We hope that you all had a very merry Christmas and happy holidays thus far.  For many of us, decorating the Christmas tree is a favorite pastime during December.  It’s especially nostalgic when you take out that beloved ornament that brings back memories of yesteryear.

Here are some favorite ornaments and the memories that they evoke from a few of our team members:

Little. Musical. Pinecone. Elves.  The words come together to form this sweet little trio.  My parents purchased these in 1964 for our first Christmas in my childhood home, the year I was four.  We had a large hearth with flagstone display shelves, which my mother festooned with evergreen garland, ribbons, small packages and figures.  I was so proud when my father held me up, so that I could tuck the miniature musicians among the fragrant branches, forming a little orchestral vignette.  They have been a part of my Christmas décor ever since, through my childhood, my daughter’s childhood, and now my grandchildren’s.  Truly making music and celebrating the holidays with us for 45 years!  – Martha Kirkpatrick, Director, Member Services

My mother’s side of the family is Cuban, moving to the US from Cuba almost 50 years ago. My family is big on continuing its Hispanic traditions, so my sister and I grew up celebrating El Día de los Tres Reyes, or Three Kings Day, on January 6 of each year. Every Christmas my family would set up two separate trees – a larger Christmas tree that we would place all of the presents under, and a much smaller Christmas tree that my sister and I would decorate on our own. At the top of the first tree we would place an angel, but we always topped the second tree with a star to represent the star the three magi followed. On January 6 each year, my sister and I would sing along with our mother to a song about the three kings. It was a childhood tradition that I looked forward to every year, so the star tree‐topper will always hold a special place in my heart.  – Amanda Butterworth, Director, Creative Services

One year ago, my fiancé and I decided to start a Christmas tradition where we picked out a Christmas tree ornament once a year.  With this being our first tree and start to a new tradition the choice to start at the top was an easy one.  Enjoying a favorite pastime, we were strolling the Charlottesville downtown mall, and spotted an angel in the window of a local shop.  We went inside, and after careful examination we knew this was the one.  The angel was made of metal screen and had a silver finish with gold accents around her wings and skirt.  The halo looked as if it were made of a bird’s nest.  It was perfect!  The angel has stood on top of our tree for two years now, and will proudly be the focal point of our Christmas tree for years to come.  – Lolly Rush, Senior Associate, Member Services

One of my favorite Christmas ornaments is a commemorative  White House ornament.  Although I have collected these for years, I do have a certain favorite.  The ornament has an eagle on it, and it reminds me of my father.  He was a WWII veteran, who at the age of 40 built a business that was so respected, he actually renovated and restored the Office of the Vice President, and many other executive buildings in DC.  This ornament reminds me that we live in a wonderful country, where our possibilities are only limited by our own imagination and drive.  – Margie Strickland, Associate Director, Accounting Services

We hope that your Christmas and New Years is a time filled with both memories of the past and visions for the future.

This martini was featured in our December e-newsletter, The Gibson.  If you don’t receive The Gibson, click here to sign up!

Many of the Christmas and holiday martinis that I found sounded very sweet and thick.  This one, however, is a perfect marriage of class and elegance to add to a holiday night.

Ingredients:

• 1 (1.5 fluid ounce) jigger vodka (top shelf)
• 1/4 ounce Grand Marnier
• 1-1/2 ounces fresh lime juice
• 1 tsp cinnamon water (boiled water with cinnamon and sugar)
• 1 ounce blood orange juice
• 1 fig slice garnish

Preparation:

1. Place liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice.
2. Shake to blend and chill.
   
3. Strain into a chilled martini glass, and garnish with a fig slice.
4. Enjoy!

The design industry is no stranger to the acronym heavy list of professional organizations available to the trade. Professional organizations serve a vital purpose to those well established within the industry, help to foster connections with those that are new to their chosen field, and act as a resource and a mentor to those seeking an education or degree within the trade.

Let’s spell out a few of them for you!

AKBD – Associate Kitchen & Bath Designer. A certification examination for students provided by the National Kitchen & Bath Association.
ASID – American Society of Interior Designers. The leading organization for interior designers. Founded in 1975, with 40,000 members, there are also student chapters that are very active throughout the country.
IDS – Interior Design Society. Founded in 1973, dedicated to serving the residential interior design industry through its 3,000 members.
IIDA – International Interior Design Association. Founded in 1994, this organization has a global reach with 13,000 members in 29 chapters around the world.
NCIDQ – National Council of Interior Design Qualification. A competency based examination for interior designers, and serves as a qualifier for many of the professional organizations.
NKBA – National Kitchen & Bath Association. Founded in 1963 with over 40,000 members serving 11 industry segments in chapters throughout the US and Canada.

