On the Ask Us Anything podcast, editor in chief Kaitlin Petersen taps former Trade Tales guests to answer real, confidential designer questions, offering a safe space to discuss business challenges. Have a question of your own to ask? Send an email to start the conversation.
This week, Brian Paquette joins the show to answer a question from a designer who was stumped when a client asked if they needed insurance for the furnishings being held in storage ahead of an installation. When the designer set out on a search to identify the best way to protect those items, she quickly hit a dead end. But the insurance question remained as pressing as ever: If something happens to the piles of expensive, high-end product, what options are available?
Paquette, whose design firm is based in Seattle, shares advice on how to vet logistical partners, why storage insurance can result in profitability for both warehouses and designers, and how to help your project partners grow with you if they aren’t yet offering the level of service you need.
Crucial insight: Paquette was fortunate to develop a strong relationship with a local warehouse that knows the design industry inside and out. When he began to take on projects in other states, he soon learned he had to develop a vetting process to find receivers with similar standards wherever his firm was conducting business. In the end, he approached each of those prospective partners with a roadmap of how he’d like to work together and what was in it for them. “We’ve created [a] document [that] explained: This is how our warehouse does it. Here are the results of how they’re doing it. And here’s what you could see if you take this on,” says Paquette. In each case, the warehouse was all in on the new approach. “They are different in levels of communication. They’re different in the way that they do it. They’re different in the way that they bill,” he adds. “But I don’t think of that as a detriment. I think of that as, ‘This is how we do it here.’ It’s like, ‘I’m going to throw this at you and see how you respond.’”
Key quote: “It’s like having five people in the room building a house, and me being humble as to what I don’t know, and the architect being humble as to what they don’t know, and the landscape designer and the client being humble as to what they don’t know—but understanding that together, we can come up with the best solution possible,” Paquette says of the design process.
This episode was sponsored by Four Hands and Crypton. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.