (31:47)
Sure.

Lexi Schultz (32:07)
kind of 30 to 50 year old structure that are in their prime and they can pick up another skill that might have otherwise really scared them. So that’s my passion project. We’ve been kind of soft launching it and we’ve got some, we’ve got our Instagram up right now and we’re starting to kind of collect names and build courses and classes. There’s some freebies on our site right now, but overall it’s just one of those things where I want to make sure I’m hitting the right market because it’s only for designers. The retail public doesn’t need to care about those unless you want to go into the window treatment industry. But making sure that

William Hanke (32:25)
Okay.

Lexi Schultz (32:36)
this art of how draperies get made correctly and how to sell that there’s a platform to have a designer go,

this feels easy, this girl can teach me something that I otherwise would never have picked up. But it’s profitable, it’s something you can do, and it’s an easy extension of your current design brand is what I’m really trying to get across to everybody.

William Hanke (32:55)
That’s great. We’ll make sure to link below on the show notes, links to all this stuff that you’re building for sure.

Lexi Schultz (32:59)
Yeah,

William Hanke (33:02)
What gaps are you seeing in designer education right now?

Lexi Schultz (33:07)
The gap is massive. It’s almost like a void at this point

because designers are one of two animals and I love working with everybody from the design industry, but I found that you’re either you’ve been in it for a long time, perhaps you have all your certifications, you’ve gone to college,

but this amount of drapery knowledge wasn’t taught necessarily at the college level. So this was the ⁓ build it as you go type experience where a lot of designers struggle with it. They just let their workroom rely on them and let them make the decisions.

but didn’t know that there was an opportunity for them to have a voice in their own drapery designs. So I found that kind of more of the classic to traditional design ⁓ way of going about it. You went to college, but perhaps weren’t taught drapery, and then you just kind of went along the way. You found a vendor and you latched on, and that’s who you use. And that’s great. That’s fine. But it doesn’t necessarily leave you a lot of options on expanding your radius on drapery.

Then you’ve got the designers over here that are the self-taught ones. There are so many these days, and they are in

incredibly talented and these are the ones that we see more and more on Instagram or with their own TV shows and things like that where they’re not classically trained

William Hanke (34:11)
So.

Lexi Schultz (34:14)
but they absolutely have the eye, the style and then the marketing behind them to be able to get in front of the right audience.

William Hanke (34:14)
You

Lexi Schultz (34:20)
Drapery to them is the scariest thing on the planet because it’s a high value, expensive, essentially mistake if you don’t know what you’re doing.

So having these two paths of designers, everybody’s welcome when it comes to our academy.

And in addition to that, great curtain company, Brand, we support designers with

a VIP trade program where if they really truly just don’t want to do any of it, they want to keep doing their thing, which is tile and paint and chandeliers and rugs and all of that, go for it. But let me be your girl to come in and help you and make sure that you’re getting your draperies the way that you want them, that they’re going to follow through on your vision. So having an option of you want to learn, we’re going to have that academy for you. But if you are necessarily wanting to go that route, you want to have it just look the way you want it to.

I’ll be happy to step in and actually be your concierge and your voice for draperies.

William Hanke (35:08)
So for those that want to learn, what kind of topics are you teaching and how are you structuring the courses?

Lexi Schultz (35:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, so a lot of the topics are circled around, especially the most recent ones we’ve started on. I’ve got some free downloads on the site right now.

We have a course called Linen Logic, which is probably about 30, 45 minutes of me really showing examples of different linens and how to embrace blends versus just leaning into the fact that, 100 % linen is the way to go. There’s a lot of good and bad that goes with a lot of different textures. And if you don’t know the nuances of how it’s going to hang or how it’s going to pleat,

a lot of times your project’s gonna end up a huge expensive fail. So I’m trying to kind of hit the bullet points of how do we make sure you’re selecting fabric for the right client? If this client has the right home for this style of fabric and how does it get applied to drapery? So a lot of courses and just tips and tricks with how to make sure you’re selecting the fabric initially at the right phase for the right application.

William Hanke (35:47)
Okay.

Lexi Schultz (36:03)
But I also, like I said, building my sales course right now.

We’re having a master class. We’re hopefully going to launch later this year. I’ve got a wait list right now as we’re building all of the content right now. having the ability to sit down and go, no, I want to learn how to sell this and I want to be a rock star at it and I want to increase my profit levels. There’s a whole second part of the site if you’re looking for that, not just tips and tricks.

William Hanke (36:11)
⁓ good.

Yeah, what platform did you do this on?

Lexi Schultz (36:27)
This one was built on Shopify, actually. Yes. Yeah. I found it to be fairly easy.

William Hanke (36:30)
Okay, cool.

Lexi Schultz (36:33)
And it’s one of those things where with such a developed background in graphics that I’m able to do it and manage it myself and not fully rely at this time on a secondary web developer or anybody who has to manage it. Once it gets bigger, I’m sure I’m going to be like, let’s have somebody help us just for the logistics part of it.

But being able to see my concept and put it together, Shopify was really easy to work with for this.

William Hanke (36:56)
Okay, interesting. What’s been the biggest challenge in getting that off the ground?

Lexi Schultz (36:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

So it’s been really a combination of things. I didn’t realize when I have this, I’ve had this idea for so long and putting it together and executing it, had professional videography,

we had professional photography, we used our showroom as basically the commercial for this entire academy and the knowledge courses that are gonna go with it.

And to also show off our concierge services, how we go about our process, how we select it. So building all of the content, I guess I was.

in over my head as far as wanting to make sure that we had enough video, enough professional photography to make it feel like you’re standing here in our studio with me right now. ⁓ So that was the biggest stumbling block where I’m like, have the idea. I know what structure I want. I know what I want to teach. But how do I make it feel engaging and like you’re actually here and you’re not just watching some boring course online? Yeah.

William Hanke (37:39)
I love it.

Right.

Do you think education is a growth opportunity that more window treatment pros should explore?

Lexi Schultz (37:59)
I do,

I truly do. And I help more people see the profitability in it. When you start off in your own entrepreneurial business, you’re not sure how it’s gonna go. You definitely believe in it enough because if you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t stop. You just keep building and you keep going. So that’s what we’ve done since 2006.

But having someone stop and go, we need to grow this industry and…

I need to be able to be a voice or an extension or a hand, a olive branch essentially to reach out and find a new generation that wants to be a part of this industry. That’s what my real hope is here because I’m not seeing, you know, 30 something, 40 something designers anymore that are wanting to learn a new skill like this or going one step further, the sewing element.

Our workrooms have so many beautiful, wonderful seamstresses in them, but they are, unfortunately, their bodies are aging out. And so they’re not able to sew those 20-width pairs or two-story ripple fold draperies the way that they used to or at the speed they used to because humans are still involved. And so having the growth opportunity in our industry, I would love to see more younger generation wanting to develop a trade, learning the sewing element, the production element, the building element.

I’d love to see more people getting involved in that trade because it is highly lucrative and highly profitable because there’s such a need for it around the US.

But in addition to that, having designers grow their current ⁓ bottom lines and ROIs based on the fact that they’re just adding one more skill set that they can charge hourly, they can do markup on, they get with the right workroom, they’re gonna crank out draperies every time if they can market it correctly and get it positioned in front of their clients.

So growth in the sales form when it comes to the designer, but also

I would love to see a huge growth in the explosion of a younger generation taking over the workforce that’s producing all these beautiful products behind us.

William Hanke (39:50)
Yeah, now a lot of the younger generation is doing what you didn’t do and going into graphic design, right? That’s a big one. ⁓

Lexi Schultz (39:56)
They are, they are, absolutely. that’s gonna

get them very far too. need, there’s a huge need for that as well. And these products don’t sell themselves. You’ve gotta have that type of archetype to be able to do both. know, be in design, but also be in graphics. So that’s awesome.

William Hanke (40:11)
Yeah,

yeah, how has your graphics design background helped you as a business owner?

Lexi Schultz (40:18)
think it’s helped me be able to visualize with my clients and show them what the finished product is going to look like.

So before the advent of AI, we relied solely on full length, drapery panels and being able to hold it up and just use my natural ability to create a world for them verbally, how this is going to pleat, how this is going to

hang. Knowing in my head what it’s going to end up looking like on their window was something that only lived here for so long until recently, once we had all these developments with ChapGBT.

William Hanke (40:42)
Yeah.

Lexi Schultz (40:46)
and the ability to pop out a rendering within seconds, I can now, with so many years of knowing what I want to say to my client,

give this into the prompt, put the window in it, and get fairly close to generally what the space is going to look like. So this has been a huge tool for me to finally be able to use because I was just relying solely on my natural ability to tell people, OK, here’s how it’s going to look. We would do a lot of sketch artistry. We would do a lot of drawing.

We would do.

composite images, if it was a really complex project, that’s where we bring back the Photoshop skills and I was physically doing it myself.

But now, having this graphic design background has made marketing a lot easier for me, it’s made my content a lot easier to share and keep it cohesive with my brand. But on top of that, showing the client ultimately what the finished product’s gonna look like has been just exponentially easier these days.

So yeah, having that as the first part of my brain and now being able to apply it to design has been wonderful.

William Hanke (41:35)
Yeah.

That’s great. And you mentioned jumping into AI early. ⁓ Tell me what is your favorite platform, LLM, to use? What is your best case scenario for that?

Lexi Schultz (41:51)
Yeah, so I’m currently still a chat GPT girl. However, I’ve been able to manipulate it the way that I need to to be able to get my drapery logic in there and make sure that we have all of the steps and the right kind of rendering that I’m gonna want.

Uploaded plenty of example images of how I want my final product to look like and then I can use my ability to explain how the fabric hangs, what the repeats are and things like that to end up with a beautiful product to show my clients. So the AI element when it comes to visuals has been really helpful.

But in addition to that, just keeping the messaging on target. Being able to do audits of my own website and make sure that the content feels like our brand or like my voice. I don’t just use it and let it spit it out and just print whatever it comes up with.

I spend a lot of time inputting information and making sure it understands our tone and how our style is and make sure that we don’t start drifting and looking like somebody else. it’s been a…

Couple years of really honing in to make sure that when I open the app and I wanted to do something, I’m not having to have it remember everything every five seconds. giving examples, spending a lot of time with it and making sure that it knows your brand fully before you even produce one image or even before you produce one bit of content is real important. Don’t just rely on AI to say, hey, I want to know what black and white drapes look like in my office.

William Hanke (42:54)
Great.

Lexi Schultz (43:09)
OK, it’s going to come up with something for sure. That’s its goal. But.

William Hanke (43:09)
Yeah.

Lexi Schultz (43:13)
Having the ability to rein it in is a totally different

animal. And so that’s what I really enjoyed. I know there are so many better rendering programs out there. I think it’s because I have the showroom still. I’m still a brick and mortar that I still really rely on the ⁓ old school way of sales and holding up the fabrics and stuff. And then I moved to rendering when we hit an impasse where I really got to show somebody something. So I use it, but as a support, not a crutch. It is not what I’m building the brand around.

William Hanke (43:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, but I love that you’re jumping in head first into that world.

Lexi Schultz (43:42)
Oh yeah, had

to. mean, there was something that it’s like a person who’s been in graphic design and my mom has been doing marketing even before she was doing design. She and I were like, this is incredible. Can we just play around on this? We would just have nights where we would just ask it questions and see what it could come up with. What is it capable of? And it’s a lot, but as long as you’re using it, like I said, as a tool and not as a absolute substitute for sales or being able to have human interaction or be able to have

still the tactile environment to walk into, this industry can be irreplaceable if we make it.

William Hanke (44:16)
Great. Yeah. Let’s talk marketing. What channels or tools are delivering results for you right now?

Lexi Schultz (44:23)
Yeah. So when we first started in 2006 to 2013, we relied really heavy.

Once PPC, per click, came into the mix, that’s where we spent almost all of our investment. It went from magazines and then it moved very quickly from Austin American Statesman and print advertising, which was crazy expensive at the time, to then moving into Google and pay per click and then SEO. And we started with a very modest budget. And then as everybody got into it, the budget started getting bigger and bigger, but it was still paying off for us.

Again, specific to the last probably two years, I’ve seen a huge differential in how PPC works, at least in my industry or on my brand. PPC is now just a support. It is almost like a billboard or the yellow pages. It is definitely not something where I’m going to click it and this is my absolute authoritative selection anymore. It’s now we have to spend a lot of time with SEO management, updating our website, having content rich posts on Instagram. We do a lot of

cross promotion with other designers and making sure that we’re doing collaborations with them. I’ve got a few independent designers that we have an exclusive fabric line with. And so having this kind of cross communication, working with people in my industry that are on my level of sales and what they’re trying to do ⁓ brand wise, but then spending a lot of time making sure that all of our words and text and text and verbiage meets what I’m trying to say and hit the right marketing. I spent a lot of time on Instagram.

