We recently connected with Angela Markham and have shared our conversation below.
Angela, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
Set The Stage is literally setting the bar for the home staging and real estate industry. Due to our exclusive, wholesale relationships with furniture vendors, we are able to provide a furniture sales solution for our clients in addition to the traditional home staging service. Typically in the home staging world, stagers do not want to sell their furniture. Selling their furniture to a home buyer means that they have to go out and replace that furniture at retail costs. With Set The Stage, we encourage home buyers to purchase whatever furniture in their home is screaming their name. We not only can sell the furniture at a much lower cost, but we can turn around and purchase replacement furniture at much less than retail. It’s a win-win for everybody!
Angela, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Earlier this year, my husband and I were looking for a new business venture that would allow us to take on a more active role in our community. Interior decorating has always been a passion and hobby of mine, so we sought out to find a business available for purchase in our area that emphasized my passion for design. We stumbled on the Set The Stage franchise. Fast forward a couple of months later, and we were awarded the first Omaha-based Set The Stage location and were up and running–serving real estate agents, investors and developers–in a matter of a few months!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
When starting this business, I quickly learned that I would need to detach from the beautiful furniture pieces that we use to stage and sell to clients. My history has been to fall in love with my furniture, take exquisite care of it, and keep it for a really long time! In this business, the turnaround is quick. And that’s exactly what we want for our clients! We want to be able to turn furniture around quick and often so that we are constantly staying on trend with new styles and aesthetics.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Because this business was a franchise purchase, we needed to seek outside funding for the initial franchise fee. We split the funding between a HELOC (home equity line of credit) and an unsecured loan. This has worked really well for us and has allowed us to hit the ground much faster than if we attempted to source the funds ourselves, or simply fund the business as we start generating income.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://wesetthestage.com/locations/sts-omaha-metro/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/setthestage_omahametro
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561093264840&sk=about
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-markham-9017ab31/
