Intro:

Hey friend, and welcome back, or welcome to the Trend Report. I'm excited that you've joined me today for today's conversation. I'm Sid Meadows. I'm a business advisor, coach and longtime student of the office furniture industry, and my goal is to share information that will help you and your business move forward each and every day. And I got to tell you I am super excited for today's conversation, as we get to bring you another CEO Chat with Natalie Hartkopf of Hightower.

Sid: 

Hey, Natalie, how are you today?

Natalie: 

Hi, I'm doing great.

Sid: 

Thank you so much for joining us. We talked about this a few minutes ago. We met in person for the first time at the BIFMA 360 conference in California, Carlsbad, California and the listeners have heard me say this. You are one of the people that I kind of accosted and cornered and said will you be on my show? And here we are, a couple of months later.

Natalie: 

That is true. I saw you coming from across the room.

Sid:  

And you couldn't run fast enough.

Natalie: 

I knew of you, so I was excited to meet you.

Sid:  

That always scares me when people say that I knew of you. But I will take it very much so. But, Natalie, let's just start about you for just a minute. Tell us a little bit about your journey in the office furniture industry.

Natalie: 

Sure, a little bit simple. I have been with Hightower. We are family founded, so I started with Hightower around 2003. And first we started in Seattle. I was kind of thrown into the deep end just going to design firms and doing presentations. And shortly after that I moved to New York, opened our showroom at the New York Design Center 200 Lex and I was there five years doing outside sales. I think it's a great place to start your career in the design industry.

Sid: 

All right, wait a second. One of the toughest cities in the world to work in, right, and you think it's a great place to start?

Natalie:

Amazing, I think they're just like amazing. The design community all like so much inspiration from other industries as well, whether it's fashion or any other industry, and so I just I loved being there those five years. I did, you know, carry a lot of chairs on the subway, took, you know, trains out to Long Island City to receive shipments. So not all glamorous, but it was a pretty amazing entrance to the industry. And I've been with Hightower since the beginning, so we're 21, 22 years old at this point, so it's been fun.

Sid:  

Well, you certainly have a very recognizable brand and most people know you very much, for ancillary products as well as for European design and importing, working with European partners and importing European products into the United States. In that perspective, have you or will you be launching your own products in the United States? In that perspective, have you or will you be launching your own products in the near future?

Natalie:  

Excellent question. And yes, so Hightower Studio is our own brand, so we do have our own products. That's something that you know. A handful of years after we got started, we did start purely as an importer, working with like a wonderful curation of European and mostly Scandinavian brands, and then after a while we realized there's wonderful talent in High Point and we could easily do upholstered hoofs and small things. We didn't need to import that and so we started shifting to say we will work with our brands on things that. There's been a lot of investment. Something's molded, a special tooled part, things like that. If it's a wood, frame, foam and upholstery, that is something that we can do really high quality in North Carolina. And so we started licensing and producing some of their products and at that same same time, developed our own products. We worked with a couple of great outside designers and then recently, in the last five years, have our own in-house design team, in-house engineers, and we have really built out our portfolio as Hightower Studio.

Sid: 

That's great, all right, we'll make sure that there's a link to that specific page. I should have actually researched that to know that on my own. So it was two years ago, I believe that you had a chair that was best of NeoCon like the best of NeoCon award winner that it had an air bubble. If I'm saying I'm butchering this, so forgive me, but the seat was like an air bubble, right.

Natalie:  

It feels like a cloud.

Sid: 

Yes, thank you yes.

Natalie:  

It's called Flote and that was a wonderful segue because that was the first product by our new design team that had been launched in the market. We had made some modifications to existing products and things like that, but that was the first one. Sean Sowers leads our design team and Flote was the first one that he designed with us and this is an example where we could have stopped it good enough and we kept going and the team just spent so much time on the layers of foam. There's some just wonderful comfort in the angles and how it's constructed, and I was just thrilled that it got the recognition that it did, and just watching people's faces when they sat down in it and noticed how comfortable it was was really was really awesome.

Sid:

So I haven't actually seen it in person. I heard about it, I saw the press about it and I heard people describe it because it feels like you're sitting on a cloud. So this year I'm going to have to come test it out now.

Natalie:  

Please do.

