Transcript: Episode 226: Phony on the Phone
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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 226. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/226.
[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.
[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Stacy Garcia is a designer, entrepreneur, and trend forecaster. Known for her bold patterns and eye for what's next. She started her career at Ralph Lauren and went on to build a design studio and textile company serving the hospitality and residential markets. She's appeared on QVC, produces annual trend forecasts and collaborates with brands, designers, and ownership groups on everything from color to custom product design. Today, we're talking about color trends, designing for longevity and the power of customization and hospitality. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.
Call button rings…
The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at (850) 404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Sandy. I actually have this question too, so I can't wait to hear what you say. Okay. Sandy says, settle a bat for me. Are the books that fill the shelves in hotel lobbies for decoration only or are guests supposed to or allowed to take them to read? Alright, Stacy, settle this bet for Sandy. What do you think? What's the answer?
[00:02:02] Stacy Garcia: Alright, so it really depends and that's a great question, Sandy. So thanks for submitting it. But it's funny, there are many books there that are like lending libraries and libraries are a whole trend that if you wanna dig into, we can talk about that too. But there is a designer's secret that some designers specify the books as decor only. You can actually buy books by the foot. So there's, there's actually a thing there that is books by the foot. You can get them. Some of them aren't even real books, they're just the spines of books. So that it kind of gives the impression that those shelves are filled. So that is decor only.
[00:02:43] Susan Barry: So why would you specify that it's decor only? Because you're using fake books or for some other reason, like you don't wanna be bothered with looking at the titles.
[00:02:53] Stacy Garcia: We've seen these kind of specifications in both hospitality and residential. Especially on high shelves or you need a lot of decor in there to make it feel full and sort of round out the emotion that being in a library has. It is a little bit of a hack. The other thing that's neat with the books by the foot idea is you can specify the color of the spine. So if you are going for sort of a specific color aesthetic, a palette, the sizing of them, you can order specifically what you're looking for. So that's the reason why.
[00:03:28] Susan Barry: I think that could be a fun job to put together the books by the foot packages and then like sneak a really naughty title into the mix and see if anybody found out.
[00:03:40] Stacy Garcia: Totally and some of them, too. They'll like the kind of design the spines where you'll have four or five books together. And it's a saying across all of the spines. So they are getting kind of cheeky. It is a cute way. I happen to love a real curated library. So my personal preference is the authentic, actual book. I've gone to many hotels as a guest also, not just as a designer. I am very appreciative when there is live libraries, lending libraries, guests can leave books that they've finished reading and you can borrow them. So there is a mix of the aesthetic and the functional to it.
[00:04:15] Susan Barry: Yes. I like that too. Well, you studied something that I had never heard of before, which is surface pattern design. What is that?
[00:04:24] Stacy Garcia: So it's an interesting question. And at the time, I wanna say there was only three universities in the entire United States that actually had it as a formal degree. And I went to Syracuse University, which was one of the three. It may actually be down to one. It was FIT and RISD. So kind of shout out to all the design students in the audience. Very, very niche thing to study. And what it is is the applied pattern a decorative way. So I studied all different kinds of pattern design from textiles to carpet, wallpaper, wrapping paper, dishes, anything that would have sort of the decorative arts applied. And at the time, I'll date myself, this was before all of the digital printing that happened. So there was a highly technical aspect to learning surface pattern design. Also, because you had to understand the equipment and machinery. And then how to build the patterns into repeats that would be usable on those various equipments.
[00:05:26] Susan Barry: Okay. This is a little bit random, so stay with me for a second but here's what I'm wondering. When you learn something that is an analog process that then becomes digital. To me, like in the hotel business. I find it very valuable to still have that analog understanding because I know what the robot is doing, for lack of a better way to explain it. Is it the same when it comes to something like machinery, things like that or is are you just like, oh God, I'm so glad I don't have to understand that anymore?
[00:06:01] Stacy Garcia: No, we are still very much in a hybrid manufacturing world, so there's still a lot of analog manufacturing that happens. In many cases, it is still the least expensive method to produce a product.
