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Business & Tech

Designing Sisterhood

Meet the Owner: Sisters Barbara Elliott and Jennifer Ward-Woods talk about their shop, Interiors by Decorating Den.

Even though neither of them have had design school experience, sisters Barbara Elliott and Jennifer Ward-Woods always have had a passion for interior design.

While running their independently-owned Decorating Den franchise shop for the past 14 years, that passion has geared the duo to win 23 design competition awards and be featured in 35 publications including Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens. Elliott and Ward-Woods has also gained more than 900 clients and designed thousands of residential and commercials rooms. 

Their shop, Interiors by Decorating Den, has been in its current location of 917 Main Street in Stone Mountain Village for nine years. In this week's Meet the Owner, Patch talks with the two owners to dig deeper into their business. 

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Patch: How did you guys first get into interior decorating?

Barbara Elliott: We actually came from different backgrounds to get into this business. I was in accounting and Jennifer was in insurance, but we always had a love for interior design. So the franchise opportunity became available, and we decided that it was something that we were really interested in. 

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Patch: You've been in the Village for nine years, so it seems the city's been treating you well. 

Elliott: It was a prime location as far as visibility, because a majority of what we do is in the client's home. We have some walk-in traffic, but not very much. But because it is a more like a billboard, with people coming through every day, that's what attracted us to it, just a presence from the cars driving by. Even if they didn't stop in, people do see us and call. 

Patch: How far do you travel for clients?

Elliott: Well, we've traveled quite far! We've been to Alabama recently, but that was for a client that used to live here. Typically [it's] within the metro Atlanta area, but we go as far as Suwanee, Big Canoe, Douglasville, Union City, Covington. We go all over. 

Patch: Could you take me through the steps one would go through if he or she wanted to get, say, a bedroom redecorated?

Jennifer Ward-Woods: Well, normally, someone calls and our office manager has a questionnaire that she goes through: what they're working on, if they have deadlines, who's going to be a part of the decision-making process; she goes through that whole spiel. And then she'll schedule the initial appointment with either one of us, and we go out for the first appointment.

The first appointment is complimentary, so we don't charge a fee to go out and see them. And we do that so we kind of get an idea of how their space is and what they need help with. We go in and they show us the particular area they want us to have decorated, and then we ask them a series of questions, just to kind of get a good feel for their style and what they're looking for. It also helps by seeing other things they have in their house so we'll kind of get a good idea of the types of things they like.

While we're on that appointment, we go through our portfolio, which has a lot of pictures of before and after, just to show them the quality of our work. We then tell them a little bit of who we are, the franchise, and all of that. We try to give them a budget, and from that, we tell them that if they're comfortable with that, then we charge a retainer to actually do the designwork, which we come back to our studio.

We design presentation boards like here [in the store], which we then get them to come into the store for the second appointment, where we can explain to them what we decided for their particular space and run them through what it's going to look. It's kind of a storyboard. And, after that, if they want to make changes, they can do it here. We've got everything here at our fingertips. If not, then they start the ordering process. And then after that, we sort of deliver. We kind of do a reveal, where we send them away the day of installation and have everything done while they're away, and then the room is finished when they come in. 

Patch: Can you do something as small as a closet?

Ward-Woods: We do one window, or a whole house. (Laughs) So it's not necessarily where we can do the entire room; we can do parts of a room. A lot of times people have things they've already purchased, and they need to finish their space. 

Elliott: It could be a facelift or it could be a redo. We do everything in between, so it just depends on what it is they're looking to do. 

Patch: Do you guys work with different companies to get everything finished?

Elliott: Well, we directly buy from manufacturers, and we have over 100 different vendors that we use for that, and we use other businesses that we've partnered with that we do other work, like painting and flooring, things like that, that actually need to be constructed. So we have sources for literally anything we need to get done in a room. And we can coordinate and handle as much as the client wants us to. 

Patch: Did you have any training at all in interior decorating?

Elliott: No, not really, I mean... 

