Latest / The iDesign Lab Podcast / Guy Holbrook talks Craftsmanship, Commerce, and Century Furniture

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Guy Holbrook talks Craftsmanship, Commerce, and Century Furniture · The iDesign Lab Podcast

0:00
Voice Over: This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design.
0:05
Voice Over: Curator of interiors, furnishings and lifestyles.
0:09
Voice Over: Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott, idesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends.
0:25
Voice Over: Idesign Lab provides industry insight, discussing the latest trends, styles and everything in between to better help you style your life, through advice from trendsetters, designers, influencers, innovators, fabricators and manufacturers, as well as personal stories that inspire, motivate and excite.
0:43
Voice Over: And join us on this elevated, informative and lively journey into the world of all things design.
0:50
Voice Over: Today we're talking design, craftsmanship and the business of luxury furniture, with industry veteran Guy Holbrook as the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Century Furniture.
1:00
Voice Over: Guy plays a key role in shaping the brand's direction and growth.
1:02
Voice Over: With decades of experience at top furniture companies.
1:03
Voice Over: He's a role in shaping the brand's direction and growth.
1:05
Voice Over: With decades of experience at top furniture companies, he's a leader in high-end custom home furnishings.
1:10
Voice Over: Let's dive into his journey, the future of design and what makes Century stand out in the world of luxury interiors.
1:18
Tiffany Woolley: Today on the iDesign Lab podcast, we are excited to welcome Guy Holbrook, who's in our furniture industry, part of our design world, and who's right now heading up a part of Sentry.
1:36
Scott Woolley: VP of sales.
1:37
Tiffany Woolley: That's a big-.
1:38
Scott Woolley: Big job.
1:39
Tiffany Woolley: Big role.
1:40
Tiffany Woolley: For a big company, iconic company it is an iconic company and we kind of discussed that before on the podcast.
1:46
Tiffany Woolley: It's definitely probably one of the first companies that I was ever familiar with.
1:52
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, it's an iconic brand and you know, if you're in our industry certainly in the middle to high end and luxury goods you know who we are, our company.
2:00
Guy Holbrook: We've spent, you know, 77, 78 years developing this beautiful brand.
2:04
Guy Holbrook: It's a family-owned brand which is a little bit of an outlier now in the industry.
2:12
Guy Holbrook: That's my favorite.
2:13
Guy Holbrook: I love all those stories too.
2:14
Guy Holbrook: It's third generation, Our taglines.
2:15
Guy Holbrook: It sounds a little cliche, but we're makers, we make furniture.
2:19
Guy Holbrook: I think in the industry now there's so many people that they design beautiful furniture but they source it somewhere and they just brand it, but we build it and I think that's kind of a.
2:28
Scott Woolley: You have your own factories here in the united states.
2:30
Guy Holbrook: We have multiple factories underneath the century brand.
2:33
Tiffany Woolley: So we've actually got four producing factories which I love that too, because in our fast-paced world where everybody wants this instant gratification, I to, as an interior designer, lead clients back down to.
2:46
Tiffany Woolley: I understand that heirloom quality furniture is not necessarily everybody's priority, but it should be, and there really is a difference.
2:54
Tiffany Woolley: So I love to be able to explore that and discuss things like that of what sets Century apart.
3:01
Tiffany Woolley: Sure.
3:02
Guy Holbrook: And I think that people need better furniture in their lives.
3:06
Guy Holbrook: They just need to know why.
3:07
Tiffany Woolley: A hundred percent and usually it's.
3:09
Guy Holbrook: There's a little bit of kind of a give and take with it.
3:12
Guy Holbrook: Usually we tell people all the time they may have the means for better in goods and luxury goods, but what happens is they typically buy on price maybe their first purchase and they have to kind of get burned by that.
3:23
Guy Holbrook: They have to buy quality that's inferior or doesn't last or quickly fails, and then they say, well, I'm going to go back to the.
3:29
Guy Holbrook: Well, what do I need to do this time?
3:31
Guy Holbrook: And then they usually engage someone that's knowledgeable on construction or an interior design firm that says here are the brands you should be buying, and here's why it's better materials, better design, better construction, and those things have longevity both from a stylistic standpoint and a performance standpoint.
3:47
Tiffany Woolley: So, as you've evolved in this business, and especially in the brand of Century, where have you seen things shift of, like who your customer is?
3:57
Tiffany Woolley: Is it high-end furniture stores?
3:59
Tiffany Woolley: Is it interior designers?
4:01
Tiffany Woolley: Like, where do you see?
4:04
Guy Holbrook: or where does your focus?
4:05
Guy Holbrook: That's an excellent question.
4:06
Guy Holbrook: I mean, you know, our industry is kind of an ecosystem, so the ecosystem has many parts and many players that are kind of interdependent upon each other.
4:14
Tiffany Woolley: I've been in the business about 30 years, so we got to start.
4:16
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, let's go a little back so we can hear how you did land here.
4:19
Guy Holbrook: Well, you know.
4:20
Guy Holbrook: So my story is much like a lot of great people.
4:23
Guy Holbrook: I was in college and worked for a furniture store.
4:25
Guy Holbrook: I had a great gentleman who brought me into the industry when I was working graduate school in the furniture business and it was really kind of the forefront of the Internet.
4:34
Guy Holbrook: So I was doing, I did a term paper on Internet commerce back in 1995.
4:38
Guy Holbrook: And a friend of mine said hey, you know, I'm working in a furniture store here in town and I think we need some part-time help and we're starting to explore internet and would you be interested in that?
4:50
Guy Holbrook: And I was like, eh, why not?
4:51
Scott Woolley: But this is while you were going to college.
4:52
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, I was in grad school.
4:54
Scott Woolley: So grad school.
4:55
Scott Woolley: But what were you going to college for?
4:57
Scott Woolley: Was it to be in the furniture industry?
4:59
Guy Holbrook: I was not going to be in the furniture business.
5:02
Scott Woolley: I can assure you Did you have an aspiration to a direction you know.
5:06
Guy Holbrook: I thought at one time I wanted to be in finance.
5:08
Guy Holbrook: I thought I wanted to be a banker and thank goodness that no one really ever wanted me to.
5:13
Guy Holbrook: I'd worked in finance a little bit after undergrad and then I worked in marketing for about three years and then went back to grad school and that's when I met some folks in the furniture business.
5:22
Guy Holbrook: And it's just, there's so many incredible personalities and great people in the industry and you know, back up a little bit, my father was a merchant, was a men's clothier, and my grandfather was too.
5:33
Guy Holbrook: They had a great men's store in the upper end and my mom was a lifelong educator.
5:37
Guy Holbrook: So my mom taught and was a school administrator for 30 years.
5:41
Guy Holbrook: So I kind of got the boast of best worlds.
5:43
Guy Holbrook: You know I love, you know people and I love fashion and I love the emotion that is elicited when people get excited about a product.
5:52
Guy Holbrook: And furniture is that way.
5:53
Guy Holbrook: I mean people get so excited about.
5:55
Guy Holbrook: Think about, like your favorite chair or your favorite sofa, or maybe your best meal that you've ever had at your house or Christmas.
6:01
Guy Holbrook: All those things happen to happen on furniture and this industry kind of drew me in.
6:08
Tiffany Woolley: That's an interesting way to look at it.
6:09
Tiffany Woolley: I love it too.
6:09
Tiffany Woolley: It is yeah.
6:11
Scott Woolley: So you're in college and a job is what takes you in your direction.
6:15
Scott Woolley: That's right.
6:15
Guy Holbrook: So just engaging people, a gentleman by the name of Tom Shores who had a company called Classic Leather and I'll get back to that here in a second, but he also owned some furniture stores and brought me in to work for him at retail, part-time.
6:29
Guy Holbrook: And then, you know, I think I worked for him for six months and he said your next job as soon as you graduate, you know from my MBA, he said you're going to be a sales rep for us, you're going to manage the territory.
6:40
Guy Holbrook: And that was the interview, really yeah, so territory.
6:42
Guy Holbrook: And then that was the interview, really yeah, so he's a big basketball guy, big sports guy, and you know I was.
6:46
Guy Holbrook: I loved sports and just love people and this guy had such a magnetic personality he just drew me in.