[00:06:17] Susan Barry: Oh, that's surprising to me.
[00:06:19] Stacy Garcia: Yeah. Well, the inks are less expensive. So when you think about the digital inks, that it is just a more expensive chemistry that goes into it. And the analog machines have been around so long that the speed that they can function if they fly. So some of these, you can really produce thousands of yards of product much faster than printing with digital heads. So that is even in the most sort of advanced digital technology, the analog is still faster.
[00:06:48] Susan Barry: Interesting. So then what's the benefit to digital one?
[00:06:53] Stacy Garcia: I know, so there's a couple of benefits to digital. Digital gives you the opportunity to sort of break the mold on that whole constrained repeat. So in the past, it's like if there's a flower here and you're dealing with a 36-inch cylinder, so it's gonna print every 36 inches that goes away. So digital, you can do sort of whatever you want in an unlimited repeat, and then build your panels to match. So, if you're doing wall covering, you can do full murals that you're wrapping the whole room in. So your creativity expands because you don't have that same constraint and then your minimums are lower. So, while the analog method is really good for large volume, it's not great if you have this crazy one-off idea or you only need a unique mural, let's say for your fitness center, you wanna do one special thing there that nobody's ever done, to go traditional method. You would have to build out screens and have costs of tooling digital. You can kind of do whatever you want, so it lowers your MOQs.
[00:07:54] Susan Barry: That is so interesting. I feel like we could wrap the show now and everybody's gonna come away like, wow, I really learned so good. But we're not going to, so take us back to Theme Park Vegas. What did all of those sort of big pattern hospitality projects that you worked on in Las Vegas teach you that maybe, I don't know, still shows up in your work today or deliberately doesn't show up in your work today?
[00:08:24] Stacy Garcia: It's funny you bring up Theme Park Vegas, because that is right around the time when I got my start in this industry. But a little bit of a backstory to that is there was a textile building. There was actually two in New York City. I'm a New Yorker, if you can't hear by the accent. At the time, and I had my first job out of school at one of those buildings, and I was on the 8th floor working for a company in residential bedding design. So this was after my internship at Ralph Lauren and I took this job at a bedding company and I did that for about a year. And I had no idea that the hospitality industry existed as a separate concept that had different standards and all of these things.
[00:09:03] Susan Barry: It's amazing how that is true in so many different industries, but please carry on.
[00:09:08] Stacy Garcia: Yes. So yeah, of course I knew hotels existed and I love travel, but I didn't know it was a more niche, very specialized kind of space to build a career. And kismet happened and I got hired two floors up from where I worked at a different company. And they had an opening in their hospitality division and there it, at the time it was called their contract division. So it was anything that met commercial standards, including hospitality standards. And I was just really excited to get a bump in pay and to move two floors up and try something new. And so I hit this job and that's where my first exposure was to this whole different world of design. And as you said, at the time, it was themed Vegas hotels. It was the Circus Circus and the New York Hotel and Paris, and every hotel that you went to had a totally different theme. And then, you throw Orlando in the mix, too. I was doing the Nickelodeon themed hotels and this crazy design that was patterned everywhere. Vibrant color, bold design choices, a lot of layering and just this immersive sort of escapism is what I'm gonna call it. It was super kitch. We all remember it and before the white bed existed, so that's how long ago I was entered the hospitality industry and I was like totally hooked because when you design residential, people are making a decision to put something in their home and it's a big commitment, like they have to live with this look. And so people do on the whole, tend to be more conservative with the choices for what they're going to put into their home. It feels like a bigger investment and then it's something that to wake up with every day. But when you're designing for hospitality, and I believe this holds true even today, even though the themes have changed and the concepts have evolved. It's our job as hospitality designers to bring a sense of fantasy to the guest, to bring something to them that they would never think about necessarily putting into their home.
[00:11:19] Susan Barry: I love that you said that because I am so tired of people talking about like, you are home away from home. No, dude, I'm at a hotel on purpose.
