Home Stager Success Story – Stager Turns Online, Trade Furnishing Company
I love this story because it represents so many stories I hear from HSR Members who get calls right away and have immediate success…
Can you imagine just starting the HSR Certification training and getting a call from a builder to stage a model home? Here’s a quick video and encouraging story of how they handled it…
Our Story…
What makes the alliance with HSR and DesignMeBuyMe.com even more exciting to me is that my wife and I both got our start with HSR. The HSR program and lessons truly gave us a solid foundation and allowed us to apply what we have learned and in turn create a multi-million dollar business!
Back in 2006 when we joined HSR and completed their program, our very first job was to stage two 5000+ sqf homes top to bottom for the parade of homes. Without thinking, we were so excited and we accepted the challenge just to find out shortly after that we only had 48 hours to get it all done.
We were in way over our heads, but we had to get creative to get it all done. So we decided to take all the furniture out of our personal home to get started on house number1 I do not recommend this!! Unfortunately all of our furniture only furnished the 1st floor of the parade home, so we had to reach out and two of our best friends loaned us all of their furniture for a week just so we can get one house completed……good friends!
By the time we started house 2, we were out of furniture and good friends it seemed J so we contacted local furniture stores and asked if we could use some of their furniture. After getting multiple “No thank you” answers we finally found a store to lend us living room, bedroom and game room furniture. As relieved as we were, the furniture we used was all very high-end which made it very stressful for us to move and place.
All that being said, we won 1st place in the Parade and both houses sold within a week. In addition, all of our furniture and some of our friends furniture sold as well.
The money we got paid for staging was certainly great but to also have additional income from furniture sales made the entire process even better.
Since all of the furniture that we sold was originally purchased at retail prices, our overall profit margins were relatively small.
Prior to starting DMBM my wife and I went to Furniture markets in an attempt to open up our own vendor accounts. We quickly realized that as an independent homestager/designer we were treated a little differently – the first question we were always asked was “Do you have a store?” Our answer was no, which meant that we automatically got placed in the least favorable pricing category – Designer Pricing
Designer Pricing basically means – higher product cost, higher shipping costs and minimum order requirements. In addition, most vendors have opening orders that have to be met which can range from $1000 to $20,000.
Markus EngelkeDesignMeBuyMe.com
Now HSR Members can access the DesignMeBuyMe.com website and offer “To the Trade” pricing to their clients because of our special relationship with HSR!