6:51
Guy Holbrook: And that was about the extent of the of the conversation.
6:54
Guy Holbrook: I'll cut to a very quick end.
6:56
Guy Holbrook: That company, domestic manufacturer of high-end leather for roughly, I think, probably 55 years Century, and our ownership group, actually Rockhouse Farm, bought Classic Leather like three years ago.
7:09
Guy Holbrook: What a full circle moment.
7:12
Tiffany Woolley: Well, and I feel like that's what's also so cool about the industry is it started with so many small, you know, local vendors Well, not local, but American-made vendors and there's just so much growth in an untapped industry.
7:28
Tiffany Woolley: Really.
7:30
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, it's interesting.
7:31
Guy Holbrook: I mean again, manufacturing isn't easy.
7:33
Guy Holbrook: It's a different equation to import.
7:37
Guy Holbrook: I think that you'll see more people that probably get into the import side and whether that's tabletop or bedding or things along those lines, and whether that's tabletop or bedding or things along those lines, but furniture has migrated a little bit, or quite a bit, to basically what you see is what you get, the old acronym WYSIWYG, right.
7:54
Guy Holbrook: So, hey, I really like that.
7:56
Guy Holbrook: It's pretty and it only comes one way and, trust me, Century does some cool things like that that we source from some of the best sources around the globe.
8:04
Guy Holbrook: But our calling card is the customization, and customization is a broad term.
8:08
Guy Holbrook: Customization could mean special order, you know, and there's something like hey, can I change the fabric on this chair or the finish on this table?
8:16
Guy Holbrook: That's mild customization.
8:18
Guy Holbrook: Customization for us gets into a much broader, you know, spectrum of like hey, can I change the arm on that?
8:24
Guy Holbrook: Can I change the depth on that?
8:25
Guy Holbrook: Can I change the cushion on that?
8:27
Guy Holbrook: Can I change the stitching on that?
8:29
Guy Holbrook: Can I actually change the width on this?
8:31
Guy Holbrook: Or finish.
8:32
Guy Holbrook: And once you get into, kind of those multi-axis opportunities, there's a huge separator in being a domestic manufacturer.
8:39
Scott Woolley: I don't mean to be so wonky, but that's a little of it.
8:41
Scott Woolley: But I think a lot of people don't realize that or understand or know that.
8:44
Scott Woolley: I mean Tiffany's been in the interior design business as a decorator for 24, 25 years.
8:49
Scott Woolley: I only started getting involved with her maybe four years ago.
8:54
Voice Over: And had no idea that you could take.
8:58
Scott Woolley: You know, I always thought about going into a furniture store and that's what they sold, and that's what that is, and that's all you get, Absolutely, but that one chair could have five.
9:07
Tiffany Woolley: Thousands of SKUs.
9:08
Scott Woolley: Oh, yeah, and so many different ways.
9:11
Guy Holbrook: There's a great book I think came out maybe 10 or 12 years ago and it's called the Paradox of Choice.
9:16
Guy Holbrook: Right, and the paradox of choice is really that people want choices, right, right, but once they get to a certain level of choices, they get overwhelmed with it.
9:24
Guy Holbrook: So if you've got three choices to make, if I say, hey, here are three shirts to choose from.
9:28
Guy Holbrook: Do you like this shirt, this shirt, this shirt, you feel empowered, you get to make a selection.
9:32
Guy Holbrook: If I say there are 50 shirts, you go whew, that's a lot.
9:36
Guy Holbrook: The buttons are different on this one and the material is different on this one and the fit is different on this one.
9:42
Guy Holbrook: And that's the lovely thing about having interior design.
9:46
Guy Holbrook: Who can come in and say here is what you need.
9:48
Guy Holbrook: The scale of your house, is this?
9:49
Guy Holbrook: The architectural elements in your home, are this or going to be this?
9:53
Tiffany Woolley: if you're doing a new bill exactly and here is what fits in.
9:56
Guy Holbrook: So finding great design professionals and consultative selling, those are linchpins to success of our industry and certainly of our price point with all the option sets we have.
10:05
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, right, definitely.
10:07
Tiffany Woolley: And I always loved, like my first, like I century did the line with Oscar de la Renta and I was just like always because I was an architectural digest junkie through the years and you know, just always craved all that information of what these people lived like.
10:24
Voice Over: Sure.
10:24
Tiffany Woolley: You know, behind the scenes intimate pictures To me.
10:28
Tiffany Woolley: That was one of my first introductions to Century Sure.
10:33
Guy Holbrook: And Century over the years has done multiple kind of pathways to success and some of our talent has been internal talent in terms of design.
10:42
Guy Holbrook: So Bill Faber and these storied names that have been in our industry, that worked exclusively for Century, designing product for our brand, you know, just over the years we've had some incredible talent come through and stay in tenure at Century.
10:55
Guy Holbrook: But occasionally we will reach out into the industry or an adjacent industry and find an iconic name in Oscar de la Renta.
11:03
Guy Holbrook: Or you know our current, you know stable is just incredible.
11:07
Guy Holbrook: We have Thomas O'Brien, ad Top 100.
11:10
Guy Holbrook: Jesse and Mara from Carrying Company are just phenomenal people.
11:13
Guy Holbrook: We've got Allison Palladino that does some great things.
11:16
Guy Holbrook: I'm going to leave somebody out so I'm sorry, but you know our current that we've picked up is Tara Shaw and Tara Shaw found us and we are delighted she did Incredible designer out of New Orleans.
11:27
Guy Holbrook: She has done wonderful collections before and she has brought her wonderful aesthetic and eye and talent for developing finishes and brought that into Century.
11:37
Guy Holbrook: And we've got a new collection from Tara that we launched recently.
11:39
Scott Woolley: So when you say she found you she approached Century.
11:43
Guy Holbrook: She approached us us it was almost kind of like a funny thing a cold call at market, so we're all at high point market, you know, twice a year and she kind of knocked on the front door and and said hey, you know, I'd like to speak to somebody about, you know, maybe developing a collection for y'all.
11:58
Guy Holbrook: I admire your brand, uh, but you know, don't know the and I mean for that to you should hear her tell the story I was going to say We've got it on our website.
12:06
Guy Holbrook: It's like that is like the furthest outlier you can find in how these things happen.
12:11
Guy Holbrook: And she kind of found us and I think she sat with like our creative director and eventually maybe got with our CEO, alex Shefford, and they looked at her portfolio.
12:20
Guy Holbrook: They knew who she was and her impact and she's just a delightful person.
12:30
Guy Holbrook: So did she come with a portfolio of designs or ideas or pitching?
12:32
Guy Holbrook: She is one of these wonderful people that has this incredible passion and desire and ability to go over to Europe and all around the world and find these antiques and just bring back the real thing.
12:41
Tiffany Woolley: Which New Orleans kind of sets the stage for that you get down to.
12:44
Guy Holbrook: Magazine Street and just Royal and all those wonderful places in the French Quarter.
12:48
Tiffany Woolley: There's so much inspiration too.
12:49
Guy Holbrook: Incredible things and she can tell you the detail of where this came from and original design inspiration.
12:56
Tiffany Woolley: She's really like a furniture historian to a degree.
12:59
Guy Holbrook: She is absolutely all of that in a bag of chips, as the kids say.
13:03
Guy Holbrook: It's great to see her do her thing and she does it in such a genuine way and she is authentic and she romances it and she's got this beautiful.
13:11
Guy Holbrook: You know, I think she's got that New Orleans drawl.
13:14
Guy Holbrook: Now I don't know whether that's native or she's been down there on magazine long enough to kind of pull it out of her, but it's just beautiful.
13:20
Tiffany Woolley: Well, I love what those collaborations bring to the market too.
13:24
Tiffany Woolley: I think that they just add such a special twist.
13:27
Tiffany Woolley: It makes people also, like I know, even when I'm selling to clients and everything, I love using some of that information.
13:35
Tiffany Woolley: Sure, because it makes them feel like they are getting something more special, unique, something that is so curated and found Not necessarily you know your run of the mill.
13:47
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, we were talking prior to the show a little bit about co-branding and, you know, are the sum of the parts greater or you know, and so on.