[00:11:28] Stacy Garcia: Right? Totally. And listen, I love taking inspiration. So even in my primary bedroom, I had sort of this extra space along a wall, and when I hired somebody to do the built-in, it was pictures from luxury hospitality. I mean, I wanted this to look like when you walk in and you have the mini bar area and the closet space and we laugh. My husband goes, are you putting anything in those wardrobes? I said, “No, it's for luxury.” I wanna feel like I'm at the Four Seasons. I wanna feel like I'm in a luxury space. So it does go back and forth. But I really do believe that hospitality spaces give us an area, whether you're an owner, a general manager or a designer. I think it's our duty to create spaces that are transformative and that open people's eyes, that do transport them, that provide fantasy, that provide inspiration. And when I learned about this industry back in the day when Vegas was themed, I just couldn't get enough. It was like, wow, I can actually design things like this and people will use them. Yeah, because the guest only stays two nights, maybe a week and then they leave, and they have this memory with them. And so it's less of a commitment.
[00:12:44] Susan Barry: Well, and from a practical hotelier perspective, if your experience is part and parcel with what you can have at home, or when you go visit a relative, what is the point of paying for hotel rates which are not always easy? I have to shift gears because I think that this is probably the unsung most impressive thing on your resume, which is that you were on QVC, because I've read so many stories about people selling products on QVC and just how difficult it is. So QVC is famously difficult, you maybe cutthroat a little bit and you sold there for three years. I think it's so impressive. Can you talk about what being on air taught you about how you sort of translate the intellectual-ness of it all of design to real people fast to get them to buy?
[00:13:44] Stacy Garcia: It was crazy. So first of all, there's no other way to describe it. It is a world unto itself. It's like its own little city. And having the opportunity was something that I had wanted for myself for many, many years which is so random, right? Like most people aren't like it when I grow up I wanna be on QVC.
[00:14:06] Susan Barry: I know, but once you learn about it, the switch flips and you're like, oh my God, that is such a huge accomplishment.
[00:14:13] Stacy Garcia: It was just fun. And, you go there and they do have these green rooms set up for all the on-air talent that are coming through and the whole nine, and the hair and the makeup. So they're just churning people through. They have multiple bays that they're filming in at once and it's live TV. So different than this podcast, we have the opportunity to edit. And if I say something silly, I could say, I don't want it. If you did something wrong, it was live. There was no turning back.
[00:14:42] Susan Barry: I could never do it because I would cuss. I would absolutely cuss.
[00:14:46] Stacy Garcia: Yeah. You have to watch yourself before you go on air. They put you through QVC boot camp. And they teach you, like you said, do not cuss on TV, but they also teach you how to interact with the host and how to show off a product and the way to sell to their viewership. And a lot of it is about creating a sort of sensory experience because you're really on a two-dimensional screen. So you're sort of, I was selling pillows, I would be petting the pillows. I sold hotel-inspired pillows that had sort of a chamber and a chamber with down and a feather on the inside and the gussets. And so you'd be showing them off and squishing the pillows in between and showing how great it was and how it would bounce back and trying to sort of demo it live while you're there.
[00:15:37] Susan Barry: So they can sort of feel it.
[00:15:38] Stacy Garcia: They can feel it and they could hear it and they could hear the air puff. You'd go, come in closer, like, listen to this. So it was quite an experience. And then you met famous people. Scott Brothers would be in one day, and Catherine Zita Jones was in, and all of these fun people.
[00:15:56] Susan Barry: Wow. That's really cool. Well, I'm gonna shift gears to something that I think is fascinating. I developed these questions before Pantone came out with our color of the year, so we may have to sprinkle that in as well, but we have been stuck in gray. A lot of people call it millennial gray for a long time. Where do you think the hospitality design palette is going and what is driving that shift if there is a shift?