Our site has a very developed backend and it’s one that we keep up regularly. I have a monthly meeting scheduled tomorrow with our team to be able to review where we are with PPC and SEO. But if you don’t keep these things updated, it’s specific to SEO. That’s where AI is starting to pull a lot of its information from these days. So if you’ve got a beautiful site and a beautiful portfolio with maybe like less than a thousand words on your whole site, you’re not going to get discovered.

William Hanke (45:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lexi Schultz (46:13)
AI is not going to see you as a brand authoritative.

or someone that can actually give the right answers. So we’ve spent a lot of time making sure that our site is content rich. It has the right answers. It’s not just bloated with a bunch of whatever. It has ⁓ a lot of information on it. It has a lot of high level, hey, this is what you can do with this window. Here’s an entire idea gallery of arch windows. So making sure that you have a brand that is rich enough for people to be discovered organically in addition to through AI search has been the new way of doing it.

But I’m a very, ⁓

Again, graphic girl. love Instagram. I spend a lot of time on there. I love doing stories. I like doing ads. I like doing all of it to be able to see where my market is.

William Hanke (46:56)
Yeah, that’s the dream, right? Having all these different pieces all working together, and especially pay-per-click being a supplement and not like the main all your eggs in one basket kind of thing.

Lexi Schultz (47:08)
It used to be, I’m not going to lie,

there was a point where we were spending upwards of 6 or 7K a month just on PPC, probably between 2010 and 2018. But then when we started to see just ⁓ more competitors in our area and then other competitors just spending twice as much. And I’m like, well, I can’t chase that. I need to drill down and really find my marketplace because if it’s a blanketed approach, it’s not going to work anymore. So that’s what I got really excited when we did start seeing such an uptick in organic. And these numbers we can see on our regular dashboard every

It wasn’t something that all of a sudden was like, ⁓ we need to start thinking about this. It was like, no, half of your, more than half of your visits and your clicks are coming from SEO and just you speaking organically on your blog posts or doing things like this. And then cross communicating and cross promoting between designers that I do installations for on Instagram and things like that. So it’s, it is a symbiotic relationship, but you got to use all of it.

William Hanke (47:58)
Yeah. Yeah,

we call it omnipresence, right? And being on all these different platforms, and there are different levels of visibility to customers. no customer sees you in one spot and engages. That just doesn’t happen, right? They see multiple questions.

Lexi Schultz (48:08)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah, I agree completely. And again,

it’s changed wildly. I’m sure you know that too, Will.

So when you see everything these days on the the data sheet that you pass to a client, you’re kind of like, these numbers look different than they used to. We need to start focusing more here. Here’s where your market’s going. Here’s what’s clicking. Here’s what’s not. So we spend a lot of time making sure that we follow up on what’s working and what’s not and just getting rid of what doesn’t.

William Hanke (48:37)
So as a business owner, you’re in the trenches running this thing. If somebody similar to you wanted to improve their online visibility today, where do you think they should start?

Lexi Schultz (48:50)
think in the window treatment industry, focusing heavily on visuals would be probably where I would start because people don’t reach out until they can make a decision on what it’s going to look like.

so using those platforms like Instagram to be able to show your work or if you’re not ready to show your work yet, embracing AI to be able to create a tool to show rooms or get inspirations going, having something that allows a client to see what is possible instead of just a bunch of,

random stock images from your vendor of fabrics. That’s not going to sell anything.

People in the window treatment industry, we go on these sites because we want to see window treatments. We don’t want to hear 50 different ways to reach out to you. We want to see the finished product before we’ll even contact you. So I feel like if someone’s starting out, obviously stay in it.

Don’t give up because it is a big red ocean out there, as they say, for you to swim into when it comes to online marketing. But if you stay the course and you’re really passionate about

what you’re wanting to present or what you want your brand to look like,

whether it’s maximalist, minimalist, whatever. Just stay the course, stay consistent and make sure that you’re only focusing your energies on your audience. If you try and capture everybody, you’re gonna lose. So having yourself be present visually, getting your photos into Google and organic search right away, just so people can start knowing with meta tags and backend tagging what these things can look like and then lead them back to you.

I start with the visuals, know, and starting to build a couple of good clients that trust your vision, ⁓ maybe even going in and doing it at your cost to begin with a few times just to get it photographed, just to get it on your portfolio. Really, it’s going to take some hours. It’s going to take some money.

But once you get it going, you’re going to look the part. You’re going to look like you can actually walk in and someone’s going to feel comfortable giving you tens of thousands of dollars to do window treatments if you don’t have something to show for it. And it’s just a bunch of reach out here, forms here, maybe a stock image here and there.

William Hanke (50:28)
Thank

Lexi Schultz (50:42)
that might not get you across the finish line these days.

William Hanke (50:44)
Yeah,

yeah. As a company that builds websites for window treatment companies, the gallery section is always highly trafficked because people want to look at, they want to imagine. Yeah.

Lexi Schultz (50:55)
my God, it’s like our number one for us too. It’s like, yeah,

I agree. And it’s so important to fill that with your work or inspiration work that you have that you’ve associated with, anything you can do to start showing the finished product. Because once people see what’s possible, then they’re more apt to go, I can reach out. I understand now that this can be done on my window. Yeah.

William Hanke (51:16)
Yeah, it’s funny because gallery pages tend to not rank very well, right? They had to be exposed to you some other way, so all that other stuff matters. But that’s really their main goal is to start looking at what, my home can look like this. ⁓ you know, that’s pretty awesome.

Lexi Schultz (51:23)
Exactly.

Yeah, it’s like opening a magazine these days. know, when you’re standing at the line, we have HEB here in Texas. So when you’re like standing in the line with your groceries and you see a Veranda magazine or you see a Texas Home and Living and you pick it up and you start flipping and you’re like, wow, look at all these cool window treatments or look at all these beautiful upholstery pieces. It makes you want to buy it. It makes you want to learn more.

So if you can apply that logic to your site, people are definitely going to feel more comfortable clicking and reaching out.

William Hanke (51:55)
Yeah, cool. So let’s do a couple bonus questions here. You ready? ⁓

Lexi Schultz (51:58)
Work!

William Hanke (52:00)
What is a tool or trick that you swear by that more people should start using?

Lexi Schultz (52:07)
think if it’s going to be a tool, it’s probably going to be being in touch and being a human with the process. We touched on it a little bit before about how AI is a great tool to bring in. That’s obvious. I can use that tool all day long.

But to still have human connection, to still show up for your client, whether it be on install day, if that’s the type of business model that you run, or at least doing the house call or having them come back to whatever space that represents you and where you want to show them.

making someone feel like you heard them and listened to them and that you spent time on their project and it wasn’t just a number and a queue, that’s the most important tip or trick or tool I can possibly tell because everything is going to get kind of absorbed by AI. Automatic emails are going to be starting to be sent. Voices are going to change on how people send. I’m highly uncomfortable sending an email unless I know that it sounds like me.

I just feel like, my God, this is no longer my brand if I can’t really hone in on it and I won’t send it until it does.

If you just hit click, yes, this sounds good, do this, you’re losing the human interaction. So not losing the ability to like sit down and hear your client’s needs and hear that they said at least several times that they have a lot of sun in this room. That means they’re going to want to close the draperies. Don’t go and sell them a mock valence or a mock Roman shade. They’re going to call you and go, why did you sell me this? This isn’t what I asked for. I said, I have sun that’s roasting me while I’m watching football on Sunday.

So listening and just picking up on what clients are saying and having a relationship with them so that they know they can trust you, but also that you heard them and that the product they’re getting is actually what they’re getting. That’s the most important tip and trick I can give.

William Hanke (53:41)
I like that. I like that. What’s a trend that you think is going to reshape the industry in the next two to three years?

Lexi Schultz (53:51)
If it’s a trend when it comes to fabric and things like that, I’m really excited about where the industry is going. I can open a magazine these days and see more maximalist design. And I’m like, yes, we’re starting to bring back silk fabrics and some more avant-garde looking things and top treatments are coming back. So if it’s a trend aspect, I’m pretty excited to see all of those more maximalist fabrics in use again. They’re not for everybody, but it’s certainly the way I like to design. ⁓ If it’s a trend when it comes to

The marketplace as a whole, definitely the trend of AI kind of coming in and selecting who’s going to be shown for advertising purposes. Because without that SEO support and all of the good things you need to be doing with your website, soon people will just be asking Chad GPT, hey, who do you trust for draperies in my area, in my zip code? And that’s it. If you’re not on that list, you’re done. So having the ability to have the amount of years behind you, like we do.

the support structure and the star rating and the clientele to support the authoritative selection of an AI figure to be able to select and give you the best recommendation. I think that that’s gonna be a huge shifter for what you do, Will, and then also for what I do, to getting shown in front of people.

William Hanke (54:56)
Yeah.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, we’ve already got clients that are getting recommended by chat GPT.

Lexi Schultz (55:04)
We are too. The other day I had somebody

tell me that I’m like, that is so cool. my gosh, I love this. ⁓

William Hanke (55:10)
Yeah, pretty cool. But it speaks back to the fact that you’ve built this foundation. It’s not like you just just didn’t

Lexi Schultz (55:15)
Yeah, I didn’t just show up. Absolutely not. And

so I think that’s part of it too, is the amount of years we’ve been on Google,

the amount of work and updates clearly our site has taken on, ⁓ and just the amount of time and relationships that we’ve had in the Austin area. I sure miss physical marketing. I always have a dream of going back into doing magazine, but I’m like, it’s so expensive. But I would absolutely love to open my magazine that I subscribe to and be like,

There’s us, just to say it, you know what I mean?

William Hanke (55:45)
That’s great. Yeah. Yeah. Lexi, thank you so much for all the things that you’ve shared today. I really do appreciate it. ⁓ Yeah, cool. Yeah, it’s been fun. Where can people learn more about you, the showroom, and the Art of Drapery Academy?

Lexi Schultz (55:51)
Absolutely, this was such a joy.

Sure, so if you want to learn more, if you’re a retail client listening and you’re just kind of understand what’s out there in the drapery marketplace,

our retail showroom is The Great Curtain Company and our website is austincurtains.com. That’s where you can find all of our products and see our galleries and see our work and see me and our showroom. We’ve got a whole video of our showroom up there. But if you’re a designer and you’re looking for a workroom, I am happy to tell you that we offer that as well. Same site, austincurtains.com. You can drop it down to the ⁓ trade and trade partners page.

and be able to fill out a form to get a trade application sent to us and we can get you all set up. We’re happy to help and support your projects. But the Art of Drapery is just artofdraperyacademy.com. You can also find us on Instagram and that’s where we’re gonna be launching all of our new courses, ideas, and we’ve got something really special and planned for spring coming up right

William Hanke (56:48)
Listen to you. You knocked it out. This is fantastic. Cool. Well, thank you again. I really do appreciate your time.

Lexi Schultz (56:51)
Thanks guys, this was so much fun. ⁓

Thank you all.

William Hanke (56:57)
Yeah.

Lexi Schultz (56:59)
a good day.

William Hanke (56:59)
So that’s

a wrap for today’s episode of Marketing Panes. Big thanks to Lexi Schultz for sharing her journey, her passion for American made and her mission to help designers level up. If something in this episode sparked an idea for your business, share it with a friend in the trade and make sure to follow us on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you listen. We’ve got more expert conversations just like this coming soon.

And if you’re thinking about how to align your marketing with your message, we hope this episode gave you a roadmap.

Guest Profile: Nathan Eldridge

Nathan Eldridge is the CEO of Franchise Support Services (FSS), Nathan has leveraged his extensive background in technology and executive management to bring transformative solutions to the industry. His entrepreneurial journey began with the launch of two successful window treatment franchises in Dallas and Houston, where he quickly identified the industry’s need for more efficient and accurate measuring tools.

Nathan’s most notable contribution is the development of the FSS Window Pro app, a groundbreaking tool that has revolutionized the window treatment consultation process. By integrating Bluetooth laser and tape measure measuring technology with cloud-based data management, Nathan has addressed one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: measurement accuracy. The app has significantly reduced errors, saved costs, and improved the speed of consultations, directly impacting the bottom line of businesses in the sector. This innovation demonstrates Nathan’s commitment to not only his own success but to the advancement of the entire window coverings industry.

Beyond his technological contributions, Nathan’s launch of the Commercial Takeoff service further showcases his dedication to empowering small retailers to expand into larger commercial projects. By simplifying the complexities of project bidding, he is enabling more businesses to grow and thrive.