These organizations provide an excellent opportunity to network with your industry partners, celebrate at their many festive events and laud the achievements of fellow designers.

It’s 8:30 am Monday morning and you turn on your computer to start the day.

Enforce the one click rule. Once you open an e-mail it is much more time efficient and effective to reply the minute you finish reading it.

Organize e-mails by folders. Set up a folder with-in your inbox for each client to catalog all of your correspondence.  Then broaden your electronic mail message organization method with more general folders. Personally, I recommended assembling a folder for each client project, pricing, acknowledgements, tracking information, and invoices.  You can tailor your folders to your needs, for it will drastically reduce the time spent searching for e-mails.

Weekly cleaning of your inbox, spam, and unwanted deleted items. If you really want to go the extra mile, take a few minutes to unsubscribe from promotional e-mail lists you don’t use.  Cleaning out your e-mails will not only increase your productivity, it will also free-up storage space for the entire office.

For a limited time, we are offering our Social Media Launch Pad at a discounted price. Don’t miss out!

Our Social Media Launch Pad sets up your firm’s presence on all appropriate social media platforms. This starting point allows your company to jump into social media and learn along the way.

The Launch Pad includes:
• Kick-off call to explain the different tools and briefly discuss strategy
• Setting up profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Ava Living
• Adding photos, information, and all other necessary details to the above platforms to create pages that will show that you not only have a presence, but have a robust presence and want to encourage engagement
• Creating a blog for your firm, using one of hundreds of wordpress.com templates that work aesthetically with your current web site
• 1 month of “co-piloting” to ensure that you have a resource for questions as you begin using the different tools
• 6 months of unlimited Flight School classes that teach you about how to use Facebook, Twitter, Ava Living, blogging, and LinkedIn for business

Special Discount from December 11-December 31, 2009!

Cost: $695 $595

To learn more about the Social Media Launch Pad, please contact Martha at martha@gibsondesignmanagement.com

The end of the year is fast approaching (we probably didn’t have to remind you!).  A few things to keep in mind so that you can turn over an organized file to your accountant in January:

1.      Make all of your charitable contributions before the end of the year in order to get the benefit of a tax deduction for 2009.  Itemize gifts of goods, while the information is still fresh in your mind.  Remember to also account for the professional time that you donated to that auction.

2.      Make the most of your retirement contributions.  Some contributions can be made until April 14 of 2010 for 2009.  So, now is the perfect time to plan that contribution and make the contributions over the next four months.

3.      Most of us like to defer our income, and increase our expenses in order to decrease our current year tax liability; however, you may need to rethink this strategy as tax rates are on the rise.  Tax cuts created during the Bush administration are set to expire in 2011, which may make it advantageous for you to recognize income now rather than later.  Ask your tax professional.

4.  Ensure that you are up to date on your bank reconciliations so that you have a true balance sheet and income statement on December 31st.

5.  If you do your own payroll, check with your accountant and/or the IRS to ensure that you are aware of the proper year-end forms to file.

6.  In many financial accounting software programs you can only have two fiscal years open at any one time.  That means that in 2010, you must have 2008 closed.  This is especially true if you use Studio Designer.  If 2008 is not closed, be sure to do this before December 31st or you will run into a big mess.

If you are feeling any pinch and worry about what to gather for the end-of-the-year financials, be sure to use your bookkeeper or accountant as a resource.  Feel free to contact our Accounting Services group and we will make sure to either help you or steer you in the right direction.

Recently our design firm ordered a few light fixtures for a project from Unilight out of Montreal, Canada.  The project was under renovation so the fixtures needed to arrive before the contractor left to avoid extra charges.  Two bathroom sconces shipped, one lacked a back plate.

After contacting Unilight to get a back plate shipped, it took them ONE WEEK to ship us a plate that probably cost 50 cents.  The reason?  Our contact said that they had to meet about why a piece was not shipped (to figure out what went wrong in THEIR process) and she had to get a replacement plate approved.  From a business perspective, this does not fly.

In your business, you should empower your people to make something right for your clients.  What this requires from you is

1.  Trust in your team’s decision-making,

2.  The ability to not get mad if your people do something that you would not have done,

3.  Becoming comfortable enough to let your people solve a problem from start to finish without necessarily involving you.

