Wesley Hall joins our monthly Concierge Hour to talk about specifying custom upholstery through Daniel House Club.

Transcript

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Robert Fodor: Hi everyone for those joining. We will get started at around three minutes after the hour.

Robert Fodor: Hi everyone, just so you're aware. We will get started at around three minutes after the hour for those who are joining in now.

Robert Fodor: Hi everyone, just so we will get started at around three minutes after the hour.

Robert Fodor: I know I'm repeating myself, but we will be joining in about three minutes just so everybody knows we have people joining by the second so Hi Renee.

Renee Wyatt: Hi, Robert. Hi, everyone.

Robert Fodor: Everyone, this is Renee Wyatt. Some of you have probably already spoken with her. She's on our concierge team as well.

Renee Wyatt: Yes, I definitely feel a lot of familiar names.

Robert Fodor: We'll get started very soon a couple probably two minutes now we'll get started.

Robert Fodor: Hi We'll get started in at about three minutes after the hour.

Robert Fodor: Hi Peter. We're gonna get started in just one minute.

Robert Fodor: This is very exciting. We have our first. AI virtual assistant taking notes of this meeting I love it.

Robert Fodor: That goes part and parcel with our topic from last month our webinar last month. Gabrielle, I don't know if you were able to attend that meeting or not.

Gabrielle Kozhukh-Joo: No, I wasn't I don't think I discovered you guys yet.

Robert Fodor: I think Peter correct me if I'm wrong, but if we don't have it up yet. We will have that webinar up on our website so you can have a look at it. Yeah, we actually had a woman who does AI as part of her business and she kind of runs the whole series of classes and courses that she teaches on AI and she also offered a discount to our members which is great to take her classes, but she gave us sort of primer on AI last month so

Peter Spalding: Yeah, I don't think it's up quite yet because we've been overhauling the blog. But it will be up very shortly.

Robert Fodor: that's right.

Peter Spalding: And if anybody wants to have that sent to them we could send them a link to view in the meantime.

Robert Fodor: And everyone, this is Peter Spalding. He's one of the co-founders of the company as well.

Peter Spalding: Hey nice to meet you all. I am babysitting a puppy this morning. So with me

Robert Fodor: Yes, Peter got it. How old is he now?

Peter Spalding: he's not really I don't know if I should be calling him a puppy still he's seven months now. but

Robert Fodor: He's there in my mind. They're a puppy until they're two.

Peter Spalding: All right. that's encouraging because he has a lot of strong puppy behavior right now.

00:05:00

Robert Fodor: we'll go ahead and get started. It's five minutes after the hour. So I do want to be mindful of everyone's time and we have a lot to get through today. My name is Robert Fodor. I'm the VP of sales and cons here as services for Daniel House Club. I also have Re Wyatt Renee. You want to introduce yourself?

Renee Wyatt: Hi My name is Renee. I'm on the concierge team here. I've definitely emailed or spoken with a few of you on the phone outside to see some faces and I look forward to working with all of you.

Robert Fodor: Great, and then Peter, I think you can give a brief in an intro for yourself as well.

Peter Spalding: Hey, I'm Peter Spalding. I'm one of the founders at Daniel House Club, and I am sort of one of us who was the designer myself continued to do that. Actually Robert also as a designer. So a lot of the tools that we've developed are to serve me and my own struggles. And so I hope that you find them really helpful as well. And then I did just want to say we're gonna be joined by some Leslie Hall people at 9:30 or 12:30. If you're on the East Coast sorry, and I'm looking forward to learning about Custom Upholstery with you all.

Robert Fodor: Absolutely. So typically the structure of our open forums is that I'll go over just a kind of brief refresher on the site itself if anybody has questions, this is meant for all of you. So just chime in remember to unmute yourself and ask your questions. Renee will also be monitoring the chat. instead of piping up and saying anything if you're not comfortable doing that feel free to just type your question into the chat transcript as well and we'll answer those questions as we go along but it's really meant to be truly an open form where you can just ask questions as we go along so you don't have to wait until the end and then around as Peter intimated around Eastern 9:30 Pacific. We will have carry out who will be joining us from Leslie Hall one of our newer vendors, but also a vendor who's been around for many many years experts in customer.

Robert Fodor: History and com and she'll be giving a discussion and a talk about that and we'll be talking about Custom Upholstery and com with Daniel House Club as well. So we'll go ahead and get started. I'm going to go ahead and just go off a video and then share my screen. We'll go over a few of the product features on our website and then feel free to ask questions as we go along. Once I'm done. I'll give about five minutes before we move on to Carey's presentation and you can ask questions at that point as well. All right.

Robert Fodor: One moment here.

Robert Fodor: All Hopefully everybody can see my screen at this point. This is actually our home page as many of you are probably very familiar with or some of you may not be as new members. One thing. I do want to point out is that you do have to be logged in to our site in order to view your pricing that is very specific to you and the membership level that you signed up for. So you definitely want to be logged in when you are accessing our site. It will auto populate your email and your password if you wish or you can type it in this little up that comes up is the bane of my existence and I wish that it would just go away although I have heard from some of our members that they actually like it because that you shop pay pretty frequently.

Robert Fodor: Our site just so everybody knows is actually built off the Shopify which uses shop pay and you do not have to fill in this information in order to sign in to our site. You can just literally click on the little X here and it goes away. The only thing that you need to do to log in is have your email and your password that you set up at the point that you set up your account. If you forgot your password, you can just literally forgot your password link and it will send you a code via email to reset your password at that point. So you just want to click sign in? And now you can see I know that I'm logged in because it actually says my name here up at the top and it gives me a drop-down menu to look at my projects. I can look at my account or there's also the logout feature as well.

