I wouldn’t tell this to just anyone, but I love working in excel. It is such a powerful tool that is too often underutilized. In the design industry it can improve your business no matter what purchase order management program you use.  If you are struggling to make your spreadsheets look just right look, then look no further but here for three easy excel formatting tips.

If you are an interior designer, you’ve probably been asked this question.  Or you’ve at least had to correct someone who thinks that your job consists of picking out fabric and paint colors (solely).  If you are not an interior designer, you might actually wonder what it is that these creative interior designers do?

The good people at Beasley and Henley Interior Design wrote a great post on their blog about the day in the life of an interior designer.  I found it helpful to hone my message, and I actually know what designers do.

Click here to read the full blog post from Beasley and Henley.

Interior designers- how do you educate your clients on what a designer does?  If you’re not an interior designer- what misconceptions do you think there are about interior designers?

Success comes in many sizes and forms, sometimes when you least expect it; and those successes are particularly sweet.  Recently, I was explaining the benefits of project sourcing to a potential client, a very talented, well known and respected designer, how we could assist by pulling fabrics or supplying tear sheets within the parameters that she would specify for us, staying true to her design vision.  She didn’t feel she would ever use that service, as she wanted to make those design decisions, she loved that process, and didn’t want to let that go.

To my delighted surprise, I was given the opportunity to pull supporting fabrics for one of her projects!  She had a presentation in several days, and could not fit the 5 hour round trip to the design center into her schedule.  She supplied me with the vendor and pattern numbers for the driving fabrics, and a few details about durability needs and budget.  The design center is 15 minutes from my office, and within 90 minutes, I had pulled approximately 60 fabrics from numerous vendors and showrooms, stopped at the FedEx store, and sent them off to be delivered to her doorstep the next day.

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Like an amorous high schooler (but less creepy), I occasionally run across companies that I develop a severe business crush on.

My latest company crush is on a Greenville, South Carolina identity and branding company called Brains on Fire.  I am obsessed with the culture that they’ve created and enamored with the fact that their website shows that culture and personality.  [I especially like their Tequila Shots book which explains the 12 company beliefs; imagine a mission statement minus the boring undertones].

I know that I have this business crush when I think

1.  I want our company to be like that, or

2.  If I wasn’t having so much fun working with my team, I would want to work for theirs, or

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Contrary to popular belief, an interior designer’s job does not consist primarily of design time.  This is not the sexy vision that young men and women dream about when they enter design school but it’s the reality that any seasoned designer can confirm.  Project management and project administration are the largest part of being an interior designer; all the brilliant design in the world cannot make up for a poorly run project and an unhappy client.  Effective management and administration will continue to be of paramount importance when running a successful firm but can there be a better mousetrap?

The question that I encourage you to ask yourself and your staff is where that important project management and administration borders on inefficiency.  If you’re like most design firms that we work with, that greatest inefficiency is in the purchasing process.  You may have great technology (like Studio IT) and great systems in place to make this process a little less painful but the reality is that pricing, creating proposals, creating purchase orders, tracking and expediting takes time, often a lot of time.  In fact, I can imagine that much of your purchase order management time can be summed up with a few of these frustrating points:

• Calling multiple showrooms and vendors to get pricing…leaving messages…then calling them again because they didn’t get back to you.
• Calling multiple showrooms and vendors to get pricing…leaving messages…and then missing their next calls because you’re on the phone with another vendor.  Thus begins the illustrious PO management game of phone tag.
• Checking on orders weekly (if you know what’s good for you) because you’ve had too many times where a vendor has failed to notify you that the sofa, which was supposed to ship last week, will actually be another four weeks.  The vendor does not have to deal with your irate client who wanted the sofa before Thanksgiving.
• Creating client proposals that accurately describe the items but don’t give the client too much information so that they don’t “shop” you.
• Dealing with a delay in orders when you’re on vacation, in High Point, on another project install, or generally completely incapable of handling the crises as you’re nowhere near your computer and your office, and might not even have a pen in your purse/pocket that seems to work.

In our design firm, we utilize great technology and we institute effective systems.  Despite our finest efforts, this has not, however, eliminated the items above from rearing their ugly heads.  The reality is that on each project, a design firm may deal with 30+ vendors and showrooms which mean 30+ lines of communication.  When I look at our bottom line, I see this part of our business as the greatest drain, the greatest hindrance to our growth, and our greatest cost.