Sid: 

We're recording this before NeoCon, but it'll actually run after NeoCon, so I'm going to have to go by and check it out, because I have heard a lot about it. And speaking of NeoCon, last year you actually won an award yourself, for you actually won a HIP award as the Manufacturer Impact Award, something to that degree, right?

Natalie: 

Something like that.

Sid:  

What was it like when you realized that, hey, they're talking about me and I'm getting that award?

Natalie:  

Well, it's funny because they started with pictures of me as a kid which was just like and so that's how it started. So I was like, oh, that's really, it's really sweet and thoughtful. No, that's all my team. I appreciate them putting me forward for that and just the recognition and us leading with values and really thinking about our impact as a company, I think is just a huge part of me as a leader and so great to be recognized.

Sid:  

So let's talk about that impact for a minute, because your organization is very focused on social impact and environmental impact. Your organization is very focused on social impact and environmental impact and if you go out to HightowerAccess.com, which is the website, you can see some of the things they're doing. But before we dive into some of those, let's talk about how you created that culture of impact and responsibility.

Natalie:  

So I took over as CEO in 2018. 

And it was important to me. There are a lot of furniture brands on the market. There's a lot of furniture that ends up in the landfill, so we have a huge impact on the environment as an industry, and so it was important to me that if we're going to produce furniture, if we're going to keep designing new furniture, we should be really thoughtful about who is making that furniture, the materials that go into it, what our plan is afterwards, and so that just felt extremely important to me to infuse that positive impact into our business and into our business model, and so I set the goal for us to become a certified B Corporation. A B Corp is a very stringent set of guidelines to show that you are socially responsible and ethical manufacturer or company in general, and so it's really this framework that you can follow, instead of trying to recreate the wheel and say, well, what would make a positive social impact business? You can really follow this assessment and you get a certain score and if you qualify, then you're a B Corp.

Sid: 

So how many businesses or how many manufacturers, if you know, are actually B Corp certified?

Natalie: 

Well, so I don't know. There's actually a growing movement. I don't know the number of B Corps globally, but even in our industry there have been more and more. I can think of five off the top of my head right now, so only a handful, but still, I'd say, between 2021 and now, you know, I've seen five different companies announce their B Corp certification.

Sid: 

So this is something that was important to you because it actually holistically looks at your business. If you had to compare it for just a minute, or contrast and compare it for a minute to the BIFMA level program, is it similar? Is it different? If you don't mind explaining it, because I'm new to understanding what B Corp is, Yep, great.

Natalie: 

So, yes, in that the level is thinking about sustainability and the different tiers, I guess, right, it's similar in that, except you are looking at your governance structure, you are looking at your impact on customers, your impact on the community, so you're looking very broadly. So, yes, similar in that you're getting assessed. It's, you know, same if you think about a building with LEED certification. You're looking at all these different criteria and working to get certified. So, yes, a similar type of thing, but more holistic.

Sid: 

So on your website and under the B Corp certification, there's a quote there that I really like, and I'd like for you to talk about it for a minute, which says make business a force for good. So tell us how Hightower is making business a force for good.

Natalie: 

Sure. So my kind of personal take on this is that I think traditional business has been fairly exploitive, fairly top heavy, and we find even in manufacturing there isn't a lot that's given back to the workforce and the production teams, and so working conditions are really important to me, living wages are really important to me, paid time off we work to be really as consistent as possible across our entire company. So for me, when I think about force for good is how do we think about our business operations, both what we make that we sell to our customers, and also internally, how do we make sure that our employees are getting what they need from the business and that they have every chance to benefit from our success, as I do as one of the owners? So that's, I think, at a very high level, how I think about force for good and whether that's in our volunteer paid time off. Right, we provide time off to go volunteer for a cause that matters, the training and development that we do, working towards keeping up with the living wage, which continues to rise as it should. But you know that's a lot to keep up with to make sure that people can pay their bills. 

Our benefits we contribute to 529 education savings plans. So 1% of our top line sales in higher education. We pool that. Any employee who opens a 529 account, we distribute funds for their college savings. So things like that we've just tried to really think about. How do we ensure that the business is benefiting as many people as possible?

