What is the difference between a dye lot sample and a stock cutting?
In the UK those phrases are taken to mean the same thing. But that is not universally true so I will explain.
When you as an interior designer are about to place an order you need to get a cutting which you keep in your records stating exactly what colour the fabric will be. So you need a cutting from the exact roll of fabric which is going to be cut for you by the supplier. Once you have a this “dye lot sample” or “stock cutting” the onus is then on the supplier to supply you with the exact fabric.
Is this always important?
This is particularly important as the colour of many fabrics vary slightly between different batches of production. This is common across all suppliers.
Usually, however, it will not matter if your ENTIRE order comes from a roll that was different from the original sampling. The difference will be trivial and not noticed.
But if you are being supplied with more than one piece then it often DOES matter. The different rolls of fabric when made-up side-by-side can be noticeably different.
Sometimes even if the fabrics are different; the way they are made up, the lighting or where they are in a room can make the difference not noticeable.
Various technical reasons explain all of this, such as the variability of colour in man-made dyes, however designers need only know that it can and often does happen that fabrics vary slightly in their colour.
If in doubt obtain a dye lot sample/stock cutting.
What do you think of the new online logo-cum avatar?
Our normal branded corporate image did not translate to the tiny logos/avatars that seem to be needed everywhere on the web so we had to come up with something to fill the gap.
We stuck with the corporate Pantone colours and font and settled on a facebookesque styled rounded square.
Once you have set up your Facebook (FB) Fan Page for your business so that it looks and feels ‘right ‘ then it’s time to take it to the next level. So if you are at that point, read on. If not go <here>.
Note: Before you start make sure you will be working on your business page (fan page) and not your personal page. You really should be using a business page (fan page), be sure what one is before continuing as lots of people go down the wrong route and then have to start all over again, FB is not very forgiving in that respect.
OK I’m going to look at Branding, Promoting, Enhanced Navigation & Content. These are the main areas to add a bit of spice to your FB Fan Page/Business Page.
1. BRANDING.
a. You need a 200 pixels wide x 600 pixels high image of your brand. Maybe you have a logo, if so use that. Upload this to the area to the left of where it says “Wall”.
b. Header. This goes above where it says “Wall”. Change the text here so that it has your company name. What if you get the name wrong? Well if you get the name wrong you cannot change it, so you have to delete the page and start again (as at Feb 2010). So please get it right first time.
c. The same applies to the category of your page, that cannot be changed either. So when you create your page get the category right.
d. If your company is called XYZDesigns then you need http://facebook.com/XYZDesigns as your url. This article <here> tells you how to do that.
2. PROMOTING
a. You probably already understand groups on LinkedIn. Well Facebook (FB) has them as well. Start one or use existing ones like Interior Design Lovers (requires you to be logged in to FB). Promote your page in groups. BUT DO NOT SELL, SELL, SELL. Let people know about the information your FB page will provide them with. Remember further that few people are interested in your business per se, they are more interested in what it can do for them. So talk about solving problems and NOT saying how great you/your services are. The sell-sell way does not usually work.
b. User comments. Engage with your fans, reply to them. Promote yourself to these people and remember that they are already on your page and are taking the time to write something, probably to find out something, so they have more than a passing interest in what you do. Again soft sell not hard sell. Try to help them.
c. Facebook Advertising.
You may have tried Google AdWords advertising or the Yahoo and Microsoft equivalents (they are each very similar to one another). Maybe they have worked for you, maybe not. Facebook also allows you to advertise your services. They take a slightly different approach to the other 3 by targeting the FB user base. I particularly like how you can be much more specific about the region and demographics of the person you are targeting; FB also tell you how many people are in the demographics you specify. Worth a look especially for Interior Designers who are targeting the general public rather than other businesses. I will not go into this area in any more depth yet as it really comes under ‘advertising’ rather than building a better FB page for your business.
d. Make sure the information about your business on the left hand side really stands out. Get some good, engaging and genuine words about your company there.