Nathan Eldridge is a visionary leader who is actively reshaping the window treatment industry.

Other Notes/Links:

Websites:
Franchise Support Services

pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?

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TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:00)
Hey, welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today, we’re joined by the founder of Franchise Support Services and a long-time leader in the window treatment space,

Nathan Eldridge. Nathan comes from a deep background in engineering and tech.

And after running successful franchises in Dallas and Houston, he shifted his focus to helping businesses improve accuracy, workflow and field operations. His work centers on solving real measurement and training challenges that every window treatment and awning company deals with.

Welcome to the show, Nathan.

Nathan Eldridge (00:47)
Thank you very much, Will. Glad to be here.

William Hanke (00:49)
Yeah, glad to

have you here today. know we’ve been friends for a while now, so ⁓ it’s exciting to have you on to kind of talk about what you’re up to.

Yeah. So for anyone who hasn’t met you, how did your career in window treatments begin and how hands-on were you with the measurements and installs early on?

Nathan Eldridge (01:11)
My journey into the window treatment world was very interesting. in 2018, 2019, I started to look at franchises. I knew I wanted to buy a franchise.

And I probably looked at, you know, probably 80 businesses. And when I came across the window treatment business, I looked at it and I realized like an epiphany, like window treatments is what my wife would love to do.

And it took us about 18 months of exploring and looking at FDBs, but we bought our first franchise in 2021. And that was with Gotcha covered. It was for my wife to run full time. I kept my corporate job in the backend and I was going to help with systems and processes because that’s what I’ve done for my career.

It took us about four months getting into the business and constantly telling our family about how exciting it was and talking with the window treatments and

my wife just gravitated to the design side and the fabrics and all those different types of products.

My sister looked at it and said, wow, this looks awesome. I want to do the same thing. so within about four or five months, I partnered with my sister. opened a second franchise. And then within one year we expanded to four territories. And so it was quick, fast and furious kind of growth into it. know, anyone that knows me, I don’t sit still very well. And so the growth and the explosion into it,

I was there building the systems, the processes, and kind of looking at what we were doing. measurements quickly rose to the top of my focus list for my sister and my wife about how to optimize. And ⁓ what started as just trying to fix something for my family turned into a new product for the industry.

William Hanke (02:52)
Very good, and that product is the FSS Window Pro, right?

Nathan Eldridge (02:58)
That’s it, yep. So

the FSS Window Pro is the app that we launched. When we first created it, it was really just something that was putting there for us. Being part of a franchise, we have 160 other best friends that are franchise owners

and we started to show it to some of them and they started to ask, well, how do we get this? We want this in our business. And so we kind of went down a path of just being something we were gonna use internally to, okay, let’s open it and try to get it to where other franchises can use it, our friends.

And then they would tell people and people started coming to us and saying, well, how do we get access to it? We’re not part of the franchise. so it just kind of bloomed in 2023 into something that we put open to the market. And it’s kind of grown word of mouth since then.

William Hanke (03:39)
I love it. ⁓

That’s awesome.

the FSS Window Pro was even an idea, what were some of those biggest frustrations that you were seeing out in the field?

Nathan Eldridge (03:50)
Man, so measurements were dependent on the person. So you could have one person that could do it really well, one person that did terrible at it.

Tape measures, they’re error-prone in real-world conditions, right? You’re at the end of the day, you’re tired, you’re having to bend over, or you’re on a ladder reaching up.

My wife is very short, so everything that was above her head was a challenge. You also, it’s independent on rounding decisions. So it’s very inconsistent from person to person, how they read it, what they round to. In our industry, doing inside mount.

and rounding down is very important. ⁓ Then that came down to writing the measurement. introducing the human error, was that a 5 8s or a 3 8s, reading the handwriting later, transcribing it ⁓ wrong, were the top pain points. Those five were top pain points for us.

William Hanke (04:38)
Yeah, and as a systems guy, human error is like the bane of your existence, right? You the whole reason you build these things.

Nathan Eldridge (04:45)
Yeah, yeah, you

know, a good system should have no human error. The process should be so robust that anyone can use it, right? You don’t need super humans to run your business.

William Hanke (04:55)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And you’ve mentioned before that those processes and not the people are often the root of the mistakes. So can you unpack that a little bit more?

Nathan Eldridge (05:08)
Yeah. So coming from my corporate background, you know, at multiple degrees in engineering, lean is embedded in everything that I’ve done my whole career. And, you know, errors when they do happen, it’s not human. The human nature is we go, why did you make that mistake? And you focus on the person, you know, a really basic tool that, you know, people learn early on in lean is five Y’s, right? So when you ask why five times, so if you took a measurement that’s wrong and you asked, why was it wrong? It’s wrong because someone wrote it down incorrectly.

Why do they get written down incorrectly? Because the rep was rushing, relying on their memory. Why were they rushing? Because there wasn’t a standard workflow, no validation. Why was there no validation? Because the process was never designed to catch errors. And by time you get down to the fifth, you’re no longer talking about the installer, the sales rep, you’re talking about what’s missing in the standards or a lack of a tool. And so it’s really just about bringing that into a workflow and trying to make it where it’s optimized, where everyone can succeed at the same level.

William Hanke (05:57)
Right? Yeah.

Yeah. And so that’s awesome. You took that kind of you drilled down into what the real issue was, tried to start solving for that, which would obviously then work its way back up the chain. What was

what kind of surprised you the most on the tech side training gap, even resistance to change?

Nathan Eldridge (06:27)
So the first stage was with my sister and my wife and their adaption to new technology was good. I brought them the solution and they were eager to remove problems and so the adaption was easy. When we went to the next step, we kind of expanded it to franchises. I found that people really had a hard time of, this is how I’ve always done it. I’ve always used tape measures. I’ve always done a notepad with a pen and paper. ⁓

Somewhere in the journey into launching it into the full market, I heard enough customer feedback that people maybe didn’t trust lasers. They bought a laser 10 years ago and they tried it and they had accuracy problems. And a lot of the times if you, fly, why did they have accuracy problems on a laser? They treated it like it was a hammer. They threw it in a tool bag. You got thrown in the back of the truck when most of these lasers need to be treated like a cell phone, right? You don’t just throw it in a bag and throw it somewhere. You put it in your pocket. It’s taken care of.

⁓

But one of the things that we’ve looked at is that adoption of the tech side and the resistance to change is the Reekon T1 That’s a nice middle ground. So if you have someone that’s not ready to fully go into a laser, but they want to go digital, they want to remove some human error,

they can go into a Reekon T1, which is a Bluetooth tape measure. And that product’s unique because it has no calibration. So if you drop it, as long as it powers on, it doesn’t have to get recalibrated. So it really helps the trust factor.

to get them into new tech and the resistance to change. It’s not the ideal product. Laser is definitely the ideal product as a place for both of them, but it is a really nice stepping stone for people to at least engage in a digital way to change their process.

William Hanke (08:09)
Yeah.

What measuring tool do you prefer people to use or recommend?

Nathan Eldridge (08:15)
Everyone that I do a demo for, I recommend that they buy both.

So to me, a laser is like a Phillips screwdriver and the T1 is like a flathead.

So everything that’s an inside mount product, you should run the laser for. Everything that’s an outside mount product in draperies, you should run the T1 for.

And so my recommendation is that you build your processes around that. I tell a lot of people a story that a lady finished measuring a job.

with her X3 on a Friday and she had changed the reference point from the back of the device to the front of the device to measure some depth of some windows.

And then she put it in her bag and forgot to change it back. And the next Monday she showed up at a client’s house and she measured an entire $37,000 job with the reference point from the front of the device instead of the back. Cost her $37,000 to remake the whole house because everything inside Mount was three and a half inches short, which was a terrible thing to experience.

If she had bought that one tool, $260 to have the T1 and use the T1 for that measurement, she would have never, ever changed her settings. And so like the idea of this again, lean, right?

$260, the right tool for the right thing. And she would have never touched her settings ever. And that mistake could never happen in the business.

And so I try to convince everyone to think about it that way. There’s two tools, one for inside mount, one for outside mount, and you build it into your process.

William Hanke (09:42)
⁓ very good. ⁓ Is that a pretty common measurement mistake that people make or do you see some other ones that are pretty consistent?

Nathan Eldridge (09:54)
⁓ I think that a lot of people wouldn’t try to use the laser to measure the depth of a window. They probably would just pull out their tape measure and do it manually. ⁓ So I don’t think that’s a common mistake, but it’s definitely available. Anyone that messes with the settings, you could happen into that as a mistake.

William Hanke (10:12)
Yeah.

Do you see any mistakes that repeat themselves over and over again?

Nathan Eldridge (10:17)
rushing, being tired, frustrated. One of my favorite examples is helicopter customers. And the helicopter customer, you’re in their home,

they want to follow you around and watch you as you’re going through their house. But the helicopter customer is the person that is following you six inches off your side and wanting to talk to you the entire time.

And you’re trying to focus on measuring. And you could go up on a step ladder, you get the top measurements, you come back down the ladder,

William Hanke (10:38)
yeah.

Nathan Eldridge (10:44)
you go to ride at the notepad.

And you don’t remember what the dimension was because you just lost it because you stopped for a second to answer a question to her. so,

you know, between the human fatigue of being rushed or tired and the helicopter customers, those definitely set the pace for the largest repeating mistakes.

William Hanke (11:00)
I feel like we should be able to create like a Seinfeld episode out of this, right? Similar to the close talker, guess, right?

Nathan Eldridge (11:05)
Yes, for sure.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, exactly.

William Hanke (11:12)
Yeah.

So are there any hidden costs that business owners don’t always calculate beyond just the remake that you explained in the one example?

Nathan Eldridge (11:22)
Yeah, remakes are the top and we can see that directly on our P &L as owners and operators.

But, you know, one of the hidden things that are cost is return trips.

So you were in the home and you think that they’re going to do only inside mount products. So you only measured inside mount. Then you get home and, know, I don’t know what other people experienced in our two businesses. We probably average about two and a half quotes per person. So we’re between two and three iterations of quotes. And a lot of times

they’re going to move from an inside mount to an outside mount. Maybe they went to a friend’s house that night and they had beautiful outside mount. They’re like, you know what, we’re inspired. We want to change. And if you didn’t capture those measurements, guess what? You’re doing a new trip and you’re going back out there and re-measuring for outside mount. These add up. They chip away at your margins. They take away your capacity, your team to schedule, you know, more consults and installs. And so I think that’s probably one of the worst things that we do. And we have a

solution for that. You’re standing at the window, you capture all the measurements at one time. You measure inside and outside and in know 15 seconds of that window you can iterate your quote 10 times. It doesn’t matter. You have all the dimensions you need as the customer changes their mind on products and so yeah.

William Hanke (12:34)
Interesting.

So it’s a good habit for somebody that’s doing the measuring to have that kind of muscle memory to do that.

Are there any other habits or field routines that you see that really separate the pros from the noobs, the starters?

Nathan Eldridge (12:54)
Measuring the same way every time.

So having a process and you know, the pros definitely want to capture the inside mount, the outside mount dimensions all at one time. They never want to have to come back. We modeled the app around how we measure and that’s just how we do it. But we built in a template feature so anyone can take it and mold it to match their measurement processes.

And then they save it. So every time they walk up to the window, it’s in the exact order. They can add custom measurements and it makes it their sheet and they do the same thing every single time. That repetition really helps get people in the flow. When they’re measuring every window different based on where they’re standing or, you know, right handed, left handed and, you know, measuring left to right or right to left, top down, it really makes a big difference in the repeatability. So ⁓

William Hanke (13:47)
Yeah, yeah.

Can you walk us through the day of, you know, day in the life of someone using the FSS Window Pro app?

Nathan Eldridge (13:54)
Yeah. So today you start, you know, first thing in morning, you’re going to create the clients that you’re going to go measure that day. So you’d look at your calendar, you’d be creating whatever clients you’re going to be measuring. ⁓ When you show up to their house, you go in and you start measuring. In the app we organized today by rooms. Most residential are organized, you know, by the living room, the kitchen, bedroom one, primary bedroom, things like that. Inside of them, we have auto naming in the app that kind of goes through window AA through ZZ.

which lets you put about 271 windows per room. And then for every single window, you’re going to capture all the dimensions. We have a section for product notes, installation notes, and job site pictures. And one of the really key things that we try to teach people in the demo phase, that job site pictures, you should take two pictures per window. You should be taking a picture during the tech measure so you can see that that drywall damage was already there. Your team didn’t do it. And then after you do the install,

you can take another picture of it. And then that really serves as kind of your warranty claim when they call you back and say, hey, this slats broken. You’ve got that picture as your crew went to leave the house of it perfectly installed. You send it back to the customer and they go, ⁓ you know what my nephew was playing in there last night. Maybe he broke it. Maybe it wasn’t y’all.

