What If Your Biggest Business Headache Is Your Next Product?

We share the behind-the-scenes story of how we turned a constant home staging pain point into an exclusive, large-scale art line that finally meets our standards for weight, durability, and timeless style. We walk through the real manufacturing learning curve, the moment we chose quality over sunk costs, and why the problems you keep bumping into might be pointing you toward your next big opportunity.

• the real constraints of sourcing large-scale staging art for MLS-ready homes
• why retail options create sameness and weaken brand differentiation
• deciding to manufacture our own art with zero prior experience
• partnering with artist Megan Mahaney to keep the work original and versatile
• traveling to inspect production and finding quality issues in the first run
• choosing to scrap finished inventory and rebuild for better materials and hardware
• treating mistakes as tuition and planning for longer timelines
• reframing ongoing business friction as a product and growth opportunity

Love design, but think like a business owner? If you're ready to leave your nine to five and want to do something that's buildable and scalable, check out linden-creek.com/franchise and see if Linden Creek is the right fit for you.

If you found value in this episode, share it with someone else who's in the building phase.

Transcript

Why Large Wall Art Is Hard

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Let me share with you a story of something fun we've been working on behind the scenes for the last couple of years. If you've had any time staging, you know the biggest challenge oftentimes we have with inventory sourcing is large-scale art for a couple of reasons. The art needs to be something that is not too heavy because you're toting it around, and oftentimes it's only one person that's available to hang the art. Ideally, the art doesn't have a lot of glass frames because that causes issues with reflections when the cameras are on and taking MLS photos. But also, you need the art to be timeless. You need it to be something that's visually appealing, that makes sense and transitions across many houses and many different design styles. And you need the art to be affordable. And when you put all of these things together, our biggest solution to all of this was home goods. A lot of runs to home goods on the regular. We could never seem to find a vendor or a manufacturer that was able to give us exactly what we were looking for. And there are other retailers out there that are great that mass produce beautiful pieces, but you find that your competition and other staging companies are using those same pieces and suddenly your work is looking the same. So for me, I felt like one of the biggest challenges

Choosing To Manufacture Our Own

SPEAKER_00 1:24

we had as a staging company was getting our hands on large-scale, affordable, attractive art. When it came to this problem, I saw it as an opportunity. Is there a way that I could actually solve this problem, not just for me, but also for our franchise owners? And that's what started the journey of deciding to manufacture our own art. Now, here's what's crazy about this. I have zero experience in manufacturing anything. This process started with one simple thing: me pulling up my laptop and Googling, how do I manufacture art? But in that first question, it started everything. It built the relationships and the knowledge that I needed to understand how a manufacturing process works. I started to do research and find manufacturing factories that would be able to support the needs that we had. I got to understand how we draft and design renderings to make all of these happens. Asking that key question is what

Franchise Invite And Brand Vision

SPEAKER_00 2:20

allowed us to start this beautiful, amazing journey. Love design, but think like a business owner? If you're ready to leave your nine to five and want to do something that's buildable and scalable, check out linden-creek.com slash franchise and see if Linden Creek is the right fit for you. One of the big challenges that I wanted to address in this is how do we create beautiful art and how do we create something that is going to be special and specific to our name and our brand. And that's where Megan comes in. Megan Mahaney is the artist that we had the opportunity to partner with

Partnering With Artist Megan Mahaney

SPEAKER_00 2:52

and collaborate with on this line. She's uh become a dear friend of mine that we have had the opportunity to work with over the years and showcase her beautiful artwork in many, many multimillion dollar homes. I have fallen in love with the designs and the creativity that she produces in her line of art. And so when we made this decision to create pieces that could be attainable and affordable for our teams and our locations, Megan's name was the only one that I was gonna have a conversation with. When I approached Megan about the opportunity, she was ecstatic and we both hit the ground running. It came down to her reflecting on the art pieces that would make the most sense. We assessed which pieces would transition well. Are there pieces that she's created that we can pair together to span really large walls that we interact with on the regular? Which ones make a bold statement, but not so bold that it can become offensive to others? And this discovery process is something that was really fun to get to do with a partner