13:54
Guy Holbrook: And if you look at things like that, you know Century has this wonderful ecosystem, you know relationship, where we have incredible partners that can sell our brand and trust your clients with our brand.
14:05
Guy Holbrook: And then if we bring another layer of you know an 80 top 100 designer in there like Thomas O'Brien, or you know, bring someone really phenomenal like Tara Shaw or Jesse Amira into the relationship who have a design, aesthetic or a specialty that we aren't tapping into, it just expands the offering and it legitimizes you know our product out in the marketplace even more so it's a force multiplier.
14:28
Tiffany Woolley: Agreed.
14:29
Tiffany Woolley: So how long have you been with Century?
14:31
Guy Holbrook: So I'm the newbie.
14:32
Tiffany Woolley: Okay.
14:32
Guy Holbrook: You know a couple weeks.
14:33
Guy Holbrook: So no, in all seriousness, I am seriously the newbie.
14:37
Guy Holbrook: I've been there about a decade now and that's a newbie.
14:41
Scott Woolley: That's a newbie at Century.
14:42
Guy Holbrook: So you know, our company has been around 77 years.
14:44
Guy Holbrook: We've got a wonderful you know just group.
14:48
Guy Holbrook: We call it a work family.
14:50
Guy Holbrook: There's a family of ownership.
14:51
Guy Holbrook: There's our teammates who are truly our family.
14:54
Guy Holbrook: There's our family of partners and dealers in the field.
14:57
Guy Holbrook: But you know Debbie Miller's upstairs and she's been with us I think 51 years now in customer service Unbelievable, and she think 51 years now in customer service and she's sharp as a tack and if I have a question I go to her and you know allison watts has been with us.
15:07
Guy Holbrook: I think you know pushing maybe 35, 40 years and she looks and she.
15:11
Guy Holbrook: I think we got her in the crib, I mean allison harman now, and she's married to one of our plant managers, and so when we talk about like family, yeah, it's that way.
15:19
Guy Holbrook: But yeah, 10 years with the company, it's been uh, it's been incredible.
15:23
Tiffany Woolley: And was Century a goal for you?
15:26
Guy Holbrook: You know that's a great question.
15:28
Guy Holbrook: I had the joy of working for Classic Leather for a great part of the start of my career.
15:33
Guy Holbrook: I worked for a nice import company, so I learned that side of the business kind of in the middle of my career.
15:41
Guy Holbrook: And what I like to tell people, especially as I'm interviewing the territory managers that's one of my roles as we bring new talent in, like you know is that you know Century is where people graduate to in their career.
15:51
Tiffany Woolley: And you stay, they do.
15:53
Guy Holbrook: And it's because you know I always you know we talk in analogies quite a bit and it's like you know, the kids that get to eat at the little table, a kid's table, at Thanksgiving and they get to move up to the adult table and that was kind of the way I felt at Century.
16:04
Guy Holbrook: It's just, it is a company full of great people with great minds and it is a teaching company.
16:10
Guy Holbrook: I love education.
16:11
Guy Holbrook: I mentioned my mom earlier.
16:13
Guy Holbrook: It's a company if you want to come to learn, you can go in there and go to the classroom every day.
16:16
Guy Holbrook: It's special and we get to come out and share it with y'all and I get to learn from y'all too, right, right, right.
16:22
Tiffany Woolley: so as you get to go out and, like you said, you're interviewing territory reps and everything like that, I always think that that's a unknown part of our business, but such a special part of our business because there is, as we've just said, such relationships founded there and one of the things that keeps coming back to is with these reps about like, how do you know when it's time to take on a new line, or how do you know you know to add lines or not have lines.
16:48
Tiffany Woolley: I mean, there's just so much of the of more entrepreneurial part of a rep life where you're more in the corporate.
16:56
Tiffany Woolley: Yep Right.
16:58
Guy Holbrook: So you know you have to come out in the field to figure out what's happening in the factory.
17:01
Guy Holbrook: We say that quite a bit, true.
17:03
Tiffany Woolley: But you know from like our standpoint.
17:05
Guy Holbrook: You know when we are trying to find talent and people to bring into our company.
17:09
Guy Holbrook: You know we're looking for cultural fit and for us that's really important.
17:13
Guy Holbrook: There's several litmus tests and you know we have these mantras I mean just as you do in your organization and it's not all posted up on the board where everybody points to it every day, but it's like.
17:23
Guy Holbrook: You know, we try to do the right thing.
17:24
Guy Holbrook: So we don't always do the right thing, but we always try to do the right thing and that's how we treat our customers and our vendors.
17:31
Guy Holbrook: We act like you know.
17:32
Guy Holbrook: We try to put and lead with empathy.
17:34
Guy Holbrook: We try to put ourselves in the consumer's shoes.
17:38
Guy Holbrook: If there's an issue that's come up or a delay, we try to do reasonable things to find solutions for people.
17:43
Guy Holbrook: We also try to look out in the marketplace and find people who can think like what we think.
17:48
Guy Holbrook: I mean we're a fairly complex company so we need people that can explain that complexity in smaller terms.
17:53
Guy Holbrook: You know we always point to, like our iPhones pretty complex piece of equipment but it's fairly intuitive.
17:59
Guy Holbrook: So we're always fighting how do we make things intuitive for our company Right now?
18:04
Guy Holbrook: The market's changing.
18:05
Guy Holbrook: That's a great question.
18:06
Guy Holbrook: I'm going to go and I'm not sure if I've got the answer.
18:07
Guy Holbrook: I sometimes can ramble, but you asked about, you know, the ecosystem and the exchange maybe, or a little bit of a migration from retail to the design channel.
18:19
Guy Holbrook: Um, if you look at our sales force, we've got some.
18:22
Guy Holbrook: I mean, I could, I would never have been hired on our sales force.
18:25
Guy Holbrook: Our sales force is that good at Century and I'm that proud of it, and I didn't hire them all.
18:30
Guy Holbrook: I've hired probably the last third or maybe 50%.
18:34
Guy Holbrook: But we've got this great group of folks many who came from the retail background that were kind of retail reps, right, so they sold big stores, they knew retail, they understood multi-stores and distribution like that.
18:46
Guy Holbrook: And then the market has changed so we're now into more of a design channel business.
18:53
Guy Holbrook: So that could be design trade showrooms, it could be larger design firms we're dealing with all that and even an emerging kind of e-commerce channel.
19:02
Guy Holbrook: So, and our reps are involved in all of those things.
19:06
Voice Over: Okay.
19:06
Guy Holbrook: But we're trying to find good reps who can speak both retail as well as address the designer channel.
19:11
Guy Holbrook: And those are, you'd say, well, we're selling furniture, it's all the same messaging, it's all the same.
19:16
Guy Holbrook: Sales, it's all the same servicing.
19:17
Guy Holbrook: It's actually very different.
19:19
Guy Holbrook: And to find a hybrid rep like that is a challenge right now, and we've hired.
19:23
Guy Holbrook: The last couple reps we've hired have a lot of interior background, interior design backgrounds.
19:28
Guy Holbrook: In fact, the last two that I've hired were both licensed degree interior designers who just happen to want to be territory managers.
19:35
Scott Woolley: So, as the VP of sales, you live in North Carolina.
19:39
Scott Woolley: Yes, sir, today you're in.
19:39
Scott Woolley: Florida.
19:40
Voice Over: Yes, sir.
19:40
Scott Woolley: Are you covering the whole country?
19:42
Scott Woolley: Are you traveling?
19:43
Guy Holbrook: nonstop.
19:44
Guy Holbrook: My job is I work for the sales reps.
19:47
Guy Holbrook: Jim Duckworth is here with us today our great territory manager.
19:50
Guy Holbrook: I work for Jim and his 23 other siblings on our sales force and our several thousand customers.
19:57
Guy Holbrook: So I roll up to the CEO.
20:00
Guy Holbrook: But I travel quite a bit.
20:01
Guy Holbrook: I'm probably on the road half the year.
20:03
Guy Holbrook: I've got a lovely wife who understands that and you know there's.
20:07
Guy Holbrook: She will bring me my suitcase when it is time for me to take my next trip.
20:11
Guy Holbrook: But I travel a lot.
20:14
Guy Holbrook: I work with our customers and I enjoy it.