Sid: 

So, listening to you talk, I'm sure I'm hearing the same thing that the listeners are hearing, which is you are very much a people-centric organization. You care about them. You're putting them at the center of your organization. You're helping them save money for their kids' college education. You are giving them paid time off to go do good in the world and volunteer at an organization that matters to them, regardless of what it might be. You're trying your best to ensure that they all have a living wage, and keeping up with that which you talked about being can be difficult at times. Right? It's refreshing to hear a CEO of a manufacturing firm talk about the people are first in their business, and I truly believe that when you put your people first, they will create magic for you.

Natalie:  

That's yeah. I mean I think that that's been proven over and over how important it is right and it isn't easy. It isn't, you know, and I think because we are family-owned, privately held right, we have a lot more flexibility to make long-term decisions about the business and what we feel is right, and so I recognize that might not be the case for all businesses, but extremely important to me.

Sid:  

Well, in the culture that you're creating, your people see it, your people feel it, your customers will, the specifiers will all experience that culture and it's really hard to create a world class culture in businesses today.

Natalie: 

It's true, this is not for the faint of heart, for sure, and it's always evolving. We actually brought a wonderful team member on who is a professional coach, Dr. Kibibi Springs, and she joined us to lead our people team. Bring a coaching first management style, provide coaching whether you are a production team member, a first time manager or a VP, everybody has access to Kibibi for coaching and that is an example of like an investment and a focus. That might not be kind of the first thing people think about, but to me is just highly valuable and she's made a tremendous impact on our culture.

Sid:  

So she's absolutely fantastic. I had the privilege to interview her here on the Trend Report when she was with our previous company. That was a long time ago. I will we will find the episode. I will link it down in the show notes for all of you. But I had a fascinating conversation with Kibibi. I mean, she's an amazing individual and, ironically, out of all the, it's probably been two to three years I have yet to meet her in person. So one day, Kibibi, if you're listening, one day we're going to have a hallway hug is what I'm starting to call them hallway hug, right?

Natalie:  

Please come by our showroom at NeoCon. She will be there.

Sid:  

Absolutely, I will do that. So you're managing a lot, and right now the waters in our industry are a little bit turbulent. Right, there's this return to office mandates some happening, some not happening. There's all the economic conditions that are out there with tariffs and non-tariffs. Talk to us for a minute about how you're managing through some of these turbulent times.

Natalie: 

Well, I think navigating COVID and the impact of the pandemic, you know, is a once in a career, hopefully experience, and I just think we've taken like hit after hit since then with additional challenges. My team is doing an incredible job navigating the tariff situation, but it's a big distraction. They're spending a lot of time talking with our partner brands, talking internally, talking with our sales reps, our customers, and they could be focused on other more exciting initiatives that we have going on, be focused on other more exciting initiatives that we have going on. So it's, you know there's such opportunity cost on navigating some of these challenges and you know, we know whether it's from ThinkLab, research or other places, that specifiers and clients would rather have certainty versus uncertainty.

And so, just as soon as kind of everything started swirling, we just made a call of a certain percentage surcharge that we were just going to add in. It didn't cover all of our expenses, but it was something and we just made that call really early on and we will adjust that right. We don't intend to do a full price increase because this is just so fluid, but right, we have to make just these calls as a business and then make adjustments later as new information comes in. So that's how we've just been handling it is. Just trying to do our best.

Sid:  

So you just hit on something that is really important. Obviously, there are a lot of people following this. You mentioned Amanda Snyder and ThinkLab and their team talking about this. A lot of other people are Solomon Coyle's been talking about it, and it's important but you have a bar on the top of your website that talks about the tariffs or charges, when they go into effect, how to get in touch with your customer service team, right? So the thing that I think is the most important about this time, right now, is transparency and communication. Communicate with your dealers, with your specifiers, so they know that the charges are there, and be as transparent about what you're doing and why you're doing it, because everybody in our industry, in one way or another, is dealing with this. 

Some part of everything that is made by every manufacturer comes from some other part of the world. Not every component, part, piece, screw, mechanism is manufactured in the United States. This is not possible. So everybody's impacted by this, and that's why I believe communication and transparency are the keys that will get us through it, because there will be light at the end of this tunnel, this will settle down, it will equalize itself out. Right now, it's got to be like riding a roller coaster at your local state fair. One. Be light at the end of this tunnel. This will settle down, it will equalize itself out. Right now it's got to be like riding a roller coaster at your local state fair. One minute they're this, the next minute they're this, and they come up a little bit, then they go down a little bit and then they topsy-turvy around.

