The Huddle - Episode 66 - Color & Design in Flooring
This week the guys are joined by designer Emma Schlittenhardt from Hardt Studio (https://www.hardtstudio.com) who helps discuss the use of color and design in flooring applications while maintaining functionality.
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The HUDDLE is where the flooring industry can get together and talk about everything! Lead by Paul Stuart from Go Carerra who is joined by Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring.
we come at you every Tuesday at 300 p.m Central to discuss maintaining Ford progress in your flooring career with me
as usual is Mr Daniel and Jose Gonzalez although Jose is vacant at the moment
and we uh have a special guest with us today Emma and Emma I will not butcher
your last name so I'll let you say that here uh during the introduction but
um so thank you for joining us we are um really proud of what we've
been able to put together here at the Huddle um as many of you know last week we talked about the um the show that we
just got back from and we had a lot of support from there and it was really awesome to find out how many people
actually watch the show so uh I want to thank our audience and everybody who joins and and finds the information
valuable if you do find this information valuable we would appreciate a subscribe
to our YouTube channel or a like maybe a comment on one of the social channels that you're watching us on and without
further Ado today is about design and colors in commercial flooring so many of
us uh help our clients um select materials and from a flooring contractor
standpoint I typically want to make sure that the performance and the uh right
product is in the right area um but I am not a design expert and colors and I'm
I'm really excited to kind of hear your take on that so uh without further Ado
I'd like to introduce Emma Emma could you tell us a little bit about you and your company and what you guys are up to
yeah um thanks again so much for having me on today Paul it's been um it was a
an honor to be asked asked but um I so my name is Emma schlittenhart first of
all and I am an interior designer um I also have my master's degree in
architecture so that is one thing that sort of separates me apart from a couple of the other designers at least here in
town um and I own and operate an interior design studio called heart
studio um h a r DT it's the last five letters of my last name uh the whole
thing was obviously just a little too much so we just stuck the last part of my last name and uh so we we started um
in 2020 admidst the coid pandemic um and I started as just myself and I have
grown it to a team of four now so it's myself and three others um we offer
everything from floor plan drawings we do a lot of 3D renderings uh we do
finish selections we do Furniture selection we do decorating and organization Services as well
and um we work primarily on residential or commercial remodels um I'd say it's
about a 7030 split with residential being the majority of what we do um and
then I'm also in the process right now of opening up a showroom and we're going to be selling hard surfaces so flooring
uh backsplash cabinets counters things like that um it's going in a um
well-known area of our city here in which itah Kansas and it's going to be called bot
showroom and it'll be a place where we my team can go select our materials of
course for clients but then we will have a retail component as well so we'll be open to the public um serving you know
interior designers builders contractors and then just the general public as well that's great that's awesome what what uh
I got a couple questions uh from your intro you have a Masters in architecture
what made you uh decide to do that that's pretty rare with designers yeah um so I've always been math has always
been my favorite subject in school and it was kind of a surprise to even me that I decided to go down a more
creative path um but I kind of found that passion in college and then got my
my bachelor's in interior design and then decided that I wanted to go to my masters and there were actually a couple
of different um components that played into that um the first one being that I'm really competitive and nobody in my
family has a master's degree and my mindset is like why not me right and so
it was only two more years on top of my other schooling and I did it all online and so it was really like a why not um
and then the second reason is I worked for an architect for a while um while I
was doing my undergrad and he was really a big proponent of getting a degree in
architecture of some sort you know he'd been through through the 20 2007 uh
housing market crash he worked for a firm at the time and he's like the first people that got fired were all the
interior designers um so it kind of scared me honestly a little bit but you know interior design is definitely a
luxury service and when the economy goes that's just one of the first things that go and so I wanted um to obviously have
a little bit of job security and then I knew that it would also SE separate myself from the crowd and I would have
um the knowledge to do more than just pick out the pretty stuff yeah yeah well
that's cool what What's um last question here what what got you to want how did
you arrive at the decision to start your design studio and your your showroom I
should say and open it up to the public and and kind of you know try to Ser as
not only general public but also you know contractors and other designers um so with the design studio
being at home during 2020 and having a lot of Spare Time on My Hands is kind of what prompted that decision my husband
is an entrepreneur and I was always jealous of his um schedule I guess he he was working from home even before coid
and I was like I want to do that too you know so uh when I got sent home during Co I was getting all my work done in two
hours then we would go golfing for a couple of hours and then I didn't know what to even do with the rest of my day
you know so I started doing some um freelance stuff if you will for friends and family members and just helping them
out and then my entrepreneurial husband was like we got to make this into a business we gotta we got to make this
something and um I was really excited about it too I mean he definitely didn't force me or anything he's he's been a