Robert Fodor: The first page that you will come to will The dashboard has a lot of information on it. It gives you your four most recent projects that you created, but you can also create a new project from the screen. You can also click the need help button and it takes you right to our self-help videos. There's some how to videos that we've put on YouTube on how to create a project how to create a board within the project and then how to create a cart from that board. We will go through all of that today, but just in case you will have the ability to do that as well at any time. down here You'll see your summary carts are actually made from boards that you put together. So you can see here. This is the project that is associated with this particular board called new items and I created a cart from that board.

00:10:00

Robert Fodor: It also looks like I shared it with my client and my client placed an order for the item. It'll show you who the recipient was. That is my client. And then also the date that I sent it what the total is for the client if I'm sharing any portion of my discount and then also what I am saving here and then it'll show you your potential profit here as well. So a couple of these I used my full discount which means I'm not getting a profit here because I've shared the entire discount with the client obviously many of you will not be doing that. You'll be sharing a percent of your discount.

Robert Fodor: A couple of things here. You'll see the little icons on the right if they're bolded out that means that it was viewed that it was purchased and that the item shipped you'll see a couple here. looks like this one was viewed, but it has not been purchased yet. And it also has not shipped. Of course.

Robert Fodor: My cart summary page here is not the example. It is extremely long and it's because I do a lot of trainings but this is a really good feature to be able to see your active projects and also active carts that you created from boards within that project to see which boards and which carts your client has viewed and which ones they have paid for and also have shipped as well. This is not the only thing that we send to you or notify your display to you. when you place an order you will receive an immediate order confirmation email which confirms all the items in the order the pricing Etc.

Robert Fodor: once we receive confirmation of the orders from the vendors because remember we Dropship items we do not inventory items our cells and ship from our own Warehouse. So we rely upon the vendors to provide us with the confirmed orders and the estimated ship dates. Once we have that which is typically within 24 to 72 hours. We will send to you a confirmation email the estimated ship dates. after that Once the item ships, we will also send you an email notification with the cracking details and once the item shipped so there may be a little bit of a lag just as full disclosure some we obviously rely upon the timeliness of our vendors to give us the shipment confirmations.

Robert Fodor: Since we use our own shipping company to ship though. Typically we will know pretty quickly when an item has shipped. But again, we have to get that information from the vendors notor for that to get to you. So we have had circumstances that some items that are small items like lamp fixtures things like that. They ship out and they're delivered even before we get the order confirmation or the shipping confirmation email. So we try to be as efficient and as quick as possible, but again, we're relying upon the vendors to give us that in a very timely manner so do to give us a little bit of an exception when you might get one or two items that are shipped rather quickly, especially if they're in stock items, but you can always reach out to us at the concierge and we can always tell you as well. On I think the right of in a question Renee. Was there a question?

Renee Wyatt: Yeah, so I'm Peter answered but I'll just read so everyone can hear so you may answer this…

Robert Fodor: Okay.

Renee Wyatt: but new to Daniel house is the client able to pay direct to DHD or does it the designer make payment and then Peter let him know you can choose builds a client and allow your client to pay directly. And then I'm assuming…

Robert Fodor: Yes. Yeah, and you?

Renee Wyatt: if that option is selected. There is no commission. Margin, correct?

Robert Fodor: So you can have it both ways. You can if you select your full discount that obviously there is no commission to be paid out. even if you are checking out there is a way to only indicate a certain percent of your discount and that way we know that you only shared a certain percent of your discount. Even if you're checking out I'll show you how to do that when we go through creating a project in a board and then also a cart from those boards, but When you're sharing it with your client, we will pay you out the difference in what you do not share with your client Those commission payouts are sent out every 30 days.

00:15:00

Robert Fodor: And for example that shipped in February, you will receive the commission payout at the end of March. So there is just about a 30-day lag on those but we do pay it out as the items ship not as a complete order. So we originally set it up where we would do complete orders. However, what we were finding is that sometimes our members weren't getting paid out for three or four months because items weren't back order or they were a custom item or had a production lead time Etc. So we decided to do it as the items ship and ship to complete so it might get a little piece meal, but you will at least get your payouts quickly and Timely

Renee Wyatt: Thanks, One more question quick shipping to Canada. Do you ship to residential addresses or does it have to go to a commercial receiver?

Robert Fodor: so we do ship within Canada and obviously the United States within Canada it can ship to a commercial address and that's across all of our vendors sunpan used to be the only exception even though they were a Canadian company and they are a Canadian company. But we have that fixed now so you can ship to residential addresses from sunpan as well.

Robert Fodor: All right. So I'm going to create a new project here, and I'm just going to click on the new project link here. And then I'm Gonna Fill in the information. So first name last name client email any other descriptor for the project itself do note that the project names here as you can see off to the left. It does pull from the last name as well as the address that you indicate for the site address. So if you want the project name to be a little more specific or maybe something more tailored just me just know that it pulls from both of those fields when creating the project name. also

Robert Fodor: when I'm creating the umbrella project, I can create whatever discount I want as sort of the umbrella overall boards and carts that I create. However, I do have the ability to change that on the board level. And also again when I do a cart from a board to check out or to share with my client, so this is not the only place where you can change what percent of your discount you're sharing. So let's just say I'm gonna share 25% of my fifty percent discount which then gives the client a 12 and a half percent discount and I make a 37 and a half percent profit on this order. I can also indicate.

Robert Fodor: Total budget total ffnm and then I like to put my install date here for many reasons because if I am doing a project and I may need the concierge's help. I want the concierge to know what my install date is so that if I'm asking questions about particular items or maybe once I'm done creating a board before I share it with my client, I can send a link or request to the concierge team and say hey, can you just double check that? All these items are in stock or that they will arrive by my install date. So if we know what the install date is, it makes our life a little easier so we don't have to have too many backs and forth with email and it's really nice know. And then the site address and phone number fairly self-explanatory.