In order to empower people to make things right, you have to trust their good judgment.  By punishing people for

making a decision, you are sending mixed messages.  If you feel more comfortable, set a limit of $100 or $200 cost before they have to check in with you or the team about the decision.  If it’s going to make a happier client to overnight the pillows that are already late so they will be there in time for a party, and it will cost you an extra $50, your team should feel like they can fulfill that without asking.  Furthermore, if you can get your team to a place where they do this without the client asking, you are exceeding expectations (but that’s for another post).

The last thing a client wants when she calls with a grievance that can be easily and quickly solved (such as a back plate shipped) is to hear that it will have to go before committee to make a decision.

Once the error on your part is made, and your client is made happy, then it is time to study your process and fix what went wrong.  That should never be your client’s problem or concern, and should never be a reason for delay on fixing her problem.

This is the BARE MINIMUM that your company should be doing.  We’ll talk more later about how further empowering your team can bring the WOW factor…think Zappos WOW.

I love showrooms! Everything about them appeals to me, from the beautifully lit and displayed product, to the wings of fabrics waiting to be discovered, it all presents infinite possibilities available to designers.

Holly Hunt - New York

The perfectly sharpened pencils nestled in bins with memo sample request pads handily located next to them, the colorful and imaginative shopping bags full of gorgeous fabrics and funky trims, yours for the taking.

Fadini Borghi Fabrics & Trimmings

Graciously offered space to spread out and work, with water, coffee and snacks readily available. A sales associate ready to offer assistance; pricing and tear sheets swiftly and efficiently proffered.

But showrooms are more than that, they are a designer’s life blood, and designers are theirs’.  A perfect example of a symbiotic relationship.  Showrooms and their well-trained staff should be considered allies, a first line of defense. They are problem solvers, who will go to bat for a customer to help in getting to the bottom of a freight issue, or working with a vendor to push a lead time, or getting a difficult question or problem resolved.

The showrooms I have been fortunate to work both for and with have been much more than the selling, they have been about the relationship and the connection.

Gibson Design Management recently launched a Review Center.  This is a place for the design industry to review showrooms on the customer service that it receives.  We hope for it to be a place for showrooms that are providing great service to be lauded, and for those who are not serving the industry well, to improve from.  The way for this review center to be successful is for you to be candid about your experiences and to share those experiences.  We would love to have you contribute to our review center, and spread the word to your industry partners.

Currently, you can review showrooms in the Denver Design District and the Washington DC Design Center.  Please add your stars and reviews.  Posts can be anonymous if you do not feel comfortable adding your name, and of course, your email address will be kept strictly confidential.

We are excited to continue our new Flight School classes on the following social media tools’ uses for business: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ava Living, and blogging.

Our next Flight School class will be offered on Twitter 101 for Business.  The class will be held on:

Thursday, January 21st at 3pm.

Agenda will include:

• Signing up for Twitter.
• Setting up your profile and Twitter page.
• Twitter Lingo: “tweet”, @replies, DMs, “follow”, and more.
• Twitter tips to get you started.
• How Twitter keeps you connected to your customers.
• How Twitter can keep you updated in the Interior Design industry.
• How Twitter helps you to build relationships within your industry.

Each online Flight School class will be limited to 12 participants. This will ensure that people can ask questions and there is interaction between you and your Social Media Flight Instructor. Register below and you will receive a confirmation within 24-48 hours. Classes are 60-90 minutes and include a Q&A session.

Cost: $47.00 per class

When is comes to purchase order management, one of the key components for success lies in the hands of the receiving warehouse.  If you are embarking on a new design project in an unfamiliar area here are some things to look for and consider when choosing a receiver.

1.)    What kind of inventory system do they utilize?  Does the warehouse have the technology to use photographs in their receiving reports?  Do they an accurate record of quantities of items from each vendor?

2.)    What are the hours of operation?   When you’re contacting the company do you speak with a live person or a switchboard?  Good communication with representatives within the warehouse is key.  Avoid warehouses with limited customer services hours.

3.)    Are they flexible and can they schedule last minute deliveries?  I recently encountered a situation where an office desk and credenza were delivered early to a hotel and needed immediate installation.  I was in a pinch, so I immediately called the warehouse we are using for the project to see if they could send an installer the next day.  Although it was last minute they were able to find someone that was available.  This was a win-win situation for both the client and for me.  Make certain you understand the warehouse’s delivery policy before you schedule an installation.

Talk to showrooms and designers in the area and feel out your options.  Build a personable relationship with your warehouse customer service team early on in the project.  They are there to help you run your project seamlessly.