[00:16:27] Stacy Garcia: So across the board, hospitality, retail, commercial spaces, and residential, we are seeing a warming of the palette. So it's just across the board. Like you said, the millennial gray era has had its turn, and now we're looking at these warmer neutrals as a backdrop, and so it's moving into the topes, the browns, beautiful, warm beige if you're in a neutral palette. The other thing we're seeing is a return to jewel. So in hospitality, especially, I'm loving all of these sort of like earth tones and jewel tones because it's rich, it's warm, and it's inviting. So that's really where I see the direction. I think the challenge in hospitality and we get metrics too, because as you said, I own a textile company, so we're checking what is sampling is, what is selling. I'm seeing it with all of our vendor partners. We are a little slower to the uptake than doing a residential home. So that's kind of the pro-con that we talked about. When you're doing somebody's home, if they decided they like jewel tones last week, they can paint their house, they can do the jewel tone. In hospitality, especially in a world of franchising. If you've just rolled out a new prototype, you can't change on a dime. You've committed to your franchise owners that this is the palette we're gonna stick with for the next seven-year PIP cycle, so you have to be much more cognizant. It is a slower-moving machine. Where we see the trends leading within the hospitality are the more boutique brands are the soft brands. And I think luxury is sort of a world unto itself as well where the rules are just different with luxury design, with not only with the budgets, but the material expectations, the color palettes.
[00:18:09] Susan Barry: And that just feels like its own world. Because you mentioned boutique, I wanna ask you this question. So I pretty recently stayed at, I would call it a sort of Instagram four-word hotel boutique lovely, wonderful property. But it was covered with what I consider to be like super trendy, woven wall hangings, this like statement greenery, things like that that are pretty identifiably a trend. So I'm curious about how you balance something that's of the moment, so people come and feel like they're not like at their grandma's house with that seven-year PIP refresh cycle that you talked about, so that a hotel, they don't come to life and then they're old news by year two.
[00:19:00] Stacy Garcia: Yeah, I think it's a challenge in hospitality and almost the way that the standards have been built, especially when you're talking about a branded property, because it is so programmed. Where I think the soft brands and the boutiques have an advantage over some of those bigger flags is that they can change some of that material story sooner. So I think you can make decisions. I think like you're talking about the greenery, that was a thing and is still a thing, but it is starting to feel like it's dated. Even in these moments, I'm gonna say a five-year cycle or more. Everything had to have an Instagram wall. It had a neon light. It had some kind of greenery.
[00:19:53] Susan Barry: I'm picturing the neon text you’re saying this.
[00:19:54] Stacy Garcia: Right. We have witnessed it and we've all been excited about it at one point in time when it was fresh and new as an idea, and then that became kind of a go-to. Well, everybody has to have an Instagrammable moment that now feels dated. It has seen in a better day. It's time to move on from that and create the next new thing. And so I do think there's a difference sometimes between like the woven wall hangings, which depending on the property, can feel intentional to the space and not like a fad, versus these Instagramable moments to me were not a trend, they were a fad. It was like everyone hopped on that wagon, let's do it. My advice to the hoteliers who committed to that is move on from that. So wherever that space was, it's time to kind of take that down and to start to think about your public spaces, especially more like a retailer would. So the retailers change out their windows seasonally. Some of them are every six weeks. So it always sort of has a fresh spin, a fresh take on it. And I think at the boutique level, if you can start to look at how do you integrate more kind of ongoing changes within this space, a more flexible area, I think you will do better.
[00:21:08] Susan Barry: That is a brilliant idea. Like a retail wall instead of your Instagram wall. Set it and forget it.
[00:21:21] Stacy Garcia: Right? Like, conceptually start to think more like a retailer would. How are you merchandising your space for flexibility?
[00:21:29] Susan Barry: That is absolutely genius. What an idea. Someone's gonna listen to this and start a company just doing that for boutique hotels. And if they don't, or if they do rather, they need to give us a cut.
[00:21:42] Stacy Garcia: There you go or at least a shout-out.
