For Interior Designer Sarita Simpson, Gather is Game Changer
We were constantly having to cobble together different programs and different applications to compile pricing and products we were sourcing. When using Pinterest, you have to be very diligent about typing all of the item descriptions including the dimensions, the price, the material that you want. So, there was a lot of extra work to do to capture all the details of the product, not just the image and the URL. The clipper in Gather is a game changer.
Sarita’s team was wasting hours with the back and forth communication with each other and with clients
“We would go to a website to source the product, then copy and paste the dimensions, the pricing and descriptions. After that we would have to transfer it to a spreadsheet, but we could only do one field at a time. That’s a lot of back and forth. Then there was adding images to Dropbox. It was a hassle. A lot of wasting time.”
Sarita Simpson’s interior design company Sarita Simpson Design serves residential clients in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia. Her team consists of an office manager, a part-time designer and an intern.
Sarita says her four-person team was doing a lot of extra work to source products and prepare proposals and reports.
She also found it difficult to stay organized in communicating with her team members and clients.
“Emails from clients can can get buried in really long chains where we're discussing a sofa or some other option back and forth for three months. Some clients would text me, so it would be a constant search for a request or comment they made. It gets lost in the minutia of all the other discussions.”
Sarita knew she had a problem, but wasn’t aware there were solutions available.
And then she was introduced to Gather.
“It was so user-friendly, so easy to learn. I had a couple of minor questions when I got started, and we got answers right away because of the instant chat on their site.”
Sarita’s office manager, Tracy Schall, chimed in too:
“Their customer service is extraordinary. They are so responsive - they don't leave you hanging if you have a question. And Gather is also more flexible than you realize. We've actually been using it to manage our inventory too. That's a big deal. We have a visual inventory now which is great. And now we're starting to use it for some marketing ideas.”
In addition to the customer service, Sarita also loves the visual aspect of it.
“It's almost like a working digital design board where I can see everything together. I’ll get to look at a piece of furniture with the rest of the pieces of the room, and realize that maybe it doesn’t look as great as I thought it would. This is now part of my design process instead of just grabbing products that I want and throwing them into a proposal. It’s really helping my process.”
Help when you need it
“Their customer service is extraordinary. They are so responsive - they don't leave you hanging if you have a question."
Gather helped Sarita’s team be more efficient and get organized
“I think that the best feature is the clipper and the fact that you can easily import all of that information I used to cut and paste in just one click or a few clicks.
But my other favourite feature is that clients can come in and approve, or dislike or add comments, and we can discuss items within the platform. It's a big time saver to have a place where all of that discussion can be captured and saved in one central location.”
Sarita gets great feedback from her clients about Gather. It’s also helped with communication for her team. She says her office has more efficient procedures now because they have systems set up in Gather that streamline their workflow.
“If I had to sum it up, I would say it's a great collaborative platform to put all your ideas together for a space and get client feedback - and capture not only the product information, but the client feedback on particular items. Just have everything in one central location, so it streamlines the entire sourcing process. It cuts back on many, many hours so you can take on more projects.”
You and your team can streamline project communication and systems with Gather too.
Discover how Gather can help your interior design company.