Natalie:  

That's how it feels.

Sid:  

I bet it does. I bet it does. So let's talk about your products for a minute. We mentioned earlier that you guys started as a predominant European importer. Then you've branched out into doing some light manufacturing of some of those products and then designing your own. From a product development perspective, what do you see in your category? Because you're predominantly really heavy in the ancillary category. So what do you see as what's needed next or what are you guys working on that's coming next in your category?

Natalie:  

So, yes, we specialize, I'd say, in upholstered lounge products, but we have a variety of different types of products. So right now, we are really thinking about discoverability and what are specifiers looking for? So there are so many certifications, there are so many different things that different factors and features that people are looking for. We have a lot of products that pass the large occupant BIFMA testing. That might not be obvious from our assortment, but we want to make sure that if that's something that people are looking for, that that is a filter that's available. If you need something that's compatible with ADA counter height tables, we want you to be able to find that easily. So it might not necessarily be that we feel we need to invent a new category of product or something like that, but we want the pieces that we have to be as discoverable as possible and to make sure that it's really easy to discover. So we think of that as considered solutions. Whether it's sustainable features, whether it's durability features, whether it's inclusive features, we want people to know that they can find that within the Hightower portfolio. So that's a really important thing for us right now that we're talking about, because our team does spend so much time thinking about the features and the style, the different components and things that we've thought about within our designs. So that will be something that we'll be talking about it more at Neocon. Our website will be modified to make sure that people can easily discover this. So that's a big focus of ours right now.

Natalie:  

I think the other thing that our team is really thinking about is how do we take our existing portfolio and make those products better. That's a very common thing that we do in the industry, but I think we can be even more thoughtful when we think about end of life, when we think about disassembling the product or what can we reupholster. There are tweaks that we can do within our portfolio to make those products even better. So that's a big focus of ours right now.

Sid:  

So there are two things there that really stand out to me. One of them was you mentioned discoverability and you were talking specifically about and I kind of chuckled a little bit about all the different regulations, guidelines. Do you have an opinion, Natalie, as to why we don't have a standard around this? Because BIFMA's got this, Leed's got this, somebody else has that, Greenguard has this, and then you have a no offense to any interior designer listening to this, but you have an interior designer that heard about BIFMA level three and says all products must be BIFMA level three, and what they don't realize is they likely just eliminated 80 plus percent of the brands that they would want to consider because it's so hard to be BIFMA level three certified. So do you have an opinion about how we might do this better?

Natalie:

Moving forward, I have so many opinions, I do not have a solution, but I have a lot of opinions. I do think that there are people trying to do this. So I'm a big fan of Annie Bevan. Annie is the CEO of Mindful Materials and also Parallel. 

I think the Common Materials framework is trying to tackle this. To say, look at all these different certifications. Here are the key buckets. Are we talking about climate? Are we talking about human health? What are we talking about? Right, and let's be really clear about this bucket. So I think that's really helpful and I'm seeing that more, as long as these groups are talking to each other about what the end goal is, instead of just creating yet another barometer or another framework. It really should be about synthesizing and bringing us all together.

So I do think the common materials framework is in the right direction, absolutely, and I'm seeing more and more platforms that are also starting to speak to that. So adding a tech layer onto existing frameworks instead of again trying to reinvent the wheel. So I think we're making progress. I think this has been, at least for me, 10 plus years of seeing people working to bring us closer to one thing. I don't think we're ever going to get there. I think the target will continue to move, and that's hard, especially for small manufacturers, where we want to do a lot of things but we can't do everything. We have to make choices. But yes, so we could probably do two more episodes just talking about this topic and specific ones, but high level.