great support and a great help in all of that and so we made it legit um at that
point and then um the reason for starting the showroom of course officing
at home was not everything it was cracked up to be I find it um I find it easy but I find it hard to um end work
at the end of the day and so I wanted a place where my team could meet um you know now that I have a team it it would
be helpful to have an office ourselves it would be helpful to have a conference room where we can take our clients and
we can present to them their floor plans their renderings and pull samples um and
then obviously there's a monetary component of it as well right now we're shopping everywhere else and and that's
all dollars that we're giving um to somebody else and so being able to just have another uh income stream was looked
like a good idea for me and hopefully it is um and then you know my goal with
targeting other designers and contractors is just that I feel that I've been doing this long enough that I
know what other designers want and need here in this market um one big example
of that is you know how divided East and West Witchita are right yeah there's
nothing there's no showrooms on the east side of town really I mean we've got a couple but really most of them are um
larger box chain stores and if you want something besides that there's not really a good option um so that was one
of the reasons that I put it where it was and then also I think that there's a need for that from a designer
perspective a nicer smaller showroom that's more boutique style less less is
more um we won't have a ton of stuff we'll have a very limited selection and um we want to do a really
great designer program to incentivize them to bring their clients in um and
and then yeah um just being in the location where we're at is what made us want to be open to the public because
it's a big like it's a strip center basically so there's people walking back and forth um all the time lots of
restaurant in there and and other stuff so well awesome congrats on all that by
the way yeah thank you so guys uh when you you are
selecting helping the client select flooring uh how often are you working
with the a designer um very minimal actually
um yeah let me let me move this sorry I was coughing earlier so that's why I Disappeared came back um so as far as
working with a designer very minimal and and the reason is is that uh most of the clients already have what they want
picked out or they have something in mind and like she said earlier it's um it's a luxury right and a lot of people
are always trying to pinch those pennies so to speak but when you have uh clients
that don't have the time um they just want someone to make a decision because
they can't make it in the house that's when we run into it quite a bit um and the designers we work with work out of
other other uh showrooms or they have their own so it's really pretty easy the
only questions we get is will this perform yeah this happen and not a lot
of them have the degree in architecture like she does so I'm sure that she kind of already has a little bit of an upper
hand on that performance is key I don't know my buddy Zach is an architect and he told me that they don't know
nothing yeah um yeah I know
that fortunately for for for us uh the designers that we do work with we we've
had a relationship for a very long time um [Music] and they don't really have the best
experiences with a lot of uh the trades a lot of the flooring installers uh that's the only one I could really
relate to unless they vent but uh and that led me to a question actually and I
wanted to ask her is like how do you select your cont contractors how do you build your team
what are you looking for um and the reason I asked that is because we've been fortunate to keep getting repeat
business like they don't call anybody they have a an install that a level of
difficulty they already know what they're going to call and I don't those are some of the projects
that I look forward to doing because it's it's not a race to the bottom it's a what is this going to cost yeah um to
answer your question on uh how do I pick my contractors it's been a that's probably been the hardest
part of my job actually is finding the right contractor and getting them to stick around right um either being
willing to work with me or being willing to stick to this area which all um but
we I mean I went through probably one contractor every three months when I first got started and I obviously um
hold my people to very high standards um not only on the the work that they do but on their timelines and on their
fairness with the clients as far as you know if things come up for additional they want you know a change order more
money things like that um so I was pretty much going through a contractor every three months when I first started
and then I was fortunate enough about a year and a half ago to find a general contractor who reached out to me and so
it was a really good setup because I could test him out on his own projects right so he reached out to me he said I
need your help with design on these these bathrooms and I was able to help him out and kind of watch him from afar
as I'm doing that and seeing how he treats his clients and how he how he works you know how his what his level of
expertise is with everything um and I've worked with him ever since and to me
like he's why go find anybody else he's great so yeah we' we've worked with uh
multiple designers and designers reach out to us was to uh you know help them
not only select product once they have a good color scheme going just to make sure that the right products are in the
right area uh from a performance standpoint uh but also to actually
perform the work and you know bid the job and um a lot of times when you're
working with designers we try to Encompass uh you
know really open up the lines of communication to understand their vision
and and U you know provide expertise where we have it uh so let's move on to the meat and
potatoes which is kind of we're curious on design Trends and you know where
where is design going how can you help us to understand when we're showing clients like where is it all going it
seems you know we were so gray black and white for decade or more what happened gray
what's that that's what I was GNA say what happened to gray yeah so you know I
