TEASER

Erin Torres: What does someone say about your company when you're not there? That's really what your brand is. So sometimes [working in marketing is] making a company understand—brand is more than just what you say, what you do, what you say your brand is, what your logo looks like… Brand is everything else. It's all the other elements. In today's world, that feeling… that emotional side is so important, because nobody remembers anything! But they will remember how a brand made them feel. They will remember that.

 

INTRO

Coach Sid Meadows: Hey, friends, and welcome to the Trend Report podcast, where we have real conversations with real people about all-things Contract Interiors! My name is Sid Meadows, and I'm your host. I'm a business strategist, a certified professional coach, and a longtime student of the office furniture industry, and I'm excited that you're joining us today. 

My hope is that you will gain some insights, inspiration, and motivation that will help you grow and your business growth. So let's dive into today's conversation. 

The Trend Report is proudly sponsored by the Insider, a weekly newsletter delivering a quick dose of insights to get your Monday off to a well-informed start. The Insider combines meaningful industry perspective with recommended reads and product solutions, offering valuable intelligence and inspiration to anyone working in commercial interiors. To learn more about the insider or to subscribe for free, please visit indeal.org/theInsider. 

 

EPISODE 

Sid: Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Trend Report! Glad you're joining me today—this is gonna be a really fun conversation with two first-time podcasters. These two ladies are not new to me, because I have the pleasure to work with both of them each and every day. 

Today, we're going to talk about the evolution of a brand, what that means, and how brands evolve—and why it's important inside of our industry. I'd like to welcome our guests today, Anjul Chandi and Erin Torres with Thinkspace. Great to have both of you here today!

 

Anjul Chandi: Thank you!

 

Sid: So I know I took a moment to introduce you, but tell everybody what it is you do at Thinkspace.

 

Anjul : I'm the most senior person here at thinkspace, I'm the CEO.

 

Sid: That's awesome. And you actually started the business, right? 

 

Anjul: I did indeed. 

 

Sid: Yeah, we're gonna talk about the history of Thinkspace in just a little bit. But, Erin—tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do with Thinkspace.

 

Erin: So I'm Erin Torres. I am the Marketing Director for Thinkspace. So I've been working to help them build a brand over the last few months, and we've had some really exciting, exciting adventures in our brand journey—it's been a fun ride!

 

Sid: And we're going to talk about some of that today as we talk about the evolution of a brand. 

I want to know from each of you—Anjul, I’ll come to you first—how did you get into the furniture business?

 

Anjul: That's a very interesting story. I'm fairly new to furniture compared to a lot of my counterparts here in this industry. So I actually initially started my journey in food and drink, health and beauty, and direct selling to companies. So I was pretty much a furniture novice until a few years ago. 

I met Mark Mark Bailey, he's not here today, but he's the co-founder of thinkspace. He's been in furniture since he got out of school, so he's like an industry dinosaur—he's been around forever, knows everybody there is to know, in London and beyond, in furniture. 

So we both had the opportunity to come together on a project a few years back, and let's say the rest is history. I'm still in this industry, when I didn't think I'd be here for long, but I guess I came to like it a little bit like an accountant working in finance (an acquired taste). So yeah, it's something I've really grown to love. So I absolutely love being in furniture today.

 

Sid: So you know, I love hearing people's stories about how they got into the business, because, you don't go to a college career day, and they there's a furniture table set up and they said, “Come learn about the contract interiors industry.” Most people just fall into it either from family or friends, and they fall into it. People fall into two categories—either love it and stay forever, or you’re like, “this is okay”, stay for a few years, and then you get out. I'm not going to call myself a dinosaur, but I am one of those people that has been around a really long time. 

So Aaron, you and I have worked together for a really long time. Back in the day, we worked together at AIS for many, many years. Then you started your own agency, but I don't know that I've ever heard your story about how you got into the industry. So what led you to office furniture?