Sid:  

Part of what I believe needs to happen here is you just mentioned it. We need to talk about it. We need a panel discussion. We need the room to be full of all of these different organizations that are trying to be the leader in their bucket, as you described it, and to talk about it. It should be talked about by leaders like yourself about the impact. When you broadly say that everything should have this, then what's the impact to you as an organization? I think there's got to be a better understanding across all of the stakeholders, if you will, in order to get to a place that has at least some commonality or common ground. You mentioned Mindful Materials. They were on the podcast last year and what they're doing. I think it's great, but that's just in one specific bucket. We could use it across the board to help all of us, because every time there's a change, you, as the leader, have to make a decision what can we as a small business do versus what can't we do, and there's opportunity costs associated with that in every decision that you make.

Natalie:  

Yeah, I do think it's been great to engage more with BIFMA and, I think, as a group of furniture manufacturers, I think we can say how do we all work together? How do we share information? How do we write Like we know that getting EPDs is very tricky and we've done it on some of our products. We cannot do it on our entire portfolio, right. So either we work as an industry to make that more efficient, more cost-effective, more streamlined, or we help specifiers understand the cost and the time that it takes to achieve that, Because we want to do the right thing but we might not be able to get the certification for the right thing.

Sid:  

The education piece, I think, is so critical, especially for that specifier community to understand, and not just how long it takes but, as you just mentioned, the cost that it takes. I don't know that everybody understands, but I'm going to round number it. But if you wanted to have a sofa BIFMA tested, it's going to cost you between $15,000 and $20,000 to have that one sofa and all the different tests to go along with it. If it has electricity in it or any kind of electrical outlet in it and you want to get it UL tested, that's another test, right. And so then if you have to have some level of sustainability test, then that's another test, and for one product this all adds up and that unfortunately factors into the pricing to the end consumer as to what the product costs. So there's a lot of education, I think, in our industry that needs to happen across the board to understand these guidelines better so that we can do what's best for each of our businesses. Basically, I agree.

So let's shift gears for a minute, because I could geek out on some of that stuff talking about, and I've got a lot of opinions about it, but I try not to offer too many of them, but occasionally I will open my mouth and say something that I shouldn't, but I want to first talk about artificial intelligence. Ooh, that is a hot topic, so I'm in the process of interviewing my podcast listeners and I'm gathering data. I'm asking five questions. I'm gathering data that will help me inform season seven of the podcast, and one of the questions is what would you like to hear more of? Like? What content would you like to hear more of? Every person I've talked to has said I'd really like to hear more of Like what content would you like to hear more of? Every person I've talked to has said I'd really like to hear more information about AI. So how's AI impacting your business, and are you doing something really unique with AI that you could share with us?

Natalie:  

Sure, we actually have an internal training coming up next week about AI. So our people team puts on a lot of internal trainings. This is also a topic internally people are curious about, and so we'll talk about just the current state of AI at a very high level. We'll talk about the common tools, we'll talk about kind of our internal policies and then we'll go through some exercises, have people try it out to just get comfortable. So it is something we're talking about internally. I am very supportive of using AI. I use it regularly, whether it's just ChatGPT, whether it's Perplexity.

Sid: 

Two of my favorites.

Natalie: 

Yes, I love Notebook LM, so we use Google Suite. I think when I'm trying to absorb, say it's new lead standards, right, and it's just really dense information, putting in that with other kind of industry, environmental studies or things like that and then getting high level insights or kind of the podcast style report out that they do, that's a great way for me to absorb the information without reading a 200 page PDF. So I think there's just basic time savings right, and I'd say that's probably internally where I'm talking with the team about supplementing. We are a small team, we are resource constrained. If you can find tools to help you save time, move quickly, stay informed, I am all for that.

Sid:  

Bring it. Yeah, bring it. Let's talk about it, yeah totally.

Natalie: 

We have not fully integrated it. There's lots of opportunities with whether it's sales rep support, specifier support integrating it into either our website I see lots of opportunities with all of the product data that we have for internal tools or allowing our sales reps to get immediate information. They're responding to an email at 10 pm for a customer. They can't reach our team. That information should be readily available and that is exactly where a lot of the AI tools are just perfect for that.

Sid:  

Personally fascinated by Notebook LM the more I hear about it. This week they announced they have an app now for your phone that you can use it with. I have some friends, some podcast friends, that have used it to do a couple of little, you know, short, little podcast segments, because you have the two people, the guy and the girl, that will talk back and forth to each other. But what I'm even more fascinated about is how you, as a brand, could literally upload all of your documentation into and I'm simplifying this upload all of your documentation into Notebook LM. And you get a call from somebody that says, hey, can I get the COM requirements in the dimensions of this particular chair? 

