Our resident expert Naomi Findlay was recently a speaker at the Home Staging Summit in Dallas, Texas, USA, where she was voted one of the top five home stagers in the world by her peers. A huge congratulations! Here, she shares what she learned from her American counterparts.
Our stateside colleagues talk about their industry being in its infancy as they are not regulated or licensed and no quality control is done on their industry. With this in mind, it makes me think that our industry here in Australia could be described as being in utero! Yes, I am saying we are decades behind where the States are in the pre-sale property styling or home staging industry.
But this being said, we are doing an amazing job and although our industry is very young and we too are unregulated and unlicensed, there is a good solid movement towards making sure we become so, as we undergo a huge growth spurt with many people starting up businesses.
We have Australian-grown training through the International Institute of Home Staging (run by me) and in July this year, the Home Staging and Redesign Association (HRSA) launched the first Australian home staging association that offers continuing professional development (CPD) to members. Next year, they’re looking to introduce accreditation so that sellers can cut through and choose to employ those people practicing as professionals in the industry, if they so wish. It’s all exciting stuff!
If I were to share my biggest take-homes from the event, they would be:
- There are many gifted stylists, stagers and property experts around the world, but the ones that are the best marketers are the ones whose businesses thrive.
- Product is key. The cost and quality of your stock or inventory that you hold and then hire to clients, is where you business is able to access its best leverage point, where you can work hard to lower costs and hence maximise profit.
- Sharing and connecting with other staging and real estate professionals is the best way to move the profession forward. This is not mainstream in Australia yet and I am so excited to be able to change and nurture a professional culture to one of sharing and growing together. The next stop for that is the National Australian Home Staging Summit we are organising in Sydney on 2 & 3 July next year.
All in all, the event was quite epic! It was amazing to be able to speak and share my work on social media, education and leveraging your home staging business with the American audience and I was obviously honoured to receive the award.
