To the Trade 2020: Predictions
Today’s Age of Disruption
Most business models conceived fifty years ago are ill-suited for meeting the challenges of todays dynamic markets. Residential interior design is similarly challenged.
Wishful thinking that consumer demand can continue to be channeled through a labyrinth of conventions ‘to the trade’, in an era when consumers are in control and unwilling to abide by most consumption orthodoxy, is perilous to industry incumbents and restrictive to consumer choice. Some ask, “are we about to be Uber-ed?” shocked like so many others in the transportation industry.
The trade resources, distribution channels and media that make up the system of interior furnishings (the design ecosystem) understand the challenge and are beginning to transform a defensive posture in favor of a ‘eyes wide open’ offensive and strategic approach to the future.
That value system depends on each of the subsystems to perform at its best. Just like the ecological health of a natural system, the health and vitality of the design ecosystem depends on the health and vitality of each valuable contributor to designers’ most resourceful clients. A synchronous alignment of supply and demand.
Tomorrow’s Client
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Actually, tomorrow’s client resembles in many important ways today’s client. Boldly empowered by technology, they are seizing control of the conventional decorum for decorating and going rogue. Beyond the 1 in 5 affluent households that play by the rules, this corps of discovery is agile on line, flirts with digital enablers and recreates by DIY.
They have pulled back the veil on the mystique surrounding decoration, mistrust those who hide behind it and presume the fix is in for intruders. With the genie out of the bottle, though, they circumvent the conventions ‘to the trade’ and deflate the value of interior design. Meet the militants on a mission at home.
A designer’s next best client, however, may be one from the emerging elite aspirational class: educated and cultured HENRYs who are admittedly time constrained, lead complicated lives, prefer to spend on services rather than on material goods (those that anyone can get anyway) and whose confident self image aligns with their economic status.
For them conspicuous consumption is out. Inconspicuous consumption is in. They aspire to being more rather than having more. If designers can show clients that they ‘get me,’ can ’do it for me’ and can explain ‘why its worth it,’ this client's flight to value lands at that designer’s brand. Probing empathetically into their motives and behavior, becoming advocates for customizing their individual quality of life, is our Job 1, right now.
Interventions at Work
Yet to meet those expectations for luxurious client experiences, interventions are now and will be necessary to earn their trust and then their wallets, no matter how deep.
To keep up with them, our pace needs to quicken. Think of all the other professions that have become commodities: investment, travel, book buying and other markets that overnight had to earn income based on the value of their advice and judgement, rather than on preserving boundaries for consumers to buy the way they wanted them to. And think of the professions that are paid for what they know (not just what they do): legal, financial planning, accounting, psychology and many others.
Experiential luxury is the new standard; a higher bar than even functional benefits, emotional appeal, and craft. It’s what keeps executives awake at night, even at the most luxurious brands throughout the world. What this means for interior design is a new way of looking at interior design through the experience of the client. More than imaginative shopping, experiential luxury is the whole journey taken by clients with their designer. And every ‘touchpoint’ matters. It’s a system dependent on respect and reassurance from the initial client meeting, all the way through the ‘big reveal’ after installation, and everything that matters to the client in between. Indeed, it all matters.
For experiential luxury to be luxurious, it takes a system to live up to its potential.
It’s a System; designalign
This system of product and service providers (trade resources for the life well-lived) is really a community of entrepreneurs passionate about making, marketing, merchandising and story-telling through its media.
Faced with recession in 2010, some of its leaders shook hands, reorganized as DFA and agreed that “we are all in this together,” setting out to inspire and engage with these most resourceful consumers by enfranchising the trade and marketing the value of interior design.
This year, DFA’s DoItFor campaign staked that claim by promoting the value of design in language tuned to consumers; it imposed upon itself the responsibility to lead the way. As of this writing, doitfor.com is about to launch on digital and social media an emotional invitation to consumers to “do it for” … themselves, their friends and families and especially their homes as the background for their lives.
But a consumer-friendly invitation needs shared responsibility by the design ecosystem to perform up to high expectations. And to meet those expectations, each ‘touchpoint’ along the client’s journey within the system needs further review and even some re-engineering. That system in 2020 could be the industry’s strongest competitive advantage.
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