So the before and after really is powerful.

And then you access all of that data from our portal. You can pull all the measurements out in an Excel file or in a PDF report.

William Hanke (15:14)
Okay.

Nathan Eldridge (15:14)
Both of

those come with all the notes and then you can also pull down the zip files of all the high resolution pictures. And so it really lets you just have a complete data set of that pulled out. lot of our customers want those files moved into their own cloud or customer storage. So they’re pulling them out of our portal and loading it into their SharePoint or Google Drive or wherever they use.

William Hanke (15:38)
Yeah, very good. I know we’ve got it in lead boomerang. We’ve got a section specifically for documents and pictures. And a lot of our clients will do that exact thing. They’ll take before and afters and save them in there. It’s tied to that contact record so that they have that when they call back a couple of months later and said, you broke this.

Nathan Eldridge (15:56)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah, it’s so important. People that are doing notepads, you’re not gonna ever come back and find those. And a lot of our customers, you ask them, how many jobs did you do last month? Oh, we did 30 jobs. Okay, how many pictures on your camera roll from that job? 1,400. How are you gonna find the one picture to that one window that you need for the warranty claim? So having it organized with an easy button is really, really good.

William Hanke (16:22)
Yeah, yeah, having all that data tied to something that’s easy, easily searchable.

What data do you think people often forget or miss, especially when they’re measuring by hand?

Nathan Eldridge (16:32)
Definitely obstructions or the installation side of things. And so they’ll maybe note down the dimensions for the product. They might sketch down something for the product, but maybe for that one window, they’re drilling into tile. And so they need to have a note before they come to install that they need to bring the right bits to build a drill into tile or concrete. So really the installation side, the obstructions. One of the things that we found, a lot of our customers are using 1099.

you know, installers that are not their own employees. And so to be able to capture that, especially if your product’s lead time is 10, 12 weeks, you’re not going to remember that job’s nuances when it comes time to do the install. So our installation notes let them quickly look at that, see what they noted, and then communicate the day before with their 1099 crew, hey, we have something special. We’re doing this, this, and this. Make sure you bring the tools. So it’s definitely…

that side of the business, think, people miss capturing data and they just hope they cover it.

If you look at your installer’s bags, they’re full of shims and drywall repair and washers and all this stuff that they’ve learned because they weren’t told what they needed, so they just carry a bunch of stuff.

William Hanke (17:41)
Yeah, back to systems and processes, right? You have something in place that you have a way to remember that thing 12 weeks later, or at least something to remind you about it. I love that.

Nathan Eldridge (17:44)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

William Hanke (17:52)
So I wanted to talk a little bit more about training new reps and installers. Hiring is one thing, but training is another. What makes training in this industry so challenging?

Nathan Eldridge (18:03)
This industry, especially in the US is very interesting. So in the US we have about 10,000 retailers and most of them are small businesses, which means unfortunately that they probably don’t have established processes. So as they go to scale, they’re bringing someone in and their processes are in their head. And, you know, there’s things you can do to do that, but we, we hope to solve at least the little tiny segment that we’re in, which is the measuring side. And, know, we,

When we launched the app, we made a full suite. have about 30 videos on our YouTube channel. This next like two weeks, we’re going to be launching a new in-app tutorial that people can walk through and teach themselves the in-depth application, how to use it and how to apply it to measuring. So we hope that we can help solve the training of new staff, at least in the measuring portion. But definitely, you know, when it’s a single owner operator and they’re bringing on their first person, there’s challenges there.

William Hanke (18:56)
That’s really helpful. When somebody is brand new, what skills or fundamentals should companies really focus on first?

Nathan Eldridge (19:03)
product knowledge. Definitely, you know, this industry can be really overwhelming for a sales rep. There’s so many things to sell.

You know, one of the things that we did when we started our businesses without any prior experience, focus on one element at a time.

And so we picked one vendor and we partnered with that one vendor and we sold those products for, you know, four or five, six weeks until we were comfortable. And then we added the next vendor. So really building it on one piece at a time without trying to boil the entire ocean at one shot.

William Hanke (19:33)
Right, that makes sense.

What are some of the most common pitfalls when you’re onboarding like a new salesperson or a new installer?

Nathan Eldridge (19:40)
If it’s your first person, you’re so busy, you don’t have time to train them, which means they have to learn on the job, which usually translates directly to mistakes being made in the expenses hitting the P and L. And so, you know, the pitfalls would be having them have six to eight weeks where they don’t have to work on their own and allowing them to shadow you for six to eight weeks. And then the on the job training is actually training and it’s not on the job.

William Hanke (20:02)
Right. Yep.

Nathan Eldridge (20:07)
Learning which is different because you’re out there learning how to swim or sink so

William Hanke (20:09)
Thanks

Yeah. Yeah. Are there any new, are there any tools or approaches that help these new reps avoid kind of freezing up on the job?

Nathan Eldridge (20:21)
I think back to really the selling one brand at a time would probably be the same answer. Along with this, I think that you ensure that whoever they go out and sell, you partner them with the vendor that has the best retailer support. So everyone knows that you’ve got one vendor with an awesome rep, one vendor with a terrible rep, put them with the one that’s the awesome rep. That rep is gonna be your largest resource to help train them.

that’s not taking your bandwidth so they can come down that product learning curve without always having to rely on you. ⁓ So I would evaluate which vendors give you the best support in your area.

William Hanke (20:57)
Yeah. And obviously bringing somebody on that’s new is a step towards scaling your business, right? ⁓ As your team grows, communication sometimes becomes the thing that breaks. Where do you see those cracks typically show up?

Nathan Eldridge (21:15)
So you kind of look at the life cycle of a job. You have the measure, the quote, the order, the install. And if it’s one person that’s doing all four steps and they’re organized, it’s okay. You have one person doing all four steps and they’re disorganized, you start to have problems. But the larger cracks are when you have multiple people having to do a handoff. And so you did the measure. And if today you’re doing measurements on a napkin, on a notepad, and you just take a picture, you send it to them.

And that person’s supposed to read your handwriting to work on the quote. Or then they’re supposed to look at that and then do the order. So that communication and the handoff between the technical measure, the products, the measurements into the quote and order phase definitely is an area for cracks. communication really gets it.

William Hanke (21:46)
you

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, as an owner, how can how can an owner kind of, you know, keep quality consistent when they can’t be in all the different places, especially again, as they are scaling their business?

Nathan Eldridge (22:17)
I’m gonna be a broken record here, but processes, right? So giving them the same thing to follow every time. ⁓ Doesn’t matter if it’s something super sophisticated or if it’s a one note with three things already filled in, but they fill in the same three things for every job. So it could be something simple. It doesn’t have to be this giant AI driven tax deck that everyone gets like, they don’t even know what that is. have to Google it. It could just be a note file that you organize and the team collaborates on.

William Hanke (22:19)
You

Nathan Eldridge (22:46)
As long as it’s there and it’s trainable and repeatable and people use it.

William Hanke (22:52)
Yeah, yeah. And I’m with you on the process thing. It’s a hugely different world when you start getting into building systems and writing SOPs and having things that are standard, you know, that you know it’s going to start at step A and it’s going to end at step Z. And if everything’s followed, you’re going to be in a good spot.

Nathan Eldridge (23:06)
Yeah.

William Hanke (23:15)
That’s great. ⁓ For businesses that are juggling installs, measurements, orders, what leadership habits ⁓ help kind of keep everything coordinated?

Nathan Eldridge (23:27)
If there’s multiple staff having clear accountabilities for each step in that process, so knowing who’s doing the tech measures, who’s doing the coding, who’s doing the ordering, who’s managing the schedules, the communication with the installers and the customer. If it’s a single owner operator, it’s back to the system and repeatable process. They’ve got to know what they’re doing. Over communication is just a critical step. ⁓ When you start to have multiple team members and kind of a project management software is really…

really critical to manage those handoffs between accountabilities. In our business, we use Asana. There’s a handful. You can Google it. There’s like 30 options out there. But having something that’s the standard place that you go to, it’s where you communicate, it’s how you hand things off together, really, really helps when you’re juggling, especially between the installs require scheduled with multiple people’s calendars, measurements have many data sets.

William Hanke (24:04)
Okay.

Yeah.

Nathan Eldridge (24:25)
And then ordering has all its own things, right? You got to make sure you don’t miss one key attribute that ruins the order and ends in a remake.

William Hanke (24:32)
Yeah, yeah, Asana is a great tool. And that’s a project management tool, not necessarily a CRM. They’re typically different tools.

Nathan Eldridge (24:38)
Yeah,

it’s really just project management and it gives you the views. can look at it like a Gantt view or Kanban board. But again, it’s not about the software. It’s about putting a tool in place and using it. So you can do something really simple in Excel or something fancy like Asana.

William Hanke (24:57)
Right, yeah. As the business gets bigger, it’s better probably not to use the Excel sheets, right? But it’s a great place to start.

Nathan Eldridge (25:04)
yeah,

the Excel sheet in the SharePoint that someone accidentally deletes or corrupts, yeah, yeah, it’s terrible.

William Hanke (25:12)
Yeah, yeah,

for us, we use ClickUp, but we’ve used Teamwork in the past and a couple others, you know, but any like you said, any of them are good. They’re going to get the job done, right? Very good.

Nathan Eldridge (25:21)
Yep.

William Hanke (25:24)
What technology trends do you think are going to change how window companies measure, sell and install over the next couple of years?

Nathan Eldridge (25:33)
So LIDAR is going to change the world. Today, you can’t measure LIDAR with something at the level of accuracy that we need in our business. But it’s only a matter of time. It’s coming down its innovation curve right now. There are a few LIDAR scanners that are on the market that can scan even beyond the accuracy that we require. But they average $80,000 to $100,000 right now.

But they’re also those outputs are super configurated for like engineering firms. So they’re heavy and other software. They’re not dumbed down where you can just get the output usable to what we need. But I do think in the next five to eight years, it will advance enough that people can be using their phone with a LiDAR scanner and scan windows.

William Hanke (26:21)
Yeah. Pretty much all of the robo vacuums that come out now are lighter.

Nathan Eldridge (26:26)
Yeah, yeah. If you can work in half inches today for your job, LIDAR is ready to change the world. But if you need something that’s under a half inch accuracy, there’s a little left to desire there.

William Hanke (26:34)
Right. ⁓

Yeah,

yeah, but I totally agree about that. As I watch these innovations and like I said, all the RoboVacs have them now, have LIDAR. It’s just like common, where two years ago that was, ooh, this one has LIDAR, we should get that one.

Nathan Eldridge (26:58)
Absolutely.

William Hanke (27:01)
Why is field data and documentation becoming more important than ever?

Nathan Eldridge (27:07)
Our products are far more complex. ⁓ If you went back and looked at window treatments 15 years ago and window treatments today, we’re adding motorization, you’re adding controls, you’re adding what WiFi connector you’re gonna have. They’re just getting more complex. And so when you look at that field data and the documentation, the more complex the products come, the more important it is that we drive efficiencies and how we grow that process, how those standardizations and.

⁓ keeping the data organized is super important from the technical measure to the ordering.

William Hanke (27:40)
Yeah. Yeah. What about somebody who’s maybe a little bit intimidated by a lot of the tech? Where do you think they should begin? Like what’s an easy entry point into this world?

Nathan Eldridge (27:52)
So when it comes to digital measurements, the first step, we’d have a couple of customers, like the first baby step if they want to try it is they can use the app and still measure with a tape measure. And so they’re still using the tape. They’re making that decision of what the dimension is that they want, and they manually input it in. Once they’re comfortable with that, we try to get them to look at the Recon T1.

go to a digital solution, so it’s transferring it for them. It’s now removing the human error out of the rounding process. And then once we get them comfortable with that, we try to step them into the X3, the laser, and then they’re able to use the full digital ecosystem. ⁓ So if they’re intimidated by it, that’s typically the path that we get them to go down.

William Hanke (28:37)
Nice. Okay. ⁓ How do you see automation, AI, some of these digital measurement tools influencing the industry long-term? I know you and I are both huge fans of chat GPT and using AI both in our own businesses and for our customers as well.

Nathan Eldridge (28:49)
Thank you.

Yeah, I use chat GPT and perplexity probably three, 400 times a day. It’s open on everything that I have. AI is coming and how it can be applied. You know, it’s man, the universe is the limitation. I think that the first place it’s going to come into is how we do visualizations of products for our customers along with configurations. And so I know that there’s a few of the CPQ companies that are already looking at how they’re applying AI to their configurators and then applying the visualizations. I’ve

I’ve got a whole sample set with ChatGPT. I’ve built a whole agent for visualization of window treatment products. It’s quite good of what I could do in about five days of training it. ⁓ So I definitely think that’s coming. When it comes to the measurement data plus the product configuration, I think that the AI is going to add extra intelligence where you come in and you do what I tell you, where you do the inside and the outside amount measurements.