 

Erin: Yes. When I started out in marketing, I started out in manufacturing. So I was actually working before furniture for a digital television processing company that basically did television transmitters and digital processing equipment. I was marketing, basically these large refrigerator boxes that sat on top of a mountain. I decided that I needed to do something different, and I applied to position, and this is what it said—“Marketing position, needs to think outside the box.”

 

Sid: That was the whole job description?

 

Erin: And it didn't even say the company name, because it was like through a recruiter, so I didn't even think it was real. But I applied to it, but I didn’t know anyone in furniture, so who knows? 

It was AIS, and at the time, Michael Dogalley. And if anybody knows Michael Dogalley, you could understand that type of a position being posted. That was how I started, I met with Mike. I went to AIS very young in my career; it was actually very glamorous to move into furniture after large refrigerator boxes on top of a mountain and boxes of digital processing equipment. 

So I was very excited that there were fabrics and finishes and colors—even though most of it was gray—I was still excited! And so that's how I started.

 

Sid: Okay, again, I loved hearing people's stories about how they get into the industry. As you were describing what you're doing, I'm thinking… Okay, selling a large refrigerator box on top of a mountain… That has got to be harder than selling furniture!

 

Erin: It was difficult. It was very scientific, very high tech—there was a lot behind it. So furniture was much lighter. 

 

Anjul: Erin, that was really interesting that you say that, because I came from the world of beauty and facial creams and makeup—so, I was like, how am I gonna ever get excited about like a table chair?! A table? A table leg…? 

I was really struggling at first, but I love it—I love it now.

 

Sid: Well, we all have a story, right? And those journeys have led us here together today, as we all work together each and every day with Thinkspace. The listeners have heard my story about thinkspace. So we won't go into that again, but I just love how journeys come together. 

Talking about what we're doing and where we're going, I think is important for us as a brand. But also just to continue the story, your story, Anjul, and your story aired as well, Erin. But I got one other question about the furniture industry. And we're gonna move on to the next topic. 

So Eric, what do you love about the furniture business?

 

Erin: I think for me, what I love about the furniture business is I love the idea that a piece of furniture can enhance someone's life. It can really change someone's life for the better; it could provide comfort during a hard time. To me, there's a story behind that piece [of our industry], and so I think for me, I like to tap into that emotional side to something that most people would look at as just an object. And that's kind of what I like about it.

 

Sid:Wow, that is so good. That's one of the best. That's one of the best responses I've ever heard, actually.

What about you, Anjul? What do you love? 

 

Anjul: I know I’ll struggle to top Erin’s response! 

I think for me, coming from different industries before this one, I especially love the people that I meet in this industry. I love working with clients, the architect community, the designers, and dealers—I really love the integrity and the honesty of the people that I meet. So that's like a big thing for me.

 

Sid: Yeah, people in this industry are amazing, right. When you love the people you get to work with, it's so much fun. It's always been like one of the biggest draws for me is the people and the relationships that you can build in our industry. Even if you only see somebody once or twice a year, you can build these amazing relationships with people. 

I remember my very first project that ever did in the office furniture industry (We won't talk about how many years ago this was). I was working at a work dealer in Birmingham, Alabama. For those of you that don’t know my story, that was my very first job in the furniture industry. I remember working on a really small little project—I didn't know what laminate versus veneer was, by the way—and I remember the feeling after this project was finished. I worked on it with a designer, I walked away from the finished space, and I looked back and went, “Wow, I did that. That's really cool!” 

And it's kind of to your point, Erin—every piece of furniture has a story, has a function, meets a unique need. And I got to look at that space and go, “Well I created that. I hope people look at this and see how cool that is.” And for me, that's always been one of those things that is really important to be able to step back and look at “Oh, wow, we did that!” And as an industry, this is what we do. 

We often only look at the outside (the end result), but there's a whole other side to this—how what we sell impacts people and impacts businesses. So we're not gonna talk about all that today, because we could go down a big rabbit hole with that.

Anjul, let's come to you for a second, and I know our listeners want to know the answer to this question, especially from you, as the CEO of Thinkspace… Who is thinkspace?