3. ENHANCED NAVIGATION
a. You can administer your FB business page (fan page) <here>. You need to be an administrator of your business fan page.
b. Go to the wall. At the top of the left hand column you will see ‘edit page’. Go there and then choose “Wall Settings: Edit”. Change the default view to the correct page that you want a user to land on, could be your wall, could be your info page. This can be changed later if you make a mistake.
4. CONTENT
This is what will make people come back to your site. It’s really, really important! So you will need to have some new ’stuff’ on your FB page to make it worth their while to return. That ’stuff’ could be new videos, articles or whatever. it could also be the content of communication and engagement with like-minded design professionals working together to solve problems online…
The most obvious route is through your blog. You can display your blog as the ‘wall’ for your business page. You have a few options for example:
Write your blog (the original content) in FB and post it everywhere else automatically from FB. You can even write your blog by accessing Facebook from your blackberry.
Get your external blog synchronised into FB automatically (I use a free FB application called Social RSS and my blog is on WordPress)
I prefer the second approach as WordPress also automatically publishes my blog posts to other sources such as Twitter. Apparently there is a FB Fan Page-to-Twitter application but I do not use that, sorry!
Encourage your fans to add content (photos, etc.). That makes your job easier and makes your site content rich for others.
This is a quick one from me. A little bit fun, a little bit serious.
The “Wordle” web site tool looks at your web site and then, I think, nicely presents what it thinks are some of your key words based on some mysterious linguistic algorithm. It probably places emphasis on strongly emotional words that you use.
As you can see from the image it picks up ‘loathe’, ‘discerning’ and ‘beautiful’ as well as words we commonly use like ‘Interior’ and ‘Design’. Although I’m not too sure about the visual combination of “loathe Interior Design”, which I can assure you I don’t! But it also makes me think maybe I should express strong positive comments and not occasionally using strong negative words. Food for thought anyway.
Just click on the image and you can do one for your web site or blog as well. It takes a minute or two, not long.
Really, I’m not interested in what you had for breakfast, nor what the weather is. If you want to be followed by people who are not decision makers then ‘your breakfast’ or ‘which train you are currently on’ is a great thing to Tweet about. But that’s not what you want is it?
So…
1. Automatically Tweet your blog posts once a week – that’s a great way to start. If you use a WordPress hosted blog (like this one) it’s just a case of ticking a box and you are done.
Or
2. Every day just go through your suppliers. As a designer you have lots of them. Tweet a compliment about a DESIGN RELATED supplier &/or one of their products/services.
Or
3. Maybe tweet a promotion
Remember
4. Tweets are eventually deleted from the net. So you don’t have to worry about keywords too much. If you are writing a blog post then that post will be permanent and the keywords in it are important. So with your Tweets just keep it simple, interesting and professional. Think “interesting narrative”.
But would you…
5. Tweet about your competitors? Sure if you want to help publicize their work (??) and sure if they reciprocate and Tweet back.
With the benefit of proverbial hindsight the changes that have hit the Interior Design sector in 2009 were ‘obvious’. I’ll take a quick look at how some of the aspects of sales & marketing in interior design will affect ‘you’ in 2010. As always I’ll be practical and sensible and not carried away by the hype of technologies or media evangelists.
So prediction number one. I started my introduction by saying how it will affect ‘you’ with the you in parentheses. That means all of ‘you’, plural, not just you my dear reader. Well, very, very many of ‘you’ will do little different this year to what you did last year or the year before. So not much change there. But just because you refuse to change does not mean that change will not be forced upon you by the market. For example, many large design practices are now much smaller, the people who left are now starting innovative new businesses and stealing your customers. Action Point: Innovate and survive. Make a point to change something in your business this year, something important not trivial.