Robert Fodor: Then you just click create that creates the blanket project here. So it shows me the date that I created the project what my install date is the target date and then also all the information that I just entered relative to the percent of my discount that I'm sharing. Also what my client will be saving and also what my profit margin will be. Now we don't add products to projects. We create a board for the product products. So I would just click on new board here.

Robert Fodor: I'm going to name this typically people will name it by a room name. However, you can do it by vendor. And the only reason I mentioned that you can do it by vendor is that we do have some vendors where we offer free standard shipping that can be very attractive and you would want to have those items in one board because again you create your cart from a board. So once you get to the point of checkout, if you have all items from one vendor that has free shipping, you won't be charged shipping at all free standard shipping. If you have items from multiple vendors, you may be charged shipping for the items that we do charge shipping for and those that we don't of course you won't but if you want it to be a little cleaner on the free shipping end. I recommend doing it by vendor but most folks do it by room name or however, they organize themselves when they're putting together a board.

00:20:00

Robert Fodor: So I just create board. and now as you can see We are in the board screen and we're under the project that we just created so I can get started button here to start adding items directly to this board, or I can simply just go to our shopping menu. And I'm just going to look at sofas here.

Robert Fodor: And I like this Augustine sofa by forehands as you can see it clearly states here that for hands items have free standard shipping, but I want to go ahead and add this to the project. So I'm going to click on Save project. I'm just going to scroll down to the project that I just created and add it to the board here. And then it says added if I want to skip right to the project again and just make sure it's there. I can just click on the save to project button again go to view project. And it takes me right back to the project and now I can see the board here.

Robert Fodor: And I can also see that the item has been added as well as the discount that I'm sharing with my client. That is the correct discount that was applied. Your clients will never see your full pricing as unless you share it with them. They will only see what items you have shared with them at the discount that you have chosen to share with them. And again, once you start adding items, you'll see the statistics kind of change as to how much they're gonna Gave me here what your cost is and also what your profit is going to be. Now a couple of things if you're just in the collaborative stage and you're not at a point where you want to send a proforma slash quotation slash cart, those are basically ostensibly the same thing, but you just want to share your ideas with your client. You can just click on the share button here. You can put in their email address.

Robert Fodor: And then you can share it without price. That's kind of a nice feature. Although as we know a lot of clients will shop us anyway, which is a point of contention and you can click Send now that will Ascend an email that says your designer has shared a board with you and there's a link there they can click on it or you can just copy the link and send it in an email if you wish. This is a purely non-transactional. Sharing of the board that you've created for them so they can't add items. They can't check out. It's literally just at the point of being collaborative and talking about items. Once you're ready to actually send them a proforma or quotation or cart. Then you go to the create card feature and as Peter's made it earlier with the question from one of our members. You can either select Bill to client or build to me.

Robert Fodor: With the bill to me that will take the full discount automatically and maybe your invoicing them offline, which is completely fine. Obviously, you might be doing that to bill for your services Etc. Or you can build a client and what that does is that allows your client to just transact directly with us. So you would put in your client's email address again. I have the ability to change my discount. So maybe if I spend a little more time than I thought on this I can change this. I'm only gonna share 20% of my discount. that means that the client will get a 10% discount and I'm gonna be making a 40% profit on this.

Robert Fodor: I can then check or uncheck this box here, which says allowed client to remove products before completing checkout or not. And if if you want for us to still pay you out of commission on the item that you are sending. You can just put your email address here if your invoicing them offline and you don't want them to transact with Daniel house directly. You can just put your email address here and just make sure that this is checked here. That is one of the only ways that we know that you are sharing a certain percent of your discount. You're not taking your full discount now, obviously if you're sharing with your client, you can put their email address here and then you can elect to either have them have the ability to products or not.

Robert Fodor: It's just when you're putting your email address in here have. That's the only way that we will know to pay you out of commission. So I'm just going to say no. I don't want my clients to remove products because we already have this lockdown. I can still remove things before I send the invoice to them or the cart and then we just go to select shipping screen. Again. We were talking earlier about shipping within the US and Canada. So I'm just going to say United States because this is a forehand item. It has free standard shipping. So I'm just gonna select that because I will have somebody there to help me out. Now we do have the ability to expedite curbside which has an additional fee. And then we also have room of choice with packaging removal or full White Glove. room of choice if an item is already assembled like the sofa.

00:25:00

Robert Fodor: You don't really have to have white glove because They will place it into the room that you want it to be placed into and then they will take all the packaging materials as well. White Glove is really when you want them to assemble something and also of course put it into the room of choice and also take the packaging materials But it includes assembly of items. So if you're unsure if an item requires assembly, which usually it says on the product page If you're unsure just send an email to the concierge. We're happy to answer those questions for you. If it's not indicated on there, then we will contact the vendor for you And then you just click preview cart. I can still edit here anything that I want to edit. This is what the invoice will look like the cart will look like when you send it to your clients. So they will only see again what they're savings are based upon what percent of discount you're sharing with them and then you just click Send.

Robert Fodor: And then that will send an email Once you've entered their email address, it will say that your designer has set up an account for you. They will get an email to that effect. Once you share the cart with them. They get a second one that says Robert Fodor has shared a cart with you. It'll actually have your name on it. That's a little bit of a different workflow than what we used to have. It used to be branded to Daniel House Club. And we found that it was getting a little bit confusing for n clients when they check out even if our members were telling them that they were using Daniel house for sourcing they just didn't remember it. And so they were coming in and creating accounts and all sorts of things which was just messing things up. So we decided to strip out our branding.