[00:21:45] Susan Barry: So do you think that hospitality and residential aesthetics overlap at all? I know you said residential, you're able to be faster. There's not the lag time of sort of like having to produce everything for 300 rooms or whatever. Where do they overlap and where do they diverge, do you think?
[00:22:05] Stacy Garcia: I do think there's a lot of overlap. I see the overlap more in the luxury sector, so we track trends in our studio. I spend a lot of time going to trade shows, looking at the fashion reports, seeing what's happening on the runway, seeing what's happening in the art world. Looking at social media, kind of doing that social listening, seeing what people are posting. And then having to sift through all of that into sort of piles of ideas and then determine what is a fad like we just talked about, like what's gonna be here for a moment and then leave, versus what is a trend. And for us, a trend has staying power. So those are the things we're looking at. When I'm looking at the residential arena as inspiration for hospitality or vice versa, we are looking at the luxury market. So we see the trends sort of start there first, where homeowners are taking more risk, they have bigger budgets, they want inspirational properties or homes, and they don't wanna look like their neighbor. You know when you start to get into the mass residential. Mass residential decision-making is like, I saw that in my friend's home. I'm comfortable with that. I don't feel confident in my design decision. I may not be hiring a designer, so I'm gonna sort of look and see what everybody else is doing. And to me, that more equates with what we see at the franchise level. Not to pick on anyone, but like a good Hilton Garden Inn. It's like, what is everybody else doing? And this is where my comfort level is. So you're sort of designing for the masses. But we do see luxury residential, very much color palettes, material trends. I mean, you're seeing all of this gorgeous marble that's happening, the wood featured walls, warmer woods coming in. Ceilings have never been white in that arena, so just even the sculptural lighting details, a lot of that starts to then take shape in both luxury hospitality and more of the restaurants, the boutiques, the areas that are supposed to be these wow factors. So we do see a lot of inspiration back and forth at that level. And then trickle down effect happens. It always does. Just like you can see a Couture runway show, it may be these crazy feathers things, and then they walk fabulous suit down the runway and you start to see those things trickle down into that.
[00:24:34] Susan Barry: It's like the blue scene with Miranda Priestly in the Devil Wears Prada when she talks about it. Where that blue comes from. Well, speaking of sort of trickle-down effect, the all-white bed is maybe the most seismic shift in hotel design in my years of experience. It's sort of one of those things that I think people thought, okay, we're done, we've arrived at the final iteration of a bed. And now I'm starting to scratch my head. Like, is it time for a change? So here's my question. Is this now baseline timeless infrastructure? The white bed stays forever and ever, Amen. Or are there sort of smart, modern, non-gross-out ways to reintroduce color and texture without giving guests the creeps?
[00:24:39] Stacy Garcia: Truly is. Yeah, that's a hard one. I think we've been trained at this point, like that there's an ick factor within hotels. So, as much as when housekeeping is done right and a hotel is executed well, the guest goes in and you forget that anybody's ever stayed in that space before. So that's hospitality at its best. But we all still wonder, even decorative pillows, like we all know it. And I laugh because I manufacture and sell that product. But guests don't really want them on the bed. I don't want them on the bed. I know it's not been washed. So I think we would have to really retrain. I think if it's going to shift, we're gonna see it at the high-end market first. And it probably won't be crazy patterns, it will probably be just warmer colors and with the understanding that yes, these are the duvets are being washed and the sheets are being washed. The other area that I see sort of elevating the bed, but still in a white concept, is through the use of pattern and texture. So when you look at Europe, historically, they've used a matelassé type of coverlets. Things that have a beautiful pattern effect. It's still really subtle. It is an elevated bed experience, so perhaps we would be ready for that in the future. Trends always, there's a pendulum that swings, so I'm not gonna say that we'll never see something other than the white bed, but I think it's here for a long while still. I think it has become the standard.
[00:27:05] Susan Barry: I mean, the Westin Heavenly Bed launched in 1999. And I have one upstairs in my primary bedroom right now. So that's quite a length of time.