You type that into Notebook LM as a question, right, and within seconds it pops up. It's like right, there, there's no. I mean, I remember the day when you had to flip through the price book pages and find it yes, right. No longer you have to do that because you can just ask the AI technology the question and then, boom, it's there and you're talking about bringing that to your sales reps, who are out in the field working when they can to respond to their customer needs, and giving them access to that without having to go search through a PDF of a price book. That goes right. I like that.

Natalie:  

The other thing that I think we spend a lot of time on are product modification or custom requests, and there are so many inputs that our team has to go through to see, many inputs that our team has to go through to see. 

Is that a product, based on how it's engineered, that can be modified in length or width, or is it something our supplier is capable of? All that information exists somewhere, but people on our team have to navigate finding it. That's another example to me where you can take the time to gather all of that and the AI tool can then make inferences based on everything and make an initial judgment call on if it can be customized right and then our team can vet it. But that, to me, is just another. Where is there really high friction and people don't want to wait five days to hear back if this can be modified, but that's sometimes what it takes in the communication with our suppliers and things like that. So where are these things that just take too long and where can we shorten that? That's where I see big opportunity.

Sid:  

Well, you just said it, we're in the now. People want information now and they want it when they are able to get it. So that's a whole other conversation we could talk about. But I want to switch gears again because we are getting close to running out of time. But I would like to talk about you and women in leadership and your thoughts about women in our industry and women in leadership in our industry, because I believe and we briefly chatted about this but from where I sit, I see a gap in leadership, meaning I see a gap in women leaders inside of our industry, and I would love your thoughts on that.

Natalie:

So I warned you. I have a little bit of a I don't know like provocative response to this, so one I want to know if this has come up when you've talked with male CEOs on the podcast.

Sid:  

Oh, that is.

Natalie: 

As opposed to them.

Sid: 

Oh, calling me out. That is great. That is fantastic and I guarantee you it will come up in my next conversation with the next male CEO that I interview. I have two of them coming up and I guarantee you it will come up. Thank you for calling me out.

Natalie: 

Ask that question because they don't get the question. The same as what is it like to travel so much as a parent, right? I get that a lot. Oh, you're out on all these fares, you have two kids at home, what's that like, right? And a lot of male CEOs don't get that question. So I encourage asking that to them. 

The other thing I think this is a top-down problem. It comes from the top period. I feel very strongly about that, whether that's a board, whether that's succession planning and helping team members see themselves in that top role and feel like they are capable of it because they are so to me this is a top-down problem. Are capable of it because they are so to me this is a top-down problem. And then I, you know and maybe this is just again right from my vantage point I talk with a lot of the female CEOs or leaders in the industry. So whether it's women-owned dealers or other women kind of led businesses in our industry. So I'm kind of surrounded by a lot of the women in the industry. So I probably do have a slightly skew lot of the women in the industry. So I probably do have a slightly skewed perspective.

You're right, we're definitely not the majority. But as I see Sarah Armbruster running Steelcase, Andy Owens running Miller Knoll, Duran has a female CEO, Casey's up there with HBF. I'm seeing more and more women in senior leadership or the top CEO president role, and so I've loved seeing more progress. But you're right, I mean there are still gaps and I'd say we have made a lot of progress with women in leadership. I think we still have a lot of room for more diversity from a racial perspective with leadership in our industry. I think that you know should be, you know, another conversation in question that we, just as an industry, continue to tackle 100% agree with you on that.

Sid:  

We as an industry, for whatever reason, in a variety of roles, especially our quote-unquote white-collar roles, struggle to attract people with diverse background ethnicity, religion, race, sexual orientation. We just struggle to attract minorities into our industry. And I will say this, and the listeners have heard me say this before it is very unfortunate that so many people in our industry look like me, an older gray hair, white guy, and I wish it were different. Right, I wish it were different, but it is a holistic challenge that we as an industry have to figure out how to solve, and I think one of the way we do that is by doing things like Laura Guido-Clark is doing and going to schools in underserved neighborhoods at a very young age, teaching minority children about design and about what this is. 

