To-The-Trade with Interior Design Community

PJ Delaye spent 26 years at York Wall Coverings, rising from export director to president of North America's largest wallpaper manufacturer. In this episode of To-The-Trade, he joins Laurie to discuss the wall covering industry's dramatic comeback and why designers should pay close attention.
PJ compares today's wall covering landscape to the craft beer revolution. Digital printing has lowered the barrier to entry, and smaller studios are creating bold, personality-driven patterns that major manufacturers might never have attempted. Coupled with a cultural shift away from minimalism toward maximalist, character-rich interiors, wallpaper is firmly back in the mainstream.
For designers, PJ makes a clear business case. Wall coverings typically offer a 20 to 40 percent designer discount, providing significantly higher margins than paint. They also serve as portfolio builders and referral generators, because a striking wallpaper pattern prompts the "who's your designer" question in a way paint simply can't.
The conversation also covers practical aspects. PJ explains why non-woven backing has become the industry standard for quality wallpaper. Non-woven products are dimensionally stable, allow paste-the-wall installation, enable precise seam matching, and can be removed in full strips. He and Laurie contrast this with peel-and-stick, which helped reintroduce consumers to wallpaper but requires overlapping seams and can split as vinyl shifts with temperature changes.
PJ also introduces his new company, Veer Decor, which curates wallpaper from multiple European mills and studios to offer designers a broad, exclusive portfolio. Laurie concludes with ThinkLab data, estimating the North American wall covering market at nearly $12 billion annually, reinforcing that this is a category designers should not overlook.

Heather Cleveland (Heather Cleveland Design, Bay Area) joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to unpack what truly differentiates a successful design firm: process. While talent is everywhere, Heather argues that a refined, repeatable client experience is what wins trust, reduces anxiety, and drives referrals.
Heather shares her creative upbringing and her career pivot after a tech layoff, then explains how a role running IKEA’s kitchen department became an unexpected technical bootcamp that strengthened her kitchen and bath expertise. From there, she built a whole-home practice while keeping her first love, textiles and materials, at the center of her creativity.
The core of the episode is Heather’s system for “spoon-feeding” clients what they need before they ever have to ask. She outlines a clear sequence of touchpoints from inquiry through onboarding and project milestones, plus personalized gestures that feel thoughtful without resorting to branded swag. Her biggest game-changer is the weekly Friday client email: a consistent update on what happened, what didn’t go right (paired with a solution in progress), and what’s next. That cadence prevents weekend worry spirals and dramatically reduces client check-ins because clients trust the update will come. Laurie connects this to profitability and value communication, noting that proactive communication can prevent the “guilt discounting” cycle many designers fall into.
They also dig into the tough part of every project: ending it well. Heather explains how she sets expectations early by telling clients a story about something that went wrong and how it was resolved, so bumps feel normal rather than catastrophic. At the finish, her firm delivers a detailed project “binder,” now digital, built from Programa, including product specs by room, images to clarify what’s what, and manufacturer care guides. This gives clients confidence they’re not being abandoned after the punch list, and it becomes a valuable asset for resale and future maintenance.
The episode closes with a focus on learning and innovation: Heather prefers workshops (IDS, Haven Workshop) for actionable ROI, and she shares practical AI uses, such as generating presentation cover sketches from a home photo and creating virtual walkthroughs from photorealistic renderings.

