Sharon Sherman of Thyme and Place Design has 40-plus years of experience across interior design and kitchen and bath, and that dual perspective gives her an unusually clear view of what's broken among designers, showrooms, and brands, and what actually works.

The episode digs into a gap that's been widening since COVID. Clients are changing. Showrooms are closing. Brands that want the designer market often don't understand what that market actually needs. Sharon is direct: brands spend heavily on events and PR that completely miss designers, then blame the design community for being unsupportive. What designers want, she says, is to be welcomed and inspired, not sold to. They want solutions that improve projects and make businesses more profitable.

She illustrates the dysfunction with a personal story. She visited a company's showroom repeatedly over several years before placing her first $45,000 order. Her rep never once reached out. The rep finally appeared after multiple large orders had already been placed. The showroom had benefited from her loyalty. The brand had no relationship with her at all.

Her own approach is intentional. About 25 accounts across furniture, flooring, wall covering, and accessories, not a hundred. Deep relationships that go both ways: her showroom contacts know her well enough to advise her clients in her absence, and to tell her when a material won't work before she specifies it. She credits those relationships with saving her from costly mistakes, from wrong seaming placement on countertops to finding the right specialized installer for a gym floor.

The "dinner plate" analogy she offers is one of the episode's most practical frameworks. Large vendors for core products, local showrooms for regional sourcing, and one or two specialty partners for the pieces that matter most. Managing that mix on purpose, rather than by default, is a business decision.

On direct purchasing, her view is nuanced. Better margins are real, but only if the infrastructure supports it: receiving relationships, purchase volume that makes the brand care, and the capacity to absorb what goes wrong. For many solo designers, the showroom relationship is the more profitable choice once all the hidden costs are factored in.

She closes with a prediction: the industry is dividing into conveyor belt design and what she calls painterly design. One fills spaces efficiently. The other curates them intentionally. The right clients, the right vendors, and the right relationships will determine which side of that divide each designer ends up on.

Jenny York, VP of Marketing at Currey & Company, joins Laurie for a conversation about what it actually takes to build a brand that designers want to work with.

Currey is approaching its 40th anniversary as a second-generation family-owned business, now led by founder Robert and Suzy Currey's son Brownlee. That independence shapes everything, including creative risk-taking, the decision to hold real inventory, and the culture of high-touch relationship-building that makes their showrooms feel like a reunion every market week.

Jenny brings nearly 30 years of experience in the home furnishings industry to her role, including 20 years in editorial, covering trade shows, market centers, and the rise of designers as a major distribution channel. That history gives her a different lens. She saw firsthand which companies made the shift to being designer-friendly and which didn't, and she watched Currey become an early adopter of that change.

Some of the most practical takeaways in the conversation: being genuinely designer-friendly means restructuring your warehouse, customer service, and sales team, not just hanging a welcome sign. It means valuing the small orders, not just tolerating them. And it means being honest that some people on your team won't make that cultural shift, and being willing to act on that.

What makes a designer stand out to a brand like Currey? Coming to market in person always matters. But the tip Laurie and Jenny return to is simpler: photograph your finished project, own your copyright, and share those images directly with the manufacturers who made it. Currey can't shoot thousands of products in real homes. When a designer shares installation images and does so freely, that's genuine brand partnership, and it tends to pay off in relationships that hold up when things go wrong.

On the industry at large: Jenny sees a real shift toward quality and away from fast furniture, AI has a place in analytics and projections but not in Currey's creative voice, and the consolidation of trade shows means every in-person interaction counts more than it used to.

Currey is expanding carefully into adjacent product categories, most recently cordless lighting and bath vanities, with a new addition coming this fall. They'll be in Atlanta, Dallas, and Las Vegas this summer.

Kimberly Kerl is an architect and designer based in South Carolina with thirty years of experience, and her episode with Laurie and Nile covers a lot of ground: client process, billing, trends, and an honest read on where the market is right now.

She starts with video. Kimberly has been documenting a live renovation at her own home, posting unscripted walk-throughs from the job site multiple times a week. Her audience is hooked. The value, she says, is in closing the knowledge gap. Clients have no idea what a pocket door actually involves until they see the framing and the electrical relocation happen in real time. Video makes that visible and, eventually, makes billing conversations easier.

Her intake process is tight. Every inquiry gets a free 15-minute discovery call, followed by a paid on-site consultation ($375 to $600) where she requires both decision-makers to be present. She's evaluating communication styles, priorities, and who the real decision-maker is, all before she writes a single word of a proposal. The proposal arrives within one to two days, ties directly to her contract, and breaks the project into four phases with clear fees attached to each. She doesn't collect a retainer and has never been burned doing it that way.

A recurring theme in her work is the renovate vs. move question. Clients come to her undecided, and with today's interest rates, the math often favors staying put. She helps them work through it, and most do continue forward. Multi-generational living is also driving more projects, with adult children back home and aging parents needing accommodation. Kimberly designs proactively for privacy, acoustics, and flexibility even when clients aren't thinking about it yet.

On trends, outdoor living is fully mature in South Carolina. She's installing dishwashers, ice makers, retractable screens, and layered lighting in spaces that function year-round. Health and wellness is the next wave, with saunas showing up at every trade show and home gyms becoming genuinely well-designed spaces. Smart home tech is valuable when it works quietly in the background, and a good integrator makes all the difference.

The market has slowed. Inquiries are down, contractors are calling her rather than the other way around, and clients are cautious. Kimberly sees it as a market correction after an unusually long run, not a reason to panic. It's cyclical, and it always has been.