Prediction number 2. 2009 was an historically pivotal year. The time we are now living in will be looked back on by scholars as the period when the East truly began it’s economic ascendancy over the West. Not a nice prediction I know and I am not happy about it. Unfortunately, in 2010, the western economies will experience further serious difficulties. The American economy will trundle along and the UK economy will either stay in recession or double dip back into recession as massive, impending public spending cutbacks put government employees out of work. (The UK government has over the last year borrowed more money than all UK governments EVER ADDED TOGETHER that is a LOT of money and yes I have written it correctly and yes it really is true. The country and 6th ish biggest economy risks bankruptcy). This will impact you designers indirectly and directly. I doubt many of your clients work in government; however their businesses rely, in part, on the direct and indirect custom and spending power of government employees and government agencies. Action Point: Look at the type of customers you have and assess the risks to your future levels of business from that area. Survey the economic landscape in your target markets.
Prediction number 3. Many of you will start writing blogs because either it’s a good idea or because you competitors do it. About half of you will stop doing that because it takes up too much time. Action Point: Either write a weekly business blog or, if you have not got enough time to grow your business (hmm?), use Twitter/Facebook to micro-blog.
Prediction number 4. Some of you will take a strategic view on where new customers will come from and prosper accordingly. Look where the money is. Bankers STILL get huge bonuses and many spend it on houses. There is less funding available for large capital intensive projects like hotels but, once started, hotels are usually finished. Multi-billionaires are still billionaires; they will still buy ski chalets, yachts and villas because they are still rich. Footballers and MDs of PLCs still get paid too much. Fewer people will buy second homes and overseas homes. The property market (sales not letting) might grow from last year but it will still be at low levels. B&Q recently reported good sales in 2009…indicative that people are spending money on where they live now and not that they plan to move. HOWEVER remember that all economic bubbles EVER in history ALWAYS burst. (South Sea Bubble, Dot come bubble, house price bubble, footballers’ salaries!, etc.) also remember that just because an industry is in recession it does not necessarily mean it EVER will pick up at some point in the future. Action Point: Review and understand your customer segments.
Prediction number 5. No new marketing wonder solution. 2009 saw Facebook dramatically take over from MySpace. Facebook will continue to prosper. You should use it as a marketing channel if your clients ‘hang out there’. A mini-risk with Facebook is that adoption by the young and trendy is slowing as it is no longer as cool as it used to be, mainly because their parents’ updates keep appearing on their wall. Even I remember that sort of thing is not cool (just like using the word cool probably). Action Point: Use Facebook for your customer networking remembering that you are trying to network with potential business partners or customers NOT the competition, it’s not the size of your network that counts.
Prediction number 6. Traditional advertising’s terminal disease will not improve. Online advertising will continue to be adopted by designers. Traditional print circulations are falling, technologies exist to let us skip TV ads, etc. How many times do you get called with the latest greatest deal for a full page ad in some magazine you’ve never heard of? How many times does a new online web site try to sell you advertising space?. Why, for the first time in 23 (TWENTY THREE) years has Pepsi stopped spending on advertising on the Superbowl and switched to an alternative online media campaign? Advertising is intrusive, usually annoying, often irrelevant and we can now avoid it as well as ignore it. If I owned a small design business I would not entrust my money with an employee marketing manager to spend blindly on advertising. If I controlled my own media spend I would review closely every penny I spent on traditional print advertising and I would want proof that it worked. And that proof would not be forthcoming. Unlike Google AdWords, for example, which tells me exactly what happened and only charges me for success. Unlike this blog post that I know will get at least 500 hits. Action Point: If you do not advertise do so online with a limited budget. If you do advertise in print consider switching a significant chunk of your spend to online.
Prediction number 7. Although Twitter is rubbish. People will use it more and more in 2010 because, for the time being, it fills a need. The need is broadly defined by the ease of connecting with people, simple quick messaging, and convenience of use with technologies like mobile/cell phones. Action Point: You should really use Twitter for your business.
