The Designer Discount.

Not all designers are created equal. Just as the world takes all kinds, the field of design is littered with people of all kinds: some classically-trained and educated by interdisciplinary artists, some not; some who allow collaboration and some who plow through their clients’ ideas; and lastly, and likely most importantly to the client, some designers who believe in transparent pricing: passing on our Trade-Only discount pricing to our clients. And then there are the ones who don’t (Why do people want to work with them?! is it one of those subconscious masochistic compulsions that the most expensive, hard to work with item is somehow best?).

I once knew a girl who grew up in the charmed Gold Coast of Chicago. Her parents were in finance and she had the privilege of being brought up in one of the oldest and most storied homes in the area. I was curious to know how these pieces of information she kept bringing up would play themselves out, and why, and to what accord, but alas, there it was: ‘My mother won’t’ deign to hire a designer,” she told me, “because she already has her resale license.”

For those of you who don’t know, a resale license is a license issued by each state that makes individuals or businesses into reselling entities, or vendors. It makes us tax-exempt to other resellers, but not to the state. It’s a tremendous pain in the rear and it’s also NOT WHAT GIVE US THE DESIGNER DISCOUNT. Ahem. (Years later, I went to a funeral at that friend’s house and was completely unsurprised that it lacked in spatial flow, dimensionality, rhythm, color, pattern, and highest functionality).

Designers get our designer discounts after being vetted by vendors. Every vendor or fabricator has a different way of vetting, but we are vetted, indeed; clients, P&Ls, projects, reputation, orders, credit.

It’s true that some designer vendors like Schumacher have recently opened their pearly gates to the public: but it’s also true that the public doesn’t get trade pricing. It’s also true that Hermes, famous for their bags that sell upwards of $20K, now make lipsticks. You can put lipstick on a pig…

No, I’m not calling people who want to wear Hermes lipstick pigs. It’s just that product is product. Brands know the psychology of aspirational buying. And so do designers: many of my colleagues prefer to tack on 100% markups because they’ve “worked too long and too damn hard” to not charge those astronomical prices. And they know that some people think that spending $20K on a sofa instead of $10K is better, somehow.

I prefer to charge my clients for my time or my services rendered. It’s a simple transaction that makes sense to everyone involved. My clients enjoy the abounding honesty and trust that comes with working with me and seeing transparency reflected in my invoicing and purchase orders.

I can buy from Arhaus, for instance, a vendor that is outpacing Restoration Hardware in selling mid-range household goods, at 50% of what the public pays. I can then sell that item to my client at MY DISCRETIONARY price. So the client gets a price MUCH lower than the MSRP. I can also have custom burley walnut or mahogany cabinets fabricated by a local Italian Renaissance man, Valentino Baielli, and not charge my clients the 100% markups that other designers charge. You want to go to Merchandise Mart with me, or to the San Francisco Design Center? Cool! Let’s go - and I can buy you things from there that you’d never even imagined existed, unless you’d seen them in Arch Digest.

I’ll round out this information more later - I have a work site to get to - but wanted to share! Questions, feedback are welcome - christy@honeyandsalthome.com .