 

Anjul: So Thinkspace is a woman-owned company. Thinkspace is responsible for bringing European, acoustic design products into the U.S. We know that design pretty much starts over here in Europe, and Mark and I are both based out of London—so we get to see the trends a lot sooner before they are coming to the U.S. We were able to see a gap in the market for some of these trends that weren't in the U.S. that we were seeing out here. So, we wanted to be the first to bring them to the U.S. furniture market.

 

Sid: That's awesome. I do like the fact that you just mentioned that you're both in London. If you guys are struggling to understand some of the things she says—down in the show notes, I'll decipher what each word means. By the way, I'm just kidding. I work with Anjul every day, so I get to pick on her just a little bit. 

 

Anjul: My Queen's English isn’t working for you? Oh, the King’s English?

 

Sid: No, you sound great! 

I do think we've always as an industry, especially the United States looking to Europe for leading edge and new design. And there are a lot of companies that are looking to tap into the US market. And so you and Mark are there, you get to see some of the brands, and some of the products that are coming out through events like Clerkenwell, or the Scandinavian Furniture Fair that was in Stockholm not too long ago, right? Orgatec, all these shows that are in Europe. 

So you get to see all these products, and then identify the ones that align with who Thinkspace is and what we want to bring in. We're also supporting those brands in Europe that want part of the U.S. market that want to come in, but they don't really have a mechanism or a way to do that. So alignment of the right products and the right brands is one of the things that fuels the growth of Thinkspace. So I really appreciate that perspective. 

Erin, anything you want to add to like, “Who is Thinkspace?” Because you're (kind of) the newbie in the group, only since January, so finishing five months. So what's your perspective about who is Thinkspace?

 

Erin: To me Thinkspace is bringing life back to the workspace by offering products, acoustic products, that people can add-on within the within their existing workspace. So acoustic products and fun products, things that are needed for work for wellness, for meeting spaces. 

The brand is really shaping to basically provide what businesses are struggling with right now, and that is getting people back to the office. So what we're trying to do is have the right product offering, so that employees can feel like they can have those private conversations at work—and they feel happy to come back to work again, because it's got some cool components within it. So that's really, I think, what we're trying to center what we're doing around. 

I's also important that everything that we're offering is in the acoustic category.

 

Sid: Yeah, 100%—and before we talk too much about the future and some of the new stuff coming… Anjul, I want to travel back in time to 2018 when you and Mark said, “Let's take this product to the U.S.!” You basically were new to Furniture Mart, new several people here. Tell us a little bit of the story about how you got started and what the first couple of years were like,

 

Anjul: Mark and I started the business, as you quite rightly said back in June 2018, which still seems like yesterday. A few years ago, we started the business based out of London, which in itself was quite an interesting dynamic. At that point in the business, we just had the privacy booth line. That was keeping us very busy. 

We were flying over to the U.S. to meet dealers, to ramp up the business, and get the momentum going. So, every month I'd be meeting dealers all across the U.S.—so from New York all the way down to California, we would present to dealers, architects, and designers. We were really trying to get our name out there, to be honest. 

We started winning some business, which (obviously) that all helps to keep the momentum going and putting it back into the business. 

I remember in the very early days, I actually used to do the quotes myself—so I used to build up templates in Excel, then lock them up as a PDF, so they look more professional. We very much started the business from nothing. 

 

Sid: So what I think is interesting about this is that all startups have a story about how they got started, and all startups have a journey that they've been on about what they did. So you came over once a month, you would do quotes on Excel spreadsheets and send them over as a PDF, so they look more professional, you would take calls in the middle of the night (literally) from people in California needing help with something, and started grass-roots in a very saturated industry. When I say “saturated,” I mean a lot of manufacturers and distributors in our industry, and you guys started total grassroots. Over the years, you've just continued to grow and to grow and to grow and to grow. Here we are in 2023, with explosive growth happening at Thinkspace in 2023. 