still see it but it seems to be softening or or or um maybe changing to
more of a taupy color I don't know I I just curious of um not only where are
the trends but from your opinion where do the trends start who starts these things where who says you know Gray's
over let's start something else that's a great question um well so first of all the the way that I
kind of collect my knowledge on what's what's trendy and what's not is I try to do a decent amount of traveling and
seeing what's going on in other places um I just recently judged the parade of
homes in um Tulsa which is not that far away but um they actually have a lot of
people coming in from California similar to Texas and so uh a lot of the trends
there kind of mimic what was happening on the coasts and you'll always hear that Trends start on the coast whether
that's interior design or clothing trends or even like graphic design um
you know it always starts at the coast is what people say and then it comes to us slowly but tulso was a really good
representation of what's happening on the coast because they have a lot of Californians there now and so anyway
while we were there judging the pr of homes um I was actually very pleasantly surprised to see not a lot of gray um
like you said Paul it's there still it is more muted it is more beige influence
so it's more of a gray if you will um but there was really there was no gray flooring there were not really any gray
walls um there was a little bit of gray Cabinetry um a little bit of um maybe a
lighter gray wall but nothing nothing dark at all I mean nothing like your
shirt or or darker gray um there was a lot of color being used um in the actual
hard finishes of the homes there was a lot in the Cabinetry and on ceilings in
powder bathrooms uh tile in bathrooms things like that which was really
exciting to see um mostly the colors were like sage greens and um there were
a couple of almost uh mauve colors that I
saw I think it's coming back what color mauve is uh yeah um yeah you need to
Google it it's it's something um so and then I just actually
yesterday did the parade of homes in Witchita so you know I'm comparing these two and I'm thinking to myself is it
going to be similar are we still way off and actually we were we were pretty spoton with what they're doing there so
um in my opinion that's kind of what the trends are now I've seen it enough to know that that's kind of where we're
leaning and then you know my clients when I work with them they're always giving me a big Pinterest board full of
all the stuff that they like right and I'm seeing a lot of the same colors there I'm seeing a lot of sage green um
so that's where it starts is Pinterest I think it starts on Pinterest and you know who's who's making those pins I
don't know it could be could be Europeans it could be um I don't know it
could be aliens for all I know but um and then I think that you know
magazines and TV shows like HGTV and
even you know Instagram celebrities or influencers on Instagram whatever they're sharing
whatever they're doing uh that really helps set the trends a lot too almost sounds like they're just kind
of collecting an algorithm and that's what's being uh put pushed to the Forefront all the basically social media
is controlling everything the what else is like everything else yeah exactly um
when you said said colors is it you mentioned Mau and sage green you know
one of the things that was pretty predominant with the gray was really almost an
Institutional s level feel I mean it got really cold for a while yeah in
design are they trying to just bring more color in in general do you think or
is it um specific colors that are starting to Trend you see what I'm saying is it just
any color is okay we need more color into our in into uh design in general
yeah and um I would definitely say it's specific colors that are starting to Trend like I'm not seeing yellow at all
um and I know I remember growing up my parents had their whole first level of their house painted a light yellow so
like that hasn't come back yet um hope doesn't I I hope not either we're switch
to White from yellow right now oh good okay um I'm a big fan of of white like I
almost tell all my clients to paint their walls white and then you know it gives you a blank slate to start with
and then we can go from there um but anyway I I do think it's specific colors
and I think those colors are based almost on a like a rotating wheel of what was trendy you know people my age
have PTSD of yellow so that's not going to be trendy for a while yet now once my
generation starts to hit like probably their 60s and their 70s and nobody listens to us anymore because we're old
then that color might start to come back because we've all kind of forgotten about how terrible it was um that kind
of seems to be the trend of what colors come in and out in my opinion oh that's
interesting what you just said um about age so can you break age groups into
specific demographics for color trends does that have a lot to do with it I think well I just I want to you know
burgundy and teal were the colors when I was growing up like in the 80s oh man early 90s I Liv
in the hood was burgundy black and gold well still there the point here is it
has neither one of them colors have come back and so what you're saying is a a a
pretty interesting Insight maybe when I'm 70 yeah then
they'll be back and if if so and I'm still shooting this podcast I'm gonna come on and say emo was right I was
right you have to bring me back for a guest a reappearance I love it interesting so um
when you are selecting colors do you like the permanent colors so the wall colors and those kind of things you just
said you kind of like more of a blank slate whether it's white or maybe a um
um a light color in some sort then you start building around that with you know
your flooring and your tile and your things like that what what do you do there what is the um what should we
consider when we're working with someone and they have uh a beautiful building
residential or commercial uh you know their home their office space um we have
white walls or or light colored walls what what do you want to see in the flooring is it like do you want to
contrast greatly or or does it is it more of a product of like what kind of
facility it is as well um yeah I think that all of that goes into it I think that even the um you know in a house at