And then you do the product configuration and then AI will make the decisions of what products, what deductions and what like gaps. So I think that the future state there will be the application that we feed at the raw data. It looks at the product you’re doing. It has the product knowledge. You know, today we only have that kind of product knowledge, maybe in one of the CPQ vendors. But then you apply that and let the AI choose what the dimensions and deductions are to order the product. I think that’s going to be a really good logical step for our industry.

William Hanke (30:22)
Yeah, yeah. On the other side of that, what tech do you think is really overhyped right now and what’s kind of, you know, maybe underappreciated as well?

Nathan Eldridge (30:31)
I don’t know if I can think of any tech that’s overhyped. Too many people are calling things AI when it’s really not AI. I could go down a whole list of stories about this, but everyone’s throwing the word AI on things that they wanna say it’s AI when it’s really not. It’s just, you program it. So it’s not learning, it’s not machine learning, it’s not large language models. it’s…

William Hanke (30:41)
Yeah.

Nathan Eldridge (30:54)
I think that’s probably the over-hive. Everyone just thinks they can throw that word, those two letters on the end of something and, it’s a new product, but I don’t think that’s quite right.

William Hanke (31:03)
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. ⁓ There’s not a day go by that somebody doesn’t say, that’s probably AI. Wait a minute, hold on. Yeah. I wanted to talk real quick about some industry pain points for owners.

Nathan Eldridge (31:11)
Yeah, yeah.

William Hanke (31:18)
How do you think, or how should owners think about measurement, communication, accountability, all kind of as a connected system?

Nathan Eldridge (31:28)
Easy, one word, Zapier. So, I mean, especially for these small companies, right? So if you don’t have a full ecosystem built and you’re not sure how to do it, Zapier. And if you’re listening to this and you don’t know what Zapier is, go to YouTube, type in Zapier demo and explore it. One of the things that I tell my customers a lot is when they ask me, how do I connect this data into my ecosystem? What should I use? I tell them, go to Zapier.

William Hanke (31:31)
you

Nathan Eldridge (31:57)
and go look at what apps are already pre-programmed and integrated and make your decisions off the list that’s already done. So then you have to do no programming integration or anything. ⁓ We have a version of our Excel sheet that is made for Zapier that if someone wants they can get it and you can map all the data fields into anything else. so mean, Zapier I think is at

the cutting edge. think that there’s a competitor now, make.com, think, that’s cheaper, but their number of integrations are less. And so you just have to look at what apps you want to use. But when it comes to an owner thinking about how to make a connected system between measurements, communication, accountability, I think that Zapier should be their starting point. And then they look at the ecosystem of apps that are already there.

William Hanke (32:47)
So I’m assuming that means FSS has a Zapier connection.

Nathan Eldridge (32:51)
So we have the CRM file that you can zap directly into what you want it to go to. So we don’t integrate directly with the app itself. You get the file and then map the file into wherever you want it to go with the data. Yeah.

William Hanke (32:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right, yeah, nice.

I remember when I learned about Zapier and it must have been 10 years ago at this point, ⁓ but it’s wild how many people still don’t know that there’s that system out there that makes it able to talk from one to another easily.

Nathan Eldridge (33:21)
And,

you know, if you went back 18 months ago, you had to be someone that was tech savvy to really use it, right? So it still required you to be tech savvy. Today, you can go to chat GPT and tell it, I want to connect this and this with a Zapier. Give me the 10 steps to do it. And it will literally tell you like, click here, do that. so you add chat GPT to have a connect with Zapier and it’s done. Everyone’s a tech genius.

William Hanke (33:45)
Yeah. Yeah,

right. In your view, what separates companies that keep growing from those that kind of stay stale or stuck where they’re at?

Nathan Eldridge (33:57)
So probably first starting with people. So someone that is able to build staff and then empower them. That means, when I say empower them, probably three elements to empowering them. They gotta have the tools, they gotta have the training, and then you’ve gotta trust them without micromanaging them. And so definitely if you’re stuck and that’s the side that you have to look at. Once you have that fundamental piece, then it’s back to the systems. Are they repeatable? Are they scalable? ⁓ And then…

You know, honestly, in our industry today, most of my customers, most of the retailers are, small, you know, privately owned companies. It’s about providing work-life balance. They chose to come work for you as a small business over a large corporation for that value of that. And if you bring someone on and you want them to work 65 hours, like, you know, the same as you as the owner is an expectation. You as the owner have a vested interest different than just an employee. so giving them that.

kind of work-life balance there. think those three things would help companies that are stuck.

William Hanke (34:56)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think I’ve mentioned this before on a podcast, but I still remember the saying we as owners, you you’ll work 80 hours to avoid working 40. know. So yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. All right. Couple bonus questions for you. I appreciate you taking some time today.

Nathan Eldridge (35:06)
Absolutely true.

William Hanke (35:17)
What’s something you wish more designers or window treatment businesses owners understood about custom drapery?

Nathan Eldridge (35:24)
The number one thing is that I would not order Custom Drapery from any of the big names. Find a local workroom

and make them your best friend. Buy them a wonderful steak dinner once a quarter, tell them thank you, let them become integrated into your business, build your processes around how you’re gonna communicate with them, and really take your service in the Custom Draper world to the next level. ⁓ That I think is a great foundation part.

If you can build that as a workroom in your area and an installer that builds the relationship together with the drapery workroom in solving problems, it’s extremely, extremely beneficial.

William Hanke (36:06)
Yeah, that’s a great tip. like that. ⁓ What’s a tool or trick that you swear by that more people should be using?

Nathan Eldridge (36:15)
If you’re using our app, I show everyone using a wrist holder for the phone. And so if you have the laser on a lanyard, I’m right-handed, so the laser goes in my right hand, and then the wrist holder holds the phone, you’re completely hands-free. And if you’re walking around the house with an extension pole or a ladder, you’re going up and down, up and down and doing stuff. I mean, your ability, your speed is just unbelievable. It might not look like it’s the coolest thing in the world, but man.

It’s the feedback that I’ve had from customers that have tried it. Usually, the first response back to me is, my god, why have I never tried this before? This is amazing. ⁓

William Hanke (36:57)
That’s great. ⁓ I know we talked a little bit about AI and some of the long-term changes we think are coming in the industry. Any trends that you think are going to reshape the industry maybe in the next two to three years?

Nathan Eldridge (37:10)
So I mean, definitely LIDAR and the technology side, but trends, this is probably like a confrontational point, but I’ll say vendor consolidation, right? With what’s happening with Hunter Douglas and everything else going on in the background, you know, I think that the industry has a great potential to look different 10 years from now based on vendor consolidation. That could mean a positive thing. We’re sitting here talking about processes and getting lean. If there is vendor consolidation, there’s a chance that you’re

being able to use one ordering system in the future and get to more products and more portfolio. So that could be a trend that we see. But time will tell.

William Hanke (37:48)
Yeah,

especially with back to chat GPT, I think as more people use that somebody’s going to come up with a really easy way to get a lot of that done. Or maybe not easy, but easy for the end user. Yeah, yeah. For somebody that’s listening, maybe who’s early on in their business, what’s a piece of advice that you would give to them?

Nathan Eldridge (37:57)
Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, yeah. The journey to get there won’t be easy.

Metrics so understanding your business your business should be run by numbers and if you can’t quantify everything in your business You know, you should understand your marketing funnel where you’re getting return on ad spend and investments from the marketing side ⁓ Making the decisions of where to spend that money on marketing based on data Then getting into the business looking at your consults, you know how many consoles you’re doing how many consoles are turning into close rate? Understanding the close rate based on product

You know, a lot of times in really good metrics, you could come back and correlate what products you’re selling to a close rate. And you see when I sell Ulta, my close rate is 85%. I sell this product and my close rate is 30%. Maybe you start to make decisions of how you structure your product, what you want to push. So metrics are that you can’t be over or under done on metrics. It has to be just right. And you should make your business decisions based on those. A lot of times, you know,

William Hanke (39:12)
Love

Nathan Eldridge (39:14)
an early, someone just starting out in this industry, they either bought a franchise like I did, ⁓ or they maybe worked for someone, they saw it and they just wanted to do their own thing and they broke out and started a shop. Back to, I hate to say chat GPT again, but if you don’t know where to start, go to chat GPT. And one of the things that I’ve seen, I’ve told other people to ask chat GPT to ask you 35 questions about your business so that it can define all the metrics you want. That one prompt.

William Hanke (39:27)
you

Nathan Eldridge (39:41)
It’s just going to ask you a bunch of questions and you answer it. And at the end, you will have an entire data set of the metrics that you should track. And if you don’t know how to track them, you then could ask ChatGPT to build you a plan of how you could put something in place to track it. ChatGPT can solve this for so many people.

William Hanke (39:54)
Right, yeah.

Yeah. And from that, you can build KPIs so that you can then scale, which is what we were talking about earlier, right? That’s awesome. I want to get information from you on how people can learn more about your business. first, I want to know what else are you working on?

Nathan Eldridge (40:01)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

So the app’s the primary thing. second, we have a service behind it. So focusing on measuring, we have a commercial takeoff side of the business. So we have a group of engineers and architects that work for us that do commercial takeoffs. And so if you get a bid, an ITB, an invitation to bid, lands in your lap and it’s for a thousand windows for this huge high rise. And you have no idea where to start. Cause you tried to download it and it was a zip file and you opened it. There was 285 files with like,

4,000 pages, you don’t know what to do. We turnkey that so you can send us all of those files and then we will do the commercial takeoff. And what comes back to you, you know, is a consolidated spreadsheet that you can then take and bid and do that. And so we’ve been doing that for about two years. We’ve got some really, really good customers that are just crushing the commercial space that send us like, you know, 10 to 15 jobs a month. We have…

William Hanke (41:00)
Wow.

Nathan Eldridge (41:11)
a connected service that will be coming this year in 2026. So if we do the commercial takeoff and let’s say you have a thousand windows, we’re going to be having a new module in the app that we will load those 1000 windows for you into the app with the commercial takeoff dimensions. And then when you go and you do the technical measure, you’re actually seeing the progress through the job. Everything’s made for you. You know, if everything’s already named, you know, office 102, office 103, we can save you.

five hours of organization work in a job that size of organizing the windows and it’ll just be turnkey easy button. So that’s the biggest thing that we’re working on along with this right now.

William Hanke (41:50)
Wow, that’s a heck of a shortcut, right? That’s amazing.

Nathan Eldridge (41:53)
Yeah. It,

and it’s really an enabler. A lot of, a lot of our customers, ⁓ it’s their first time to ever do a commercial takeoff and that can be really intimidating, right? You know, even looking at the division 12 specifications, if it’s 400 pages, how do you find and make sure you didn’t miss something for window treatments? And so we, we do the entire review and provide you a consolidated report that make you feel really confident in it. So it’s a, it’s a nice service.

William Hanke (42:21)
Wow,

I love that. So tell me more about how people can learn about your company and your app.

Nathan Eldridge (42:28)
We have a YouTube channel, FSS app, so youtube.com/@fssapp You can go to our website, which is also fssapp.com and you can email me directly, which is [email protected]. pretty straightforward and simple.

William Hanke (42:44)
Awesome. And tell me about your integrations. I know you guys integrate with Solatech

Nathan Eldridge (42:50)
We have been integrated with Solatech for about a year. And so if you measure with our app in the field, you can then select the final dimensions that you want to order the product to. You could have a window that you take 15, 20 measurements on, but at the end of the day, you’re only going to use two dimensions to order the product, right? One with one height. ⁓ And so our integration with Solatech today, you take all the field measurements and then you can iterate through the quote process and we export

that data directly into Solatech. So it is live. Once you save that window, take something like two and a half milliseconds and it’s loaded there live. So if you’re trying to measure a window and building the quote simultaneously by the time that you switch on your tablet application over to Solatech, it’s already there in your measure sheet. ⁓ We’re in conversations with quite a few of the other CPQ companies. One of our goals as a company is that we want our measurement data to connect with everything.

And so it’s, you know, we’re really focused only in our niche. We want to solve all of the industry’s problems in measuring. And then we just want to help make that final step where our data will go to wherever it’s going to be ordered from. And so in a perfect end world for us, we would integrate with all of the manufacturers websites and everybody. So the last human error now is to take stuff from our measure sheet and to order the product with it. And so if we can make that a digital handshake for the customers.

we’re helping them remove all human error from the process.