So when you think back to the journey of Thinkspace, and what you and Mark have done—is there any one particular memory or one particular thing that just stands out to you? Like, THIS was a really good thing we did or a really pivotal moment in the business?

 

Anjul: I mean, one of our first clients was one of our first dealers—Inside Source—and you know that it takes longer to get products over to California. So there was this bright idea that why don't we give them stock? That's actually the origin of our stock story. 

Today, we have five locations, fully-stocked across the U.S.—but that actually all started with Inside Source. So they will take a container of products, and discount that and use that all across the Bay Area. 

So I think that's a very poignant moment in the business where we knew that we were the only ones doing it, and none of our competitors held stock. Everything coming out of Europe obviously carried a longer lead time, so taking that barrier down from being over here in Europe—the only way to do it was by holding stock in the market. So I'd say that's probably the most interesting thing.

 

Sid: Well, as somebody that is responsible for the sales of Thinkspace, I sit back and go—that was a great decision, because stock is a huge part of what we do at Thinkspace. Having an inventory position, as you said, in five different locations is a significant part of our business, especially to be able to ship product within 7-days. 

So, I think it was a great decision that you made all those years ago to start a stocking with one dealer, particularly Inside Source, and look at how it's blossomed and grown over the course of time. I did not know that story. So thank you for sharing that story—I'm learning something, too, guys! 

So, I want to shift gears for a minute and start talking about brand and evolution of a brand. Erin, let's come to you—you're the marketing genius on this call. I've been witness to all of your amazing ideas and the things that you've done in two different businesses now. I'm excited that you're part of the space, obviously, but let's get your perspective about “what is a brand?” 

Most people when they think about a brand, they think about a company's logo, they think about the colors, they think about that dang PowerPoint that you got to follow to put everything in the right place in a PowerPoint, that kind of stuff. What really is a company's brand?

 

Erin: So I always like to look at brand as it's really the feeling that somebody gets when they work with your company, when they see your company when they talk to someone from your company. That's really what your brand is. 

Another way of looking at it is—what does someone say about your company when you're not there? That's really what your brand is. So sometimes making a company understand that marketing is more than just what you say, you do, what you say your brand is, what your logo looks like…. It's everything else. It's all the other elements. 

In today's world, that feeling, that emotional side is so important, because nobody remembers anything today, but they will remember how a brand made them feel. They will remember that they won't remember your mission statement. Or, you know, all those things that they're going to remember how that brand made you feel.

 

Sid: So you just hit on one of my most favorite topics, like one of my most favorite topics, which is and I've just heard me talk about this a lot, which is customer experience. And what does customer experience mean? And for those of you that haven't had a chance to actually listen, I'm going to encourage you to go back and listen to episode 117. 

It’s the one where my friends at the coach's roundtable join me to talk about the book “Unreasonable Hospitality”, the importance of customer experience, and how you and your brand make people feel. Erin, you're spot on that is so important about a brand. What I think is really interesting is that you did not mention what we sell as part of our brand. You didn't mention furniture, you didn't mention the “black test chair” or “a $10,000 conference table” at all—and I think that's very important. As an industry, we lean way into what we sell, rather than the problem that we solves for our customers and how we make our customers feel.

 

Erin: Yeah, I mean, it's really true. I've been working in really a manufacturing for 22 years. It's difficult to get a manufacturer to understand that it's not about the chair, it's not about that—it's everything else. But once someone buys into that, they understand it, because it's that brand elevation is what will help your company grow. That's what's going to help your sales grow. That's what's going to help you continue to prosper the company.

 

Sid: Thank you so much!

Anjul, let me come to you for a second. I'd really like your perspective on —what is it that you would like, or what is it that you think you want the brand to become? 

 

Anjul: I would like Thinkspace to become the go-to brand when a Facility Manager is sitting there thinking about—How do I get people back to the workplace? How do I combat today's challenge of hybrid working? I'd like them to think about us as the go-to unique creative solutions at that point, because I think that's where the brand is going. We don't want to have everyday products that everyone else does and be another “me too” brand. But we want to curate, like an interesting, eclectic mix of product, which is really unique to the workplace today and also answering the challenges in the workplace today. 