20:16
Guy Holbrook: And you know I get out here and we look for solutions and we look for gaps in our lineup and we look for opportunities that we're not addressing.
20:23
Guy Holbrook: And you know we'll go out.
20:24
Guy Holbrook: I mean, you know my day, it could be filled with hey, we go going into a customer's home to look at a product that maybe isn't performing like it should be and we may be working on a you know, a multi hundred thousand dollar opportunity with a new account.
20:37
Guy Holbrook: So it could be a varied degree of day of what we do and see and and you, we might be doing a really awesome podcast.
20:45
Tiffany Woolley: Right, right, and so it really is what your reps your 23 children are kind of bringing to you and what they need from you.
20:54
Guy Holbrook: There are no two days that are alike, I mean, and Jim and I will laugh about this, which I love that.
20:58
Tiffany Woolley: That's what keeps it so interesting.
20:59
Guy Holbrook: There are days where I'm the cheerleader and there are days where I am the psychologist.
21:04
Guy Holbrook: There are days where I'm the cheerleader and there are days where I'm the psychologist, and there are days where I'm the punching bag and there are days that I'm the disciplinarian.
21:11
Guy Holbrook: And I covet all of those roles because they're important to the success of our team.
21:13
Scott Woolley: What's the aspect that you enjoy the most?
21:17
Guy Holbrook: You know they all have their merits and fun.
21:20
Guy Holbrook: I really love the customer.
21:21
Guy Holbrook: I mean, if I'm sitting with the customer and with our reps and we're talking about business, but eventually we get into, like you know, you're telling me about your kids and your projects and your passions and when we get into that, that's the gold for me.
21:35
Guy Holbrook: I mean, we were talking with somebody yesterday and at an account and lovely folks and you know, one of the ladies was from West Virginia.
21:43
Guy Holbrook: Now, I don't know a ton about West Virginia but I've got great friends from there and it didn't take us too long to find a way to cross paths.
21:50
Guy Holbrook: I'm also at the age where, like the world gets really small.
21:52
Tiffany Woolley: Isn't it crazy?
21:53
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, I love all that.
22:00
Guy Holbrook: But that is like my passion is just getting to know.
22:01
Guy Holbrook: You know, beyond just the aspect of business.
22:02
Guy Holbrook: When the relationship is deep, it's meaningful.
22:03
Guy Holbrook: And I have people call me on nights and weekends and ask can we do something?
22:06
Guy Holbrook: Can Century make this concession?
22:07
Guy Holbrook: Can we find a way to get the yes for this client?
22:09
Guy Holbrook: And if they're comfortable enough to call and contact Jim or me or anybody in our company when they don't think it's a convenient time, but yet we are eager to help them, that's the magic for me.
22:18
Guy Holbrook: Sorry for the essay answer.
22:21
Tiffany Woolley: So are you intimate withU and every?
22:24
Tiffany Woolley: So it sounds like that's a different portion, right?
22:28
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, that's a great question.
22:29
Guy Holbrook: I probably, if you asked all of our territory managers you know the Jim Duckworths of the world and the Rob Knowles of the world and John they would probably laugh at my product knowledge or lack thereof.
22:39
Tiffany Woolley: Which I think is so cool, though right, Because that is like the ecosystem there are things.
22:46
Guy Holbrook: It's such a deep line and we've got thousands of SKUs that we offer up and inside of those thousands we have some that have iterations of like 7 million permutations in our cornerstone.
22:57
Guy Holbrook: That's our best-selling upholstery program.
23:00
Guy Holbrook: So for me to know the nth degree of all of that, I can teach from a high level, and if you need me to get granular with you, I have to go bone up.
23:06
Guy Holbrook: So it's like studying for an exam before I lead sales training.
23:09
Guy Holbrook: So.
23:09
Guy Holbrook: But the good news is and Century's kind of is this we say this quite often it's like Century is the Library of Congress.
23:16
Guy Holbrook: We have every edition of about every book.
23:18
Guy Holbrook: In terms of our offering, what you need are good librarians and we're thankful that our customer service team and our product line team and our territory managers and occasionally our VP of sales can help you out with some of that.
23:30
Guy Holbrook: But usually the more granular you get down into our team, the better they're going to be.
23:34
Scott Woolley: See, I think more importantly from how I look at things is the amount of inventory and products you have is one thing, but what's coming in the future?
23:44
Scott Woolley: Yeah, what's being developed, you know if it's a new trend or yeah, and that's a whole other.
23:50
Scott Woolley: You know how to take that feedback to the.
23:51
Guy Holbrook: I'd love to be the furniture Nostradamus man and tell you what's going to happen.
23:55
Guy Holbrook: You know the wolf is in the bushes, but for us it is trying to be relevant in the marketplace and a half step ahead.
24:02
Guy Holbrook: You know, I think, as I've mentioned, like our licensed partners, help us see some of that.
24:06
Guy Holbrook: They help us see the forest, the trees, and help us kind of coordinate our design efforts and aesthetics.
24:12
Guy Holbrook: The other thing is getting out and travel and we've got a really strong creative team who are tasked with several things.
24:19
Guy Holbrook: That's making our high point showroom look great and our Las Vegas showrooms look great and our corporate showrooms look great.
24:24
Guy Holbrook: But they're also tasked with making sure that our product line looks strong and relevant in the marketplace and trying to look at colors and trends.
24:32
Guy Holbrook: And we have great.
24:33
Guy Holbrook: You know, there are great fabric mills that bring us you know, fashion trends like that.
24:37
Guy Holbrook: So it's like you know, hey, what's the great fabric that we can apply to anything?
24:40
Guy Holbrook: But there is a lot of.
24:42
Guy Holbrook: There is some science to it, but it's really more art and there's some just incredible talents in our industry that have been just forefront leaders of that, and a lot of that talent is graduating out.
24:53
Guy Holbrook: So that's a big void in the industry right now.
24:55
Guy Holbrook: Or who are the tastemakers?
24:56
Tiffany Woolley: So there really is growth.
24:58
Guy Holbrook: There is growth, there's growth potential, but who are going to be the next tastemakers in our industry?
25:04
Guy Holbrook: And it's going to probably move away from some of these big singular names that we all have known from the 80s and 90s?
25:12
Guy Holbrook: And 2000s and now it's a lot like kind of direct-to-consumer brands that we were just discussing.
25:19
Tiffany Woolley: Really.
25:20
Guy Holbrook: Those folks have such great taste and do some really cool things out there, and now they have platforms like what?
25:27
Voice Over: we're doing now, or social media?
25:30
Guy Holbrook: where they can become very, very influential very quickly.
25:34
Scott Woolley: Right, we were watching last night President Trump at his cabinet meeting, but then, after we watched that, the press secretary had a press conference.
25:45
Scott Woolley: I found interesting, because what you were just saying is that they're changing the way in which it's been for the last 50 years.
25:51
Scott Woolley: They're now letting podcasters come in.
25:54
Scott Woolley: That's awesome.
25:56
Guy Holbrook: And interview.
25:56
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, so you know, access and platforms are very different today than what they've been in the past, and that could be whether we're talking social media or where you buy your furniture, right.
26:08
Guy Holbrook: I mean, it's very, very different.
26:10
Guy Holbrook: Some of the brands used to only be exclusive to the trade.
26:13
Guy Holbrook: You could only go down to Dania, right?
26:15
Tiffany Woolley: Well, and that's really how it was.
26:17
Tiffany Woolley: So when you see the partner showrooms Dania is obviously, isn't there one in Palm Beach too?
26:24
Guy Holbrook: So you know, Century has kind of our methodology in terms of how we do things and how we distribute, and the industry is similar in some ways.
26:33
Guy Holbrook: But you know, so our distribution is you know, century has corporate showrooms that we actually own and operate and that's part of our team in roughly six markets now.
26:40
Guy Holbrook: And then we have kind of what we call our partner showrooms or agent showrooms, and those are folks We've got a couple that are branded, that just have only our products in there from our corporate brand, rockhouse Farm, right, and then we have agent showrooms that are multi-brand.
26:54
Scott Woolley: So Rockhouse brand on Century, do you branch over into any of that?
27:01
Scott Woolley: You have any involvement?
27:02
Guy Holbrook: you know, uh, so it's, it's now rock house luxury brands.