Flying To Asia For Inspection

SPEAKER_00 3:50

that I've had over these years. Fast forward to several months later, we hit a place of actually manufacturing the art. The samples were designed and drafted, they were shipped to us, we inspected them and thought everything looked fantastic. We gave our stamp of approval, and then it came time for manufacturing. So my husband Alan and I jumped on a plane, we flew across the world to Asia to go and inspect over 1,000 pieces of 40 by 60 art. And when we showed up in that factory, there were boxes lined up of all of the pieces that we had worked so hard to build and create. And then it came time for inspection. So we opened up the boxes, laid them out on this big table, everybody was standing around excited, and I looked at the piece, and one of the frames bent a little bit. And I flipped the art piece over, and the support brackets were not as substantial as I ideally wanted them to be. And I remember seeing the frame, and it was a little bit more narrow than I wanted to be. And there were these little minute misses that were happening in the art piece, and my heart sank. And I remember looking at the art piece that was not quite perfect, and I remember looking back up and seeing, again, hundreds of boxes of already manufactured art. And all I saw when I stared at those boxes were thousands and thousands of dollars that I had already invested into this process to make those come to life. And it hit this crossroads for me of what do I do next? Um, but there wasn't a decision for me to make, in my opinion. I looked at it and I knew we only had one answer, and that was to start over. And so I had the very candid conversation of we're getting there, but the reality is this is not the quality that we need to bring to market. And so we have to start over.

Scrapping Everything And Redesigning

SPEAKER_00 5:30

And in that moment, we made the decision, we removed all of the art that was manufactured and we started over. We cleared off a desk, we all sat around a table, we pulled out samples, we looked at the details of the backing. It should instead of it being made with MDF, let's make sure that it's made with solid wood, let's beef up the frame a little bit, let's perfect the exact stain color that we want to see on those frames to make sure that they're a reflection of the brand and who we want to be. We enjoyed this conversation over two, two and a half hours and basically redesigned the behind the scenes part of the art, but also the visual piece as well. And when we were done, I had so much more confidence in what we were designing and building. Did my timeline get delayed? Yes. Did I spend an insanely more larger amount of money rebuilding? Absolutely. But what I do know is from this process, we now have a product today that we are so incredibly proud of. That's one that represents and reflects the brand in the way that it really needs to. I say this to say there's tuition in learning things. If you're gonna go on a journey and try to build something yourself, you're probably not gonna get it right on the first shot. And if you do, props to you. But one thing that I know from my experience is every time I've tried to build something, I have made 17 mistakes along the way, and every single mistake has cost me money. It was my tuition. But at the end of the day, I learned valuable lessons where I can now manufacture art effortlessly anytime that we want

Tuition, Timelines, And New Confidence

SPEAKER_00 6:55

to to bring in new products, new lines, things of that nature. Was the journey worth it? Absolutely. Was the cost worth it? Absolutely. The other important lesson I learned is it always takes longer than you expect to get to the finish line. So often in each of my new fun ventures and crazy wild ideas, I look at my projections and I go, this is gonna be six months, or this is gonna be 12 months. The reality is it always takes longer. What I was told when I started my research is that manufacturing art like this and getting it in hand can take anywhere from six to nine months. Our process took 18 months to get it done and get it done right. But here's what it's done for the brand at Linden Creek. We now have an exclusive line of art that is a reflection of Linden Creek and Linden Creek only. It showcases beautiful artwork by Megan. And one of the things that I love about that is we now have an opportunity as a brand to support Megan and her business as well. The designs that she has ever she has so methodically and intentionally created are now being displayed all over the country.

Opportunity Mindset And Final Challenge

SPEAKER_00 7:58

My biggest takeaway from this experience is simple. You don't have to have all the answers to start. For me, this started with one simple Google search, and it brought me down a journey of learning and experiencing these things. So never be intimidated by the, but I don't know what happens next. Learning, educating yourself, that first step isn't a scary one, and that is the propellant that'll start everything else. If there's a problem in your business that you've been quietly wishing someone would solve, I would challenge you to sit with it this week. Maybe that problem is actually an opportunity in disguise. If you found value in this episode, share it with someone else who's in the building phase. I hope this provides the encouragement you need. I'll see you next time. This is in good space.