We were lucky to catch up with Mayo Molnar recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mayo, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

The real estate market has been really choppy for the past six months or so. Higher interest rates, buyers waiting for a more favorable time, sellers unwilling to dip their feet into an unstable market. But, with a great team come great results.

We staged this 2,000 sqft home in late February. Sellers previously did some major reno works to the property and it wasn’t the location per se, but I’d say the views of the city from the home that set the property apart from similar ones.

Once the sellers moved out, the interior walls got a fresh coat of paint and we changed a lot of light fixtures to modernize the house and make the overall style more cohesive. We then staged the home – we used a lot of styling items as both the living room and the family room each have a full wall of built-ins. We used a lot of color – blues and greens, mainly, to keep the home being memorable to potential buyers who may easily see 10-15 properties while looking for their new nest.
Unfortunately, right after we were done with staging, two weeks of torrential rains ensued so the photographs couldn’t get taken which pushed the launch date further out.

It is worth noting that the listing agent team for this property is one of the Top 3 San Francisco teams and they certainly know the ins and outs of the market.
Once the photos were taken, we had such a nice positive feedback from both the listing agents as well as the sellers that it immediately boosted our confidence (previously shaken by the inconsistent market). Once the property hit the market with a listing price of $1.995m, the home received eight offers in the first week, the top offer being all cash AND $630K over listing price. Now, that is a success that all involved worked so hard towards. This proves that even in unstable times, with focus and persistence, things do work out for the best.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My background is in hospitality interior design, mainly in London, UK, where I’ve delivered projects for restaurants, hotels, bars and similar. Having married to a US citizen, an SF native (we met in London while he worked there for a few years), I made a leap and moved to San Francisco in January 2019. Leaving all my career networks back in London, I immediately set up Studio Goldfinch so that I could work on some interesting projects, although I did not know anyone in the industry in the Bay Area. Completing a few residential projects in my first year here and Covid hitting, work drying up, I was contemplating what else can I do. In the summer of 2020 I came across a staging company being sold so I acquired the business (previous owner did staging for almost 10 years), rebranded (took under Studio Goldfinch umbrella) and started Studio Goldfinch Staging operations in September 2020. I now have three employees, 7,500 sqft warehouse full of furniture, art and styling items, staging is now about 90% of our business and I am constantly looking for ways to grow and bring more business. We’ve added more services such as Home Renovations (cosmetic updates before the staging happens and property is listed on the market) and we’ve widened the staging offering as well – we have two tiers of staging (Essential and Luxury) and we are constantly adapting to the ever-changing real estate market by offering flexible contract terms (most popular are 60 day and 90 day contracts).

One of the main challenges was to update the inventory as what I’ve acquired was pretty much on its last leg. Now, very happy with our new pieces we acquired over the last year, we can accommodate more bookings than ever.

We are also getting more and more interior design inquiries and are currently working on handful of interior projects as well.

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

I came across the staging business for sale in late July 2020. The owner was trying to sell it for some months, without much traction due to the pandemic. Luckily, my husband is a commercial real estate attorney, so I didn’t have to hire anyone to help me with that part – I negotiated most of the terms, but his help and seal of approval was crucial in some instances. At the beginning when I said I want to close on this transaction by the end of August and take over by September 1st, both my husband and sellers broker were skeptical and said it’s a very tight timeline. A couple of weeks of ‘discovery’ followed, where we checked on the health of the business, looked at inventory, vendors, clients and other areas of the business. We managed to get to a nice agreement with the seller, whereby I paid 50% of the cost at Close of Escrow and the remaining 50% was agreed via seller financing over 12 month period, meaning I had to repay half the cost monthly over the first year. And it worked!

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We do make our own large scale art. Lucky for us, staging art is pretty easy to make (if you know a little bit about art, color and composition) and doesn’t require a lot of capital. I’ve inherited a lot of large scale canvases from the previous owner, that we used in the first year, but they were a bit dated so what I’ve done is I selected the ones I liked the least and started using them as blank canvases for other art. I created a few myself, but then luckily a few months ago, I’ve employed a new team member and she’s a trained artist. So in the busy times, she works on staging installations and in quiet times she creates art. The great thing about this is, the supplies don’t cost that much and for a couple of dollars and couple of hours you can create art pieces that look fantastic in our staging installations. What’s more – it is always fun. Making art is a creative process and you can test and try different ideas. We recently started doing more sculptural pieces – playing with fabrics and other materials that can give canvases another dimension.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.studiogoldfinch.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiogoldfinch/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayo001/