Behind every polished interior design reveal is a maze of logistics to track—and when you’re the head of a firm, it can feel like every one of them is on your shoulders.
This is where clear operations management makes all the difference. Far from creating corporate-culture-style constraints, tightly structured operations systems can unleash a designer’s creative freedom. We asked a handful of pros, including New York–based designers Kathleen Walsh and Gil Melott; Charlotte, North Carolina, designer Barrie Benson; and Pittsburgh designer Betsy Wentz, to share the strategies that keep their focus on the craft and their firms running like well-oiled machines.
Define Roles for Every Team Member, From Designers to Project Managers to Procurement Managers
Even the smallest design firm needs support staff—someone to help pull fabrics, track procurement, chase invoices—so that the principal designer can direct the bigger picture. “My name is on the door, so the clients expect that I’m doing their design,” says AD PRO Directory designer Kathleen Walsh, who has a BFA in interior design and an MBA in management. “I’m best used for creative direction, for the important client conversations, and for the design phase.” For each project her firm (which has three to five members) takes on, Walsh brings in a junior or senior designer, along with a design assistant, to concept schemes, help build presentations, and present those options to clients. Her firm’s procurement manager is another key player. That individual works with the design assistant to send quote requests to vendors and, once the payments begin to flow, ensures that “all the steps in the process for every single purchase happen,” she explains. The procurement manager might be as in the weeds as making sure a fabric has been successfully sent from the knit backer to the workroom. In other words, they take on the kind of micromanaging a principal designer needs someone else to handle.
Walsh’s operational structure is not dissimilar to that of larger firms like Barrie Benson Studio and Betsy Wentz Interior Design, which have 11 and 7 team members, respectively. Both of those firms’ namesake principal designers assign a team of one or two additional designers, a project manager, and a logistics manager to each project. The logistics manager is responsible for tracking everything that’s been ordered and owning such questions as Where is it? When does it arrive? And is it damaged? “A staffer dedicated to logistical management is something that a lot of firms are lacking,” says Wentz. “But for one single person to handle all of the project management, ordering, and designing—that, to me, is too much.”
At Benson’s firm, team composition varies based on the project. “When we onboard a client, we create a team that feels right based on personality and strengths,” says Benson. Building your team with thought and intention is critical, agrees Wentz, whose firm has grown dramatically over the past five years and handles 25 to 30 projects at any given time. “At the end of the day, you do have to delegate and let people do what they know how to do. So many designer friends of mine tell me, ‘I know I need to hire someone, but I’m afraid.’ I was the same way. But once you do, you start to realize that bringing people on actually creates freedom and more revenue because you’re able to assign people the job. I think that’s how we’ve been able to escalate into so many projects at once,” she explains.
Streamline Your Presentation Process
A lot of recon goes into pulling together a client presentation: You’ve likely had the homeowner complete a questionnaire about their likes and dislikes, sorted through visual references they’ve sent you, and maybe even gone out for a discovery day of sample pulling and window shopping.
