Long Beach, California–based Shaun Crha left a banking career for design five years ago, when he launched Wrensted Interiors. Faced with minimum opening orders that kept him from accessing major industry brands, he got an assist from an unlikely source: his fellow designers.
You look at shopping through the lens of the client’s experience. Why is that so important to you?
When I was first starting out, I wasn’t getting great pricing with the vendors I didn’t use as frequently. That makes sense—but it also makes it hard to compete against the MSRP price. I don’t necessarily get shopped or have clients reverse-image search products, but I do think clients look at things critically and ask themselves, “Is this the same value I would get if I were to go on my own and try to find something comfortable?” To stay competitive, I have focused on my price coming in right at MSRP, or maybe slightly below, if I can. But I usually can’t do that with vendors that I haven’t developed a good buying history with, or if they’re new to me. As my business has grown, I’ve tried to go a little more upmarket with the new vendors I source from, but it’s hard to compete with the pricing of designers who are stocking dealers, or even those that are just moving a lot of volume every year.
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