Prediction number 8. Search engines have changed and continue to so do. They now look more at the instant chats and posts that your customers are making. Maybe they evangelise about your business or are less than kind about it. Either way that sort of up-to-date pertinent information will find it’s way up Google’s ranking and you really, really (yes REALLY) should know what is being said about your business. Action Point: Review weekly what is being said online about your business.
As an interior designer you appreciate the beauty of the things you design. So how can this flimsily-named Twitter-thing have any beauty? or any use for that matter with the constraint of 140 characters. How can it be a professional marketing tool?
Well it is and I’ll tell you why. I should also let you know that I am from the original anti-Twitter brigade but have been converted as I wrote late last year.
Many of the readers of this blog are owners of small to medium-sized interior design firms. We just don’t have that much spare time, right? (more…)
Velvets have become increasingly popular over the last 5 years. Both residential and contract usage of velvets have increased tremendously. Having been produced for hundreds of years velvets never seem to have lost the attention of discerning designers.
Interior Designers are often interested in the properties and manufacture of velvet – the two being necessarily related. The depth of the pile, the durability of the finish, the ease of maintaining the beautiful finish.
It’s a bit negative really isn’t it? I mean spying on your competitors implies they are better than you and you are devoting time just to play catch up. Or you could turn it around and say that by employing ALL the industry best practice from all your competitors you will be ahead of almost all of them! Depends how you see it.
This article considers a few easy ways to ethically get more information on your competitors and then show you how to easily integrate all that information into your web browser so it’s there to use on an ongoing basis whenever you have time in the future. Fantastic long term investment merely for investing your time.
We look at:
Google Alerts;
Competitor News Feeds;
Industry News Feeds; and then finish by
Putting it all together in one place using Netvibes.
Skip to the end of the article if you want the URL for the example created.
Let’s create a real life example by pretending that we are a Hotel/Hospitality focussed interior design and architecture practice. Now, I’ve only been to LA once so with my very minimal internet research I’ll pretend further that my main local competitor is Ralph Gentile Architects (www.rgastudio.com) – I don’t know this company and they seem to be in the hotel interior design industry. Also we will look at WATG (www.watg.com) who are a leading design consultant for the global hospitality market. (more…)
Yes, unfortunately 2010 is the end of the decade not the start of a new one. Honest. You have to wait for 2011 for that. And yes I know that we were all wrong when we celebrated the new millennium on 1st Jan 2000, but it was still a great party wasn’t it?
Well that’s the ‘correct’ definition but I still think that we have now left the period we know as the noughties.
This article tells interior designers how to setup a business page for their interior design business on Facebook.
If you sell to the general public then the consensus amongst marketing professionals is that your marketing strategy must include Facebook. Facebook will work to promote your services through your network and through the networks of your network members.
If you sell to businesses (eg if you are a hospitality interior designer specialising in restaurants) then I’m not convinced that Facebook is the best medium. However, and its a big however, many of your clients will be using Facebook already so maybe you should use it to help them consume the information that you produce and to help them interact with your organisation in a way that suits them. It’s not what is easiest for you that should be the way forwards, it should be what is the easiest for your (potential-) clients.
Let’s get started then. Here’s what you need to do and it will cost you nothing other than time:
1. Create a personal Facebook account if you don’t already have one. If you have one, use the one you have.
2. Create a business page for your business – sometimes called a fan page. Listen up here!
Don’t create another personal page.
Don’t create a group – you don’t need to know what one is.
Create a business(or fan) page: http://www.Facebook.com/pages/create.php
OK let’s focus on sales. Without further ado here are 8 suggestions for ways to sell more. Hopefully, at least one will be something new to try. Change is good:
1. One for the owners and managers: interact on the sales force with your staff and your customers. Be visible and foster relationships.
2. The retail world moves forwards changing all the time. Don’t look back to the glory days. Innovate, take a view on the future.