Laura was on the podcast several years ago talking about this initiative. Right, I think we as industry leaders need to go to colleges and universities and talk about our industry. We have a fascinating industry that is so much fun to work in, but we don't talk about it in all the right places. Right, we've got to get out there and we need to be a staple on college career day or high school career day showcasing what types of careers are possible inside of our industry. So it's a really great ad there.

Natalie: 

I will plug. I was just recently talking with somebody about IIDA's. I think it's Design your World program, which again similar kind of helping people see careers and opportunities in the industry.

Sid:  

But IIDA and interior design is only one part of our industry.

Natalie:  

Only one part, I totally agree. And where are the other opportunities, whether it's in dealerships or other parts?

Sid: 

or manufacturers that also show you know, Because when you talk to people about our industry, they're like, wait a minute. People actually make furniture. They're a company. I'm like how do you think all this furniture got into this building? Like, did you think they just twitched their nose and like it showed up? Because no, it didn't. But when you really start to look into the engineering, the manufacturing, the design, customer service, right, all these different, you know customer experience, right. When people come to your factories, you have customer experience people, you have events, people. I mean there's so many opportunities inside our little ecosystem. We just have to do a better job at talking about it, in my opinion, and it'll help us all. All right, so we're going to wrap up with the last. Thank you for that. First off, thank you for calling me out about asking men, and you can be guaranteed I'm going to do it because I'm not going to go back on that, and the listeners won't let me go back on that, because they're going to be pinging me like why didn't you ask him, Sid?

Sid: 

So I'm going to ask Okay, but two more things I want to ask you about. Sorry, I got two more things. I have a whole list, guys, of things I want to talk to Natalie about that's okay.

Natalie:  

We knew we would go over?

Sid:  

Yes, we did so. I love the fact that I saw from you a couple of months ago that you created, or you were part of a creation of, the Nomad Collaborative Showroom in New York with Karen John of Heartwork. Tell us a little bit about how that came about, because I refer to this as co-opetition. Two brands that seemingly may or may not compete, may have some crossover with others, came together, opened a showroom in New York and are working together to share a showroom in New York and are working together to share your products with the New York community. How did that come about?

Natalie: 

I got connected to Karen as another female leader in the industry. We would just talk off and on about what we're seeing and different initiatives or things that we're doing within our businesses, and she had mentioned hey, I've really got to think about my showroom space. Do I go to a different showroom? What should I do? What are you doing? So we were just talking about our showroom strategy and we didn't have a full showroom in New York at the time. So I said well, have you thought about collaborating with other brands? There's so many complementary brands to what you do. We could easily put our furniture in with your storage solutions and find other people. 

And then she just took that and ran with it, and so we got connected to UnicaVev Claris Framery. What products are going to be in a space that a specifier is designing for an end client? Right, we aren't just in a space with our own products, and so it just it's very real. It also is extremely helpful because Framery brings in customers that are also Hightower's customers and also HeartWorks customers. So it's just to me, collaboration makes a ton of sense. I'm hopeful that we will do something similar in our Seattle showroom, right? I just I think it makes sense and it's more dynamic for visitors coming to our space to be able to see multiple brands at once. So I think it's four open line brands. If you can find other brands that are aligned aesthetically, culturally, I think that there's no reason not to personally, I think it's a fantastic initiative.

Sid: 

When I saw the LinkedIn post, I'm like wait, this is really cool, like kudos to you guys for doing it. So I do not know. Karen, I hope to meet her at neocon. I would love to actually have her come on the show to talk about what they're doing in her business. But so last question, then I'm gonna let you go back to doing your real job, which which is not talking to me, right? So you guys made the decision to not renew your lease at the merchandise mart. So that means that this Neocon is your last Neocon at the mart. Where is Hightower going next? What can we expect from you guys as it relates to leaving the merchandise mart? And then, if you don't mind also sharing, what was the catalyst that made you say it's our time to leave the mart?

Natalie:  

So great question. This is definitely very bittersweet. Hightower had never shown at Neocon until 2019. So this was something that I took on when I kind of took over Hightower and felt like we were at a point as a brand that we could do a showroom in a way that I felt represented us. And so 2019, we signed a five-year lease Amazing timing to sign a lease for a showroom right before COVID so highly recommend.