Robert Fodor: And make it just very simple with your name. And so they understand that you are the one that's sharing it and that this is the tool that you're using in order to do your sourcing now, eventually we will get to the point where we will have a white label and the white label you'll be able to upload your logo. It'll have any branding that you want to have on it. That will be forthcoming. Hopefully this year. So that is something that's really exciting. The other thing that we are hopefully gonna be doing this year and likely within the next I would say six to nine months had the ability to edit product descriptions. So if you wanted to you could instead of saying Augustine sofa you could go in and just edit the description and just brown leather. so far

Robert Fodor: very simple what the hopes are with this is that we're hoping that it If not at least significantly decrease the ability for people to shop However, as we all know clients can be very Savvy and they can do Google image search and they can find out information at any time but hopefully putting some of those little bears and will protect you as well. And of course all of the conversations you can have with clients relative to that, but just a nice feature that we're hoping to enable. pretty soon presentation Yeah.

Renee Wyatt: Hey Robert, if you questions, yep, do you have an example that you can show can we see what the proforma quote heart Etc looks like from the client's end.

Robert Fodor: Yeah, I just showed it. So when you Do the bill to client? Put the client's name in here. select the shipping

Robert Fodor: and then get to The preview card this is actually what they will see. So it looks very similar to this. it looks exactly like this and it'll show the date that it was created. It'll show the email address the project all of that as well as the item to be purchased and then a breakdown here of the MSRP or map pricing what they're saving's are any shipping and…

Renee Wyatt: Okay.

Robert Fodor: then that's it.

Renee Wyatt: Okay, next not a question, but just some feedback. So on your website, you may want to consider that anyone can go to your site and see that their designer gets a 30% discount. It would be better if that information was hidden until designers make an account with you. In other words if anyone sees that if their designer buys from you, they know what the designer cost is.

00:30:00

Robert Fodor: True However, they really don't have the ability to understand what the membership level is that you are at. So, yes, they would understand that you do have a minimum of a 30% discount, but if your client is only concerned about that. To be frank, I would be a little concerned because you're providing a service to them and they should know that designers have a certain percent discount thirty percent is not an uncommon. it is high. It's not an uncommon discount though for wholesalers. So I think it's having the conversation. But we have heard this before and it's definitely something that we will take back and we'll see if it's something that we might be able to

Robert Fodor: Or at least indicate in a different way so we can definitely follow up with you on that depending on who that was maybe Renee. You can take their name down and…

Renee Wyatt: Yep. Sure.

Robert Fodor: we can follow up with them directly. Great. Yeah.

Renee Wyatt: Next question what language do you designers use to clients about what DHE is all about if a client questions why they Source One Stage?

Robert Fodor: You yeah, I always say that we're sourcing management platform and it's the platform that I use which is a sort of cradle to grave sourcing platform that I use to purchase, all or most of the items that I purchased for my clients. I think that's a fairly high level explanation. I think if clients get into the nitty-gritty of why you're doing that it would definitely raise my eyebrow as of the former current interior designer myself, but I think if you use that language, that' Should be more than enough for them to understand.

Peter Spalding: but if I could just jump in and add we've had a bunch of clients provide feedback that they've been able to avoid hiring somebody in a buying position because they're sourcing through us. So I think it's really easy to explain to a client. Hey, if I didn't rely on this sourcing tool I would need to pay for an assistant to handle all of this. So I think that's a good way to help a client understand as well.

Robert Fodor: Yeah, and also leveraging off of that would be. I can keep my costs down to you as a client so that I don't have to pay for a human resource potentially.

Robert Fodor: Cool any other questions Okay, great.

Renee Wyatt: Wow, that's all for now.

Robert Fodor: So we're running over time just a little bit. I just quickly want to go over the product information page because there's a lot of information on here. So you will see first of all, you can link to the vendor page here from where whatever product information page you're on for that particular vendor. You'll obviously always see what your price is. We will display map or retail or MSRP whatever the vendor provides us with so that will show right underneath that so you'll understand what that is and then you'll also understand if the vendor offers free shipping or not, or if we offer free shipping. We are subsidizing that And then also it gives you a descriptor the weight and dimension information any other specifications that we received from the vendor.

Robert Fodor: Obviously our shipping policy. And then this is really important because you'll want to double check if returns are gonna be an issue with your client which sometimes they are just make sure that I would say 95% of them allow for returns.

Robert Fodor: However, there are restrictions around it one is within 30 days and…

Peter Spalding: this

Robert Fodor: There's usually a restocking fee and also return shipping will be deducted from the refund so due to double check that and then also it shows what our damage claim policy is. So within five days of receipt, I always say as long as you're doing it within a week, we're good, but this is particularly important if you're sending to a warehouse or to a client site, usually if you're sending to a receiver, they're very good about letting us know immediately and you can even give them our concierge email address. So you don't even need to be involved. They can just copy you on the email and we'll handle any damage or defect claims immediately on your behalf with the vendor.

Robert Fodor: On but if it's going to a client site make sure that your client is aware that they need to open it up or you're going to be site that someone needs to be there within a week of the item being delivered so that you can check for damage. If it's beyond that we can't guarantee that the vendors will honor a damage claim. Sometimes they will but we just can't guarantee that so just let us know about That and then the other thing I just want to mention which most of you may note at this point, but we also do handle warranty claims. down the line when your client has paid for an item or If your client has paid, they don't even need to reach out to you. They can just contact us directly with any warranty issue. So that might be particularly helpful when you're talking about having a client transact directly with us versus transacting with you.