In this To-The-Trade episode, Laurie Laizure interviews Phil Hotarek, a plumbing/HVAC contractor and decorative showroom owner in San Francisco who also leads the Decorative Plumbing & Hardware Association (DPHA). Phil explains DPHA’s role in connecting brands, independent reps, and showrooms through a hotel-based showcase that prioritizes time, access, and real conversation, along with education and ongoing resources to better support designers and specifiers.
Laurie highlights DPHA’s roundtable model as a standout: manufacturers, reps, showroom owners, and designers in the same room with a moderator, topics submitted in advance, and a private environment where people can talk honestly about real problems. They reference conversations around tariffs and the shifting economy, and Phil shares that DPHA built this structure by listening closely to annual survey feedback and expanding interactive programming, including webinars, because members wanted more meaningful engagement than passive booth traffic.
The episode turns practical quickly. On pricing volatility, they discuss transparency strategies, including how tariffs might be presented to clients, and Phil emphasizes that surprises erode trust. He encourages a more decisive selection phase when pricing can change rapidly. They also discuss growing pressure on manufacturers to be clearer about where products are truly made versus assembled, because that detail matters for both credibility and storytelling.
On follow-up and relationship-building, Laurie notes designers’ inbox overload and suggests tactics that respect time and bandwidth: QR codes instead of stacks of lookbooks, sensible sampling (often one per firm), and social-media DMs that continue the conversation after the show. They also explore the importance of product stories that help designers explain value to clients and position boutique decorative brands as intentional choices rather than commodities.
Phil closes with a growth goal: reaching 100 designer attendees at the 2026 showcase in Salt Lake City. Laurie shares outreach strategies that could help achieve it.

In this To-The-Trade episode, Laurie Laizure interviews Phil Hotarek, a plumbing/HVAC contractor and decorative showroom owner in San Francisco who also leads the Decorative Plumbing & Hardware Association (DPHA). Phil explains DPHA’s role in connecting brands, independent reps, and showrooms through a hotel-based showcase that prioritizes time, access, and real conversation, along with education and ongoing resources to better support designers and specifiers.
Laurie highlights DPHA’s roundtable model as a standout: manufacturers, reps, showroom owners, and designers in the same room with a moderator, topics submitted in advance, and a private environment where people can talk honestly about real problems. They reference conversations around tariffs and the shifting economy, and Phil shares that DPHA built this structure by listening closely to annual survey feedback and expanding interactive programming, including webinars, because members wanted more meaningful engagement than passive booth traffic.
The episode turns practical quickly. On pricing volatility, they discuss transparency strategies, including how tariffs might be presented to clients, and Phil emphasizes that surprises erode trust. He encourages a more decisive selection phase when pricing can change rapidly. They also discuss growing pressure on manufacturers to be clearer about where products are truly made versus assembled, because that detail matters for both credibility and storytelling.
On follow-up and relationship building, Laurie points out designers’ inbox overload and suggests tactics that respect time and bandwidth: QR codes instead of stacks of lookbooks, sensible sampling (often one per firm), and social-media DMs that continue the conversation after the show. They also explore the importance of product stories that help designers explain value to clients and position boutique decorative brands as intentional choices rather than commodities.
Phil closes with a growth goal: reaching 100 designer attendees at the 2026 showcase in Salt Lake City. Laurie shares outreach strategies that could help achieve it.

In this episode, Marsha Sefcik talks with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson about building a design business that supports the season of life you’re in, rather than forcing yourself into someone else’s “right way.” Marsha shares her journey from corporate sales, training, customer service, and project management to nearly two decades in design, all while raising kids alongside her business. She emphasizes giving yourself grace and modeling problem-solving and professionalism for your family, even when things feel messy.
On the business side, Marsha offers very practical guidance. She recommends starting with a “reverse engineer” approach: clarify the net income you need, then work backward into project minimums, services, and pricing decisions. She also explains why time tracking matters—even if you charge a flat fee or a hybrid—because you can’t accurately audit past projects or identify the “chaos leaks” in your process if you don’t know where the hours are going.
Marsha shares a real project example where a client’s decision bottleneck (tile selection) stalled momentum, tying it back to setting expectations around options, approvals, and limiting revisions. Laurie highlights how quickly revisions can divert a project from its original vision, and why tightening the approval process protects both design integrity and profitability.
They also discuss “shiny object” tech stack creep, with Marsha recommending regular subscription audits and cutting tools you’re not using. From there, the conversation shifts to marketing and pipeline building: relationships matter, newsletters are a missed opportunity for referral-driven designers, and marketing should be viewed as a strategy with ROI, not just random effort. Marsha outlines four marketing pillars: attract, engage, nurture past clients, and delight them.
Finally, they explore boundaries and sales. Marsha redefines upselling as education and service, encourages designers to follow up on proposals, and shares how proactive weekly client updates can reduce frantic weekend texts and keep projects moving smoothly.