[00:27:16] Stacy Garcia: It is, it is. I think it's gonna be about layering the white. So maybe adding, again, color at the foot, not a bed scarf, but some something else. It's really about overcoming that ick factor, though, of just making sure that the guest knows this is a clean blanket, it has been washed for you. Everything on this bed is fresh.
[00:27:38] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with some really practical and tangible things to try, either in their businesses or in their lives, in this case, in their hotels or in their homes, maybe. If a team has a budget for only one sort of design swing, where should they put it for maximum impact?
[00:28:05] Stacy Garcia: Ooh, that's a tough one.
00:28:08] Susan Barry: I have a guess too. I wanna see if I'm missing.
[00:28:10] Stacy Garcia: You have a guess? It's really hard to prescribe when you don't know sort of what they're starting with. So, as a designer, take that responsibility seriously because there are a lot of creative people who just jump in with answers. My method in the studio is really to understand first and then try to prescribe for that. I will say color from a psychology perspective, is one of the things that people experience first. So I'm a member of a group. I'm actually a chairholder of a group called Color Marketing Group. Come join. It's a premier color forecasting association. It's an international organization, and one of the things I learned early on as part of that group is how deep colors impact is on human psychology. And so whether you're designing a product for retail or designing retail displays, or designing hospitality spaces or restaurants, the first thing you'll notice is color. If you sort of have one swing and you want to make an impact, it really is thinking about the use of color in your space. And that can be done on whether it's paint, wall covering, carpet, but really thinking about how the color is gonna bring you through the space. I think that is one of the biggest changes you can make and it's not necessarily an expensive change.
[00:28:53] Susan Barry: I wanna be in that club. So your answer is no surprise, way better than mine. But I was going to guess, light fixture, like in a public space, getting a really dramatic, crazy looking light fixture because no one can touch it, so it'll last a long time.
[00:29:56] Stacy Garcia: That's true, too. I mean, listen, lighting is like my new obsession. So I'm with you.
[00:30:01] Susan Barry: Okay. Will you describe Material Bank and how your material bank curation service works in practice? I think this is so interesting.
[00:30:14] Stacy Garcia: Oh my gosh. Material Bank is such a fascinating business. We were one of their founding partners when they were looking to start this thing because back in the day, and for those listeners who are more on the ownership group or the management group, you may not be privy to sort of how the decisions are made or how the selections are made when you're going into either a new construction or a renovation on your property. And in the past, interior designers had huge libraries of samples that took up sometimes multiple rooms, floor-to-ceiling shelving of carpets and wood finishes and metal finishes and fabrics, and all the things that would go into a space. And then it's hard to maintain because vendors are always coming up with new things and discontinuing others. So Material Bank started as this way of trying to curate an online library where vendors put their memo samples in their warehouse. And then the designers can go on and get from hundreds of manufacturers all from one place and it ships out in one box. I know it sounds like I don't work for Material Bank, by the way, like this isn't a commercial, just a description of it.
[00:31:33] Susan Barry: No, it's so cool. What a good idea. That just sounds like a fun experience to have.
[00:31:39] Stacy Garcia: It's great for the designer and it's more sustainable. So instead of having 10 boxes coming from 10 different websites that you went onto. It's all being packaged and pulled, almost like in this Amazon ASK method. And then being shipped out to the designer. And so all of our manufacturing partners that we design with are on Material Bank. And so what we started to do about a year ago from our studio was as we were working with interior designers, let's say on textile or on carpet or working with them on designing custom furniture for their spaces, we started to say, “Hey, by the way, if you'd like, you've got your mood board, we can help curate for you out of all of the different products that we design out of our studio.” And we had such a great reaction to it. And so what we're able to do is set up these private mood boards online on Material Bank. One of our designers will curate out of the product based on what their inspiration is, what their design narrative is, and then they become a collaborator on that mood board and they go on and decide what they want. So we've sort of become this sort of concierge shopper for them, putting the initial concepts together. And then ultimately, the designer or the hotel owner, whoever is making those decisions, can go on and choose which samples they want, and it all gets shipped to them for free.