00:35:00

Robert Fodor: To someone have a All So I think we can take questions at the end here…

Peter Spalding: Focus

Robert Fodor: but I'm gonna go ahead and get started with I want to introduce Carrie Carey is with Wesley Hall. She's one of our really great vendors. They specifically specialize in custom and com and we are very very happy to have Carrie with us Keri. I'm gonna go ahead and cart it over to you to do a little brief introduction. And then I'm also gonna presenting out your presentation. So Absolutely.

Carey Yount: Good morning. Thank you for joining us. There's a lot of faces here, which is really exciting. So we are thrilled to be collaborating with Daniel House Club. Zac is also here with us today. He's our president down there and Peter's really is curated a great collection assortment of Wesley Hall on his platform. I have a little frog in my throat this morning. Anyway, we're really excited to share our story with you all.

Carey Yount: And for those of you not familiar with the line, we hope you leave the meeting today learning five things about Leslie Hall. If you want to go to the next this whole presentation. You're going to see a great assortment Of all sorts of across the board from traditional to contemporary and it's just a smattering of our product line. Again Peter has curated the line with specific Fabrics, but you know that you can order CEO on with us co-l. You can reach out to your combsiers service to get cuttings of fabrics and leather and actually would finish as well. We're happy to send those out to you.

Peter Spalding: And I'm going to jump in for just one second all you have to get through. So I want to say hardly anything at all. But at the end we'll show you where the form is living on our website to get a custom quote started. So we have some tools now that will facilitate this conversation really easily. No, okay. that

Robert Fodor: You just took the words out of my mouth Peter.

Carey Yount: Perfect That's okay.

Robert Fodor: back to you Carrie

Carey Yount: So we are very proud to say that we are family owned family operated and shaped by generations of tradition. We're actually in our team A Fearless leaders, we've got any deal our CEO and his son Marshall. And then Zack who's joining us today is really in charge of our creative and marketing side of the business who brings so much to the table. So I'm really happy. He's here today joining us. We were actually celebrating our 35th Anniversary, which is pretty cool.

Carey Yount: Zack hails from Valdez Weavers, he was there for 20 years. So he's got a textiles in his DNA and you'll find that the line has so much to offer. So I'm going to let Zack jump in. Here Zach. Are you there?

Zack Taylor: I am here. Can you hear me? All right. Yep, good and…

Robert Fodor: Yes.

Carey Yount: Yes.

Zack Taylor: and Robert if you can see me, I'll point up when I'm ready for you to switch slides if that's okay.

Robert Fodor: If you don't mind verbalizing that would be great because I'm actually full screening your presentation. So yeah.

Zack Taylor: Okay the problem. I'll tell you you're in better shape if you don't have to see my face anyway, so

Zack Taylor: Yeah, but I am really honored to be here at all of you will be very glad to know that even though I'm Southerners and I talk slow. I'm a very quick presenter. So I promise you I will not take too much time. But it's Carey said we were very proud of the lineage of Wesley Hall. We actually represent the longest lineage of upholstery makers in North Carolina, and we currently have the fifth generation of the Dual family making furniture and I'm proud to say we still make it really much like they did a hundred years ago. That's what I want to talk about. Next is just talking about from a construction standpoint. We strictly only build to one standard and it is a premium constructions standard and we also only the most exact dean of tailoring practices. So let me talk a little bit about construction Robert good lead there first off very important. we only use hardwood framing, our wood comes from sustainable.

00:40:00

Zack Taylor: Resources they're based here in North Carolina and every single piece is made from the same American grown white Maple. This is important because this one is dried. It's a chemical free. There's no off gassing and it's certainly the strongest form of frame building. There is next Robert.

Zack Taylor: This for example is one of our best-selling reading shares and I like to show this because you really see a couple of things here that I think are very telling first off you recognize there's no plywood in this Frame again. It's all hardwood framing the inset down to the left shows the way we Corner block which really is a sign of strength an Integrity. So our product which I think is a 35 year lifespan, is built to survive shipping and installs, even when it shouldn't go through a doorway or down the hallway. We typically survive those kind of moments when you just have to shove a little bit to get something around the corner and if you go to the next slide Robert in comparison, this is what a plot lip frame looks like. Most of our competitors build with plywood as you might imagine. There's a lot of chemical implied.

Zack Taylor: A lot of formaldehyde a lot of gassing when this is in someone's home. And so I really like to compare and contrast to sort of the way we do it versus the other way and that's not say that they're in room for these kind of products and other projects in other areas as well. But we just think we do it better Robert.

Zack Taylor: Sorry, in addition to that. This is showing the inset on the right shows the bottom of the Wesley Hall sofa. So you have a huge amount of webbing, which is that great textile substrate, which is again American made really strong. I tell people that webbing is like Spanx it holds everything where It keeps everything in line. It's keeps your what's on the bottom very tailored and nice and strong to the left hand side is the way a less expensive care would be that's actually where they use cardboard instead of wedding. They also would not have still strapping they would just have some simple metal bands underneath there Robert.

Zack Taylor: Everything we do at Wesley Hall is eight way hand Todd and I'm sure you all have been educated at nolsium about what that means. But basically what it says to me is the comfort for each piece is individualized to that style which creates cradle the perfect spot that you definitely feel when you settle in and sit down on a piece. You're not going to list to the left or fall to the back or feel like you're being pushed out of the front. You're really gonna land in a very perfect sort of comfort cradle, which every human knows the difference between a good one and a bad one.

Zack Taylor: Up to the left is how a lesser made product is made those are called ziggers with a z and it's just sort of those looping coils, which basically takes the customization out of the Comfort. That's a prefab way of doing it. They're all the exact same spring you sit the same way on each of them where if you look on the right, you'll notice that certain Springs are taller and certain Springs or tighter and that really is what gives you that Comfort Robert.