But we had this beautiful space. We took part of Noel's old space. We opened up the light. Well, it's just such an incredible space and we talked early on that we were going to redesign that space three times Part one, part two, part three, Sure, and show Hightower Studio as well as our brand partners, in totally different perspectives, right. So we started off with a very, very light Scandinavian kind of light-colored cream aesthetic. Then we went to this very dark and moody burgundy luxe kind of hospitality aesthetic and then we went to this very poppy Harry Styles as a showroom kind of glitz, lots of patterns, right. And we said we really want people to see us in different ways because we are, you know, they have the canvas, Our furniture can go in any type of space. You pick the finishes, you decide what it looks like, and so when we finished part three, I felt like we had kind of done what we set out to do. I'm super proud of how we showed up at Neocon, super proud of winning the best small showroom multiple times.

Sid:  

Yeah, your award list goes on and on. Of all the things that you've won.

Natalie: 

Each time we redesigned it, we won, which was very exciting and just showed the amount of time and attention that our team put into those showrooms. I think we brought good energy to that floor and so for me, I felt like we were done redesigning that space. I think it's easy for something to get stale, to not feel as exciting, and I would rather leave kind of on top right.

Sid: 

Understood.

Natalie:  

There wasn't another space that I felt was right for us, and so we did consider moving to a different space and kind of getting reinvigorated. And so what we have decided is to focus on our other showroom spaces and bringing our experience to more local markets with our sales reps, and then we'll figure out what feels inspiring, whether that's at the mart, whether it's a Fulton, whether it's a, you know, collaborative opportunity. But I'm a very like kind of gut feeling person and I wasn't feeling like 100% set on any one solution at the moment, so we're just going to pause.

Sid:  

Sounds like a fantastic decision and there has been a rise in popularity, if you will, of localized, regionalized shows. They're coming back. Those of us that have been around for a long time will remember Neocon East, neocon West, right, all these other types of shows. Then they kind of faded away a little bit. There was even one in Dallas called Metricon. That was good and then it started dying and then it completely went away.

And now a lot of the dealers have come together, a lot of the reps have come together, sometimes supported, sometimes not supported, by the local IIDA chapter, bringing Neocon shows after Neocon to the local market. I've heard about them renting an empty floor in a class A building and just everybody's got a little corner and pays a little bit, brings their stuff in, and I love that. I love the ingenuity of it, I love bringing the products, especially, if you can, as many as possible bringing them to, because you actually get better quality time with your dealers, with your designers, with your specifiers, right. So I love that idea and I love that you're focusing. Can you share like a market you're going to, that we could be on the lookout for a Hightower showroom?

Natalie: 

Yeah, so we have our space in Seattle and we obviously did the collaboration in New York, and then we have just been San Francisco. We're collaborating with our reps for our collaborative space there, and so, anyway, our reps are kind of all over and we're bringing kind of little. We're going to be breaking out the pieces that are currently in our Chicago space and sending kind of chunks and parts of those vignettes to our reps showroom, so it'll be all over. 

Yeah, so keep an eye out for that, but we're excited for that. And then to figure out what's next. So I'll be all over, yeah, so keep an eye out for that, but we're excited for that. And then to figure out what's next.

Sid: 

So, Natalie, I can't thank you enough for joining me today, and we've gone through this whole gauntlet of conversations about you and a little bit about your journey into the industry, your leadership, the culture at Hightower products. I mean sustainability, women and big women in our industry. I mean we've gone all full circle here. So I really appreciate you coming and sharing with me and with our listeners about you and about Hightower. I'm excited for you and your future. Look forward to even though this will come after me. I look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks when the show actually happens. And if our community would like to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Natalie:  

Yeah, so either my email is Natalie@ hightoweraccess.com or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well.

Sid: 

So we'll be sure to drop website address, email address, Kibibi's episode and LinkedIn profiles down into the show notes. Please, guys, remember, if you do reach out to Natalie, let her know that you heard her here on the Trend Report and that's why you're reaching out. Natalie, thanks again, I really appreciate being here today. Thank you for joining us today. Go out there and make today great, everybody, and we'll see you again in a couple of weeks.

Natalie:  

Thank you for having me.

Sid:  

Take care everyone.

Natalie:  

Thank you.