Today we’d like to introduce you to Julian Buckner.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Julian. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I am currently the CEO of Vesta Home – a luxury interior design and home staging firm. Prior to this, I worked at McKinsey.
After two years of consulting, I realized that what I loved most was building businesses, and in particular, working with people to build strong and effective teams. So, I left and joined a startup called Showroom. Twelve months after I joined, the company went under.
Even though the company failed, I had built a great team and saw the potential for something larger in the small part of the business I was focusing on. In 2018, I re-formed the company into Vesta Home.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. When I first joined Showroom in January 2017, the company was a Silicon Valley sweetheart. In its first six months, the company raised millions of dollars from VCs. 6 months later it had burned through every penny. Of course, this was kept a secret from all but a few senior executives. The last Thursday in January 2018 I was told the company was weeks away from foreclosure and bankruptcy. I was shocked. All ~140 employees were going to lose their jobs.
I had been hired to help build a home staging business. We were a start-up-within-a-start-up, working out of a warehouse in Vernon, and though we were only a small sideshow to the core business, over the last year, we had put together an amazing team of dedicated, hardworking, designers, movers and salespeople, as well as a state-of-the-art technology platform. On top of that, our small corner of the business was profitable.
I was confident in this side of the business, and I knew the company could succeed with a new strategy and the right leadership. Regardless, if I didn’t do something everyone was going to be fired that next Wednesday. The next morning I reached out to the bank and cut a deal to personally take over the debt. It was a big risk, but I knew that once I had the business, I would be able to make it work. The only important thing was making sure we didn’t shut down on Wednesday.
Over the next few days, we structured a deal. I created a completely new business plan, and many of our existing shareholders stepped in to support us. That Wednesday, the rest of the company shut down. A lot of great people lost their jobs, but our team survived. Everyone showed up for work the next day, and we started to rebuild. Since then, we have tripled in size.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Vesta Home – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Vesta is a true design firm. Our mission is to delight our customers with experiences and aesthetics that motivate them. This requires a level of empathy and a holistic approach to the customer experience that defines everything we do.
As a luxury design company, we offer our customers a full suite of services, including:
- Home staging – we partner with real estate agents and developers to design and furnish homes that are being listed for sale. This is what we are best known for, and we work with nearly all the top agents in Southern California.
- Private residential design – we work with clients to design and furnish their private homes. In the past, we’ve primarily focused on celebrity and other ultra-high-net-worth individuals with homes in the $20M+ segment. However, we’ve recently expanded the practice and are now working with clients and homes of all sizes.
- Furniture rental – we partner with high-end developments such as the new Palisades Village, model unit builders and vacation rental companies to provide luxury furniture rental to their tenants. We also do a number of projects for athletes and traveling executives that would rather rent a home than stay in a hotel.
- Bespoke – for large projects we offer a fully bespoke model in which we design and custom manufacture an entire home of furniture exactly to the client’s specifications. Whereas this would normally cost $750,000+ for a large home, our advanced custom furniture manufacturing capabilities allow us to do it for a fraction of the price.
- Commercial design – we just launched a commercial design business and have recently done several high-end designs and FF&E procurement projects for restaurants, and large residential and commercial buildings.
Two things set us apart: Quality and Operational Excellence. Because we design and manufacture our own furniture – we keep a tight grip on the quality of every product we use. We hire the very best designers, and their job is to ensure our design quality remains exceptional.
Additionally, since we are constantly redesigning and manufacturing new inventory, we are able to keep up with current design trends. We work with the most exclusive clientele in some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Our success depends on flawless execution and impeccable client service.
Where do you see your industry going over the next 5-10 years? Any big shifts, changes, trends, etc?
Consumers across the retail world are increasingly demanding convenience and quality, and these needs are not being met by the traditional players. Take home staging – until we came along, the industry was dominated by a single, antiquated business, notorious for its inflexibility and recycled old furniture. We took a different approach: we invested heavily in a software platform that allows our clients to see the furniture going into their homes and poured millions of dollars into building state-of-the-art domestic manufacturing capabilities that enable us to provide our customers with a level of quality and customization hitherto reserved for million-dollar budgets.
To illustrate this, we recently worked on a gorgeous $20M project in Santa Monica. We did a full repositioning of the property – our interior designers selected paint, drapes and flooring. We brought in trades to complete all of the work while we designed and custom manufactured every single piece of furniture in the home. The home sold in 6 days to a notable celebrity couple. The buyers then hired us to continue renting the furniture while they got situated and have now contracted us for multiple other interior design projects.
This is the direction the design industry is going. To compete, you need to offer clients a full package of highly bespoke and convenient services.
Pricing:
- Staging – Depending on the property we charge anywhere from $5,000 (for small homes and condos) to $100,000 (for a $120 million home we just did in San Francisco).
- Residential design – Our designers bill hourly and charge anywhere from $100-350 per hour depending on their seniority. However, unlike other design companies, when a client hires one of our designers – we devote the full resources of our company to their project – including access to the highest quality custom furniture for a fraction of the price – which ends up saving our clients tens of thousands of dollars.
- Furniture rental – Depending on the size of the space, length of the rental and value of the furniture, the price can be anywhere from $1,000 per month (for a small apartment) to $20,000 per month (for a $1 million furniture rental we did last summer for a royal family).
Contact Info:
- Address: 1900 E 25th St. Vernon, CA 90058
- Website: www.vestahome.com
- Phone: 323.348.1551
- Email: [email protected]
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