Zack Taylor: Okay, another very important thing about Wesley Hall when we talk about our standard cushioning standard means anything but standard here we go ahead and price in a premium cushion with our product. A lot of my competitors have a Heavenly set a Godly sit in an angel sit and everyone's a hundred dollars more and they expect you all as designers to figure out what's your clients sit pattern is like we take that burden on ourselves and so 98% of our product ships with standard pushing that said we can handle special needs. So we change configurations in our sleep on a bench cushion instead of two that's easy. If you have a client that needs extra firm or feather free, those are all very simple to navigate here Wesley Hall.

Zack Taylor: We hand cut all of our fabrics and our leather and we hand apply every bit of our Wood Finishing in house. We build about 1,000 custom pieces a week. and the fact that it's all done one at a time and one layer at a time is a really telling deception between a high end piece of the Upholstery and more moderate piece.

Zack Taylor: Robert I'm gonna let you sort of go to this one. Go ahead and skip to the next one. These just show some great details. one thing I like to point out here is we're the only Factory in North Carolina that pays every associate an hourly rate again, we've got 275 people in the factory their hand Craftsman, this is not a machine product. This is very much a handcrafted product. Most of our competitors pay on the production scale. So their Associates are trying to rush and get product out the door because the more they get out the door the more money they make we in sharp contrast drive for Perfection. We pay our Associates by the hour. So if it takes them, One day to build a chair or if they get four chairs out in the day, they make their money and they're in good shape to their family. No one rushes here. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about our tagline. Which is very important to me. This is a

00:45:00

Zack Taylor: I tell people a Wesley Hall purchase again. I've already said it's gonna be a 35 year lifespan. It's a lot like a marriage you're gonna look at this piece of furniture for a long time in your world. So certainly the construction and the Comfort have to be classic but as you shift into the made current side of this tagline, that's really where the treatments and The Styling and the Silhouettes and the textiles come home to roost.

Zack Taylor: So I'm going to talk a little bit about one of the advantages of Wesley Hall, which can also be a complexity of us. We can speak to almost any lifestyle. We have customers that ass as a traditional brand. We have Associated customers that associate us as a modern brand. So I'm starting with more modern imagery here. This is a program where we show the scale of our sectionals the chair. The right is a swivel which any of our skirted pieces can be swiveled any of our chairs to be built to the floor and swiveled. But again, you've got these beautiful lines with the underpinning of all those construction details. I'll talk about Robert. How am I doing time wise? Okay, I'm not talking slow enough fast enough to write board to.

Robert Fodor: You're good.

Robert Fodor: I think a perfect pace so

Zack Taylor: Okay, almost to inbox me and tell me to do something different. I'm happy by the way another very important part of who we are is our leather product again, I think we are the best decorative leather value in the industry. If you compare us against other gold standard leather Brands who also have taste good equations, because we're upholstery only we're gonna be 15 or 20 percent less expensive but again sacrificing nothing in the name of leather. This is a gorgeous swivel chair here with a beautiful little nailed detail. Again, more moderate scale Wing share called The Clayton again. This is great for tighter notes may be smaller fireplace use

Zack Taylor: So you will see as you get to Carolina silhouettes on the left a very Cutting Edge almost modern. We sort of purposely stop just shy of modern and then on the right you've got the Galvin which is a more classic more menswear kind of look but really in a beautiful color leather and we all for a lot of true color in our products. Again on the left you have our test chair that has these beautiful iconic sort of legs coming out of the front incredible comfort for a tight back on the right. You've got to swivel chair called the Etta where we actually hand quilt a treatment on the outside. So we offer a lot of customizations that most brands run from again. If you're on an hourly scale, you can slow down the hand quilt on out arm or an Outback. If you're on a production scale, you're probably not going to want to do that.

Robert Fodor: I love a good quilting.

Zack Taylor: You know what I do to and these are all mark my hand and quilted by hand. Again. This is our Advanced chair in a beautiful Turkish velvet. This has beautiful wood framing on outside and we've got 30 or 35 wood finishes. Again. We apply in-house, which is really an important part of Who We Are

Carey Yount: I would show the flow match on that one as…

Zack Taylor: Yeah,…

Zack Taylor: you could back up one. Yeah, if you

Carey Yount: We're just known for incredible flow match the detail.

Carey Yount: The tension to detail is amazing and…

Zack Taylor: yeah.

Carey Yount: not that leather chair before the foremost. We did a contrast leather welt on that cream colored leather and…

Zack Taylor: maybe one

Carey Yount: the buttons have a contrast leather as well. Just all the little details you can add.

Zack Taylor: Yep, is Carey said I don't know how many of you can see me but I always tell people that we're very buttoned up Presbyterians here. I've got all plan. I've got a plaid blazer. I've got a plaid shirt. We are crazy four-way flow matters. We are uptight in terms of our tailoring and we're very proud of that. This is our weak Wing chair with the beautiful wrapped cuff treatment on the Outback. We have a lot of jewelry pieces that can be added to chairs and sofas. We recognize in today's open concept living very often you're walking into the back of the piece of furniture instead of the front. So we programmatic and systematically applied decorative options like this cuff treatment.

00:50:00

Zack Taylor: Again Modern side this is our Affinity chair again, beautiful wood detailing around the three legs of this piece again, architectural beautiful, but comfortable enough to watch salt burn or whatever you're watching. And I mean, it's movie worthy in terms of this chair. And in terms of its comfort.

