When you are getting the same end results regardless of who is assigned to the tasks… an individual or a team, it requires the same amount of work steps to get to that point… . So just because an independent designer does not have all the “mouths to feed” as a larger firm, that designer is wearing many hats and doing the same amount of work to produce the same results.

My post was in response to Mr. Wolf’s answer on why he charges a 35% commission. The original question was from a decorator with only a few years’ experience who worked out of her home, charged a 20% commission, and felt that she was doing fine. I’ll admit, I was flabbergasted that the blog host told her, unilaterally, that she wasn’t charging enough. Here is why:

Mr. Wolf does not take home 35% from each job. Vicente Wolf’s company charges a 35% markup, from which they pay their NYC rent, utilities, fees, travel, employees, taxes, Mr. Wolf’s salary, and then, presumably, plows the remainder back into the business. Should a client hire a firm like Mr. Wolf’s, they can be assured of having the benefits of that firm, such as someone to see to it they are billed properly, and mostly importantly, a firm to manage the execution of a job, which is at best stressful, and at worst, disastrous. If a single person, with no overhead, employees, and minimal experience charged the same markup as a full-service firm, I would think that they are so overpriced they had their heads in the clouds. A markup should not be a business’s goal. The more important number is cash-flow, and the markup is merely the number to get you there.

Now, whether or not whatever percentage or fee I think a designer is worth is the matter for another post. I will say, however, that I studied architecture in Italy, and finally saw the difference between a window and a hole in the wall. There is no question in my mind that truly wonderful spaces require a professional.

With the market and clients changing so much in the past few years due to the economy and also the ease of shopping online, I am beginning to shift my practice to flat fee services, rather than hourly. I find many of my clients willing to do the purchasing themselves, so unless I am custom designing something or buying from to-the-trade sources, I’m rarely getting any mark up.

In our profession, experience and style is important – but our personality is also very important. We end up being pretty closely involved with our clients. So, I do think that clients are making decisions on who they feel comfortable with — not just years in the business. This may be why they don’t research as much. Although, I do think that most people who have called me for work have interviewed a few designers.

I think we’re all just trying to do our best – don’t you?

All design businesses are high risk with a failure rate like restaurants. Vicente raises interesting points with his analogies of the price of design services to tomatoes, art and blue jeans. Our government has subsidized farmers in droughts and bought their excess in good years because this business provides necessities and has enough large farms to have a good lobby. Since designers and architects are small businesses who in part provide luxuries, we bare our own risk and have to charge enough in good times to survive prolonged recessions. My point is that design professionals must gather their crops in while they may! (For the record, I like farmers and don’t think the government should favor one business over another.)

Design professionals seem to be in a uniquely defensive position, perhaps because we have one foot in the professional world and one in the artistic world. I don’t think that most individuals negotiate fees aggressively with their doctors, attorneys and accountants (some of whom do better in a recession!). And has anyone every asked an artist to reduce the cost of a painting based on how many hours it took to paint? What attitude leads a person pay the full retail $1000 for Versace jeans and then ask Vicente for a discount on similarly priced home accessories?

I think it’s important to note that the finished construction cost alone of an apartment for sale in NYC, which can be $1000-1400/SF, is 4 times what one would pay for a home in St. Louis MO, at $250-350/SF. So the same percentage fee or commission would be 4 times less in STL than NYC. Therefore, location makes a great difference in the absolute dollars you would expend for design. I think in a free market there is a great range of design talent, skill and service cost. So I would heed the words of my mama, who told me you better shop around! – Gary

Karena
Art by Karena