Page 42 - Lighting Magazine October 2018

JUDY ZICCARDI (continued)
“Designers don’t seem to understand that retail pricing doesn’t exist in lighting anymore.”
they are serious by making a nancial commitment. If a designer is a referral to me, I’ll o en waive that fee, but if it’s a new client with no connections, I always charge for my time. My level of experience has value.”
tHe priCe ConunDrum
“Designers don’t seem to understand that retail pricing doesn’t exist in lighting anymore,” Ziccardi ob- serves. “There was a time when we had a retail price sheet with a three-time mark up. We’d give designers a 50-percent discount — which was 33-percent gross margin. Then some designers started going direct
with manufacturers. That’s a dangerous place for manufacturers to be. If they keep opening all of these individual accounts, they might have an occasional rep who will do a lot of business with them, but there will be plenty of others who will just do an occasional job. That leaves the manufacturer with thousands of designers on their books instead of a handful of show- rooms. It’s a di cult situation to manage, and it isn’t likely manufacturers will be able to provide custom- ized service for each of those designers. This situation has led us to pull some lines o of our shelves and only use them when speci cally requested.
“Now with the internet and virtually unlimited access to information, designers can go online and see prices on various sites. They think they’re seeing retail pricing, but it’s not — it’s ‘market value.’ So they think we should be able to o er them a 50-percent discount on market value prices, but that’s impossible because that’s less than our cost. We have to charge not only for our cost, but for our service in order to stay in business. To be quite succinct, retail was mur- deredandtheinternetkilledit.”
MARIA VIOLA-KUTTRUFF
Viola Interior Design, Merion, Pennsylvania
While taking a break from her job as a business writer/editor when her children were young, Maria Viola-Ku ru helped her set designer sister
with a TV commercial she was working on. She enjoyed the project so much, she began investigat- ing educational programs for that line of work and earned a Master’s degree in Interior Architecture & Design from Drexel University and was hired by several architectural rms for residential, commer- cial, and institutional projects before starting her own business specializing in luxury residential.
“I take my business very seriously,” Viola-Ku ru says. “I don’t see it as a trivial pursuit or hobby. I’m working on someone’s home and get involved rst-hand in every aspect of the design project. Some days are stressful and heavy, but what I do is dynamic, fast-paced, creative, and never boring. I enjoy interacting and strategizing with people and am a problem-solver by nature, so it comes naturally for me to gure out a way to make things beautiful.”
pArtner witH sHowrooms
At the start of a project, Viola-Ku ru will surf on- line and ip through catalogs for inspiration, but she considers lighting showrooms her business partner and o en brings oor plans and photos into the store to talk with the sta about the aesthetic and pale e.
“The main showroom I use is Bright Light because their sta is very well-trained,” she explains. “I’ve built a strong relationship with them, and they un- derstand my style and the way I like to do business. Their sta knows the products and the right books to pull for each project, which helps me work very e ectively. It saves me hours of time looking through products online that aren’t right for the project. I trust the showroom sta will help me nd the best options for any project I bring them.
“Once I decide on the selections to present to my client, I make an appointment with the showroom to go over the specs in advance. I want to prep her on the direction I’m going in so we’re on the same page when I bring clients in.”
Viola-Ku ru wants to ensure her clients have a true vision of what the product will look like when
“Lighting is a very personal thing. Sometimes it’s hard to grasp the scope of a xture — or have a sense of what the nish will look like in person.”
38 enLIGHTenment Magazine | OctOber 2018
www.enlightenmentmag.com
the Designer-showroom BonD