When we launched Gibson Design Management, we focused on purchase order management.  While we now have multiple services that we offer for the interior design industry, I still believe that our purchase order management service is the best way to make a design firm more profitable and healthy.

Instead of having those 30+ lines of communication open at all times and being the central hub with a plethora of spokes, our purchase order management services give you one “go to” person that handles every order that you place, every item that you want to price, and every piece that you need to track.  At the same time, your company can actually make more money with fewer paper-pushing efforts.

As I write this post I worry that this might be the first time in the history of this blog that I’ve written a sales-y post that is also an educational post.  I would not risk our readers with shameless self-promotion if I did not truly believe that this service can have the greatest impact on a single interior design firm.

We offer a lot of great services and our team is really, really good at what they do.  However, when we sit and talk about our different services, purchase order management is the one service that the team unanimously says “that’s a no-brainer; every design firm should use that.”  Once I explain and write down the numbers on the time and money lost on managing purchasing in-house and then I show that the design firm can actually make more money, it’s not surprising that they say that.

In 2010, if you are interested in growing your bottom line and getting back to the real reason you became a designer, please contact me and we can talk more.  Don’t continue to do things the old way as we all now see that the old way is slowly taking a choke hold on the livelihood of our industry.

On January 1, 2007, the Boise State Broncos shocked the country by upsetting the powerhouse known as the Oklahoma Sooners in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.  At the same time, the Broncos showed, in a David vs. Goliath battle, that hope, faith, and preparedness can be recipe for greatness.

I was lucky enough to be at this game.  I must admit that I lost faith; it seemed that the there were so many things that had to go “right” for Boise State to win the game after losing a 17 point lead and falling behind with only 1:30 left in regulation.  Sooners fans filed out of the stadium, bound to get an early break on the traffic, to only listen to the game going into double overtime on their car radios.

There is a great article from the New York Times about how this game even inspired the numbed sportswriters in the press box to believe that great things were possible.

This is not a football blog post though.  This is a New Year’s post about the importance of hope, faith, and positive thinking in each of our businesses.  We must be prepared.  Boise State would not have succeeded if they had not been completely prepared.  However, almost more importantly, when it seems that the odds are against you, there is never an excuse to give up hope.  Hope costs you nothing.  Great things happen every day; they’re not just on the SportsCenter highlights.

When setting your company goals this year, remember the nuts and bolts, but don’t ever forget the hope and faith that must accompany every day that you run your business and face adversity.  A little team from Idaho stunned the nation; everything did go “right” for them that day.  When you are faced with adversity in your business, don’t forget the Broncos.

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.

Many of us set out each day, especially each Monday, with a spring in our step and the greatest of intentions to do many of the business tasks that we have been putting off for far too long.  History has shown, however, that as business owners or managers when we walk through the door to the office our best laid plans are going to be sidetracked.

Mondays seem to frequently start for me as mentioned above and then quickly spiral out of control; all of a sudden it is 6:30 or 7 pm and while I have been frantically busy all day, I have not checked one item off of my best laid Monday plan.  Unlike Office Space, as a CEO, this is what I call our Case of the Mondays.  While I will take our Mondays over the cubicle nation Mondays depicted in the movie any day, I still feel less than fulfilled after a day like this of heavy firefighting.

I recently read a great article by Peter Bregman for Harvard Business Review with tangible steps to managing your day.  As today is a Monday and we still have four more days left this week, I thought this might be particularly applicable to making the most out of not just tomorrow but the rest of the week.

[Below is an excerpt from Harvard Business Review]

An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people’s problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer. I’d been ambushed. And I know better.

Read more…

Accounting Services is now offering more competitive pricing!  Our team will continue to provide the same high quality of service and expertise to our members, but at our new lower rate.

Our Accounting Services team would be happy to set up a complimentary call with you in order to discuss the scope of your typical accounting needs.  Let Gibson Design Management handle:

• Creating invoices for time and goods
• Disbursing checks to vendors
• Operating payroll
• Calculating and paying sales tax
• Running reports to show both the financial health of your business and where you need to improve
• And more…

If you would like more information about Accounting Services, please contact Margie Strickland, Associate Director, Accounting Services.

As an added incentive, Gibson Design Management would like to offer our members a 10% discount on all accounting services provided through July 31, 2009. 

Utilizing Gibson Design Management Project Sourcing services has many benefits for your design firm.  From more hours in the day to increased profits, you will see the advantages when you let your Project Sourcing team assist you in meeting the needs of your design projects.