William Hanke (44:21)
That’s great. And I know our developers are working on a connection with you with the lead boomerang system as well. So.

Nathan Eldridge (44:25)
Yep, absolutely. And that’ll

be great because then they get their CRMs and once they know that they’re going to be going to do a technical measure, everything comes over from the CRM just helping them save time so they’re not sitting there having to put in their client’s details. Everything’s there.

William Hanke (44:40)
Yeah,

yeah, it’s gonna be great. Well, listen, Nathan, thank you so much for being on today. I appreciate you explaining a little bit about what you guys do and what you’re up to.

Nathan Eldridge (44:48)
I appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me on.

William Hanke (44:50)
Yeah. So thanks so much for joining us, Nathan Eldridge.

If this episode got you rethinking how you measure, train or scale your team, that’s the point. Better data leads to better decisions. Share it with a friend in the

trade and make sure to follow us on YouTube, Spotify and wherever you listen. We’ve got more expert conversations just like this coming soon. Thanks everybody.

Guest Profile: Ceil DiGuglielmo

Ceil DiGuglielmo is the owner of The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library, the industry’s largest collection of educational resources for Custom Home Furnishings Professionals. She is also the owner of Learn to Choose Window Coverings an online course for window treatment professionals created by Linda Erlam.Ceil has owned a to the trade workroom since 2005.

Ceil is passionate about education and technology in the window coverings and soft home furnishings industry. She has taught at the Custom Workroom Conference and has done presentations for several Window Coverings Association of America chapters.

Ceil is the producer and Host of The Sew Much More Podcast, an interview-style podcast sharing the stories of the people in the custom home furnishings industry. Ceil also produces and co-hosts 30 Minutes with Workroom Tech with Susan Woodcock, offering workroom education.

Other Notes/Links:

Websites:
The Sew Much More Podcast
The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library
Learn to Choose Window Coverings

pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?

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Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry.

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TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:00)
Welcome back to Marketing Panes where we talk with real window treatment professionals, business owners and service providers about what’s working in marketing and what’s changing in the industry.

Today’s guest is Ceil DiGuglielmo a longtime workroom pro turned educator and the current steward of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library.

one of the most comprehensive collections of training and tools in the industry. She spent years helping fabricators and designers not only level up their skills, but build confidence and community along the way. We’ll talk about.

what today’s workroom professionals need most, what’s shifting and how people learn the trade, and why education and support can’t be one size fits all. Let’s get into it.

Ceil, first of all, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Ceil (00:55)
Well, thank you. It’s my pleasure.

William Hanke (00:58)
Glad to have you on. ⁓ How did you first get into this industry?

Ceil (01:04)
Well, it’s interesting. Well, I think especially for people my age who are in the industry, it started out as I chose to stay home when my oldest daughter was born. And a few months into that, I was like, this isn’t quite what I expected. And I also needed to make some more money. And I had some skills. I knew how to sell. My very first business was making bridal headpieces. And I literally would make a headpiece, photograph it, take it apart, make another headpiece, actually, my husband photographed

He was a photographer at the time. And I put together a book and then I started advertising locally. And I did that for a couple years, but I had been in business. I worked for a retail, large retailer in the Philadelphia area. I just did not know how to run a business. And I ended up going to a SCORE meeting for female entrepreneurs. And they are the service core of retired executives if people don’t know who they are.

William Hanke (01:57)
Okay.

Ceil (02:02)
It was eye-opening and I learned a lot about how to run my business. I got myself a score mentor and I met two interior designers there who were looking for someone to make soft furnishings and window treatments for them.

And it was like the perfect alignment. ⁓ I was able to work with them. And since they were new, I could say to them, I have no idea how to make that, but I will find out. And it was, I wasn’t embarrassed or trying to prove myself. They were new. There were things they didn’t know. So it was a great start. And then I sort of fell into, I found out about other people in the industry through a conference that was advertised. And I went.

William Hanke (02:34)
Yeah.

Ceil (02:46)
and I sat down in my first class and it was like, ⁓ these are my people. Like this is what I want to be doing. And I realized it was in fact a business that fabricating window treatments could be a career for me. And it could be something I could work around my family schedule when I needed to and grow it as my family grew.

William Hanke (02:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that you say this could be a business. I remember that as well. Like, ⁓ I could probably do this. This could be a thing, right? Yeah, that’s awesome. So you’ve worked in several corners of the trade now. What experiences shaped that approach?

Ceil (03:20)
Yes, it’s gonna be a thing.

Well, we talk a lot about learning to say no, but it’s also important to say yes. And I said yes to a lot of odd things. And one of the things that I said yes to was doing my own podcast. I had been listening to a podcast that was actually meant for crafters. And I say this very respectfully, I’m really not a crafter.

William Hanke (03:58)
Sure.

Ceil (03:59)
I

need to make something that has a purpose. I mean, I knit and I do some other things, but I never really saw myself as a crafter and I don’t, can’t tell you why I used to listen to this podcast, except that the woman who did it did such a brilliant job of asking questions. Her name is Abby Glassenberg. And I kept listening to it and thinking, oh, somebody in our industry should do this.

William Hanke (04:10)
you

Ceil (04:24)
somebody in our industry should do this. And then one day I figured like, well, I’m somebody and I can go to YouTube and figure out how to run, you know, do a podcast. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. As you well know, there was a whole lot more to it. But I said yes to it. I started to do it. And then when Janelle Deck, who was a previous owner of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library was

William Hanke (04:38)
Sure.

Ceil (04:52)
realizing it no longer connected to what she was trying to build. She and I sat down and talked about it and actually the anniversary is coming up very soon. On January 17th of 2017, we signed the papers and I took over running the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library.

William Hanke (05:12)
Wow.

Wow.

Ceil (05:14)
So again, I said yes, but I didn’t quite know everything I was getting myself into. But I had been a member of the library and I understood what having a place to go to and look for information, but also having a community. At that point, Facebook groups were becoming very popular, but sometimes I’d look and there’d be like 3000 members on a Facebook group.

And I had no way of knowing whether they were professionals or whether the questions that were being answered were the best way to do things or the most recognized.

right way. I know there’s no one right way to do everything, but I would get too many answers for things. Inside the library, it’s a smaller group. It is professionals. It’s people who have been helping other people for years. We have some people who are retired from the business and still continue to come into the library and answer questions and help people. So I loved what the library stood for and it was a great ⁓

William Hanke (06:12)
Love you.

Yeah.

Ceil (06:18)
It was a great combination of the podcast and the library. I did not realize that I would have so little time and I started to cut back on the fabrication.

So in the past maybe two or three years, I’ve cut back to maybe just one or two clients that I work with. And that’s more to keep myself in the workroom once in a while than anything else. So the focus now is on running the library, doing the podcast. And part of the library is also a digital digest, which is a magazine geared towards workrooms.

William Hanke (06:45)
Yeah.

⁓ that’s awesome. You’ve basically you mentioned score earlier on. You’ve basically built a version of score specifically for this industry, right?

Ceil (06:57)
Thank

You know, I hadn’t thought about that, but yes, based on the fact that so many people within the library are seasoned fabricators and willing to answer questions. the content of the library, Will, it’s grown over the years. Some of it is,

William Hanke (07:08)
Yeah.

Ceil (07:26)
Recorded webinars from the old custom home furnishings Academy some of it is courses that people put together sold for a little while and then realized that the content was important but not as Up to date so they would donate it to the library and also have a great working relationship with the workroom channel

and a lot of our industry teachers record courses on there. So yeah, yeah, you’re right. I had not thought about that, but it is kind of like score for window treatment fabricators.

William Hanke (07:59)
Yeah,

yeah. And for listeners that aren’t familiar with score, we’ll put a link in the show notes for sure, because I used score when I first got started. What an amazing organization to really, you I love to hear success stories like yours, where you had a mentor that helped you just, you know, just explain that, yes, this can be a thing. And this is the way to get there.

Ceil (08:08)
Okay.

And what I loved about ScoreWill was that it was people with, at one point I had one mentor and then for a little while I was meeting with two or three people. During the pandemic, we were only meeting on Zoom. So ⁓ like three of them would jump on and they would give me different perspectives from their industries. So it was just, and just really helped me keep on task about running the business end of things.

William Hanke (08:43)
Yeah.

Ceil (08:50)
not just being creative and this is pretty, I want to make this. I really had to focus on that part of it too.

William Hanke (08:51)
Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Creative brains have a hard time doing the actual working on the business stuff. It’s like an unfortunate evil in order to eat at the end of the day. You have to do these things, right? That’s awesome. Well, let’s dive in and talk a little bit more about the resource library. I want to hear more about this.

Ceil (09:03)
Yes, we do.

Yeah.

Yes.

William Hanke (09:21)
Give us an overview of what it is and who really is it for specifically.

Ceil (09:26)
Okay, it’s geared mostly towards workroom owners. And that can be the single person workroom, it could be the person who has a part timer, and it could even be a workroom owner who’s hands off from the fabrication standpoint, but that he or she has to bring in and train employees. So it consists of videos that were from the now defunct Custom Home Furnishings Academy.

how to operate a straight stitch machine, how to clean a straight stitch machine, how to make single width panels. So there’s step-by-step videos. There are years worth of magazines that were put out in the past.

started with a black and white printed newsletter that was done by Cheryl Strickland, who is a name that a lot of people who have been around for a while know. So there’s step-by-step articles. Then there are the drapery and design webinars, which again, there are some things in our industry just like a lot of our machines. I have a straight stitch machine that’s probably 100 years old.

It’s still working. It’s a workhorse. I don’t need an updated machine. Would I love one? Sure, but I don’t need one. Some of the information that’s in the library is like that. There’s a video on how to make a box pleat valance. It’s got older looking fabric, but the method hasn’t changed at all. in that sense, it’s really valuable. And it also cuts down on the expense of updating some things. We haven’t changed how we do a lot of things.

William Hanke (10:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah.

Ceil (11:04)
hear the step-by-steps. We have webinars on how to deal with sheer fabrics, how to deal with oversized projects when your table is 10 feet by five feet.

how do you get something on there that’s even larger? How do you manage fabric for a seven width panel when your tables is wide as one width? It’s things like that. And then over the years we’ve added, there is a course on how to start a business by Michelle Williams. There are some upholstery information classes. We had several people who, we have several people in our industry who do a little bit of both. They make window treatments and they do some small upholstery projects.

William Hanke (11:32)
great.

Ceil (11:44)
foam do I use? Here’s a webinar on foam and what the differences are. So it’s, there is so much information in there that sometimes when people reach out to me and say, is this in the library? I have to go, let me think about that for a minute. I know it’s in there somewhere. Now over the years I’ve collected, so it’s easy for me to find, but inevitably there are some things I forget are even in there. So

William Hanke (11:48)
That’s awesome.

Ceil (12:10)
My job as the librarian is to help people find things and to remind people of everything that’s in there. We also have a community inside there and it’s called the forum and people can come in and ask questions. And again, it’s moderated by me and it’s my full-time job, unlike the Facebook groups. And since 2017, I have had to ask one person to be a little bit more respectful.

No snarky answers, there’s no unkindness. And people will come in and say, this awful thing happened to me today. And seven people will jump on and go, crap, I feel your pain. Here’s what I did when it happened to me. Or there’s nothing I can do to help you, but I’m here for you. And that sense of community that doesn’t have 3,000 people attached to it, I think is just nicer and.

William Hanke (12:53)
Yeah.

Ceil (13:02)
It’s just a nicer version of Facebook and a calmer version. And I see people, I don’t have to be the one to answer all the questions. I will see a question pop up and before I can even go on somebody saying, ⁓ here’s a link to this article. here’s, ⁓ this is the product I’m using. And everything within the forum is searchable. So if you’re ready to ask a question, you can always go in and search it first.

If no one has answered that question, then you jump in and you ask the question.

William Hanke (13:33)
Yeah, that’s priceless when you can have a community of like-minded folks, especially ones that just want to be helpful and they’re not worried about being competitors. I think that is absolutely fantastic.

Ceil (13:42)
Yes.

Exactly.

Well, we’re geographically diversified, although people will connect with people who are close by to them. But we’re really not in competition with one another. There’s more than enough work out there for all of us. And there are enough people who are part of the library that believe that

By helping other people, we elevate the industry and we make it a better place for everyone who’s in it. And we also make the output even better for our clients.

William Hanke (14:17)
Great.

Yeah, yeah. We’ve got a lot of clients that have work rooms. So they’re dealers, but they also have work rooms. I can see this being a fantastic resource to give to your employees and maybe even say, hey, spend an hour or two a week in here as part of your training to help those employees get even better.

Ceil (14:39)
Right.