least the owner's opinion goes into it a little bit too um there's not always necessarily a right or wrong answer
because I mean in my opinion interior design is Art and art is always subjective what I like you're not going
to like and what you like Daniel's not going to like you know um so but there's definitely some some color theories that
will tell you if something does not go together and part of the reason I like to start with white walls is because
well white obviously is bright it feels clean it feels um open it reflects light
so it makes your space feel bigger and then I like to start there because we can kind of go any Direction with our
flooring right we could go black brown we could even go white or gray on the floors or we could do a color I mean
honestly because it's open at that point to to pretty much anything you want um in my opinion the thing that looks the
best is having a higher contrast flooring with the White Walls if you do go white or light on the walls um so
anything like medium brown tones down to Black is kind of the best fit in my
opinion for that gotcha well I love I love the
um when when you have really light walls and really dark floors it doesn't always
work uh we we do a lot of dentist offices and putting lvt in their
operatory areas uh we don't put dark because of all the spit and the
toothpaste and the stuff just shows up everywhere all of a sudden so that's obviously where that's one of the things
that a lot of designers don't think of and maybe they some do but not not all of them and those are just things that
we we experience later on when someone's like is there a better way to clean this
floor I'm constantly cleaning all the White toothpaste off or whatever and you're like well maybe we shouldn't put
dark walnut or black walnut in absolutely yeah spes yeah I mean and it's funny because everyone thinks that
white shows everything right but it's absolutely the other way around with floors at least um dark floors really do
show everything and I also think like to your point that's why it is helpful to
have designers or Architects or even flooring people who specialize in a certain field uh because if you're doing
you know churches or dentist office or vet clinics or day carees all day you're going to have a lot more knowledge on
exactly what products work best functionally and aesthetically for those types of
spaces when you work with uh the your cont contract or a flooring company or
something uh let's use flooring do you enjoy does it bother you at all when
they bring product to you and say this is what you should use and then there's a color selection within that product
line or would you rather we have found I probably need to qualify this
question we have found that sometimes uh designers can be really stuck on their
product even if it may not be the right
application yeah no I always leave it I mean I if you as a flooring expert are
willing to give me Insight on what brand of flooring I should use I am personally
more than happy to hear you out on that because I cannot mentally keep track of
the right brand of everything for every product that I'm selecting because I'm doing floors trim doors Windows paint
you know it goes on and then it goes into furniture too right and there's a whole list of 250 other brands of
furniture that I'm supposed to keep track of as well and so if you as the flooring expert are willing to advise me
on that um I am more than happy to hear hear that out that might be the architect in you yeah maybe the
reasonable part yeah um I think that maybe a lot of the times designers you
know we are used to having contractors or whoever might
be try to tell us the right way to do our job and so that might be kind of where that comes from that you're
experiencing that with designers sometimes but um no I am I'm not that
way at least I like to think so yeah well we've worked I mean we've had both
ways where the designer really appreciated it I was just curious if uh how you felt about that and then um you
know obviously we used to have a Design Center and have tons of designers come in and
use it was similar concept from the size
standpoint um that you have which is like it wasn't you know some massive
30,000 foot showroom of tile and uh but we were really selective of what goes in
there um but working with designers inside the uh Design Center as we called
it was that always tend to tended to uh
Foster a good uh Team atmosphere it's when they have selected something on a
set of drawings and we're like that is not going to work in a shower room it's LBT and it's glued down that's gonna be
a problem yeah and they're like well just use it you know
anyway on to the next question before I stick my foot in my
mouth the uh uh next question and and
this kind of tends to go a little bit more on the business side how do you how do you bridge the gap between desire and
budget when you're dealing with the client and they got a you know that that old saying a you know what what is a
champagne taste with a beer budget beer budget yeah I hear that all the time um
I've never had anybody tell me they don't have a budget um I've had people who won't give me a number and then it's
not until I've picked stuff out that they say that that's not in their budget and then you know that's obviously always frustrating because you're like
well what is your budget you know that would have been good to know uh but yeah it's definitely a challenge my biggest
thing is I won't even look at stuff if I don't if it's not in their budget so as soon as they give me a number if I know
that you know we have $5 a square foot to spend on flooring I will because I usually start my search online at least
um that's how I do it now when it when I have a showroom that'll probably change but um I will filter it by my price and
I don't even look at anything that's not in my price point um and so that kind of helps me to stay within their budget um
as far as quality goes you know if there isn't item that I think is going to be
better for them and it's not in their budget I'll usually bring that to the clients and kind of let it be their call
you know hey this is a dollar a square foot more it's going to be a $22,000 um you know addition but I
really think it's worth it because it's going to last you another 15 years it's not going to scratch as much and it's
