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Cheryl’s Ways to be Innovative during the Pandemic on the Ignite Your Business® Podcast

Cheryl has been featured on a podcast!  Greencrest, a marketing and advertising agency in Columbus, Ohio, has a podcast titled, Ignite Your Business® Podcast, focuses on helping industry leaders ignite their businesses through marketing, trends, and innovative practices. They took the time to speak to Cheryl about Crimson and its experience during the pandemic.

“Travel is really my main inspiration and since that has been taken away…it has made me just really try to be creative in other ways. We’ve got to feed our energy and our spirit so that we can continue to be creative.”

Cheryl Stauffer

Cheryl speaks on her love of travel and how the pandemic has affected the Crimson Design family with Kelly Borth, Chief Strategy Officer and CEO of GREENCREST. Here are some of the topics covered in the interview.

Changes in Interior Design Conversations

Residential design business has increased from the last two years for Crimson. Due to the pandemic, everyone is at home, and people are seeing their spaces through different lenses. People are now figuring out how they can remodel their homes while also accommodating for additional office space for the adults and workspaces for children.

Crimson’s Journey

To keep our audience engaged, Cheryl has done photoshoots in her home to share patterns and designs for inspiration.

How has Crimson been innovative?

It is important for our team to have clarity breaks to ensure that the team is exercising the most creativity. Allowing for these breaks means our employees can think of “outside the box” ideas! 

Our team created, Styled Red, an e-Design service for those who are wanting to spruce up small spaces (i.e., offices, bathrooms, etc.).  We are excited there has been so much interest in our Styled Red service; we are currently booked through January of 2021

How has Cheryl kept the team motivated?

Cheryl has implemented new ways to communicate with the team and our clients. For example, we will FaceTime each other and clients during projects. We use Zoom a lot for team meetings!  We thrive on brainstorming together, but doing so in person is where some of the best ideas come. The Crimson Team has come back to the office so that we get that brainpower to feed off each other’s ideas

Commercial and Residential Projects

How have we been accommodating with commercial business opportunities around safety and incorporating new technology?

Crimson has been applying the standard social distancing protocols with daily operations in addition to client’ meetings. We meet either in our office space or in the space of our clients’ business, depending on which is larger to ensure that we are social distancing. Additionally, we have been utilizing Material Bank to get design materials quickly.

Material Bank provides product samples to interior designers and is the largest material marketplace in the architecture and design industry.

How does Crimson help incorporate design and brand to life in interior spaces for commercial clients?

This typically happens in the discovery phase. We figure out who our clients are and what they want their customers to experience when they walk into their company. We have seen an increase in “resmercial” projects–a cross between commercial and residential design as home spaces are inspiring for comfort due to the pandemic.

Design Trends

Design Trends: permanent influence through pandemic? How will ID change in the long-term?

There has been a large influx of creating sanctuaries at home. Cheryl included a shoutout to her friend, Lisa Kahn of Lisa Kahn Designs, who focuses on creating sanctuary spaces.

Cheryl also mentions Studio Shed, a company that has experienced a huge increase in sales since COVID started. They make modern backyard sheds that people have turned into offices.

Philanthropy

Why is philanthropy important to our brand and business?

With Cheryl growing up as a missionary child, she always had a love for helping those who surrounded her. Working with individuals that come from both ends of the financial spectrum Cheryl realized her “give to get” philosophy could be a way to bridge the two and give back! Crimson Design Group gives a portion of all design fees to causes that touch our hearts as well as the hearts of our clients. One of the larger organizations Crimson donates to is Asia’s Hope. Cheryl and the Crimson Design Group team were able to raise enough funds to build a house for 24 orphan children and Crimson continues to be able to support them monthly.

Thank you!

A special thank you to Kelly Borth and the Greencrest family for the amazing opportunity to be on the Ignite Your Business® Podcast!

Don’t forget to listen to the podcast!

Further Reading