We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jason-Michael Gray a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jason-Michael, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Finding those key vendors can often be make or break for a brand. Can you talk to us about how you found your key vendors?

In the Interior Design industry, like most; absolutely nothing is more important than you relationships. That’s relationships with vendors, fabricators, clients, everyone. I’ve made it a point to gather and build relationships throughout my time as both a General Contractor and an Interior Designer. If I find a situation where I’m in need of a Manufacturer or Fabricator that I don’t currently have a relationship with; I almost always rely on word of mouth; 95%. The Atlanta Design community is pretty open to working together and sharing resources so if I need something specific that I’ve not encountered before, I’ll pick up the phone and call another designer. There will always be gate keepers in every community; but we all know who they are and they are treated as such.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My route to Interior Design was unconventional at best. After business school at University of Georgia, I became a General Contractor. Things went really well until the 2007 mortgage meltdown that affected Atlanta, and particularly the east side of Atlanta, very, very hard. During the recession; I worked retail at a variety of shops including Louis Vuitton and Brooks Brothers. When I felt it was safe to start building houses again; I built a few contract houses very far out in the suburbs and quite honestly felt uninspired by the projects. In 2017, I made the decision to go back to school and attended Architecture and Design school at Savannah College of Art and Design. Both during school and immediately after I was lucky enough to intern at some pretty heavy hitters in the residential sphere here in town and was ultimately hired at Habachy Designs and Atelier where I was immediately thrown into the deep end. After a few years, I was poached by another firm in Atlanta where things went really poorly very fast. It was then that I created my own firm; Gray Brothers Design.
Of all of the time spent in very good schools, the greatest education I received was from being a General Contractor. It has made my career as an Interior Designer so much more rich and thorough and that has essentially become my niche. When clients hire me for projects or other designers ask me to draw their construction drawings, which happens more than you would think; they all know they will receive the best version of their intentions.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

While working at an Interior Design firm where the working relationship was going horribly sideways; I received a call from a GC I had worked with previously about taking on a large project myself that they were contracted to build. About a week later the Interior Design firm and I parted ways and I accepted the new project. I used that project as a jumping off point to start my own firm.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I primarily work in residential design so the relationships I build with the clients end up being very close and familiar. This is a pet peeve of mine. If you are going to propose to offer “luxury design”; you must always offer luxury service to go along with it. During the beginning of every project, I let my clients know this will not be a presentation, proposal, implementation; presentation, proposal, implementation type of situation. This will be a 18 or so month long constant conversation that will always be open all day, every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.GrayBrothersDesign.com
• Instagram: jasonmichaelgray221B
• Linkedin: Jason Michael Gray

Image Credits

Personal photo by Robert Hartnett