going to be better for your pets H something like that so so a lot of times when designers um one of the challenges
is when homeowners find something on Pinterest and say this is what I and they fall in love with it I I've
literally had it happen where they absolutely fall in love with it and they're like well where else can we cut
to get this budget yeah no I've got yeah I've got some clients that are um kind of doing that
right now I mean they're they bought a 100-year-old house in right right on the river and they want to add on a full
glass wall on the back of the house so that they can see their View and that's like the Mantra of their project they
need to do that now they also need to gut and remodel the rest of the house because it's hundred years old but you know that's like the glass is going to
happen one way or another even if the rest of the house has to have um 50 Cent carpet throughout you know
but that's kind of what the whole the the most important part of the project is and so I think that being able to
figure that out too with your clients is really key um being able to find out what where their priorities lie and I
always say that usually the the spaces that you're going to spend the most time in your kitchen your living room uh
maybe the primary bedroom those are probably going to be your main spaces and then let's start there and then we
can cut in other spots if we need to
awesome guys what's your thoughts on budget what you what have you had to
kind of mental gymnastics have you guys had to do to I think it's less Gap I
think it's less the material for us than it is the overall package because people have a I don't know where they get the
dollar amount in their mind but it's like Oh I thought this was just going to be like $5 a square foot it's like
material is $5 a square foot these days then you want us to remove and
install everything do you guys ever run across
um as you're working through a project and and and interior designer or not do
you ever run across where your client gets really honed in
on a certain product and you have to figure out other products for other areas to reduce cost to make that
product fit in we we do our very best to conform to
their changes that they're trying to have right but if uh I'll be honest if if it's if we're not working through a
designer and I'm talking to a client I'm I'm very direct I try to it's like hey look
I understand you really want to make that change but but I'm letting you know like if if I know it's going to fail and it's not going to perform then I I'm
really have no interest in doing it uh to be honest with you and I mean that that's the short version
of it right usually we go down a conversation and I I drop it very lightly and I say well these are the
potential downfalls um as far as working with a designer or through a designer um
we do have the luxury of being at the Forefront of some of that and and giving
her our or them our our worries on some of the products
um and then and then they usually narrow it down but that's an individual designer but if we're working with a design firm that's a lot harder to do
especially that's more of the commercial world than it is the residential World um they don't like to hear that their
selections are wrong yeah at all um but well maybe that's part of the key is the
um independent designer that's that's a good insight as well is yeah uh we you
know when I get outside my comfort zone I I reach out to the designers that I know and try to get somebody on board
because I may be an expert in the flooring product itself but how it ties in with all the other elements in a
building I'm I'm not I'm not a designer uh so that's where people like Emma come
in to save the day a lot of times um I guess
uh from when we're talking about you know color and design you have an
architect background or degree uh how much has that influence the way that you
approach these things yeah Masters and man so uh what what kind of things uh in
your architectural um uh from that degree does that
influence Your Design because you do floor plans and things like that as well you said so obviously that's going to be
derived from the architectural side of you uh it's really intriguing to me that
you have both Sid so I'm curious when you when you start selecting your your
products that you're going to utilize does that I mean it seems like it would influence the way that you do your
selections not just for color you may be an outlier I guess is what I'm saying where you you consider how it's going to
be used as opposed to just what looks pretty yeah um so in architecture school they I think
there was one class maybe on finishes so there's not a whole lot of focus on it but the one class that there is on
finishes is all about um functionality it's not really got anything to do with color and so it definitely helped me um
a little bit to kind of just take those other items into consideration um they're really good about teaching you
that in interior design school as well that you know we're not just looking at color we have to make sure that the product is going to hold up and that
it's going to function the way that the client needs it to um I would say the biggest thing that the architecture
degree did for me is it opened up my knowledge into commercial design a lot
more um really when you do interior design school the focus is on homes and then switching over to architecture
school it's Swit it's on Commercial design right and so um I don't know if
it changed a whole lot about how I think about the functionality of products but it definitely added a lot to my
knowledge uh for codes and Ada and all of that and that all goes into selecting
product as well I mean not a lot of people know that there's a a coefficient of friction that you need to maintain on
your tile if it's going into an ADA Bathroom um or just a commercial bathroom in general so um it definitely
did add to my knowledge base and I'm I'm very helpful for that because it makes me sound really smart if I'm able to
spit ball stuff out remember one time I was working with a guy and he we were
doing a therapy clinic and you know he texted me two pictures of door knobs and he's like which door knob should I pick
and one of them was one of the traditional round where you twist it and one of them was more of the lever kind