 

Sid: And I think it's a great vision, and I think we're really stepping into that and really leaning into that. But Aaron, we think about evolutions and brands changing, you know, from one logo to another logo or one tagline to another tagline, or whatever it might be… 

Why is it important from a marketing perspective for a brand to evolve?

 

Erin: So I think a brand evolution really occurs for a couple of different reasons, whether the company is changing or whether the world has changed. When you look at an evolution, why brands should evolve—it's always the idea that you obviously want to succeed, you want to increase your sales, you want to be relevant. Brands need to evolve as the company changes, as trends change, as the world changes, to basically have a response to what's going on out there.

 

Sid: And I think it's safe to say that in the office furniture industry, or the interiors industry, our world is really evolving… The way customers buy products is evolving, what their needs are is evolving, the size of their footprint / their real estate is evolving to be smaller. 

There's so many bits and pieces of evolution that are happening inside of our industry. So I would love your perspective (Anjul, I'm gonna give you a minute to think about this…)—But Erin, from your perspective, how is Thinkspace as a brand evolving?

 

Erin: For Thinkspace, when I started, we were talking about how we fit in the acoustic phone booth category, these are the products that we have. And as the brand, as the company started—that was the one product that the company was carrying. 

So what had to happen was, we had to develop a story around who Thinkspace was, and it wasn't about the product you're carrying, but who Thinkspace was in a space…  

Then as we started to round that out, we started to think well, what else can we add? What are some of the other things out there? What are some of the challenges that are occurring? It really became a really “growth moment” to have some of these conversations and really reshape everything. 

When you go through these brand moments, you actually start taking your sales goals, the goals of the company, and all of these things and you shape it like a ball of clay and figure out how it all works together. I think that's what we're doing, and that's what we've been doing over the last few months.

 

Sid: And I just want to echo that, it's going really fast too! I mean, moving at a Road Runners pace. 

Anjul, tell me about your thoughts about this, how do you see Thinkspace’s brand evolving?

 

Anjul: So as Erin quite rightly said, when we started the business, we had one brand that we were bringing to the U.S.—that was Hush Office. So it was very hard for us to, in fact, build our brand effectively as Thinkspace. In fact, what we ended up doing was a fine job building up the privacy booth brand. So, there was always a bit of an identity crisis between who we were, verses what we were selling. 

We were very much leveraging the Hush Office brand, more than we were doing our own brand. So I think it's taken us a while to get everything in place. So, yes, right now, we are absolutely shining the light firmly on the Thinkspace brand. 

We have more products and more partners that we're working with, which also I think makes more sense for Thinkspace. We have a story now, when we were very much clinging onto the privacy booth brand before. 

Now, Thinkspace will be bringing to the U.S. market cutting edge acoustic products—this is who we are. We're going to very much build our brand far more effectively than we have ever done, which is a very exciting moment in our journey!

 

Sid: 100% I think it's an exciting time, and it's something that I think has evolved very quickly too. It started with, “Hey, we need to lean more into Thinkspace.” And then we looked at product expansion, and then Erin comes in and goes, “We really need to zone in on what the messaging is,” which has landed with something that I absolutely love—which is bringing life back to the office. 

Now, multiple product categories that fit together very well with the unique solutions that were coming in. This is how I describe it…. 

We decided not just to take a bite out of the apple. We bit the whole apple and then half of another apple, all at the same time! 

And that is what led us to this decision. So we got a new brand, we have a new logo, which is really cool. anyone talk about the logo for a minute and the logo redesign. I think this is a great story of the evolution of the brand.

 

Erin: Yeah, Thinkspace had a great logo to begin with. How it was, so there's an “i” in the Thinkspace with a dot (over the lowercase “i”), and it had two bubbles over it, or one bubble over that. Kind of a bubble.