27:06
Guy Holbrook: That's where we are so I have to make sure I say that right, and our vp of marketing, who is also one of our principals, will probably correct me, um, on it.
27:12
Guy Holbrook: But so, uh, it's quick story that that's the background, that's actually the, the farm that our ownership team grew up on, and and it's their parents' farm.
27:21
Scott Woolley: We learned about that from Jim I know, I just love all these backstories.
27:24
Tiffany Woolley: It's amazing.
27:25
Guy Holbrook: You know our ownership team and you know whether they would ever listen to this or not.
27:30
Guy Holbrook: They're fabulous people and they are incredibly intelligent.
27:33
Guy Holbrook: If they weren't in the furniture business, they'd be running Fortune 500 companies.
27:36
Guy Holbrook: I intelligent If they weren't the furniture business, they'd be running Fortune 500 companies.
27:40
Guy Holbrook: I mean, these are just bright people who happen to be very passionate about the furniture business, but they grew up like working on a farm, like their parents are just great people and their folks were in this industry and grandparents were in this industry, but I mean they were like they were shoveling horse stalls.
27:52
Guy Holbrook: These are people that work.
27:54
Tiffany Woolley: Which is work ethic, yeah.
27:56
Guy Holbrook: And they have brought that into their professional lives.
27:58
Guy Holbrook: But back to your question Rockhouse Farm or Rockhouse Luxury Brands is just this umbrella and portfolio of these incredible brands.
28:08
Guy Holbrook: And Century is, I like to think, the crown jewel.
28:10
Guy Holbrook: We are the organic native brand, but Holland House is part of that.
28:14
Guy Holbrook: Hickory Chair, hancock Moore, jessica Charles.
28:18
Tiffany Woolley: Maitland Smith.
28:20
Guy Holbrook: These just iconic.
28:21
Tiffany Woolley: Holland Houses.
28:22
Tiffany Woolley: I can't even really wrap my head around how that all started too.
28:26
Tiffany Woolley: They captured all those brands.
28:28
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, and it's golly, without throwing any shade on anybody, some of these, like Hancock Moore story brand Jack Lachine and Jimmy Moore and that whole team just built the best leather company basically in the industry and they were looking for a way to retire without really messing up their ecosystem and it's almost like they selected the Sheafford family at Rockhouse Farm.
28:54
Tiffany Woolley: So that was their exit strategy?
28:56
Guy Holbrook: I think it was like engage and see if there's interest there.
28:59
Guy Holbrook: And you know you hate to say you kind of bequeath your company because there was a transaction.
29:03
Guy Holbrook: But I think that they thought they would be very great stewards of what they had built.
29:07
Guy Holbrook: The Shuford family would be great stewards carrying forth Hancock.
29:11
Guy Holbrook: And you know, hickory Chair is just an incredible story.
29:13
Guy Holbrook: I've got Hickory Chair in my home.
29:15
Tiffany Woolley: I love Hickory Chair.
29:16
Guy Holbrook: Kudos to them.
29:16
Guy Holbrook: And you know it's my mom and grandmother loved Hickory Chair and we've got some of their beautiful pieces in my house that.
29:22
Tiffany Woolley: I covet.
29:23
Guy Holbrook: Yep, and you know they got kind of tangled up in three or four things in different ownerships and the way I view that is they were great kids with bad parents and they just got rehomed and they got rehomed into the Rockhouse family and they are growing and doing great things again.
29:38
Guy Holbrook: But my involvement with them is that I know all of my peers in those companies.
29:42
Guy Holbrook: We collaborate and we compete Healthy they do, and maybe I'm looking for a rep in a territory and they just interviewed for a territory a year or two ago and they've got a couple candidates.
29:55
Scott Woolley: So do you all get together or are there any kind of meetings, of brainstorming?
29:59
Guy Holbrook: well, we don't collude, so there's none of that.
30:01
Guy Holbrook: But the bottom line is is that you know it's a small industry and we're friendly and you know, uh, john pig and wardo, quinn and nathan and sam, all these are great kind of peers my counters, nathan's president of highland house, but the other names I've mentioned are basically the VP of sales, or you know, and I'm the VP of sales at Century and since I've been inside a little bit longer than a couple of the other peers I've mentioned, right there, they will sometimes come to me and say hey, you know, what do you think about this?
30:28
Guy Holbrook: And maybe I've got some insight that's of value to them, and maybe not, but they've got fresh eyes.
30:34
Guy Holbrook: So I value the way they see our company as newcomers coming in.
30:38
Guy Holbrook: So a little bit.
30:40
Guy Holbrook: But we also share some fabrics.
30:41
Guy Holbrook: There's a cool little Rockhouse Forum fabric story and we share some trucking and it's all the stuff.
30:47
Guy Holbrook: That isn't real sexy on the back end but it helps the business run more smoothly.
30:50
Tiffany Woolley: Right and I would say that, like as an industry as a whole, it is such, you know, a very authentic group of people.
30:59
Tiffany Woolley: It's definitely, you know, America, for you know, I just feel like it's, and when you go to High Point you do feel that and you get to be intimate with it, which I don't think the end user ever really gets to really appreciate or understand.
31:15
Tiffany Woolley: So, it's kind of our job to educate.
31:18
Guy Holbrook: Well, you're great brand ambassadors, and that's the thing is that you know the brands you represent.
31:22
Guy Holbrook: You are what your customer sees in that brand and it's a two-way street, right.
31:27
Guy Holbrook: So Century would be trading on your goodwill, right?
31:31
Guy Holbrook: You have the relationship with your customer.
31:32
Guy Holbrook: We are absolutely trading on your goodwill.
31:34
Guy Holbrook: You are recommending our brand to your customer and vice versa.
31:40
Guy Holbrook: You know, let's say that we're delayed on a fabric that you've chosen for a customer and that's not even Century.
31:44
Guy Holbrook: We don't make fabric at Century.
31:46
Guy Holbrook: We just apply it to our furniture, so we buy it from mills all around the globe.
31:50
Guy Holbrook: But let's say that fabric is delayed, and it's delayed three months, something terrible and your customer're a big bridal shower that you know, and you know everybody's coming.
32:03
Tiffany Woolley: That's my life, right oh yeah, we are.
32:05
Guy Holbrook: we've heard this call before, believe it or not.
32:07
Guy Holbrook: Um, you know they often.
32:10
Guy Holbrook: The client often looks to you and are upset with you, and maybe not century, and certainly not our fabric mill.
32:18
Guy Holbrook: So that ecosystem is super important and we often have to write a note of apology, and I'll write handwritten apologies every other week and we tell people I'm sorry, please don't be upset with our customers, who expect our product and brought our brand to you.
32:35
Guy Holbrook: Be upset with us and we'll do better next time.
32:38
Guy Holbrook: I love that.
32:39
Guy Holbrook: That's the doing the right thing or trying to do the right thing Right.
32:42
Scott Woolley: So there's another aspect that I find really fascinating about Century is the sustainability the program that's in place.
32:49
Scott Woolley: It's quite an amazing program.
32:52
Guy Holbrook: You know, that's a great, great question, and we prod ourselves as again of being makers, and if you're a maker, you're held to a higher standard.
33:11
Scott Woolley: And whether it's our forestry sustainability, the lumber that we harvest and use to our finishing, to the way we treat our employees.
33:16
Scott Woolley: We've got a great, great group of folks your packaging, the cardboard you use, even the fact of water hyacinth plants oh yeah, you know I read that and I saw that and I'm pretty in tune with that.
33:22
Scott Woolley: I ran a company that was an FDA over-the-counter product, that was a plant-based product, right, and then when I saw the water hyacinth plant and the fact that for your re-tan and whatnot that you're doing, that I mean yeah, natural materials.
33:38
Guy Holbrook: You know big thing for us and you know there are lots of regulatory things that we have to kind of keep our pulse on to make sure that if we're producing it you know we certainly have to have a high level but we have visibility of that If we're sourcing something around the globe, we have to have documentation and we're good boy and girl scouts.
33:58
Scott Woolley: Yes, I documentation and that we're um, we're good boy and girl scouts?