of doorknob and I just respond you know he wanted my opinion on looks and I responded and I said you have to do the
um lever knob because you have to be to code and part of ADA code is that
somebody without a hand has to be able to open that door so you have to be able to open it with your elbow if you don't
have hands and he was just like whoa that's I would have never thought about
that I'm like yeah well never thought about that and we work in hospitals all the time yep so well everybody just
learned something now you'll start paying attention I bet you'll see it a lot more so there you go so so you're
saying that that your your background with your degree helps a little bit with the Engineering Process as well so that
you kind of have an idea of this might be feasible or this is way out of line
or with the budget you submitted to me I can tell you that we're open up this can of worms yeah exactly yep it does well
and it helps that you uh are creative but it's almost like you're
creative second yeah like you're you're you're analytical and math driven first
and so that probably helps a lot because I I uh I love all my designers so this
isn't you know but even though they're taught just like you
said in design school that functionality is important um I I have found that um you know a
fair number can get really hung up on a certain color like that color if I
cannot get it switched over to a different brand and it keep all the
same design look color like they don't want to look at at it and it's they get
really stuck on that piece of it um I'm working on a project right now where you
know it's it's over budget and so we're getting creative with some of the product selections and trying to uh
cross over an lvt that is pretty unique to that brand
in style and so I can't find the something that's like almost the exact
same and it is it is a struggle we are struggling to to get that someone has to
move like the budget's not going to move it's been cleared they're not going
to spend any more money and I've got to switch this out to be able to have any
uh hope of hitting the budget so in that realm it's like please like come my
direction a little bit you got to give a little bit yeah yeah so that's why that question came up earlier actually the
the the gap between the budget and the uh you know the design and and how you
like work through that because we we definitely have those scenarios come up
fairly often a few several times a year at least where you know we're stuck
almost between a rock and a hard place so yeah we were on a project a few years ago where this um she was actually at
maybe she wasn't a designer I forget what she did but uh
she was selecting the colors it sounds like she really really wanted a bamboo floor and it wasn't in the budget so
they went with an engineered like pind looking floor so it had it was real
naughty and had a lot of dark planks oh no she was a designer that's right I know what you're talking about after we
got everything done it was always don't like this over here don't like this
board don't like this board and it's like she was a designer actually she's a
designer for a very large firm um she does a lot of uh spec designs for
companies and she selected a material that the variation in the in the boards
was all over the place right it was different sizes like it was a it was a wood floor
and instead of saying what she didn't like at the beginning she waited till everything was installed insted yeah
that's crazy well this kind of leads me to um kind of my final question for you
Emma which is you know it was a uh touched on a little bit earlier but what
are the keys to success in your mind when dealing in these scenarios where
you're dealing with other people you're dealing with a team you talked about finding a good contractor but a lot of
times uh you're kind of in a luxury position uh in the low bid world of
commercial building where uh you never know who the GC uh is going to be until
the bid is over and and you get told that oh guess what XYZ gc's the the the
Builder uh and they have their team that they've assembled of low biders
and so but working in those scenarios when you're working with teams and just what
the guys just brought up with um Jose was just talking about where he's trying to uh you know be proactive or he wishes
that would have been proactive we all have our frustrations with you know working within a team but what are some
of the keys to success that that you found in your relationship with uh say
this uh current Builder you're working with what what makes it work so well not just this quality there's got to be some
other things yeah um I mean I know that this one's a cliche but honestly communication is 95% of this job and I'm
sure you guys know that but even if something does go wrong because no not even if when something goes wrong
because it always does there you go um if you can communicate it upfront and
effectively and be professional about it and catch it in time and you can
communicate that to your client you'll actually find that most of the time they're not that upset about it I mean people aren't usually upset about
something going wrong they're upset that they were not told or that they were not asked um so for example I was on a
project and the contractors decided they were going to move a wall nobody told me nobody told the client they just moved
it and you know their excuse was oh well we needed to move it because the plumbing something about the plumbing
line and I was said okay well that you should have at least run it by the client like even if you don't want to
run it by me of course I would have liked to have had it run by me but you need to at least tell the homeowner
again they wouldn't have been upset about it because they had to do it um just being able to communicate that um
and then you know I think communication of timeline and budget is also huge uh putting forward the right expectations
making sure your clients know what to expect again they're not going to be upset if you tell them it's going to
take me six months but you got to tell them up front and that way they they have that expectation in mind um so I
think that that's really the reason that uh my contractor who I use uh works so well with me um is because we're we're
pretty good about communicating with one another I probably talk to him 15 times a day
um we on the phone probably every 30 minutes just different project or I'm
