“An Online Marketplace For Interior Designers” with Greg Wyers of Design Trade Services

Jeffrey (0s):
Welcome everyone who is interested in the stories of entrepreneurship to radio entrepreneurs. And we are, again, presenting more stories of how entrepreneurs are dealing with this chaotic economy, adapting every day. And our next guest is Greg Wyers, president of Design Trade Services. Welcome, Greg.

Greg (18s):
Thank you.

Jeffrey (20s):
So why don’t you tell our listeners about design trade service

Greg (24s):
Design trade service in a nutshell is revolutionizing the design and furniture industry, as we know it today, and as we have used it for the last decades forever, should I go on?

Jeffrey (38s):
Yeah, sure. I want to understand what that means. I used to build furniture. I was on a lathing machine for my father in high school.

Greg (45s):
Oh, right. Well then you have some familiarity with estimate explained. There are approximately 75,000 designers in the United States. 84% of those. According to American society of interior designers are very small firms, maybe individually and a small farmer of two or three people as such. They have always had to source products for their clients independently. There’s no such organization. They go through to do any of that. So over the years, they’ve either gone to retailers where they get a small commission to a very small boutique manufacturer. And such, maybe you were describing about yourself there, where, where small firms make a small amount of products, not much selection and relatively high prices designers that have never been able to actually access world-class vendors.

Greg (1m 38s):
They just don’t have the buying power. It’s like, you know, you calling Ford motor company to order a car. No, they just, they don’t qualify with enough purchasing power to do that. Well, DTS is changing all that as we speak for the last six years, we’ve worked on building and perfecting an e-commerce platform. That’s private is exclusively for interior designers on that platform. Designers, professional designers can instantly access products from world-class vendors in the furniture business, and they can order the product 24 7 at the lowest designer net prices available.

Greg (2m 26s):
And then we do all the work. They don’t have to have an internal staff to keep up with all the orders we’ve been doing that for the last five or six years. It was relatively unheard of in this industry and not immediately accepted. You mentioned the chaotic economy, actually, part of the events that took place two years ago added to the importance of an organization. Like we have designers can source for their clients at their and access. As I said, the world’s biggest and best at the best prices. And then we do all the work. They order through us and we use a collective buying power to buy from manufacturers.

Greg (3m 12s):
And we do all the fulfillment. This has never been done before. And we’re now on the verge because of recent investment funding. We received scaling this program out to include every designer in north America. That’s just getting ready to take place. That’s why I said, we’re revolutionizing the industry from what it’s ever been in the next 30 to 60 days.

Jeffrey (3m 37s):
And you know, what is your background that led you to sort of think about this? Cause I do think it’s a logical solution for the end user, for consumers, as much as for the manufacturers, it makes my life easier as well. Lets me access a greater range of people. But what led to this? What’s your background

Greg (3m 57s):
Originally? I was an air force pilot during the Vietnam era, came out and started a, a company that ended up being the second largest franchise company in the camera and photo industry. Interesting. Look back. It’s all gone. People don’t have cameras anymore.

Jeffrey (4m 13s):
Well, don’t say that Nathan, Nathan, I found Nathan our producer at a camera store.

Greg (4m 20s):
I mean, they’re gone think about it. So, but I, but I got in the furniture business 40 years ago and again started kind of growing things and eventually became very much involved with interior designers 30 years ago, and major manufacturers on a national level, all the designers and stores that I work with or brick and mortar. And I worked with major manufacturers and as such, I became familiar with all the, we call them pain points that both manufacturers and designers go through when they try to work directly with each other, I’m talking about major manufacturers, world-class products and so became familiar with that.

Greg (5m 6s):
And so then a few years ago, we kind of decided, let’s see if we can make this work in a, on a, some type of an e-commerce site. I can tell you that the manufacturers didn’t initially think that people would ever source furniture over the internet, but we’ve shown that’s not the case they will. So our background mine and my partner’s background is simply decades of working with designers and manufacturers and knowing their relative pain points. And you said something right? A while ago. What we put together works equally. Well, both designers who can now through DTS at two o’clock in the morning source products, and let’s say 5, 6, 7 different vendors and be done.

Greg (5m 52s):
And then we do all the work. We do all the logistics tracking and fulfillment the manufacturer. On the other hand, instead of all the manufacturers love designers. There’s thousands of them out there. I know that collectively it’s a huge group, but individually again, it’s like Ford taking order for one car. So instead they get all the orders from us collectively, you only have one point of contact us, which is like the designer has one point of contact and we see that both sides get what they want out of the transaction. We are now going to inform every designer in America about what we finally have put together that we see on a daily basis is working

Jeffrey (6m 42s):
Well. It’s all very, very interesting. And maybe this is an obvious question to you. How do you make your revenue?

Greg (6m 50s):
We buy because of our relationship with manufacturers for decades, I’m talking about major manufacturers we purchase at what is known in the industry is stocking dealer cost. That’s a cost. You only get, excuse me, turn this off. That’s a cost. You only get when you have a warehouse and you stock product. But however, since we have correlated collective purchasing power volume is such that we can qualify for that cost without actually stocking anything. And that allows us to sell to the designer at the same price that a manufacturer would sell to that designer.

Greg (7m 35s):
If that designer could qualify for an account, which usually they can’t, but if they could, a single designer would play it, we’ll pay a slight up charge over what a stocking dealer would pay, which is logical. And when they design, it goes through DTS. They get that same load designer, net price in some cases, even lower. But the, the margin we make is pretty slim in the end, the third front of that, and in furniture industry. However, what I really want to emphasize is where this is leading to much more than what we’re offering today. Even though what we’re offering today is working. We did the start of this six years ago.

Greg (8m 17s):
What we’re building is much more substantial than that. When we are able to collate a majority of designers through one entity designed trade service, we will, by at that point have formed one of the most powerful buying groups in the entire furniture industry. You would have as much as 70,000 designers correlated, purchasing power through one point of contact, which will give us the ability on behalf of designers to secure proprietary programs, just for designers, just for our members, proprietary products, meaning that aren’t distributed through the retailers or anybody else that size of a collective purchasing power will provide something that designers have never even imagined it could happen.

Greg (9m 7s):
They could be part of the merchandising group with their own catalog products and prices and programs.

Jeffrey (9m 14s):
All very interesting. And we’ve been speaking with Greg wire’s president of design trade services innovating the whole furniture process system. Greg, if somebody is interested in design trade and wants to learn more from you, how would they contact you? Or

Greg (9m 32s):
I just log on to design, trade service.com. It doesn’t cost anything to join. And there are no obligations. It’s a totally free membership. They only have to have free a sales tax license, and we have to be able to tell they can, they can log on and place immediate order. We won’t place the order until you’ve vetted the designer, but essentially they can log on find products. The pricing, see shipping costs place an order, and we verify their credentials, which means they have to be in the design business. And that’s it. They can find out everything about the company right there. It’s free and there’s no obligations.

Jeffrey (10m 12s):
Well, Greg, thanks for being on the show today. We hope you come back again and tell us how things progress as the launch goes into marketplace. Remind everybody, this is radio entrepreneurs and that was Greg wire’s. President the design trade service.