To-The-Trade S3E16 Beyond the Showroom: What Brands Really Want from Designers, with Jenny York

Jenny York, VP of Marketing at Currey & Company, joins Laurie for a conversation about what it actually takes to build a brand that designers want to work with.Currey is approaching its 40th anniversary as a second-generation family-owned business, now led by founder Robert and Suzy Currey's son Brownlee. That independence shapes everything, including creative risk-taking, the decision to hold real inventory, and the culture of high-touch relationship-building that makes their showrooms feel like a reunion every market week.Jenny brings nearly 30 years of experience in the home furnishings industry to her role, including 20 years in editorial, covering trade shows, market centers, and the rise of designers as a major distribution channel. That history gives her a different lens. She saw firsthand which companies made the shift to being designer-friendly and which didn't, and she watched Currey become an early adopter of that change.Some of the most practical takeaways in the conversation: being genuinely designer-friendly means restructuring your warehouse, customer service, and sales team, not just hanging a welcome sign. It means valuing the small orders, not just tolerating them. And it means being honest that some people on your team won't make that cultural shift, and being willing to act on that.What makes a designer stand out to a brand like Currey? Coming to market in person always matters. But the tip Laurie and Jenny return to is simpler: photograph your finished project, own your copyright, and share those images directly with the manufacturers who made it. Currey can't shoot thousands of products in real homes. When a designer shares installation images and does so freely, that's genuine brand partnership, and it tends to pay off in relationships that hold up when things go wrong.On the industry at large: Jenny sees a real shift toward quality and away from fast furniture, AI has a place in analytics and projections but not in Currey's creative voice, and the consolidation of trade shows means every in-person interaction counts more than it used to.Currey is expanding carefully into adjacent product categories, most recently cordless lighting and bath vanities, with a new addition coming this fall. They'll be in Atlanta, Dallas, and Las Vegas this summer.