Home staging seems to be way more profitable than surface pattern design from what I’ve learned diving into an inside look at the industry.
I used to hand paint floorcloths and other home accessories and always wondered how an artist could get their pattern designs onto home furnishings.
So I decided to find out and headed to New York trip to attend a huge trade show, SURTEX.
Three days of workshops with artists, licensing agents and product manufacturers gave me a crash course in the surface and textile design industry.
It really made me appreciate how much better a home staging career is for generating income when you’re a creative person.
Artists were selling their designs outright for a one-time fee of $600 (what most home stagers can make in a few hours).
Then the manufacturer could turn around and use it on hundreds of products worldwide and they’d get none of the benefits.
Others were licensing their work for 1.25% of sales.
So if Target sold a million dollars worth of placemats with your pretty pattern on it, for example, you’d only make $12,500 in royalties.
Worse yet, you wouldn’t get paid anything for at least 2 years from when you signed the licensing deal.
Plus the royalties can take many years to come in.
By contrast, home stagers get paid right away.
And instead of earning that amount in dribs and drabs over time, they get it all at once.
Recently I wrote about Staging Diva Grad Stacy Goade who has made $7,000 in a month staging homes in Anchorage Alaska.
It just occured to me that a home stager will make more placing accent pillows on a couch than the artist who designed the pattern that’s on the accent pillow.
I was telling Staging Diva Grad Susan Atwell what I learned at SURTEX and she replied, “Yikes, those numbers sound terrible. I think you’ll need to change this market as well. A new ‘Designing’ Diva business model.”I’m not sure if that will be in the works, but I am proud that I’ve turned home staging on its ear by eliminating the previously common practices of:
- Doing free estimates
- Waiting to get paid when a house sells
- Investing in your own staging inventory
Unlike in other home staging programs, Staging Diva students learn how to avoid these 3 problems (among others) that put most stagers out of business.
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