And I think also, Will, the reason that I talk to workroom owners is if they don’t have a training schedule in place, they literally can sit somebody down in front of the how to make window panels, draperies, let them watch it, and then have someone take them to the table and say, OK, here’s how we do this here. But then it’s not a completely foreign idea.

And I just, think it’s a valuable resource. It’s also, we do custom window treatments. If you’re a small workroom, you rarely do the same thing over and over again. And so to be able to go back, or if you have one employee, just to go back and, all right, just refresh my memory on this. How do I do this? I think that’s really a valuable resource for people.

William Hanke (15:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, I’m a huge fan of the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule. If you can give somebody something that’ll get them 80 % of the way done very quickly, and then you just solve that last 20, absolutely fantastic.

Ceil (15:37)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah. I think that’s a good analogy. I like that.

William Hanke (15:44)
Yeah, yeah. So when people log in to the library, do they typically use the search feature? Are there predetermined courses, folders? How does that piece work?

Ceil (15:59)
So search is a big part of what people go in and do, but the way we have the library laid out is each of the three levels of membership are listed with what you have access to. So it’s overall, like here’s where all the magazines are, here’s where the older webinars are.

for the ProPlus, which is the highest level of the membership. There’s a drop-down menu. Here’s everything that I have access to. One of the things that we do is a monthly webinar called Circle Time. And we have all kinds of different ⁓ types of webinars. They’re business related. They’re fabrication related. They will do technology, anything that assists.

our workroom and a lot of the people who are doing those webinars for me are people within the library community, educators within our industry. I know you interviewed Susan Woodcock. She’s done webinars for me. She and I collaborate on a second podcast and a lot of the people who teach at the custom workroom conference also do webinars and they stay recorded inside the library. So people have access to them all the time. So it’s not quite a roadmap on the front

page, but it’s a list of everything that people have access to.

William Hanke (17:19)
That’s awesome. ⁓ What makes this one different from some of the other industry groups that are online?

Ceil (17:26)
I think it’s more the sense of community and not being afraid to ask a question that reveals that you don’t know something. Even people who been in this business for a very long time have not made everything there is to make. And sometimes people will ask a question on Facebook. It’s like, what’s the best window treatment for this window? And…

Sometimes it’s not that simple. There are some other questions you need to ask first. incidentally, one of the women who always used to start that answer with a question, what does your client need, is a woman who wrote a great course called the Learn to Choose Window Coverings course, which I ended up buying from her. It’s standalone, it’s different from the library, but it’s…

William Hanke (18:13)
nice.

Ceil (18:16)
how do I reach my clients? How do I tell them what they need for their windows? And she does it in such a logical step-by-step way. And she was getting ready to retire. And I was like, this is really valuable information. This should not go anywhere. So ⁓ again, I said yes to something ⁓ and added it to my umbrella. it’s that willingness to help and answer questions is what makes the library stand out.

William Hanke (18:44)
Love that. The community is awesome. Any moments from the community that really help someone stand out?

Ceil (18:52)
I think I see a few things on a day to day basis where someone is just frustrated they can’t find something.

You know how much content is out there now. Well, you could go to five different places and get five different answers and AI is great, but it doesn’t have everything we need and Someone will say I don’t know where to find this and within you know 15 minutes five people have come on and said here’s who I buy it from or here’s a great resource for it

William Hanke (19:06)
Sure.

Ceil (19:23)
⁓ Susan and I have been running a workroom accountability and mentoring group that we hold within the library and then people also go to the custom workroom conference. And one of our mentees recently left her job to start this full time. And she was able to first announce it in our private forum and then have her other mentees come on and say, yes, you’ve got this, we’re here to support you. So those are really great moments when you

see that where someone is has been supported enough that they know they can take the next step and that there’s somebody there to help them.

William Hanke (20:02)
Yeah, feels good, doesn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. ⁓ What ⁓ you mentioned, the straight stitch machine content is pretty old. ⁓ What other kind of content do you have in there that even though maybe it’s pretty old, it still resonates?

Ceil (20:05)
Yeah, it really does.

Well, I think all of the machine videos are helpful. My very first industrial machine was literally given to me for free. And I had no idea how to actually run it. Neither did the woman who gave it to me. And…

if I had had someone show me, I would have saved myself a lot of trouble. And now somebody can sit down and watch and go, okay, that’s how it’s different from my home machine. I can see where I have to add the oil. can see, you know, an industrial machine is much faster. ⁓ And it’s a workhorse. So that’s on there.

I probably am not doing myself any favors by referring to it as older content. just, it doesn’t need to be updated. It’s there. It’s there for you to look at and learn from. ⁓ So we’ve got videos, we’ve got step-by-steps.

And it was so well written in the first place that it just takes people through. And I love that if you have a different learning style, if a step-by-step written instructions don’t work for you, there are videos for most of the things that we have on the library. And a lot of them are broken down into small chunks. So it’s not a three-hour video that you have to watch.

William Hanke (21:40)
Yeah, that’s great that you have the different learning styles. Not everybody resonates with one, so having the different ways is great. What formats are the most popular today? Video, step-by-step guides, webinar.

Ceil (21:45)
Yeah.

I think

that it’s interesting. think the videos are, ⁓ you know, I can track who goes on and watches things. Sometimes this is your most watched video of the week. I’m like, really? That’s the one. I’ve also started to get people to start sending me videos of how they’re doing things that I include in the digest and then we store on the library. And again, that’s, those are the things that people look at. They’re

There are solutions that people find in their own workroom and think, I need to share this with people so they can try it. you know, again, well, they’re not highly edited or perfectly lit videos. They’re here. I am in my workroom. Here’s what I figured out. I’d like to share it with you. And I’ll have like.

50, 60 people watch it in a week and think, great, now people are learning from that. So yes, I think videos are the most, but when I share…

I can take the old magazines and pull out like one section of it that has step-by-steps for how to add a flange on a pillow. And I’ll include that in the digest and people will download that PDF so that they have access to it when they need to make it. So I’d say it’s probably a tie between the two. Video is first maybe and then step-by-step. We are really…

hungry for step-by-steps in my part of the industry.

William Hanke (23:23)
Yeah, yeah. I think most people are visual learners, probably why YouTube’s the number two search engine, right? I have a bumper sticker on my car that says ⁓ YouTube mechanic, right? Because I just go there and figure out how to do the wrench thing, right? So video’s fantastic. But at some point, we do need like, OK,

Ceil (23:27)
Mm-hmm.

You

Yes!

William Hanke (23:47)
I need to get into the details of how this works and having that as an option. Again, great. ⁓ Different levels of searching, right? Once I found what I want, then I need to dig down to get the step-by-step to get that done. So great that you offer both of those. What do you think surprises people the most when they first join?

Ceil (23:50)
Yes.

Right.

I think the volume of information that’s available to them. I think that people don’t realize how much content has been collected with Inside the Library.

William Hanke (24:18)
Wow, that’s good. That’s good problem to have, right? All right. I want to talk a little bit about younger, newer pros that are entering into the trade. Yeah. So are newer workroom pros entering differently today than they have in the past?

Ceil (24:21)
Yes, yes.

Love this. Love it.

I think very differently.

When I started to interview people who had been doing this for a little while, some were closer in age to me, and a lot of us had a similar story. They were not exact, but it was, have this skill, I’d like to make some extra money. And it took some of us a very long time to value those skills and to charge appropriately for them.

William Hanke (25:09)
Sure. Yeah.

Ceil (25:10)
Some

of the newer younger people that I’ve interviewed are like, listen, I was making six figures in my old job. If I’m not going to make money at this, what’s the point of doing it? It would be like, Whoa, okay. Yes, you’re right. But how did you learn that? And please share it with more of us. I definitely saw determination and the younger and newer people and I use those terms together because for a lot of people, it’s a second career.

William Hanke (25:18)
No.

Ceil (25:40)
but they’re not 75 making it ⁓ a second career, although we have a few of those people.

they’ve been through enough that they know if they’re going to commit to this, they want to make sure they’re successful at it. But they a lot of people also choose it because they can make it balance with the current circumstances of their life. They can be as busy as they want to be, or they can cut back and work fewer hours. So I feel like the most important difference was or is with some of the newer younger people is that they value their skills more than some of us did.

25 years ago.

William Hanke (26:19)
Yeah. So instead of, ⁓ this could be a thing. It’s more like I can make this a thing. Right. Yeah, that’s awesome. And they come in a lot more educated right off the bat. They kind of have a good maybe 10,000 foot view of what’s going on and what’s going to happen before they even commit.

Ceil (26:25)
Yes, yes, that’s exactly right.

Yes. A lot of us didn’t even know we were workrooms, Will. That’s the difference between my generation of workrooms and the newer ones. And that was one of the things people said to me when I started the podcast was, I didn’t know I was a workroom until you told me that. And the newer, younger people coming in are…

William Hanke (26:42)
That’s great. love that.

Ceil (27:03)
They know they are a workroom and they know they have skills and they know they bring value to their clients, whether they’re interior designers or retail clients.

William Hanke (27:14)
Yeah, when they come in like that, what do they need the most to get started?

Ceil (27:22)
You know, it’s interesting, Will because I love technology, but what we do, you really can do with your hands and a needle and thread. I mean, the machines make things happen faster, but we can do everything by hand. I think the most important thing for someone who wants to be fabricating is a table, a gridded, padded table that allows you to work at the right height.

because there is nothing worse than stooping over your dining room table and then having to clear it off so that people can eat at it. We’re getting down on the floor and cutting out material. And a lot of us started out that way. So I think a work table is really important, a dedicated space that you don’t have to put things away. And yet if you don’t have those things, I don’t think it should stop you from getting started. I think that the third thing is community.

is knowing that there are people out there who can direct you where you need to go and answer your questions.

William Hanke (28:25)
Yeah. How has the learning path changed over the years?

Ceil (28:32)
Well, one of the questions I ask on the podcast is how did you learn to sew? And I would say for 90 % of the people, it was either a grandmother or an aunt or a mother, or it was school. They don’t really teach home economics anymore, but for a lot of people, that was the answer.

And the first time someone said to me they learned to sew on YouTube, like just was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. But it makes sense, as you said, it’s the second largest search engine. So one of the challenges that workroom owners who are not fabricating have is when they hire someone, they don’t want to hire someone with too many skills because then they have to unlearn some things.

And I think that the learning path for some of the people in our industry is they’ve decided they can make this a thing and then they have to learn to sew to do it. And in the past, it was the exact opposite. I know how to sew, what can I do with this to make some money? So I have seen people start a business in this industry when they did not know how to sew prior to it. And that’s a drastic change from, you know, 20 years ago.

William Hanke (29:37)
Yeah.

That’s really interesting. It’s definitely reversed ⁓ from what you’ve seen in the past. So yeah, has that caused different courses to suddenly be more popular and maybe other ones be less popular, I would assume?

Ceil (29:56)
Yes. Not for everyone. Yeah.

I don’t think it’s the courses so much as the styles that have changed. For many years, we’ve been doing Roman shades and side panels, and those are straight pieces of fabric. ⁓ There’s a lot to learn with a Roman shade and the different types and the head rails and things like that. But when I started, my very first class was an empire swag.

and not too many people are making them, although that’s changing again, swags are starting to come back. So I think that for the people who are learning to sew, they also have to be open to, it’s not just about sewing, it’s manipulating fabric, it’s stapling on a board, it’s all of those things. So I think that’s another part of the path that’s changed.

William Hanke (31:00)
Yeah, yeah.

One of the things you mentioned earlier on was the Learn to Choose Window Coverings course. Tell me a little bit more about that course and who it’s for.

Ceil (31:12)
So I feel like that is best suited for anyone who is going to be fabricating and works with a retail client. It is not about fabrication. It is about how to help your client choose the correct window coverings. it can be ⁓ interior designers can use it, workrooms who are selling to ⁓ retail clients.

But as a to the trade workroom, I also found it incredibly valuable because a lot of my designers were not well-versed in window treatments. And they would have me show up at a client’s home and we’d be measuring for side panels. And I’d ask the question, well, how are they keeping light out of this room? There was no answer to that because that wasn’t part of the design.

And in asking those questions, we were finding really what the client needed. And nine times out of 10, it meant the designer and I were both making more money because we weren’t covering the actual need of the client with pretty fabric. It was, we need a shade and we need pretty fabric. the course is meant to educate people so that when they go to a client’s home, they can

put together information, sell them what they need, and do it quickly with fewer visits. Because time’s money.

William Hanke (32:42)
Yeah. Have you had to update that course over the years or add additional pieces to it?

