This week Alex Shuford, the CEO of Rock House Designer Brands—the North Carolina–based parent company of Century, Hickory Chair and Highland House—returned to The Business of Home Podcast to discuss the hot-button topics plaguing the home furnishings industry today.

Top of mind was AI: Shuford has embraced the technology. From creating AI-generated imagery to marketing and using AI like an MIT grad intern, the executive is not shying away from artificial intelligence. It has even helped the company build a new brand, coming this fall. “We’re going to launch a new brand called Hancock Modern that focuses on the modern upholstery world, leather-heavy but modern motion, made to compete with a lot of what we’re seeing in the modern leather and modern sectional world,” he says. “AI enabled us to refine the concept at lightning speed. Create the visuals; create the story and the language and the atmosphere and the mood; and move right into execution and deployment instead of being bogged down for months in ‘visioneering.’ It’ll launch in October; the concept was coming out of the April Market—that’s how fast [it’s moved]. And that would have been impossible in a pre-AI world.”

Elsewhere, he discusses what he learned at Las Vegas Summer Market, how the company is thinking about future acquisitions, and the effect the K-shaped economy is having on the industry.

Crucial insight: Shuford is concerned that design schools are focusing more on hard skills and less on the interpersonal skills that are just as important. “Young designers, add a psychology class to your curriculum. Take one as an elective and force yourself to think about how communication happens, how motivation happens, how empathy really works,” he says. “It’s not AI that’ll take your job. It’s a person that knows how to use AI, the person who understood AI was going to de-skill the position and invested their time and energy in soft skills, empathy and connection. That’s the person that’s going to take your job.”

Key quote: “Across the board, no one’s going to go shout it from the mountaintops, but we’re all having a decent year. The wealth effect is unbelievable. The U.S. equity market has added somewhere between $10 and $12 trillion of new wealth in the last 12 months. You think about the scale of that, it’s [more than] two times the GDP of the U.K. We have added in wealth in 12 months through the rise in stock market valuations and probably also, arguably, private company valuation increases two times the GDP of France, and it flows through the economy. It’s just unbelievable.”

This episode is sponsored by Loloi and Maiden Home. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The Thursday Show

Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world, including earnings from Home Depot and Lowe’s, the industry’s freight problem, and why a tech mogul is trying to invent a new design style. Later, designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen joins the show to share the story behind her buzzy glassware brand.

This episode is sponsored by Joon Loloi and Lutron. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.