3. Browsers. For all those people who just can’t be engaged by your sales people get the sales people to give these ‘browsers’ a flyer. The flyer (terrible word) can be a discount voucher, an unadvertised promotion or a brief look at a new product, anything of value. Keep it succinct.
4. On weekends when you are particularly busy ensure that a senior staff member greets entering customers and tries to engage with leaving ones (who have not purchased) to ask them what they were looking for that they could not find.
5. Make sure your best sales people are selling on busy days. Ensure they are properly incentivized to SELL. Customer service is great but you want the money, right?
6. Consider a promotional event that is invitation only for your best customers (and anyone they want to bring along). Make sure there is genuinely something in it for the attendees.
7. Ask your salespeople what can be done on a practical day-to-day level to sell more. More products? Better layout? Different incentivisation or promotion?
8. Work your networks. Through Facebook; through staff, friends and family, email list.
LONDON, England. 07-DECEMBER-2009 11.30 AM: KOTHEA today announced it has expanded its extensive contract faux skin collections by the addition of KOFAUXLEATHER. KOFAUXLEATHER is a high durability, faux leather: a superb contract fabric with a very high Martindale result. It simply and effortlessly delivers longstanding elegance in all the right bars, hotels and marine environments both as upholstery and as a wall or door covering. It looks great.
This article looks at the very narrow area concerning how to make your Facebook URL for your interior design business appear professional. Specifically how to create a proper ‘vanity URL’ for your business fan page.If you have already done that then here are some more useful additions to the business side of your Facebook page.
Many Interior Designers who sell to the general public see Facebook as just one way of lead generation – to some it is more important than others.
Ok here goes. This is a real life example where KOTHEA’s MD set up her personal username on Facebook incorrectly, there was already a Fan Page for KOTHEA. This article takes you through the steps we had to take to get the ‘vanity’ url correct both for the individual and for the company. Our MD inadvertently set her personal username (vanity URL) as ‘KOTHEA‘. So if anyone typed www.facebook.com/kothea it took them to her personal page rather than to the ‘proper’ company page. This situation got progressively messy as she started to use Facebook more for personal matters with business messages appearing in the same place as her personal ones. The result was that many of her friends kept seeing fabric related articles when they were not interior designers. Hopefully you get the picture!
as the original name for the company as it was assigned by Facebook. Note for this all to work you must already have created a business page or FAN PAGE for your business.
What we want to do is threefold:
Release the facebook.com/kothea name so that it can be re-assigned to the business page
Change her vanity url/username name to something more like what it really is
Assign the proper company name to be KOTHEA.
Before we get started in earnest there are five critically important points: firstly, the person making these changes must be an administer of the business page and logged in; secondly, you can only make changes to names once so be very, very careful; thirdly you must have at least 25 fans of your business page; fourthly, your business page must have been created as a Facebook PAGE not a group or anything else, it must be a page!; and finally Facebook sometimes requires that your personal account has been verified by mobile phone before any of these changes are allowed to be made.
If you are creating a page for the first time BE VERY CAREFUL some Facebook Fan Page setting CANNOT BE CHANGED (Jan 2010).
Here are the steps to go through:
Check to make sure what settings have already been made
Type in this exactly: www.facebook.com/username ie do not put in your username put in the word ‘username’. You will get a message like the one below.
This confirms that KOTHEA is my MD’s username.
2. From the facebook menu go to SETTINGS and then to “ACCOUNT SETTINGS”. You will see something like the following where we now want to change the Username NOT the name.
3. Click on the word “change” the one next to USERNAME. ie the one above the word KOTHEA in my example. You are then prompted for a new username. It must be unique and there are various limitations to what you can have (sorry I don’t know all the restrictions but Facebook seems to disallow certain names even though they might be unique – for example i think only one ‘full stop’ is allowed). Be very sure what new username you want. (more…)
I have worked on, sold and managed many projects in the corporate world as well as in the interiors world. It strikes me that the nature of ‘projects’ is very similar across all industries.
