Purchasing Power: Maximize your Firm’s Potential with the Best Digital Tools
Learn how to streamline your purchasing process, strengthen your vendor relationships, and use digital tools to keep your design business profitable and organized.
If you’ve ever felt like projects get delayed, client decisions drag forever, or purchasing feels chaotic no matter how hard you try to stay organized, this conversation will completely shift how you operate. In this video, we break down the operational systems, purchasing workflows, vendor strategies, and communication habits that separate calm, efficient design firms from those constantly scrambling to fix mistakes.
The panel, hosted by Universal Furniture and Studio Designer, brings together industry leaders who speak candidly about the realities of running a design business today. They don’t sugarcoat anything. They show you exactly how high-performing firms manage client expectations, structure proposals, track orders, negotiate with vendors, and build internal systems that eliminate confusion and protect margins.
Inside this discussion, you’ll learn the real-world practices top-tier firms rely on:
The Order Tracking Advantage
Why having a clear A→Z purchasing workflow, color coding, proposal tracking, lead-time monitoring, documentation, and shared access, prevents lost orders, missed deadlines, and margin leakage. You’ll learn how top studios organize everything from client approvals to vendor emails so the whole team can instantly see what’s pending, what’s ordered, and what needs follow-up.
Avoiding Client Price-Shopping & Misinformation
Designers share how price shopping, slow decision-making, and constant reselections derail timelines. You’ll learn practical tactics like sending mirrored photos to prevent reverse-image-searching, onboarding clients clearly, and setting expectations early around who pays, how they pay, and when decisions need to be made to keep a project on track.
Fixing Internal Inefficiencies Before They Cost You
The panel highlights the silent profit killers inside most studios: payments received but POs not created, unclear role ownership, inconsistent processes, and using client funds to cover general expenses. You’ll learn how weekly reporting, defined responsibilities, and disciplined cash management prevent financial confusion and project delays.
The Power of Strong Vendor Relationships
From negotiating better discounts to getting priority treatment, you’ll learn why consistent communication, timely payments, and recurring volume build loyalty with vendors, and how that loyalty translates into better margins, faster problem-solving, and flexible payment terms during tight months. The conversation reinforces that volume discounts belong to the firm and are part of your earned margin.
Leveraging Inventory as a Business Asset
The panel discusses the often-overlooked potential of inventory, unused pieces, client rejects, antiques, and overstock. You’ll learn how firms can turn dormant items into revenue and how Studio Designer is exploring a designer-to-designer marketplace to make inventory selling easier and more profitable.
Building Internal Communication Systems That Work
You’ll see how leading studios use digital tools like Studio Designer, Asana, and structured Excel systems to keep everyone aligned, maintain transparency, and ensure proposals, orders, and timelines move smoothly. The message is clear: your tools don’t need to be fancy, but they do need to be consistent.
Why Structure Beats Hustle in the Purchasing Process
The panelists emphasize that operational success doesn’t come from working harder, it comes from building predictable systems. With standardized workflows, shared dashboards, regular vendor communication, and clear client onboarding, designers gain control over timelines, purchasing, and profitability.
This is a must-watch for any designer who’s ready to shift from messy, reactive purchasing to streamlined, confident, and profitable project execution.
You’ll walk away with immediately actionable systems to simplify your backend, improve your ordering process, strengthen vendor partnerships, and elevate the way your studio runs from the inside out.
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Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Universal Furniture and the Learning Center. This space has hosted events all week, covering everything from creative topics to the operational details that quietly keep our industry running. All sessions have been recorded, so if you registered but couldn’t attend, you’ll receive the full set of recordings by email within the next week. We also have more events tomorrow, including an afternoon party.
If you’re new to Universal, feel free to tour the 115,000-square-foot showroom after this session. The new outdoor collection is on the third floor, two new indoor collections are on the second floor, and this floor showcases our special-order upholstery program and the designer lounge. The lounge is hosting several activations this week, including cocktails and a pottery pop-up immediately after this panel. If you’d like a more detailed walk-through, the front desk can give you a scanner to tag products and receive a list by email.
Now I’ll hand things over to Rachel Wagman of Studio Designer to introduce today’s panel.
Thank you, and welcome. We’re grateful to Universal for hosting us and for creating space to talk about both the creative side and the operational side of design. I’m Rachel Wagman, Chief Marketing Officer at Studio Designer, the leading project management, time-billing, and accounting platform built for interior designers. More than fifteen thousand designers use Studio to handle the operational backbone of their firms.
Today’s conversation, “Purchasing Power: How to Maximize Your Firm’s Potential With the Best Digital Tools,” focuses on a simple truth: creativity needs structure. Ordering, tracking, and managing products are core to every project, and we’re here to explore how to make those processes smoother.
Our panel includes Julia Nish, owner of New Age Financial Consulting; Keith Granet, CEO of Studio Designer and long-time consultant to design firms; Valerie Lambert, founder of Valley Procurement; and Caitlyn Murphy from Margaret Rogers Interior Design.
We began by discussing how teams can streamline ordering and expediting. Caitlyn described her firm’s color-coded internal system that instantly shows where every item stands, helping the team prioritize weekly orders and anticipate lead times. Julia emphasized that no matter which platform a firm uses, the process must be clear, repeatable, and easy for anyone to follow. Most margin loss happens in the ordering stage, and a solid workflow prevents that. Valerie added the value of consistent communication, starting each order with clean documentation, approved purchase orders, and one continuous email thread to avoid missed details.
The conversation then shifted to client-created challenges. Keith shared a story about a client who price-shopped a custom floor installation online and accused the designer of overcharging, which triggered an audit of a $40 million project. The issue turned out to be trust, not pricing. The panel agreed that online price-shopping is now constant. One designer in the audience shared that they send clients mirrored product images to prevent reverse searching, something that works as long as clients are told upfront so they’re not confused. Ultimately, the best solution is strong expectations from the start: who approves what, how fast decisions need to be made, and how delays affect timelines.
We then talked about internal inefficiencies and cash handling problems. Julia noted that bottlenecks often come from unclear roles, when funds arrive, who verifies them, who creates purchase orders, and who reviews them. If the workflow isn’t owned, mistakes happen. Keith brought up the difficult but common issue of firms using client money to cover operating expenses, leaving no funds to place orders. Julia said good software prevents most of these problems by giving real-time visibility into cash and vendor balances. Valerie added that strong vendor relationships can help during tight periods; vendors often support designers who communicate early and consistently pay on time.
The panel also discussed negotiating margin and vendor discounts. Caitlyn said her firm advocates for better pricing on large orders and that vendors are often more flexible than designers think. Valerie and Julia noted that more designers are opening small storefronts or separate entities to qualify for stocking-dealer pricing and boost profitability.
Looking ahead, Keith described a designer-to-designer inventory marketplace Studio Designer is exploring, allowing firms to buy and sell pieces directly to one another. With thousands of users already on the platform, interest in the room showed how valuable such a tool could be.
Finally, the panel touched on team communication. Julia highlighted how often reporting is overlooked, even though consistent reporting keeps teams aligned and maintains project visibility. Valerie added that whether a firm uses software or Excel, the key is consistency: detailed tracking of every item and clear communication so mistakes, like confusing which sofa is arriving where, don’t happen.