Zack Taylor: This is a collection we do with the designer who's now based in Palm Springs, California. His name is Peter Jacob and I love this image because it shows again the more transitional the modern leaning side of who we are in the dead center of the frame. You have something called the social sofa which sort of has that envelope shaped opening on the back of it. I've seen as many as nine people sitting on this frame in our showroom, but at the same time not only is it trim lied and beautiful with a really gorgeous wood base. It's also comfortable enough or someone that's six five to use a day bed. we do not make anything that is uncomfortable at Leslie Hall and I think it's one of the biggest compliments I get is not travel is designers and clients feel like they can specify straight from our catalog because we have a very consistent sit comfort. In fact, if we can't get something comfortable. We don't put it in our line.

Zack Taylor: Okay, again, a huge comprehensive bed program again. We all know upholstered beds or a big part of today's environments and primary Suites or whatever room you're working in. I'll tell you our price point here is really strong and our pets have a lot of decorative options to them. But probably the most telling thing about them is we fully assemble and photograph them before they leave the factory. So when you're installing it's a online within says all the bed doesn't have the right parts of the bed doesn't fit and I need another hundred. Dollars to fix it. We can actually send them an image showing that it' works perfectly and has already been tested.

Zack Taylor: This is a great point when it comes to lead time, again, we're very hands on business owners and operators is Carey's started with their really three of us that are at the core of the management of the company and a big part of what I do is Source textiles and Leathers, we typically average eight week production schedules in terms of from receipt of order to ready to ship is typically eight weeks right now and a big part of that is because we invest in and by the best textiles as Carey and Peter and Robert, I think all three have mentioned we are proves that you and we can handle extra backings. We can send things out for Knit backings. We will call you. There's a problem and problem solve with you is to have to get a Pete that amount a yard if maybe there's a fall on it. I mean, we really are great to see them but you will find that we have about 12 to 1300 stop Fabrics that really could be the basic underpinning of your environment.

Zack Taylor: Your interiors and you can count on them coming from the best Mills and going out in a reliable lead time. Again, this is a gorgeous swivel chair of this is where we took a five inch section of the exact same fabric and then a beautiful linen rope welt and sort of did this beautiful treatment at the bottom again? these are the tailoring finesse points that really have gone by the wayside with some of my competitors and we love that. We still apply them here. again, we also

Carey Yount: That looks gorgeous that the May caught to interrupt with a contrast skirt pocket to we do that a lot in the showroom looks beautiful.

Zack Taylor: yeah, that is true. Yeah, we can just for those of you looking on that's a velvet panel in the skirt pocket. Again. That's a forty dollar up charge to do that kind of detail. So these things are really approachable and achievable on again. We invest heavily in pattern and color, a lot of lines have gotten very vanilla and what they stock and what they offer but you still find a lot of pattern and a lot of color here at Wesley Hall.

Zack Taylor: Okay, we have a ton of performance options. I know everybody in the world is tired to talk about performance, but on our website if you're ever around hanging Gallery, we identify everything with this orange Pea or performance. I always tell people that's not PE. It's just the P because I think everybody. Wants to figure that out. Basically the performance story for us is as simple as if it has an orange pea. It is contract grade in terms of it's abrasion, which again is probably 40 to 45% of our textile offering and it's soap and water cleanable. You can read further and learn further and you be protected some are bleach cleanable, but they are all durable and soap and water cleanable, which I think is the most important thing to know.

Zack Taylor: Okay, and then my last point I hope I'm doing okay time wiser notes five tool one my time. I will tell you we have the best customer service and the best quality in our industry, but the calls we pay by the hour. Our returns are much less than 2% Annually the vast majority of those are freight related issues. But on top of our quality be in the best you will find that we are incredibly transparent and responsible when it comes to our lead times. We cannot stand to disappoint people. So when we tell you that Something's Gonna Be Ready an eight weeks chances are really seven and a half weeks. We like to quote the worst case scenario and then we like to improve against that as we go throughout our manufacturing process.

00:55:00

Zack Taylor: Okay and Robert, I think I've got this last one, you can reach out through the Daniel house concierge services who then can get in touch with us for custom quotes. We customize links on the vast majority of our product again cushion configurations customization are really a cakewalk for us as well as decorative treatments and all of these bells and whistles are sort of encapsulated on the Wesley Hall website. So there's a lot to see and learn there. So I hope I didn't go on too long or anyone or lose you with my Southern drawl.

Peter Spalding: That was absolutely perfect. Thank you so much.

Robert Fodor: That's great.

Peter Spalding: I think we probably should just hustle over to show you where you can start a com or…

Robert Fodor: Yeah. Yep.

Peter Spalding: up a custom order and then take any quick questions. I know that Robert and I are good to stay on a little bit over if people have questions continuing. Yes, so you're gonna go to furniture and scroll over. where Robert's hovering to start a custom order. This is probably gonna ignore those other brands go right to Wesley. I'm teasing of these probably gonna change we're gonna be starting using this and just find how effective it is for you all but this is really just meant as a conversation starter with the concierge team. They're gonna know a little bit what it is that you're asking for and then they're gonna reach back out to you and discuss all the details so we can make sure that your order is placed.

Peter Spalding: exactly how you expect it to be. And I will turn it back over to Robert and see any questions.

Robert Fodor: Yeah. Yeah, we had just real quick. I think Peter just intimated this but once you fill out this basic information, you'll just click the next button here and then you'll submit it and that will go directly to the concierge team and then we'll be in touch with you to discuss the order further. So I will open it up to questions now. Renee do we have any questions on chat?

Renee Wyatt: There are no questions on chat at the moment.

Carey Yount: Sharon Marcus has her hand up. Hi Sharon.

Robert Fodor: Hi Sharon. How are you? Doing well.

Sharon Marcus: I'm How are you? Good. I had a very quick question for the Wesley Hall raps about the performance. It's encouraging to hear that so many of the options are already performance. But if you are submitting a CLM Fabric or you're choosing something because the customer so in love with it that does not already have a pea on it. Is there some kind of finish or treatment that can be applied before it shipped that would provide some essence of protection.