Ceil (32:49)
Yes, and we are in the process of updating it yet again, especially with AI. There’s a capsule inside. So it’s broken down into nine different segments. And when you buy this course, you own it. It’s not something you have to pay for every year. It’s just you buy it and you have it. There are

two or three different rendering programs that are available for our industry. One is minutes matter, the other is dream draper. And it’s, they’re fabulous because you can import the fabric that you want to use, put it onto, this is what it would look like as a valence. This is what it would look like as a drapery. But now with AI, one of the things you can do is do a rendering of the total room that looks far more realistic than any rendering program can show. So you can put it all together and say, does this

William Hanke (33:36)
Sure.

Ceil (33:38)
look then have AI update it. So Linda Erlem was the creator of this particular course and she is updating it with me. She just doesn’t want to do the marketing and the running of the program but she’s a really great educator and we’re updating some of the language that’s in it. So I think this is a course that can’t be left.

The information is going to change as time goes by. And then anyone who already owns the course will just give them the updated version.

William Hanke (34:06)
that’s great. Okay. Wow. So it’s always up to date. I love that. Yeah, that’s great. What inspired you to include that in kind of your business umbrella?

Ceil (34:10)
Yes, yes.

Well, I did retail for a little while and realized that I was not qualified to be making some of the decisions that interior designers know how to make. I did it, and the older I got, the worse my filter became. And someone would say, oh, I love this orange rug. Let’s make this work in the room. What window treatment fabric can we put with it? And inside my brain would be going, oh, no, that rug’s got to go. I’m not an interior designer.

William Hanke (34:28)
Hahaha

No.

Ceil (34:45)
I have such respect for their ability to look at someone else’s tastes and requirements and create a beautiful environment for that client. I am not that person. I don’t have those skills. I can, however, make whatever beautiful window treatments you’d like to put in that room.

And I looked at this course and again, Linda was always that person answering the question, what do I put on this window with the question of what does your client need? And I thought she is so brilliant. Like that’s the first thing we should be asking. But she broke down how to measure properly, how, you know, everything you need to bring with you. She just did such a great job with it that I felt.

William Hanke (35:21)
Yeah.

Ceil (35:32)
that with the education that was available inside the library, that the two were just a great ⁓ companion piece.

William Hanke (35:41)
That’s great. It sounds really good. You mentioned what should you bring with you? Are there any tools or tactics you think more people should be using now?

Ceil (35:50)
I do. think that it’s taken a little bit of time. think that people need to be more digital. I think they need to walk into a client’s home with a tablet and not a patent paper. If you like writing because tactically and you learn and remember better, then use a note taking app and write it on your tablet. I’m a big fan of the iPad. I’ve taught some iPad courses at the custom workroom conference. But I think that if you are trying

to keep things in a folder and it’s a lot of paper, you’re taking more time than you need to work with your clients. ⁓ I also think that walking in with samples of hardware and samples of fabric that you have preselected for your client, because if you walk in with 50 books,

they’re gonna take a really long time to make a decision. If you’ve narrowed those choices before you ever walk in the door, but you bring things with you, you’re gonna make the sale faster. And I think that…

There’s also a really fabulous webinar inside the library that’s done by someone who had like 25 years of sales experience. And she has her system down to T. She answers phone messages at a certain time. She has a questionnaire that she sends her clients. Those are all of the things I think that make you more effective. And

especially for someone who’s new and your confidence isn’t quite where you want it to be. You take this course, you watch this webinar and you can walk into your third client’s home and it sounds like you know what you’re talking about and you’re comfortable with the information and then you can move forward faster. And again, by not going back to their home two and three times to check on things, by having checklists and doing everything while you’re there the first time.

William Hanke (37:46)
Yeah, the customer doesn’t know that, right? If you can exude that confidence when you show up on your third ever customer visit ⁓ and you got your stuff together, they’re going to be like, wow, this, I mean, this, is the person we need.

Ceil (38:04)
Exactly, exactly. And it’s, I don’t think it’s that hard anymore to be ready sooner with the information that we have available.

William Hanke (38:14)
Along those same lines, if you walk in with a pad of paper and they’ve got another guy that shows up an hour later with a tablet, that speaks to the customer as well, right?

Ceil (38:26)
Yeah, and I think Will that everything isn’t about appearance, but if you look pulled together when you walk in the door, if you are not so worried about forgetting something that you are interacting naturally with the client, whether it’s a designer or…

retail client, those are the things that I think make a difference. And if you’re still using a pad and it’s working for you, you go for it. But when you walk in and you’re not trying to remember, okay, what do I measure first? And what do I do next? And what do I do next? And when you’re new, those are things that are harder to remember. So all those checklists and things on a tablet just makes you know that you’re going to relax, get everything you need.

and you will be able to talk more easily to the client. And you’re right, then the client goes, this is the person I want to work with.

William Hanke (39:20)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. You’ve shared some incredible things. I want to jump into kind of like a bonus round, if that’d be OK with you, and do some a little bit more fun questions. One still somewhat industry related, so we’ll start there. What helps you stay sharp or inspired outside of the window treatment industry?

Ceil (39:27)
Okay.

I, outside of the window treatment industry, I love to learn, Will. I read constantly. I love to research different things on YouTube. And just, I love to learn. So I think that’s probably, and then sometimes I’ll learn something, ⁓ that would be helpful in the industry. So I would say that’s it. My love of reading and learning.

William Hanke (39:58)
Yeah.

Okay.

Do you do fiction, nonfiction? Yes.

Ceil (40:10)
Yes.

Yes to both. read

a lot of business. I read a lot of business books, but I also love to read fiction and I read everything from historical fiction. I’m not a big romance fan. I love Jeffrey Deaver. I love Jonathan Kellerman. My husband laughs because we’ll watch something scary on TV. He says, you read books that are so much worse than what we’re watching, but they’re just words when I’m reading them.

William Hanke (40:38)
Right.

Ceil (40:39)
watching

them on TV. That’s another story. Yeah.

William Hanke (40:41)
Yeah, it’s coming at you, right?

What business books have really affected you lately?

Ceil (40:51)
So I’m actually, it’s really not a business book, but Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’m actually rereading that. I love that book. A book I hate, but I have read three times is The E-Myth Revisited. I hate it for all the reasons that it’s accurate. That you can’t be the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur and get it all done.

William Hanke (40:56)
great one.

Yeah.

Yes.

Ceil (41:16)
Profit First by Mike McCallewitz. Those are all books that have had an impact on me.

William Hanke (41:23)
those are great.

I’m hearing a lot about atomic habits because I probably read that what three years ago. I don’t know when it came out, but quite a while ago. But suddenly it’s like back on my radar and we’re actually cleaning out our storage room. It’s become a storage room that’s like too much storage and we’re cleaning it out. And I saw the book lay in there the other day. I’m like, I guess somebody’s telling me I need to go ahead and pay attention to this again.

Ceil (41:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s interesting because I had, you can see a bookshelf behind me and there’s, I’ll admit it, there’s a pile of books on the floor, because I’m trying to clean it out a little bit too. But I had been listening to a podcast and James Clear was a guest.

William Hanke (42:00)
Yeah.

Ceil (42:08)
And I had been talking with someone about my word of the year. And sometimes I do that and sometimes I don’t. And I had chosen a line because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t say yes to things that don’t align with where I want my business to go. And he said something on the podcast that made me change my word of the year. And he talked about having clarity. And of course the joke was his last name is Clear.

William Hanke (42:23)
⁓ that’s great.

Mm-hmm.

Ceil (42:36)
If you’re

not clear on what you want, then you don’t know where you’re going. And I was like, yeah, I can’t use the word align until I’m clear. So I’ve chosen clarity as my word for the year and align will be about like my secondary word. But I just listened to him and I thought it’s time to pull that book back out again and reread it. And I’m not a big rereader. There are too many books.

William Hanke (42:46)
Yeah.

That works.

⁓

yeah.

Ceil (43:05)
for

me to spend time rereading one, even if I loved it. But I absolutely am enjoying taking the time to read it a second time.

William Hanke (43:15)
Okay, all right, you sold me on it. I’m gonna go downstairs and grab it and get it back on the top of my head.

Ceil (43:20)
All right, I’m gonna follow up with you and see if

you read it.

William Hanke (43:24)
Fair enough. What’s a favorite oops moment from your fabricating days?

Ceil (43:32)
I was making a bedspread for someone and I was serging the seams. And if your listeners do not know what a serger is, it cuts and stitches the edge of the fabric and it gives a really nice finish. it not only sews a seam, but then overcasts the edge of the seam.

And the fabric got caught. And I cut the fabric where I shouldn’t have. And I literally had like one of those moments where I ran screaming from my workroom and like, this is gonna cost me a fortune and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. ⁓

And I went back and I really hadn’t caught it at a bad spot. Like, was only an inch or two over and I had allowed myself enough excess that it was not a problem. So I learned a valuable lesson with that one and that was to maybe not overreact to a mistake the way I did. And there’s a woman in our industry who’s been an educator for years, Anne Johnson. She had written an article called Three Strikes and You’re Out.

And that is if you make three mistakes in your workroom, get out of your workroom, go do something else, which you will make a fourth mistake. And that was the fourth mistake of my day that day. So I learned that Anne knew what she was talking about and I had to follow those rules in my workroom. But yeah, I saw that cut in the fabric and I literally had a meltdown.

William Hanke (44:52)
Fair enough. ⁓

Yeah, wow. You mentioned Profit First earlier. I’m a huge Profit First fan. Do you have a secret weapon, maybe not necessarily finance related, but just overall some sort of tool or habit that makes your work smoother?

Ceil (45:31)
That makes my work smooth. That’s a good question.

I would say my secret weapon is investigating ways to be more productive. That is another thing that I truly love. I wear an apron while I’m working. ⁓

William Hanke (45:40)
Okay.

Ceil (45:47)
I have tools hanging around my work table. I have my desk set up so that I can get to things quickly. And I don’t come by those things naturally. I don’t sit here and go, if my pens were here, I learned them from other people. So I think my secret weapon is investigating and saying, there’s got to be a better way to do this. I just don’t know what it is.

William Hanke (46:10)
Yeah, yeah. And you’re running the resource

library, which is pretty awesome to have that sort of personality. And also, the user-generated content you mentioned. Other people can upload pictures of how they solved something. ⁓ I bet that helps tons of people, which is, yeah, that’s awesome. ⁓ As we wrap up, thank you so much for being on today. This has been great.

Ceil (46:27)
Absolutely does.

William Hanke (46:35)
Any final thoughts from someone who’s either new or rebuilding in the workroom space?

Ceil (46:40)
I think, Will, not to beat a point to death, but look for community. One of the things that I always find so fascinating is…

that either someone has listened to my podcast and heard where someone lives and says, ⁓ they live right up the road from me. And I love when I hear this, where people say, I reach out to them, and now we’re workroom buddies and we help each other. ⁓ Susan Woodcock has said that about the Custom Workroom Conference. People will be standing in line to get their badges and they turn and they live a town away from each other. I think that finding people who can help you.

is the most important thing for a small workroom, a solopreneur, this can be a very lonely business.

But being able to connect with other people and find out that the way you are doing it is great and giving you that boost of confidence. Or if you try this this way, you’re going to be done in half the time and you can move on to the next project. If you’re working by yourself, you don’t have that opportunity. But reaching out to other people and connecting with them allows you to build confidence in yourself and your skills. And I think it’s invaluable.

William Hanke (47:56)
That’s awesome, yeah. Where can people learn more about the resource library and connect with you?

Ceil (48:03)
Well, I’m on social media. The library is CSFRL.org and I have an Instagram account for the library and the So Much More podcast has a Facebook page so I can connect with people there.

William Hanke (48:16)
Perfect. We’ll also put all the links in the show notes, of course, so that people can check it out and get in touch with you if they have other questions. So thank you again. I know I keep saying it, but I really do appreciate you being on this show. Anything else you’d like to share before we finish up?

Ceil (48:21)
Awesome.

No, well, this has been a pleasure for me. I said this before we started to record. I’m not used to being on this side of the microphone, so this was a little bit fun for me. A little nerve wracking, but you made it great. So thank you. I appreciate it.

William Hanke (48:44)
good. That’s fantastic.

Well, thank you. So that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Marketing Panes. Huge thanks to Ciel DiGuglielmo I didn’t butcher it. That’s good. For giving us a peek behind the curtains, literally, and showing us how the right resource at the right time can change a career. Whether you’re new to fabricating or 20 years in, there’s always more to learn.

Ceil (48:55)
No, you did not.

William Hanke (49:11)
And it’s leaders like Ceil who make that journey easier, smarter, and a lot more supported. If this conversation sparked a new idea or gave you a resource to explore, share it with a fellow pro and be sure to follow us on all the usual channels. Thank you for listening and have an awesome day.