33:59
Scott Woolley: Yeah, we are very, very, but I don't think your century promotes it enough, or well, you know, or talks about it because it's some great I think 10 to 15 years ago people really got into the green story, correct?
34:10
Guy Holbrook: yeah and there was a little bit of kind of what you kind of call green washing people like oh you know, hey, we're putting less, you know, that's right.
34:18
Guy Holbrook: We're putting less, you know, petroleum-based stuff in our full, in our foam cushions and we're using more, you know, soy-based and all this stuff and it, it and there was some, some very, very great stories and truths to a lot of that.
34:32
Guy Holbrook: You know the bottom line is just do the right thing.
34:34
Guy Holbrook: I mean tip over, for us has been a big thing in the industry with I'm sure you've probably heard about, like you know, full extension drawers and things that fall over.
34:43
Guy Holbrook: And there's some things that were in a couple of the big boxes were some terrible outcomes for some families and small kids.
34:48
Guy Holbrook: And again, a majority of our products already were built in a way that there was no issue.
34:54
Guy Holbrook: But we had to go back in and back weight some things and shorten some drawers.
34:58
Guy Holbrook: Again, good Boy Scouts, good Girl Scouts do the right thing, and if you do the right thing, the outcome generally will be what you want it to be, but it's a great thing.
35:09
Scott Woolley: It's a good philosophy.
35:09
Scott Woolley: But, when you read all the things that.
35:11
Scott Woolley: Century does.
35:12
Scott Woolley: It's a very impressive list.
35:14
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, with our VP of Marketing and one of our principals the other day and we were talking about that in particular.
35:20
Guy Holbrook: It's on our website, it's on our consumer website.
35:22
Guy Holbrook: But you have to go deep into the mind, in the bottom of the mind, to find that.
35:27
Guy Holbrook: But it's sustainability statements and all the accreditations that we have.
35:32
Scott Woolley: No, even when you've got to dig to find that, and when you read through it it's like wow.
35:39
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, it's pretty slick.
35:40
Scott Woolley: As big as this company is, as long as it's been around, they're really carrying on so many different levels.
35:45
Scott Woolley: But even the video that you have about the company and the history it's kind of buried.
35:50
Scott Woolley: I watched the video.
35:53
Guy Holbrook: It's a great story.
35:54
Guy Holbrook: This is like coming out in the field to figure out what's happening in the factory.
35:57
Guy Holbrook: It's like you know.
35:58
Guy Holbrook: Again, we need to hear this because we know this is important information.
36:02
Guy Holbrook: It's where do you house it and how do you make it visible without looking like we are beating our chest and you know being braggadocious about things that are simply just doing the right thing, but we were talking before we had the podcast about this one home that we're starting on.
36:17
Scott Woolley: I know that the owners of that house if they saw that video they would be more in tune going.
36:22
Scott Woolley: That's the kind of stuff that we want.
36:24
Guy Holbrook: These are the people I want to do business with Right.
36:26
Tiffany Woolley: Well, and people do want to know that what they're buying does have sustainability and lasting.
36:33
Scott Woolley: And the craftsmanship.
36:34
Scott Woolley: Sure, it's not being done in some factory in China, it's being done in America.
36:40
Scott Woolley: And when you watch the video and how it's being done, it's very interesting.
36:45
Guy Holbrook: You know, the thing is, too, is like people's attention spans right, so they will tune in and watch something.
36:52
Scott Woolley: So you take short, little you know tidbits of it and put it on Instagram.
36:55
Tiffany Woolley: About social media.
36:57
Tiffany Woolley: Like do you get involved with social media?
36:59
Tiffany Woolley: Cause, like what Scott just said, like those are the sales standpoint.
37:02
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, so you know, for us it's, it's um.
37:05
Guy Holbrook: You know, unfortunately I've got a face made for radio right.
37:09
Scott Woolley: They don't need me.
37:09
Scott Woolley: I wouldn't say that.
37:13
Guy Holbrook: They don need me talking to customers and building the relationships.
37:16
Guy Holbrook: We've got some great people that head up our social media Lexikini and Comberware back from our marketing team, kind of head ours up, and we've invested in that platform right now or those platforms to kind of elevate us, Our customers, I think, do it so much and partners do it so much better.
37:31
Tiffany Woolley: Well, that's just it, they do.
37:32
Guy Holbrook: But you're marketing right.
37:33
Guy Holbrook: You're kind of marketing to the client.
37:36
Tiffany Woolley: For you, yep.
37:37
Guy Holbrook: And we are kind of marketing to our partners, right.
37:40
Guy Holbrook: So it's kind of a weird thing, but we're also marketing out to the client, so they're pulling the product back through our partners.
37:47
Guy Holbrook: But what we're finding is that, while we can have all that information out there about sustainability, a short video clip of that is what people really want.
37:55
Guy Holbrook: They want the news highlights the executive summary and the same thing on product right.
38:05
Guy Holbrook: Like we can tell you, we can go way down into the rabbit hole and show you all the 7 million permutations of this upholstery program Cornerstone.
38:08
Guy Holbrook: That's phenomenal.
38:08
Guy Holbrook: Or we can show you a 30-minute clip that you can get multiple depths and multiple arms and multiple legs and put it in any fabric you want and tailor, make this to you and your clients needs.
38:18
Guy Holbrook: And if we can do that in a video that's compelling and professionally shot and looks great and resides in a very clickable place, then we're making good things.
38:27
Tiffany Woolley: What advice would you give an individual who's looking to break into the furniture industry?
38:32
Guy Holbrook: That's a great question.
38:33
Guy Holbrook: You know I'd probably need to figure out a little bit about where they're trying to get in.
38:38
Guy Holbrook: You know, are you trying to get into what segment of the industry?
38:42
Guy Holbrook: You know, the first thing I would say is is look and learn about the industry a little bit, find someone that's already in it and try to kind of connect with them and say you know, what are your passions?
38:51
Guy Holbrook: Do you want to try to work with a customer?
38:53
Guy Holbrook: Are you creative, you know?
38:54
Guy Holbrook: Do you want to try to do marketing or media or product, and they go?
38:58
Guy Holbrook: Well, I don't know any of those things.
39:00
Guy Holbrook: I think working for a design firm or working for a furniture retailer is the greatest experience you can have in our industry.
39:05
Guy Holbrook: You have to understand where the customer transacts and the client transacts and you know there are great opportunities for people to come in design firms and be like a junior associate designer or a librarian or resource manager or pulling things or a little you know, assistant project manager.
39:22
Guy Holbrook: I think those are great things.
39:23
Guy Holbrook: They're just kind of a gopher.
39:24
Guy Holbrook: Hey, I need you to go out and meet this client and you know, give access here, absolutely, and that's how you learn.
39:31
Guy Holbrook: You learn through that kind of you know, being submerged in it.
39:34
Guy Holbrook: And then if you have the the opportunity to work in a furniture store, I think you learn so much, not just about like dealing with the client and customer, but I think it's the back end that is really the magic.
39:46
Guy Holbrook: You learn how furniture is received and repaired and installed and you also see the sales cycle of how it's entered and just how all of those things are so important, of how they work and how it's displayed.
39:56
Guy Holbrook: You know, and just I learned so much.
39:59
Guy Holbrook: I mean, these little ladies that I work with when I was in my early 20s taught me about this industry inside and out, and I mean they would grab me by the arm and march me over to something Honey, exactly, you never sell a bed without selling a mattress with it.
40:14
Guy Holbrook: Why would you they're getting a new bed?
40:15
Guy Holbrook: Why would they not want a new mattress?
40:17
Guy Holbrook: And I mean just things like that that you go bing lights, come on.
40:21
Guy Holbrook: So I think, if you can get with somebody that's in the business and passionate about it and we need, we need a farm system, we need people coming into our industry and it is an untapped industry.
40:33
Tiffany Woolley: And another thing that I found fascinating is when I was listening to some podcasts, they were saying how this industry really won't get disrupted by AI.
40:41
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, so I mean, I feel like that's something that's so important to the youth today, because, look, you're coming in here obviously from a very business side of things.
40:51
Tiffany Woolley: You know, like we talked to Jim, it's business but it's also entrepreneurial.
40:56
Tiffany Woolley: You know, there's just so many facets, and for me it's more on the designer and the sales to an end user, and it is a really beautiful ecosystem of positive people.