Carey Yount: So we could do the Scotch Guard we can add that to the piece. We can.

Zack Taylor: We can anybody large, anything that's topically added after the fact it's gonna over certainly protection and it's certainly gonna length in the lifespan of the product because of that initial protection that said anything that's topically added is also going to wear a way, the beauty of the inherently performance textiles is the Yarns themselves and the woven structure themselves have been done in a way today that it's permanent technology, sort of corner of the days of being Teflon just spray on at the Mill level. And so the Branded performance Fabrics are gonna have a lifetime of performance the topical things can offer sort of a small insurance plan, but yeah, but we certainly do that every day of the week.

Sharon Marcus: Okay, I was just curious to know if that was something that would then need to be handled. Once it was already delivered or if that could be done ahead of time.

Zack Taylor: But you can't be done ahead of time. I mean, I will tell you anytime that I speak with a client and they've opted to topically add Scott sharding or whatever. I always tell me that that's a great option. But it's a little like cushion care. They're gonna have to take it upon themselves to occasionally reapply that layer once again,…

01:00:00

Sharon Marcus: right

Zack Taylor: not a big deal in today's world. If you got some of the can help you draw your certifications outside, to miss them with Scotch Guard is not a big deal, but it goes a long way to protect you, but it's got to be sort of Every couple of years sort of a tucked up kind of thing sort of like both sort of like botox for some of us.

Sharon Marcus: so there's no fiber CL option or other more industrial longer lasting options or

Zack Taylor: They're not many that will handle discrete quantity. And when I say that if you were to call me and say hey, I've got a 60 yard I could find someone to do something more permanent for a big 60 yard run. But if you're talking to three fifteen yard kind of increments,…

Sharon Marcus: Okay.

Zack Taylor: they're no local people that are gonna do anything more than just a topical mist. Yep.

Sharon Marcus: Okay. Thank you.

Robert Fodor: Thanks, Sharon.

Renee Wyatt: Hey Zack, I have a quick question for com orders. Do you guys need to approve the fabric first before we commit to the order?

Zack Taylor: no, I see what we typically do is we typically receive it and if there's an issue Upon Our seat, we'll be in touch which again we do hourly where we might suggest that we send it out for a back coating or we send it out for Knit backing we would also let you know if there's a problem in the role, every now and then a customer might

Zack Taylor: courtship of the order to or there's a fall buried in the middle of the role that nobody do about and we're very proactive and being in touch and problem solving for you. Typically we might give you a couple options for example, hey, this is the yard short we can cut it but the Outback flow match is gonna be a little different than our Norm. We're very proactive and very easy that way but nine times out of 10. It's gonna be a phone call saying that the product backing or a back coating and you need to get an extra thirty eight dollars from your client or however you handle that, but we would notify you that and allow you to sort of direct us when the production

Robert Fodor: Great. Leslie I just saw your message about finishes and swatches. Yes, you would just contact the Daniel house concierge. That's regardless. Whether it's Wesley Hall or any of our vendors I know you said that that was just a general question. But yes, we can absolutely coordinate swatches and Sample finishes as well.

Robert Fodor: Any other questions where two minutes over so I Wanna Be respect to everyone's time. It looks like we have if we find all the Wesley Hall item on our website. Let's see one second. Let me go back. Yeah.

Peter Spalding: Yes, you can find anything available on Wesley Hall through us. We started with the sort of curation of bestselling products, but we are happy to facilitate anything.

Robert Fodor: And that's from any one of our vendors. So you can always reach out to the concierge and we will add items custom skus as well and that

Peter Spalding: Actually a fun fact we've just learned that of late 40% of our Revenue comes from custom product orders. So we are pleased that you all are taking advantage of that and we know that we do a great job at turning those around really quickly. Thanks to Robert and Renee and their team. So yeah keep them coming.

Carey Yount: That's great.

Robert Fodor: Carey and Zack I can't thank you enough for joining us today. This is a really great opportunity. I think for all of our members whether they be new or not to understand not only who are new vendors are but also the processes behind all that they do and I think that's extremely important for new designers as well who may not be that familiar with becking out custom or com. So yeah, this is fantastic. Thanks everybody for joining just a quick reminder. The next concierge open Forum will be the last Thursday of March. Same time same channel and Peter. Who do we have lined up next time?

Peter Spalding: I believe Nancy gansakoffer is joining us.

Robert Fodor: I can't remember.

Robert Fodor: right

Peter Spalding: That'll be fun. And one question in the messages just reminded me that we are gonna be having a custom upholstery piece sale starting March 17th. I think it'll run for 10 days where I'll shipping is free for your custom orders. so Yeah.

Robert Fodor: It was very important.

Carey Yount: Take advantage of that.

Peter Spalding: exactly not too much Advantage, but take

Carey Yount: Thank you so much for letting us be here today and reach out to give any questions for sure.

Robert Fodor: abs And just one last word.

Peter Spalding: Age thank you for joining.

Zack Taylor: Yeah.

Robert Fodor: If you have questions about anything that we would review today. Feel free to reach out to the concierge. You can reach us by phone by email or live chat on the website. We're around from 8 am until 6 PM Eastern Time Monday through Friday. We hope to expand to the weekends and after that soon that might be towards the summertime, but we will let all of when that changes and we look forward to seeing you in the club. Thank you so much.

01:05:00

Carey Yount: Thanks.

Peter Spalding: Hi everyone. Thank you.

Renee Wyatt: Hi, everyone.

Robert Fodor: All right. Take care.

Meeting ended after 01:55:42 👋