asking him a question about something um and again that's just to eliminate as much error as we can uh well that goes
even past like communication I just want to point out that that's embracing
almost communic like really embracing communication
yeah what you said earlier about the wall being moved I would imagine that
part of the um frustration can come that they had no say in it like maybe they would have
wanted the wall moved a little further right or you know what I mean like if the wall had to move yeah me as the
homeowner maybe I want to make sure the wall moves where I want it if it has to
yeah so giving options and communicating exactly sound like those
go hand inand yeah and then just the respect of you know knowing that you're not it's not your house or not your
building it is somebody else's money it's somebody else's project it's somebody else's um a lot of the time
when we're doing homes it's somebody's dream that they've been saving for for 10 15 years and preach please preach
yeah I no and I think it's I think it's disrespectful to just decide oh I'm G to move a wall because I do this every day
and I know what's best well that's fine but you know it's not your house so it's not your choice and I think that's what
it comes down to is just having respect ultimately for your clients and then for me for my general contractor and my
general contractor should do the same for me so something like that can change the entire look of a space um yeah know
like if if everything was structured around that wall because it was breaking up a sight line I get it yeah um and you
know that was probably something that should have been caught on the on the initial uh walkth through or when we
were drawing the floor plans um but it wasn't and it did it it ended up affecting the bathroom they ended up
losing some storage in the bathro that they would have liked to have had obviously it's not the end of the world
um and thankfully they were very reasonable clients and they were aware that it wasn't the end of the world but
in some cases that could have been a a bigger mess than it was yeah well we've
had a lot of communicate or a lot of podcasts um that end up with that word
coming up like it's almost Universal we'll be talking about something or have
a whole uh topic on something and then it comes back to communication is key and uh so I
can't you know bring that up again for our audiences that when you're dealing with clients and you're dealing with
your general contractor as a installer or you're dealing with a store you're dealing with you know Architects or
designers communication both good or bad timely communication yeah um is kind of
the key uh it's a struggle I mean we we have to work with our team uh you know
our our leadership uh has to work with our team all the time to really make sure that communication is uh fostered
as a positive it it seems like um you
know if you don't embrace it the way you guys have with you know your your uh GC
that you're working with or like I know that Daniel and Jose are huge on communication um you know that's what we
preach are to our project managers and our estimators is like if we're not going to b a job that we've been invited
to we need to let the client know we're not bidding this job like as soon as possible or on the project management
side if something goes wrong and material gets delayed it's better to call and say hey this material got
delayed as soon as possible um again that's giving some options to the
designer and to the uh end user to maybe switch product uh
if you wait until it's on a boat coming from Korea and you cannot return it then they're
stuck with that but they're worse off they're stuck with that timeline that right may not work for them so that
communication I'm glad you brought that up uh that that is U Paramount in most
things so I think too like um you know you present a problem when it comes up
and I kind of decide if that is worth sharing with my client usually I'll kind
of Judge if it's something that they need to be told about but if I do bring
up a problem to them I'm always pairing it with a solution so I had chairs that were delayed for a client they needed
them in their house because they were going to have house guests and they were going to have dinners and they needed their dining chairs and so I was texting
her on a Saturday and she asked where they were and I said they're still not here I know your house guests are I on
Tuesday I am so sorry about this I will go to uh I don't remember where I
suggested going I will go get you some chairs and they will be in your house by Tuesday you they will go with your house
they will go with the design style that we that we have going your client or your guests can use them while they're
at your house and then I will pick them up and I will return them afterwards and she responded she was like wow that's an
amazing answer or something and you know just being being able to present that
solution as well is is really important it's crazy how they go from super angry about something wow thank you yeah I
think I her off guard because I think she was just expecting me to say you know they're not here sorry deal with it
and I know that in flooring that's that's a lot different you can't put a flooring in and then well I bring up I
was gonna ask these guys how often have you put in temporary uh carpet or something so that the facility could get
open but then have to go back and and replace it when the materials finally get in it's not even opening sometimes
it's hey we have inspections we need this down right now yeah and like well I
got something at the warehouse let's just throw something in real quick I had to do aary carpet in a movie theater in
Iowa so dve driving down there to install it temporary to come back home and wait for a phone call wow yeah we
even installed um in fact we have several pallets of product and and
different um of different various products just for that like okay put
this cheap carpet in for a couple of weeks until their actual carpet comes in
uh keep it in the neutral easy that's another reason good for us to understand
kind of design and colors coming down the pipe is we try to keep a little bit of product that we can throw in pull up
rep palletize for the next time uh and use it in temporary manners uh we we