Ward-Woods: We both love to decorate since we were kids because our mother taught us how to sew and just to make our own little window treatments and things like that. So we've always been creative. But in terms of training, we both kind of started a decorating business before Decorating Den, but kind of on our own, and we just saw that it was hard when you don't have all the supplier sources and all the people that you need to do it at a larger scale. 

Elliott: Plus, with Decorating Den, when we purchase the franchise, you have a two-week [training session] that you have to go to the corporate office for. And that training is on design, sales, the different products. And then, once you get back, we have weekly training that they provide you at the field level on different categories, and there's subsequent training after that. We have a national conference that we attend, we have regional meetings every month, so all of those are ongoing training.

I did take some design classes before purchasing the franchise, but a lot of it, as far as the creative side, was something that you just have a knack for or you don't. But then, having some business knowledge really just transpired to the business side of it, and then with the training that we received through Decorating Den we were able to fast-start. It helped us with stuff like measuring and all the basic stuff that you need to know as an interior designer. 

What we try to do is, in the design process, we try to help clients create the room they want and also solve problems. And most of the time when clients call us, it's because they have a problem. They have a window they don't know what to do with, they have a room where they can't find furniture for, or they have a color in mind and they haven't been able to find something for it. 

Ward-Woods: Or they're overwhelmed. 

Elliott: Yeah, a roadblock that they've hit. And we're there to analyze their problem and to come up with solutions, and that's what we do.

Patch: Your website says that design seminars are sometimes offered for free from the two of you. How often does that happen and what occurs in the workshops?

Elliott: I don't think we've done any this year, but we're probably having one in the latter part of the year, probably about holiday decorating. But generally, we try to do one to three different ones a year, and they are free. Primarily, we have different information that we go over. Like last year we had one in the spring where we went over outdoor decorating, which is a hot trend right now, and we had one in the fall about holiday decorating. We've also done some different solutions for windows. A lot of specialty windows, which are very popular here in the South... we have everything from Palladian windows to really tall to sliders. We normally have a slide presentation of before and after [photos] so they can actually see it. We try to make it as informative as possible. 

Patch: How many clients have you had and how many rooms have you decorated?

Ward-Woods: We have over 900 clients that we've worked with in those 14 years, and a lot of those clients, we've done multiple rooms and multiple houses, so we've done a lot more than a thousand rooms. 

Patch: Is there anybody or any businesses that are notable?

Ward-Woods: We've done a mega church.

Elliott: That was probably our biggest commercial job. We've done some other commercial work, such as the Hampton Inn here in Stone Mountain. We did that several years ago. We've done a lot of doctor and dentist offices, that kind of thing. But as far as people go, we've had opporunities to work with people in television, that are CEOs of corporations, some athletes... so we've had the opportunity to do work with those types of clients, as well.

Patch: Do you have one tip for readers if they wanted to spice things up in their home?

Elliott: Well, I think there's two things you can do. One is paint. You can get a lot a impact from changing your paint color. If you do like neutrals and you don't want to be married to a color, even though it's really easy to repaint, but in case some people just have a phobia about paint, then accessories is another way to give a different feel and look to a room. You can take a pretty bland room and adding accessories with pops of color can make a big difference. and those things can be changed out even seasonally, if they want some different changes to the room. Those are probably the two least expensive and the easiest to do that we find pretty satisfactory for a change. 

Patch: Is there anything you guys would like to add?

Elliott: The only thing I would like to add is that our philosophy is that we like to try to help solve problems. We're not the type of designers that push styles upon people. We do try to push you out of your comfort zone because when someone usually comes to a designer, they want to be pushed a little bit. If they didn't, they would stay within their comfort zone and probably not use a designer. But when you want something, when you feel like you want a little bit more, we try to be comfortable to work with so it's not you know, our design. It's theirs. And that's what Jennifer's trying to talk about with the questions, because some people generally have an idea of what they want, even if they don't know it. But we can get that information by asking them questions, and that's what we do we investigate. 

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