Then what we did when we started to really look at the logo—we thought about how part of our goal is to really be the thought leaders in this acoustic category, in this idea of bringing life back to the office. So what we started to do was look at the logo, and we actually shaped the top part to look like shoulders and to look like a person, and we added an extra think bubble to look like it was thinking. 

So, really the colors stayed the same, the logo really stayed the same, it was just some really smart elements that we added for a feeling of emotion, that added a feeling of “think”, something that you could connect with more. So that was one of the ways that we changed that logo.

 

Sid: I have been a lot of subtle little changes like that across the board. And in during this process is we were like Okay, let's go to NeoCon. So we're like, Okay, let's go to NeoCon. And I'm just like, Sid really NeoCon? And we're like, “Okay, we're gonna go on the 7th floor!” And then that led to, “Wait a minute. There's some vacant spaces in the market!”

So now all of a sudden, we have a permanent showroom, which I'm super excited about, on the 10th floor suite 1099, most of you've heard me say that before. NeoCon’s like a week away from the launch of this episode, and so we've been really, really busy zoning out on our product categories. While Erin and I are over here in the U.S.—we have the rest of the team working out with Anjul in Europe finding and identifying new partners for us. 

So Anjul, I'd love to hear a little bit from you about when you're out there looking at products and looking at Partners, what are some of the driving factors that you say, this is a good product for us or this is a good partner for us.

 

Anjul: So for me, the product really has to make my head turn. I want to walk past something, and there's so much furniture everywhere in the shows. For me, it really has to be a show-stopping concept that made me walk back, turn around, and go and learn more about that product. If I'm doing that, I know that the audience is going to be doing the same.  

Then I think another really big thing is again—back to people. We want to work with good partners that we know are aligned with us, in terms of our vision. They're going to be supporting us in the business in the U.S., because it's not an easy gig. 

I think there's a mentality in Europe that you just get product into America, and that's it—you walk away, but no it's not! 

Getting product over effectively, packaging it effectively so it doesn't get damaged along the way, then having the day-to-day service element of that. There's always going to be challenges there. No, there's no getting away from that. Knowing that we're working with partners that are willing to share our vision in that the customer has to come first, that is very important as well. 

I think the last thing is just fun people, we like being around good people, right. So we want we want to work with partner partners that are going to make business fun.

 

Sid: 100%. And that ties into the product categories, workspace. meetspace, fun space, and wellness space are the product categories. 

So Erin, as we start to wrap up today, you've had your head down, like buried into creating an amazing experience for our dealers, our reps, designers and users coming the third week of June the 12th-15th. Tell us a little bit about what our listeners, if they're coming to NeoCon, could expect to see from Thinkspace at our space in the Mart.

 

Erin: Yeah, so we're going to have products in our space. We talked about the Hush Office line, the acoustic booth line, we're also going to have some new product from Glimakra Smeeton, and another partner in the industry. So there's going to be products for work, products for meeting, products are fun, and we also have a really cool wellness product that we're also showing, as well. 

Besides just the product, there's also some fun elements that you're going to see. One of the things that we think is key to bringing life back to the workspace, is that life is music. One of the things that we're doing, we're going to have some live acoustic music in the space, which is going to have a nice happy vibe—but also allow people to go into these booths into these meeting spaces, close the door, and see what it's like to work inside, what it's like to drown out the outside noise, what it's like to open it back up and hear the differences while they're there. That's one of the other things that we'll have there. 

It's going to be a clean, but bright and vibrant space. We're really excited to make our debut. It's our NeoCon debut.

 

Sid: It absolutely is! 

So Anjul, what are you most excited about as it relates to debuting thinkspace at NeoCon 2023? Or even what's scaring you? Tell us how you're feeling about NeoCon 2023…

 

Anjul: Well, one of the things that is scaring me is that band—I hope you can actually shut the door and it does drown out the sound. Obviously, sound booths are not meant to be like around live bands playing in the workplace. But ya know, it'd be bad if it didn’t work.

 

Sid: We're not gonna be dancing and stuff?