41:07
Tiffany Woolley: It is family-centered for the most part, even as these brands start to get bought up, which I do sometimes worry, because all these fabric companies are now like under one umbrella and all these furniture companies, but I find it interesting too that they are really being bought up by such like family brands.
41:30
Tiffany Woolley: So, like I like that, it's not necessarily, you know, a venture capital type of situation, you know a venture capital type of situation, it's still staying in a, you know, a family a more entrepreneurial environment.
41:51
Guy Holbrook: Well, there's so many different relationships that make our industry go and you know we've talked about kind of the distribution side, from designers and trade showrooms and retail stores and so on, and those are all incredibly important.
41:58
Guy Holbrook: But if you look back up channel you start thinking about.
42:01
Guy Holbrook: You know, for us as a manufacturer, think about all the people that have to kind of be involved to make this happen at Century.
42:07
Guy Holbrook: So you know that could be our lumber vendors.
42:10
Guy Holbrook: It could be our fabric mills.
42:11
Guy Holbrook: It could be our foam and cushion manufacturers.
42:14
Guy Holbrook: It's our corrugated container makers that make our boxes for us, and then we have our own custom box machines.
42:20
Guy Holbrook: You know it's our fabric.
42:21
Guy Holbrook: You know we have these automated fabric machines that actually do incredible cutting.
42:25
Guy Holbrook: You know it's our Catawba Valley Community College that has our furniture academy that is teaching an apprentice program to get folks into doing this.
42:33
Tiffany Woolley: For apprenticeship.
42:35
Guy Holbrook: Absolutely, and Century is a founding member of that and there are all those relationships and that's just getting product to supplies to actually get to the build side.
42:44
Guy Holbrook: And then it's like you know, it's Duke Power, that's our power partner and I know you would say, well, that's so corny to think about that, but it is so many parts and pieces before we even get to starting to build furniture and you know there is an apprenticeship that goes with it.
42:59
Guy Holbrook: Same thing, like in sales reps or territory management.
43:02
Guy Holbrook: You find a lot of people that bring their family members in.
43:05
Guy Holbrook: When they find a good company, they bring their family members in.
43:09
Guy Holbrook: And I love that there are multiple territory reps.
43:12
Guy Holbrook: I'm sure that service your accounts.
43:14
Tiffany Woolley: I have a rep whose son is now coming in Exactly, or niece or nephew.
43:19
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, it's wild and it's really kind of a cool thing and we talk about our industry being family-centric.
43:24
Scott Woolley: It is, it's special, it really is when you say apprenticeship, apprenticeship from a craft and construction and building the furniture.
43:32
Guy Holbrook: You alluded to AI earlier and how that could maybe be a big disruptor in certain industries.
43:36
Guy Holbrook: I think it can enhance our industry.
43:38
Guy Holbrook: Well, enhance is great, but yeah but you know it's not going to build furniture for us tomorrow it's not going to make upholstery.
43:44
Guy Holbrook: So you know, back to the apprenticeship is that you know building furniture isn't just stamping out quarters.
43:50
Guy Holbrook: I mean, you know there's a segment of the market that stamps out quarters.
43:53
Guy Holbrook: That's not what Century and anyone in the middle to high end or luxury side of this does.
43:58
Guy Holbrook: They build custom furniture and that's a handcrafted thing.
44:01
Guy Holbrook: That's rubbing finishes.
44:03
Guy Holbrook: It is putting six pleats on this arm and making sure that I can work the left side as good as I can work the right with six pleats.
44:09
Guy Holbrook: And this arm is six inches in diameter if it's a rolled arm and that inch has got to be six inches.
44:14
Guy Holbrook: This one can't be four inches and this one be six.
44:17
Guy Holbrook: And it's that level of art and science right, and more of it is art, and we are in a little bit of a dry spell of bringing that type of talent into the industry and whether it's building the furniture, designing it, selling it.
44:34
Guy Holbrook: I mentioned the creatives.
44:35
Guy Holbrook: Right now I'm really worried about the creative side of this industry from the manufacturing.
44:40
Scott Woolley: We feel the same way in certain aspects.
44:42
Scott Woolley: You know like really good, you can do fantastic millwork on a wall.
44:47
Scott Woolley: Sure it's like a dying craft.
44:49
Scott Woolley: You know millwork that's for a ceiling yeah, and you hear about somebody retiring please even wallpaper hangers.
44:57
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, the trades.
44:59
Scott Woolley: Yeah, there's certain trades that.
45:01
Guy Holbrook: And if you're good at what you do, you know naming your own price to a degree.
45:05
Scott Woolley: Correct, you know, because there's not a lot of substitution for it.
45:07
Scott Woolley: No, it's so true.
45:08
Scott Woolley: Especially when they're really good 100%.
45:11
Tiffany Woolley: And you can rely on them.
45:12
Tiffany Woolley: I mean that you really truly, can, you know, attest to their integrity, sure For sure.
45:19
Guy Holbrook: You know what you're getting.
45:20
Tiffany Woolley: Yes.
45:21
Scott Woolley: Do you see a trend or a direction that the industry may go in the future?
45:26
Scott Woolley: You know, like how I have seen that A lot of furniture stores have gone and I feel like there's more designers or interior designers or firms.
45:41
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, you know, I think that there again it depends on what channel you're in.
45:46
Guy Holbrook: If you're in retail right now, I mean we're certainly seeing the independently owned, you know the family stores.
45:52
Guy Holbrook: We're seeing that probably wane a little bit.
45:56
Guy Holbrook: It's not going into non-existence but it is waning and part of that is it's second generation or third generation is now in the business.
46:05
Guy Holbrook: The property value has probably far outweighed the value of the business.
46:11
Guy Holbrook: So hey it's a piece of property over here on A1A and all of a sudden it's like oh my gosh, you know it's time to sell.
46:19
Scott Woolley: We've seen that happen with cabinet.
46:21
Scott Woolley: You know kitchen cabinet companies that have.
46:24
Guy Holbrook: So you know you're not seeing as many of the independent furniture stores.
46:28
Guy Holbrook: You still see, you know nice kind of multi-store chains that are upper end.
46:34
Guy Holbrook: Those still exist in this world.
46:35
Guy Holbrook: There are fewer of them than I wish there were.
46:37
Guy Holbrook: But what we are seeing is more of this kind of what we call boutique retail and that might be.
46:42
Guy Holbrook: You know, hey, out front it's on a really kind of cool area in a cool little neighborhood, you know, or shopping district, and you know it's a couple designers and they've got a cool storefront and there's some furniture in the front and the back is where the action happens.
46:55
Guy Holbrook: The back is there are projects laid out and there are two or three designers back there just kicking it and they're selling things up front and candles and furniture and all that, but in the back is where the projects are happening.
47:05
Guy Holbrook: That's the trend I'm seeing in retail.
47:07
Scott Woolley: Right.
47:07
Scott Woolley: Well, the Internet has certainly Sure, but from our perspective, we don't do anything with the Internet or the internet retailers that are selling.
47:16
Guy Holbrook: I mean, for us the internet is logging on to a century site, or logging on to, I agree you know, I think the upper end struggles with the internet because of the tactile thing and it's hard to see the value without actually being in the product and seeing and working in a consultative way.
47:33
Guy Holbrook: It's not going away.
47:35
Guy Holbrook: I mean people shop on the Internet every day.
47:39
Guy Holbrook: But I think design firms have a very healthy future.
47:42
Guy Holbrook: We're seeing more and more people hang out their own shingle and give it a try and we're trying to figure out the best way to keep that ecosystem happy because we have vested interest in our showrooms and our showroom partners and design firms and interior designers.
47:55
Guy Holbrook: We need good ways for people to access our brand and for margin to stay healthy for all parties and we are thinking about that day and night.
48:04
Scott Woolley: We are absolutely committed to that.
48:05
Scott Woolley: One of the reasons why Tiffany wanted to do this podcast is to try to educate people more the fact that going to an interior designer or a design firm actually doesn't cost more.
48:15
Scott Woolley: It actually it gives you so many opportunities.
48:20
Guy Holbrook: We you know, my wife and I redid our kitchen right before COVID I mean literally right before COVID and you know I know a bazillion people I have.