Often how you propose to engage with the client to tackle the project will win you the business. Price and competence are obviously important. New clients might not trust you enough to feel they can commit to your services for the full duration of the project; so bear that in mind. Sometimes elements of risk in the project are high or unknown – you must deal with these in you proposal/pitch (Nugget 1: By highlighting risks where others haven’t could win you the project on the risk issues alone).
Anyway, the point of this article is to summarise different approaches to charging for projects. You’ve probably heard of most of them but maybe not all:
1. The design fee
“I’m an interior designer and I provide a fantastic service. I charge you for my skills and you benefit from me being able to buy things for you at trade price, I don’t make a profit on the things I buy for you”.
This is a fair and honest pitch. Well done, I’d think about buying from you. It probably won’t differentiate you from anyone else though.
2. The markup
“I’m an interior designer and I provide a fantastic service, I’m going to do it for free for you though. I have to make a profit so I’ll make that on the difference between trade and retail prices for the things that I buy for you.”
I really don’t like this and yes I know it is widely used in the industry. Firstly your service is so good that you are giving it to me free? Really? Things that are given away free are generally valued very lowly in business. This approach might appeal to a cash strapped buyer though, so don’t dismiss out of hand. Secondly can I trust you to charge the fair and correct margin? Probably not (I don’t know you, how can I trust you?), you probably won’t have any degree of transparency on your purchases and their true retail and trade prices. Besides a savvy client can get many things at trade price anyway, buying is easy (ish) – selecting and creating is more the art, that is where the value lies.
3. Fixed Price
This is the best way to make money. Read on, I know you don’t believe me!
Many of the top consultancy companies in the world manage their fixed price projects very, very carefully and in great detail. They win the projects essentially because of their low price BUT that price is conditional upon lots of conditions. Once those conditions cannot be met by the client then the price goes up (a lot). After committing to a company the client finds it very hard to pull out later and change suppliers. In any case they share the blame for not properly specifying the project at the outset, so in itself that really is not a reason to think of ditching the new supplier.
(Nugget 2:) For this to make money, lots of money, you have to really understand what you have to deliver, in detail. You have to know all the risks and where things can go wrong and how you will handle those eventualities. You have to be clear about what is and what is not included. (Of course add-ons for what was not originally included will cost a LOT, later on when the client changes their mind!)
This relies on you being organised and the client less so. In the corporate world many buyers are themselves now very organised and so this approach to projects is consequently becoming less profitable. These projects often become acrimonious unless one side gives in over points of contention that arise “I thought XXX was included” – you’ve been there.
Remember that when you are extracting every ounce of $/£ out of your client, at least be nice and polite and friendly about it. Seriously.
Of course if you’re new to the industry you might just go for this approach to win the business and you MIGHT just strike it lucky based on little or no detailed preparation. Or you might not.
4. Phased Approach
This works best where there are unknowns that the client appreciates exist, it’s a good and fair way of making money.
You identify the phases of the project: scope, functional design, technical design, aesthetic design, etc – whatever you choose to call them are unimportant.You come to a financial arrangement for each phase before it happens. When the first phase finishes you definitively quote for the subsequent one. You might have earlier given an indication on the cost of all phases but you make it clear up front that you have a chance to revise prices as some of the risks become more clear.
The great things about this approach are inertia, deliverables and risk.
‘Inertia’ because clients are unwilling to change suppliers unless really annoyed – in which case it’s probably a good time to move on as you’ve messed up and lost their trust.
‘Risk’ because you MUST plan for all risks in this approach. Your prices include the risks, you say you are charging a lot for phase H because of risks X, Y and Z.
‘Deliverables’ because when you revise (typically up) the cost of a subsequent phase it’s because the deliverables have been changed by the client (no matter how small the change).
Oh and of course its easier for the client to commit to small sums of money rather than the whole thing.
5. Mentoring
Here’s one you probably haven’t considered.