 

Anjul: That's just a cool concept! What am I excited about is bringing the Thinkspace brand to life. It’s coming to life! It's like a baby, that's actually gonna be there in the flesh. And it's gonna be real! 

People can touch and feel the product. We've never had this before, in our five-year journey at Thinkspace. So yeah, that's really making the hair stand on my arm at the moment; that's going to be cool stuff.

 

Sid: It really is going to be super exciting, not just for the entire organization and all of our people that will be there. But for our partners, as well as for our customers, and for our reps that have been with us. So many of them have been with us from the very beginning to actually see the brand evolve, see the brand get to the place where we have a permanent showroom where they can bring their customers to showcase all the really great stuff that we're doing. Guys, we got some really cool things that we're going to be showing. 

If you're not coming to NeoCon—not to worry, trust me, Thinkspace (along with every other brand that's at NeoCon) is going to be sure that you know about all the products that are launched, and everything after the show. 

I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with both of you today to get your perspectives about this evolution because I'm in the middle of it every day, and sometimes I lose sight of some of the things that are going on because we get so busy doing things but you know, final thoughts from you err, and about the thinkspace about the brand about brand evolution or NeoCon. 

Final thoughts from you today, as we wrap up…

 

Erin: Final thoughts. I just think for the people listening to this podcast, they're obviously interested in furniture. I just think it's a really fun time in furniture! I think it's a really big time for some ingenuity and different ways of thinking.

I feel really blessed that Thinkspace was open to my ideas as I came in and the ways that I felt we could think about furniture, think about what the workplace needs, and think about how to really solve real problems out there.

A lot of people have moved to open plan, right—panels are dead, we’ve moved to open plan. And then now, they don't want to go back to the workspace because there's no privacy—especially after a pandemic, right? So these things changed. How do you help these businesses get back together? How do you get these people back together? And that was really how I looked at it. If there was one thing— it’s let's get the human race back together. Let's be people together. So I think furniture is a huge part of that; it brings people together and bands us together. 

So my final thoughts is it's a really fun time [in the industry right now]. Definitely come check out the Thinkspace brand. I'm so thankful to think Fitz, for allowing them to go down my Thinkspace journey. I think it's a fun time in furniture, and a lot of ingenuity can happen right now, if it's done right.

 

Sid: I totally agree with you on that, and I had not really thought about the word “fun,” because we see all these challenges, we sell these changes, we see all this evolution happening… but I love the way you describe it—it is a fun time to be here. Now is a great opportunity for brands to set themselves apart with how they're supporting their customers, the products they're bringing to market, and how we're helping the workplace evolve, and honestly, leading with the workplace evolution happening. 

So Anjul, what about you? Final thoughts from you on this great conversation today?

 

Anjul: Final thoughts for me are—when you surround yourself with great people, you work hard and you push each other, you ask great questions, you care deeply about a business, and you have a purpose to make a difference—amazing things can be achieved.

 

Sid: That is well said! That is perfect, and there's no reason for me to add anything else beyond that. 

Ladies, thank you for today for this conversation. If our audience would like to get in touch with you, Anjul, let’s start with you—what's the best place for them to do that?

 

Anjul: I'm accessible by social, phone, call, email. Any way you want to get hold of me—I'm around.

 

Sid: We'll drop all that information down in the show notes for you... Aaron, what about you—best place to get in touch with you?

 

Erin: LinkedIn!

 

Sid: Perfect. Just remember, if you do reach out—please be sure you drop a note that says, “Hey, heard you today on the Trend Report!” And that's why you're reaching out guys. Thank you so much! 

If you're at NeoCon this year, please be sure to swing by the 10th floor, Suite 1099. Come say hello to me, meet Erin and Anjul! We'd welcome you to come in to join us for just a little bit. 

In the meantime… Go out there, and make today GREAT everyone! We'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for joining me today on this episode of the Trend Report Podcast! I'm glad that you're here, and I hope that you got some amazing value out of today's conversation. We look forward to seeing you next week and go out there and make today great!