[00:33:01] Susan Barry: Everything that you say makes me regret not having any design skill but be any education because everything that you do sounds so interesting and fun to me. I cannot ask you, Stacy, about the Pantone color of the year because it has been so controversial. What are your thoughts now that we've talked about the all-white bed? What about the all-white color of the year?
[00:33:31] Stacy Garcia: Yeah. Well. I did post on my Instagram and LinkedIn. So if you wanna see my initial reaction the day that color was dropped, you can go right on to Stacy Garcia's studio and check that out because it was an interesting one. Honest opinion, I think it's lame. So that's my honest opinion. White is a neutral, white is a classic. I understand that this white has a little bit more of a yellow undertone to it. In our forecast that we publish from our studio. We have a trend called peak serenity. So we do our forecast for kind of these two-year rolling cycles. We don't move that fast. We're not fast fashion in the world of hospitality interiors or residential interiors. So our trends, we feel like hold for a good two years and then they evolve from there. So our peak serenity trend has a color almost identical to the Pantone color of the year. So we saw it, we saw that little bit of warmth in the undertone, and that white is still part of the story. Color of the year is really supposed to be about the emotional feelings that humans are having on this planet, driven by many things, economics, geopolitical, the environment, pop culture, youth culture, all of it. And it is supposed to be a statement about what's happening. And I understand that's what they tried to do with white, but to me it felt quite tone deaf and again, kind of like a cop out. That's what I thought the colors that are emerging. It was just lame.
[00:35:20] Susan Barry: Yeah, I hundred percent agree. We have reached the fortune-telling portion of our show. I know you spent a lot of time fortune telling and projecting trends, but you're gonna have to predict the future now and then we will see if you got it right. So what is a prediction that you have about the future of color and materials? In the next few years of hospitality design.
[00:35:44] Stacy Garcia: Okay, so the future of color materials. We are coming off of an era, I mean a decade-long or more of blue and gray. So it has been the era of blue and gray and it's been beautiful and it's been really neutral and it's sort of been throughout our industry. So I'm really seeing, we talked a little bit earlier about the warming of the palette, earth tones, jewel tones, more of the natural materials. So warm woods, brown woods, rich kind of color palettes coming back, colored marbles or stones, quartz, as that looks like colored marbles. So I'm sort of looking at this kind of more legacy heritage color palette that's coming in. And then I think we're at the very, very, very tip of the iceberg, but our forecast this previous year, so our 25 26 forecast, what one of the trends we talked about was opulent heritage. And it is sort of this, when you look at what's happening on the TV screen, right? Like the Gilded Age type of shows that we're, many of us are loving. I think it's this anti-sweat pant kind of like. Yes, we're in leggings all the time and we're comfortable and we've come out of this really neutral interior. So, for me, I'm actually excited to see a return to some opulence. I think we're gonna see the 70s back in effect in a new way, sort of in a neo-deco interpretation. I'm really excited about where the future lies in the world of hospitality design.
[00:37:27] Susan Barry: Everything that you said sounds amazing and perfect. Thank you. Thank you. My follow-up to that is there is so much heirloom-quality China floating around in thrift stores and in the world right now that nobody wants. I have an entire basement full. When do you think that those things will begin to resurge? I know you can't tell, but just make something up.
