shopping.’ But with us, we want to help them create a feeling and experience. We are helping them with custom drapery design and choosing lamps and rugs and custom millwork, like bookcases and everything like that. You could say we’re control freaks – but the clients we work with tend to appreciate that. They come to us because they want something unique and specific.” So all that accounts for the strength of their visual portfolio – which Adam says is part one of why clients choose them. Part two, he says, is their ability to stay on budget. He credits that ability to all the work they do on the front-end, and to the benefits of doing both the design and construction under one roof: “As we’re doing the design work, we’re also spending a lot of time going through the construction logistics,” he explains. “We’ll go through multiple rounds of costing so that we can put the client or the homeowner in the driver’s seat. When it comes to priorities and values, what do they want to spend on and how much do they want to spend? By understanding that, we can save and splurge intelligently as we go through that process.” “It’s one thing to design something beautiful,” he adds. “But at the end of the day, is it buildable? Can it be done on time? And is the value there for the cost? Those are really important things that we try to communicate to the client not later, but all the way from the beginning of the process.” “We hear a lot from clients who have worked with other companies, who say they spent a lot of time designing and falling in love with things only to have them have to get value engineered out of the project later. They’ll come up with a design, they’ll send it out for tender, and then the tenders come in two or three times over their budget. At that point, the only things they can really cut are all the beautiful things they were really excited about, and then they don’t get what they want. So we’ve chosen to be a little bit more holistic in our approach in order to avoid that situation. I think that’s a really big competitive advantage that we bring to the table.” “We’re in a constant dialogue with our clients about their budget,” Jaclyn adds. “And we’re not shy about it. Day one, we’re talking numbers right away. If you’re going to be shy about it, you’re only hurting yourself in the end. We still really want to dream big, but those dreams have to have actual budget implications. We don’t believe in designing something that we can’t build.” JULY 2024
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