May 19, 2015
The Design Commerce Agency launches to serve a changing marketplace.
Today marks the official launch of Design Commerce Agency. We’ve actually been in business for 15 years – as Eye for Art, started by Art Libera in 2000. Our new identity reflects the culmination of nearly a year of work to expand and re-position the company for today’s rapidly changing interior design industry. With the advent of Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, this highly visual industry is changing rapidly – in terms of how consumers look for home furnishings and how the design industry promotes designers and their product lines.
Designing for the future
Art has built a premier design licensing business, connecting a group of talented designers with dozens of respected manufacturers (all of whom you’ll find profiled on this site). Convinced that there are even more opportunities among manufacturers and retailers who need great design, Art set about to expand the capabilities and ambitions of the agency.
He recruited two new partners for the new Design Commerce Agency: Bryan Calkins and Mark McDonough. Bryan has extensive technology, ecommerce, and online marketing experience, coupled with an equally deep background in home furnishings retail and the luxury residential design showroom industry. Mark’s expertise lies in both core Internet technology and online marketing fields, with extensive experience in search engine marketing, paid online advertising, social media brand building, and web and mobile content strategy. (You can read more about everyone here.)
We think social media is changing just about everything in the interior design marketplace – brand management, product introductions, business development and sales lead generation, trade communications – and especially the way marketing and advertising dollars are invested. In turn, these changes are creating exciting new opportunities for designers to broaden their range. We believe we can help designers find new ways to make the most of these trends, and help manufacturers and retailers find the best new creative ideas.
With our digital marketing services, Design Commerce Agency now offers designers an unparalleled opportunity to build their brands and social media presence online – in a highly cost effective manner compared to more traditional offline marketing approaches. With Art’s deep relationships, long experience and market expertise in the interior design industry – in the hospitality, commercial, private label retail, and large-scale manufacturer segments – we aim to create even more peerless opportunities for design licensing. In each of these segments we know there are large potential end customers of design licensing, and we want to match a growing stable of top luxury interior designers with substantial licensing opportunities in all interior design market segments.
Just call us!
We look forward to discussing what this means in person with as many of our partners and industry colleagues as possible in the weeks and months ahead. Meanwhile, we invite you to have a look around our new website, and follow us on your social media channel of choice (the links are at the bottom of this page).
And let us hear from you, anytime! Call us at +1 (415) 485-6012 or email Mark.
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