[00:37:56] Stacy Garcia: Oh, you know what, I actually love it too. So it's funny, my grandmother was big into estate sales. She's still hanging in, by the way, Granny Franny, I'm gonna send you the link to this. 99 years old. So everybody will give her a little shout-out there. Go, Granny Franny. She was into design and into going to these estate sales, so she used to pick up China sets. And I have some of the sets that she had purchased and she gave some to my cousins and whatever, 'cause what are you gonna do with all this stuff? But I'll pull it out randomly. Like we'll have a random breakfast and I will use beautiful fine China for it or we'll host on a Friday night and we use fancy dishes because why not make yourself feel special? So I do think there is this whole, I don't know if you've heard of like the granny core or the cottage core on the residential side. I think we will see some of that trickle into boutique properties. But there is a real interest in sustainable products and sustainable design and the younger generation is focused on that. So we are seeing a lot of people in their 20s and below, consciously choosing to buy thrifted products, consciously choosing to surround themselves with things that have lived one life and valuing the soul that is part of those pieces and the stories that went along with them. And so I think it will be interesting to see if hospitality follows suit, whether it's in restaurants that are sort of curating unique pieces of China and putting them with some new, so you have this mix of old new, but I think there's a lot of storytelling that can happen around it, and that is really what we're yearning for. Listen, in a world where we haven't spoken about this yet, but AI is the future and robotics is the future. And we're going to have this sort of soulless writing and construct around everything and these mass produced stuff. The backlash to it is to cultivate not just the experience and the narrative, which has been huge, but I believe the soul of the item. Like the energy that comes along with it and you can't manufacture that.
[00:40:12]Susan Barry: I honestly wish we get in the show there because that was such a great statement, but we cannot because we have to go to the loading dock. So before we tell you goodbye, we're gonna head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.
Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”
[00:40:32] Susan Barry: Stacy, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock, maybe in between FF&E installs?
[00:40:40] Stacy Garcia: Oh gosh. Well, it's funny. I was thinking about sort of two different stories that I could share here. And it's funny, I'm gonna go back to a little bit of the founder's story. So I actually founded my company in my 20s. We are 26 years old now. We are turning 27 soon, which is a kind of amazing feat as a solopreneur at the time who's now built a multimillion dollar textile company. I started this in my basement. So, this wasn't Silicon Valley starting like a computer company. This was a young designer with a textile and surface pattern background, having a dream of putting out a collection for the hotel industry. And when I first founded the company, my husband let me take out a home equity line. So I started this thing with a heloc. And we basically bet the house on this thing. And so I was pregnant with my first child. I quit my job and we borrowed every penny of equity that we had saved at the time. And he was sort of in between jobs. It wasn't a very smart time to start a business. It was like we had, but I did it. And when I started, the funny part was I used a chunk of the money on a publicist, and I used the other money on a booth and my first collection of fabric. And I could only afford to basically buy prototype samples and hang drapes in the booth. And when I got back from the trade show, so I launched it a trade show in Las Vegas and had a really professional booth, 10 by 10, a small booth, but it didn't look like pipe and drape. I was like, I'm a designer, this is gonna be designed and you're gonna like go for broke or whatever. So I came back home with a list of leads. It was only me. I had no employees. I had my sister and my uncle, I convinced to work this trade show 'cause I knew I couldn't go to the bathroom otherwise. So I brought family that she's a speech pathologist, like she knows nothing about textiles or hospitality, but she's cute and she worked and so did my uncle. And I came back with these drapes and then I cut them up in my garage to make the samples to send to people who ordered them. And then, I don't know, like I haven't talked about it much, but the funny thing is, if you had called me back in the day, if you had called LebaTex 26 years ago, I would've answered the phone pretending to be the receptionist.
[00:43:17] Susan Barry: That's amazing.
[00:43:18] Stacy Garcia: That's what I used to do. I'd go like, “Hello LebaTex, how can we help you?” And they would say, “Is Stacy there?” I'm calling to talk to Stacy, 'cause I was the only person who actually worked there. And I would go, let me see if she's available. And I'd make them wait like 30 seconds. So it seemed like I was transferring a call. And then I would re-answer the phone as myself because it was like a fake it till you make it kind of thing.
[00:43:45] Susan Barry: Absolutely. You do what you have to do. I love that. That's hilarious. Stacy Garcia, I feel like I could talk to you from now until the end of 2026 and I really think you need to write a book. Thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners got so much interesting information and I truly appreciate you riding with us to the top floor.
[00:44:09]Stacy Garcia: Thank you so much, Susan.
[00:44:12] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/226. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all-around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.
[00:44:47] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.