The Year That Launched a Thousand Design Firms
Original article posted at Business of Home by Fred Nicolaus.
San Diego designer Susan Wintersteen has been in business 19 years, a span that covers two financial downturns, two recoveries and now one global pandemic. She’s seen a lot, and not much fazes her, but last month something took her by surprise: Two members of her 13-person team left to start their own firm. That had never happened before, but it wasn’t a total shock. The really surprising part? They were in their early 20s, only a couple of years into the industry.
“It was so far off my radar,” she tells Business of Home. “It wasn’t the money—they were paid well. For them, it was about: Now is the time to do it. The market is hot. And it’s true, there are so many clients out there, you can hang up a shingle and get projects. There are so many design businesses that will be born out of this.”
Over the past year, the COVID-instigated home boom—a perfect storm of mass relocations, shelter-in-place orders, a buzzy stock market and work-from-home culture—has created unprecedented opportunity for interior designers. The secondary effects of the surge are only starting to become clear. One is a hypercompetitive job market for design talent (several people described it as “a jungle”). The other is a surge in new interior designers, soaking up the excess demand. Among (many) other things, 2020 will be remembered in the design industry as the year that launched a thousand firms.
COMPETITION FOR UP-AND-COMING TALENT
Wintersteen’s dilemma is hardly unique. Across the country, established firms are experiencing the effects of a demand for design talent that’s unheard-of in recent memory. Junior employees are leaving to start their own firms. Finding replacements or reinforcements is harder than ever. And design firms are actively poaching employees from each other in an effort to stay on top of the incredible surge of work that has emerged from the pandemic.
“It’s never been like this before,” says Brianne Bishop. “In 2018 and 2019, it was tough to find good people, but at least resumes were coming in! Right now, they’re just not.” Bishop was on a hiring spree before COVID. After the pandemic hit and her queue of inquiries began to surge, she started to look for even more help. It’s a problem she says is shared among other Chicago designers in her circle.
A RUSH OF NEW FIRMS
On the other side of a historically hot job market is the plethora of new design firms that have sprung up over the past year. It’s difficult to gather exact numbers, but some anecdotal evidence: I posted a query on Instagram asking for designers who had started their business in the last year, expecting a handful of replies—almost immediately, dozens began pouring in. It’s a boom time for new firms.
Some, like Wintersteen’s erstwhile employees, used to work for other designers (one told me she started her own firm because, with the advent of remote work, she missed coming into the office and reasoned she could make just as much money and set her own schedule). However, there’s also a huge pool of career-changers coming to design from other industries. In some cases, they’re leaving behind industries impacted by COVID in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Others have simply taken advantage of a dramatic time to pause, take stock, and pursue something they’ve always been passionate about. In that regard, the current wave is almost a mirror flip of the torrent of first-time designers that left other careers in the wake of the 2008 recession. Then, it was tough going. Now, there are projects to spare.
WILL THE MARKET STAY HOT?
What all of this means for the industry going forward is complicated. It’s hard to argue that more opportunity for more designers is a bad thing (never has the maxim, “There’s enough work for everybody!” been more true). Industry optimists suggest that 2020 has fundamentally reset Americans’ relationships with their homes, and that rather than being the top of a growth curve, this is only the beginning of an expansion that will last decades.
It’s possible. It’s also possible that as COVID recedes, travel resumes, restaurant tables fill up, and our discretionary income heads out the front door rather than through it, home spending will go down. If the flood of projects begins to recede, firms that rushed to hire may find themselves looking to downsize. And certainly some of the firms that sprung up in 2020 won’t make it for the long haul.
One thing’s for sure: If the designers who chose to start their own firms over the last year get cold feet and decide they’d rather work for someone else, they’ll find a willing audience—at least for the time being. “I’ll say goodbye to you the way I end every conversation now,” Bishop told me at the end of our interview. “And that is: If you know anyone great who’s looking for design work, send them my way.”