Sometimes you just know that a client is fishing for ideas for their project. You just know they are going to do it themselves. (Nugget 3:) Well if you know that then why not tailor your proposition around that fact? “Look Mr X, here are the 8 phases of an interior design project, you can probably do much of them yourself but you are not experienced. I am. Let me work with you on a half-daily basis to help you along in the various stages. If there’s one bit you are not happy with like instructing builders or architects I can do that bit for you”
“I really like this approach,” says client A. “I’m not a designer but one day might like to be, it can’t be that hard and yes I know I don’t yet have all the skills, so having someone to help me along would help.”
Of course many clients will find their project too time consuming or their skills lacking. That’s fine though because they have already committed to you when they realise that and so you will be there to take over and finish it. At a price of course!
The secret of this one is to snare the project that others have no chance of winning because of their approach.
6. Selective Phase Bidding
I don’t like this one.
You essentially bid for just the phases that you are expert at. Essentially if you do this you will rarely win.
Many clients do not want to deal with many suppliers, they want one monthly invoice.
Yet you might not feel comfortable to handle all aspects. The solution is partnership with another supplier. Partnerships are fraught with danger but can sometimes work out well. (Nugget 4:) Make sure you work with someone you trust and make sure they know that partnership involves reciprocation ie they have to get you involved in their next project.
7. Capped Price
“I will charge you based on my time and the cost of the materials. However you have a budget so I promise I will not exceed it.” Crazy, don’t get involved in this type of project unless you are desperate. How do you benefit when you are taking on all the risk, this could lose you thousands.
8. Floor Price
This sounds more like it! A minimum price! However you have to sweeten this with discounted rates above the floor price so the client understands that if the floor is exceeded then you are making much less than you normally do and that you will strive to avoid that situation happening as you want to only do profitable work.
This one can work well, get your numbers worked out before you start.
Interior Designers need to understand their whole marketing strategy and how each of its 7 constituent tactics work together to grow the business.
This article is a checklist. Go through each of the points I’ve listed and apply it to your sales and marketing in your business. My opinion on what are particularly important marketing communications for interior designers are highlighted in bold and might differ if you target business rather than the public. Let me know your thoughts:
1. Search Marketing – Get your prospect at the time of their decision-making.
And as a PS I will follow this up with 2 more articles; one about different ways of engaging (financially) with clients; and a second about using facebook for an interior design business. The first comment, below, reflects a theme running through many questions posed to me: website designers (techies) and ad agencies (space sellers) are trying to get you to part with your hard earned design fees; I would read a book on digital marketing that comes more from the marketing end rather than the technology end eg “Mastering Web 2.0 bu Susan Rice Lincoln”, that’s a good way to start. DONT’ SPEND £10k/$15k on a new web site think about your customers and how they behave, your marketing communications need to latch into their behaviours.
LONDON, England. 02-NOVEMBER-2009 11.30 AM: KOTHEA today announced it has expanded its collections of residential textured weaves to include KOSHAZAM. KOSHAZAM has a striking and complex design which challenges the aesthetic intellect of the most discerning designers.
KOSHAZAM
Reference: 03-037-262
Colour Shown: Red Flower
Other colourways: 4
Width: 138cm
Repeat: 72cm
Composition: Mix
Primary Usage: Domestic curtains and
upholstery.
Type of fabric: Textured weave
About KOTHEA.
KOTHEA are a top-market fabric house based in (more…)
LONDON, England. 05-OCTOBER-2009 11.30 AM: KOTHEA today announced it has expanded its panelling collections with the addition of KORAFT. Like KOTHEA, KORAFT is, well, just a little bit different and in the nicest possible way. KORAFT is just one of those products where you desire what you see – the very highest quality, beautifully textured raffia-like wall panelling also suitable for domestic upholstery.
Reference: 01-009-410
Colour Shown: Natural
Other colourways: 1
Width: 138cm
Repeat: none
Composition: 73% Cotton, 27% Viscose
Primary Usage: Panelling and upholstery, contract & domestic.