48:28
Guy Holbrook: I am not a tastemaker.
48:30
Guy Holbrook: Hopefully I match today.
48:32
Guy Holbrook: So I'm sitting up here with two good looking people who are well-dressed but, like I went out and hired an interior designer to do my home and it wasn't one of these AD Top 100s that are lovely, it was some good people locally and it's because I needed to be able to see the forest and the trees and my wife and I maybe weren't in agreement or something.
48:51
Guy Holbrook: We needed someone to win the jump ball.
48:53
Guy Holbrook: We needed somebody to say your wife's right because she's right.
48:56
Guy Holbrook: But it helped us in some space planning and doing some things that are not my forte.
49:02
Tiffany Woolley: Right Things that you shouldn't think you're not thinking about because you don't do it, and it was worth every penny of it.
49:06
Tiffany Woolley: I love it.
49:07
Scott Woolley: An interior designer or a firm will also help you through, just like with Century, the vast catalog and opportunities and options that will make your home just so much and you're going to be happy, and we talk about having analogies.
49:25
Guy Holbrook: So a Sherpa, the person that helps you climb Mount Everest, is the most valuable person on the trip and it's like they're the ones that have climbed it before and it's just another hike for them and it's a lifetime event for me.
49:37
Scott Woolley: That's a good analogy.
49:38
Scott Woolley: I love that.
49:38
Guy Holbrook: You need good Sherpas yeah.
49:40
Tiffany Woolley: I love that.
49:41
Tiffany Woolley: Well, that's a positive note.
49:42
Tiffany Woolley: We have a fun little wrap-up of some interesting little questions to ask you what is your favorite restaurant.
49:52
Scott Woolley: From a design standpoint.
49:54
Guy Holbrook: Design-wise.
49:54
Guy Holbrook: Do you have one?
49:55
Guy Holbrook: Oh, from a design design.
49:56
Tiffany Woolley: Why, oh, from a design standpoint, one that you've walked into, it could be the design of the food too, or I even joke, it could be the lack of design.
50:03
Tiffany Woolley: You know like sometimes, like barefoot in the keys is a good idea, let me.
50:07
Guy Holbrook: Let me come back to that.
50:08
Guy Holbrook: That's a heck of a question, because you know it's funny.
50:11
Guy Holbrook: I'm a.
50:12
Guy Holbrook: I lived in new orleans for a couple years, so I love just eating so let's start with that, which is such a foodie town.
50:19
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, you know, like Commander's Palace is just such a fun place in New Orleans down in the Garden District and it's an old house and that's kind of where Emeril was the chef and it's well-appointed and it's kind of uniquely New Orleans.
50:32
Guy Holbrook: It's just a cool place and the green is kind of their calling card, which is now back in favor and that's just.
50:41
Guy Holbrook: It's a wonderful dining experience and it's a cool place that just has a cool vibe to it, Also like Jean and Georgette's Steakhouse up in Chicago, and it's not because there's anything from a spectacular standpoint of like aesthetic in there, but it's just authentic, Like it's leather and it's tufted leather.
50:56
Guy Holbrook: It's an experience and it's like walnut and mahogany and it's throwback.
51:00
Guy Holbrook: And when you fit, and you know, everybody in there looks like they've worked there for 35 or 40 years and they're wearing white crisp tuck shirts and they're these little Italian guys that are phenomenal.
51:10
Guy Holbrook: And you know, to me that's like when you're in there you kind of smell the environment.
51:14
Guy Holbrook: That's like when you're in there you kind of smell the environment.
51:16
Tiffany Woolley: It's just awesome.
51:16
Tiffany Woolley: That's the beauty of what you do too.
51:18
Tiffany Woolley: You get to go to all these.
51:19
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, and I'm showing it.
51:20
Guy Holbrook: I mean bring it with me.
51:22
Scott Woolley: It sounds like a place in Charleston called Halls.
51:25
Scott Woolley: Oh yeah.
51:25
Guy Holbrook: Hall Steak Chophouse.
51:27
Scott Woolley: Yeah, I've been there.
51:27
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, great place.
51:29
Scott Woolley: Great place.
51:30
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, so you can get a good, a lot of place and charleston's done some really cool things.
51:39
Guy Holbrook: Charleston I'm I'm loving it.
51:40
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, if you're a young professional, you want to live in charleston, austin or nashville you know, that's where everybody's moving right now if you're right out of college telling my girls.
51:47
Tiffany Woolley: I think that's a good idea for college.
51:49
Scott Woolley: So let's ask another question hotel design.
51:52
Scott Woolley: Is there any one that comes to mind that you would say that wow, that was a really interesting design, or cool?
51:59
Guy Holbrook: You know that's a great thing.
52:01
Guy Holbrook: Typically, you know, I'm a business traveler so I don't get to stay at all the fancy properties.
52:06
Guy Holbrook: We were out in Vegas a little while back and you know we go out for market and it's always interesting to go out there and just see the things that are happening in those large casinos and it's, you know, it's just amazing to see.
52:18
Guy Holbrook: I think we were in the Bellagio and it was right before Tet and they had all the beautiful flowers and things happening out there and a big flower pan.
52:27
Guy Holbrook: I've got a picture I'll show you here in a minute, but it's you know I'm always amazed at, just like, how well-appointed those places are and Caesars, it's so true right.
52:35
Guy Holbrook: And just like you know, when you walk through, you're just in amazement, because they want the experience to be something that you don't and clearly haven't forgotten it.
52:44
Scott Woolley: Right, I walk through and I look at it and go the architectural and who did the design?
52:50
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, he's starting to appreciate all those details now.
52:54
Guy Holbrook: They're so vast yeah.
52:55
Scott Woolley: He's seeing to appreciate all those details.
52:56
Guy Holbrook: Now they're so vast, he's seeing the world through a different lens and everything came together.
52:58
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, there's people like Frank Gehry that did all these cool melted things.
53:03
Tiffany Woolley: My daughter just did a paper on him.
53:05
Tiffany Woolley: And it was just so much fun for me to re-appoint myself, and I think that he did a children's hospital or something out in Vegas.
53:10
Guy Holbrook: That's right beside the Las Vegas market.
53:12
Guy Holbrook: It looks like a building that's melted down.
53:14
Guy Holbrook: It looks like a building that's melted down and it's so cool.
53:16
Tiffany Woolley: Everything is with such intention.
53:19
Guy Holbrook: Yeah, I've got a great friend that I met in the industry kind of early on named Tack Galleon, up out of West Virginia and he did master resort design for, like the Broadmoor Resort and the Green Bar and Hershey.
53:30
Guy Holbrook: Lodge and I mean these guys are so much fun and they're just like us.
53:34
Guy Holbrook: They're not hoity-toity.
53:35
Guy Holbrook: I mean, these guys are so much fun and they're just like us.
53:37
Tiffany Woolley: They're not hoity-toity.
53:38
Tiffany Woolley: They can put on airs but, they are just great people.
53:39
Guy Holbrook: Then they got into the bourbon business.
53:40
Guy Holbrook: They're interesting people, but it was always fun to hear them describe these properties and just how excited they would get about getting to work in those properties their legacy property.
53:51
Guy Holbrook: Tag had a design studio in the Greenbrier in the basement.
53:54
Guy Holbrook: These are just everyday cool people that are super talented.
53:57
Tiffany Woolley: Oh, my God, I'd love to talk to him.
53:59
Tiffany Woolley: Wow, come on Netta.
54:01
Tiffany Woolley: So cool, so cool.
54:03
Tiffany Woolley: Well, thank you.
54:04
Guy Holbrook: It's the other way around you guys are awesome.
54:06
Tiffany Woolley: Thank you so much for joining us.
54:07
Tiffany Woolley: I didn't really know what to expect.
54:10
Guy Holbrook: Thank you, Tim, for bringing us by Y and thanks for being just great and hospitable host.
54:14
Tiffany Woolley: Well, we appreciate it.
54:16
Tiffany Woolley: Thanks, All right.
54:18
Voice Over: Idesign Lab iDesign Lab's podcast is an SW Group production in association with the Five Star and TW Interiors.
54:26
Voice Over: To learn more about iDesign Lab or TW Interiors, please visit twinteriorscom.