have to do that fairly often honestly and crazy tile or with a walk-off carpet
uh specifically if it's like a walk-off system like a petat or something like
that I cannot tell you how many times these are all custom built for the
vestibule uh that we've put in walk-off carpet in a temporary manner until the
the the mat comes in and it could be three four or five months sometimes before they get to fabricating it making
it and sending it to you wow unfortunately we had a car dealership we just uh just got it in but it took
almost four months for that uh product to get made and we had to put temporary carpet in
um and we had to be cognizant of the facility so yeah we we have to do that
sometimes too wow crazy I had no idea okay good to know all right well we're
nearing the end here guys you got anybody uh commenting has something here he says that
um when he's working for a contractor and he's installing an expensive carpet
and the designer wants him to do it so this is the designer working for the contractor but he charges a lot more
than he already got quoted then you know they always have to
call him back to do repairs but I think that's different though right because if who's in charge of the project the
contractor or the designer because when we're working with designers it's always the designer that's in charge of it
and it's always what do you charge it's never the contractor saying that's too much yeah like yeah how do you handle
that as a designer um so with my contractor who I'm working with right now uh the
understanding is sort of whoever's client it was first that's who kind of heads up the project if that makes sense
so if it was my marketing efforts that got me the client then it's kind of my project and vice versa um so if you
bring him in or brought you in exactly yeah whoever whoever brought the other one in that's kind of who is in charge
of the project now there's there's phases and we have our systems worked out where I'm ordering you know
materials X Y and Z and he's ordering BC and D um so obviously if he orders in a
product and it comes in wrong or it's the wrong color it's the wrong budget whatever that might be um that's h on
him uh but yeah uh that's definitely a tricky tricky one yeah
I should have named this uh or the title of this podcast um working with a design team
and Architects because I think that's what it's turned into but it's it's great information because so many of us
have to you know have these relationships and work through uh issues
um so having your insights been been awesome yeah thank you got you guys got
any uh final questions before we close her down easy one so if I wanted to
stock some material on my shelf and be ready for a designer what is a good trending material to have ready for
residential let's just say residential because commercial is its own Beast for what is a what is a good material to
have ready uh ready to rock and ins is this like a hard surface or soft surface
let's just call it in general I'm not doing a lot of carpet
right now at all so if that answers that question question a little bit um I mean I've other than staircases I really
don't do much carpet at all um I would say vinyl flooring is kind of the new
thing um I see a lot of people getting away from um or uh laminate I'm sorry
they're getting a little bit further away from lvp um and I see a lot more laminate
flooring going in now um and so I would say just like a medium colored laminate
floor you know the wood laminate floor something uh in the taupey Grays
ory Brown say brown yeah I would not do it I would not go gray um I just think
it's not I don't think it's G to be around much longer I think it's already on its way out and I don't think that we're going to see that Resurgence for
probably 80 years so hopefully I would say for all
those people out there that have a gray house the good thing is gray is not not burgundy or teal or one of and what I
always say about color is if you like it then that is the what should be in your house I don't it doesn't matter if it's
a trend it doesn't matter if I like it if you like it then uh great you know
it's your house well that's uh they're the ones who pay the bill so I think that's a
good approach shout out to Jorge and Kevin for actually commenting today oh thanks
Kevin thanks Jorge thanks guys there's a couple of our uh really really high-end
uh installer guys that join our podcast every week they're great dudes we got to
hang out with them again a couple weeks ago so shout out to Jorge and and uh
appreciate your comments well I I want to thank you Emma for coming on today and and just kind of wrapping with us
about design and and your approach to business um again congratulations on
your new digs coming up and uh all the success that you're having keep up the good work and
hopefully we get to work together in the future and uh yeah so with that guys you
got anything left no that's it thank you for letting us know right away that you're smarter than us with your
master's degree we appreciate appreciate that Paul Paul said brag on myself so
that's right that's great and when I when I go to you know when I'm looking at projects they always ask me does this
look good over here does this look good over here and my answer is always I'm not a designer because I don't want to
have my hand in that and then they don't like it then it's my fault that's right yeah that's right shoot me a text next
time that happens I'll help them video there you go there go I'll shoot you a text and then the invoice is in the mail
the next day probably that's that's right that's you just yeah yeah all right well
thanks again for joining us it's been a pleasure getting to know you a little bit more and uh understanding your
approach here um particularly the way you approach business honestly I I it's
impressive and I'm I'm glad that you're having some success with finding a good team to work with you and growing your
team so thank you gentlemen as always I appreciate you and the Staples of the
Huddle and with that I am going to close it up so thank you everybody for joining
us and again a quick reminder hit that like And subscribe give us a comment and
uh let us know what you'd like for us talk about guests you'd like for us to bring on and I'm sure we'll have Emma on
again in the future so with that we'll see you guys next week see you have a good one all right thank
[Music] you