Martindale: 14,000 Rubs
Type of fabric: Rafia/Textured Weave
About KOTHEA.
KOTHEA are a top-market fabric house based in (more…)
Many interior designers just can’t take Twitter seriously as a business tool. Until recently I was a dissenter too; I’ll tell you about my epiphany in a moment, but it just seemed plain wrong that the self-obsessed media could be right about something they love, for once. And it just made matters worse when Oscar Wilde’s famous phrase “The Witterings Of A Wit” could oh so easily be changed to “The Twitterings Of A Twit”. And then I was further annoyed because everyone says that that was an Oscar Wilde quote and yet Wikipedia said it wasn’t (so it can’t be one of his). And then, really anyway, it should be the “Tweets Of A Twit” and that’s just silly.
And then I calmed down a bit and thought rationally.
Twitter is just a bit of technology with a silly name, we must all agree on that as a starting point. But if, for little or no cost and effort, I can get more potential clients to visit my blog or my web site by using Twitter occasionally then who is the Twit…my competitor who uses it? or me, who doesn’t?
Then Ceil Petrucelli commented on one of my blog posts saying that one of her friends had tweeted my post and here she was reading it and, in the post-modern vernacular, loving it. She’d never heard of KOTHEA fabrics before. So some other kind person had been doing my marketing for me, which is great, but I felt that maybe I should be making more of an effort myself. And then I realised that I was writing yet another blog post and I was anti-blogs a year ago! Did that make me a Twitter-blog tweeting, blogging hypocrite? (My surname is Seuss, by the way).
But is it easy? Well, from a technical viewpoint I’m sure you can automatically generate a tweet from most blog posts or from within Facebook. So we can probably all produce Twitter output SOMEWHERE in our digital marketing without any ongoing additional effort. (In fact this post has been automatically tweeted, apparently).
So I’m going to make an effort and start to use the KOTHEA Twitter Feed/Page thing that I had already set up some months ago; just in case I might need it. In fact I’m already doing it because, as I said, I made it automatic.
Having done my extensive research on how to Twitter and how not to, I thought I would share it with you and also tell you what the “Lazy Marketer” would do to get the most ‘bangs for the least bucks/time’. So now you too can avoid the “5 & A Half Ways That Interior Designers Twitter Badly”. Without further ado they are:(more…)
Once you have set up your Facebook (FB) Fan Page for your business so that it looks and feels ‘right ‘ then it’s time to take it to the next level. So if you are at that point, read on. If not go 
Really, I’m not interested in what you had for breakfast, nor what the weather is. If you want to be followed by people who are not decision makers then ‘your breakfast’ or ‘which train you are currently on’ is a great thing to Tweet about. But that’s not what you want is it?
It’s a bit negative really isn’t it? I mean spying on your competitors implies they are better than you and you are devoting time just to play catch up. Or you could turn it around and say that by employing ALL the industry best practice from all your competitors you will be ahead of almost all of them! Depends how you see it.
8 January, 2010
Velvet
Posted by Verity du Sautoy under Contract Fabric, Domestic Fabric, Product Comments, Upholstery, Upholstery Fabric | Tags: contract fabrics, linen velvet, mohair velvet, mohair velvets, silk velvet, silk velvets, textured upholstery fabric, upholstery fabric, upholstry fabric, velvet, velvets |Leave a Comment
Velvets have become increasingly popular over the last 5 years. Both residential and contract usage of velvets have increased tremendously. Having been produced for hundreds of years velvets never seem to have lost the attention of discerning designers.
Interior Designers are often interested in the properties and manufacture of velvet – the two being necessarily related. The depth of the pile, the durability of the finish, the ease of maintaining the beautiful finish.
Velvet is made in one of two ways – cut or uncut:
1. Cut pile
a. Here the loom is configured to (more…)