We were lucky to catch up with Kate Ritter recently and have shared our conversation below.
Kate , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Kate pivoted into proptech after 20 years in the entertainment and retail industries as an airbrush innovator in the makeup space. Her work was in Emmy magazine, British Vogue, commercials, TV, and red carpets during those two decades! The vision for HOMEKYND was to bring the connective advertising machine from retail/entertainment to the RE industry and HOMEKYND was born! Kate’s husband, Adam, is a licensed RE Agent in 15 states. At the time HK came to life, it grew out of his troublesome listings. One example, is that the HK team was able to help them move 90 properties in 60 days with the virtual staging services. Kate knew they were really onto something when buyers agents kept coming back asking where the furniture pieces were from. Their clients wanted the information to purchase dream furniture for their new home!
Alas, HOMEKYND Design Studio was born. It is the only platform of its kind harmonizing home buying and home furnishing in one space! Kate’s goal is to remove friction wherever we can. Creating educated, accessible, and gorgeous purchasing decisions for everyone.
In Kate’s words, “Home is a sacred place. Here at HK, this understanding is the heartbeat of our company. We believe our job is to help you imagine, create, and purchase through easy-to-use tools. The design studio gives you these tools so that you can easily imagine dreamy moments in every corner of your house, truly making it a home! Changing it as you change, growing it as you grow, and moving it as you move. Home is where the heart is, right? When a house feels like home: it feels safe, sleep comes easily, celebrations are hosted, and life is beautifully lived!”
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.
Kate started her career as an innovator in the beauty space as one of the first certified airbrush artists during the launch of High Definition TV. This was a pivotal move for the entire industry. She was responsible for leading teams on advertisements for Prada, Gucci, Cricket Mobile, ABC news, E!, Shea Moisture, and many others. As with so many industries, the pandemic shut down the entertainment and advertising industries. Events were postponed indefinitely and with 2 asthmatic children at home, Kate was searching for a new innovative and creative change. Interiors had always been of interest to Kate as each and every commercial set was crafted beautifully by interior set designers. Kate and her husband had also had run several successful airbnb businesses that she furnished. This is where she locked in the testing on the first listing image = $$ bookings.
With the real estate industry booming, Kate wanted to test her theories on virtual staging. She began to test the different manual platforms and leaned into working with difficult listings to see what helped them move quickly. Home Specificity: A home in Austin,TX is supposed to look and feel different than a NYC loft. So in 2022, Homekynd began as a virtual staging service business. She began quickly onboarding interior designers to her methods and they took on a project for Orchard a nationwide brokerage. They created gorgeous visuals for problem listings, some sitting for 180+ days! After their virtual staging and no other changes, they went under contract in 5 days or less! This was incredible but more innovation was needed!
Real estate agents were coming back and asking where the furniture was from in the photos, for their buyers. The interior designers were requesting branded pieces and special selections. Plus after 8,500 designs, 160,000+ renders, and over 10,500 hours spent MANUALLY creating these visuals, Kate knew a solution to automate was necessary. However the tools available were limited to mood boards, AI that creates too many hallucinations, and clunky/expensive 3D tools like Autocad. Kate connected with the talented technologist, Travis (CTO), willing to jump into the geometry complexities with her. Together they created the proprietary tech that can turn any single photo into an immersive 3D environment! They were told this was <b>impossible</b> and are thrilled to be able to offer this tooling to the world!
After a year and a half of perfecting the tech internally, in July 2024, the HOMEKYND Design studio was made available to the public. In the last 3 months, 40+ furniture brands have been onboarded onto the platform and they drop new collections weekly. The most recent collection features John Legend’s line at Rove Concepts! Check it out :)
Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?
HK is unique in that there are so many facets on the business that they are able to create opportunity + revenue from. <b>The HOMEKYND Consumer offering: Please sign up for an account on homekynd.com!
People Moving: Moving soon? About to move? Or re-imagining a space? They can access the Design Studio, which offers multiple pricing packages for users to upload a photo of their space (interior/exterior) turn it into an immersive 3D environment to plug and play their dream furniture! At Homekynd.com users can access all 40+ venders in our system (Amazon, Walmart, Target, RH, CB2, West Elm, etc). Staying in a budget? No problem, you can create a room with high and low pricing- sofa from RH or accessories from Walmart!
Property Managers and RE Agents: can use the design studio on empty listings to create gorgeous realistic listing images. They can also use the design studio as they walk through the property with prospective buyers/renters to see what their home flow could be. (Where will my TV and Sofa go?) They can also showcase those ever important flooring and wall color changes, to owners looking to put their property on the market.
Interior Designers: can use the design studio to create gorgeous renders within minutes instead of days for design pitches helping to lock in those incredibly important project deposits!
The HOMEKYND commercial offering:
Real Estate: The Design Studio can be embedded directly into listing pages on Real Estate websites where prospective buyers have the ability to imagine the property with their dream pieces. After 8500 manual designs for clients at Compass, Berkshire Hathoway, Orchard, Keller Williams and others, we know that if a prospective buyer cannot imagine where the sofa and TV will be placed in the first photo swipes, they will skip to the next house. With the embedded Design Studio they can immerse themselves into the 3D environment to find out “Would a sectional even work in that living room?” and drag it around in the space to see which wall would work best!
Home Retailers: The Design Studio can be embedded directly onto home retailer/furniture/furnishing websites. This is where prospective buyers can make confident purchasing decisions by uploading a photo of their home space and plug the retailers pieces directly into the scene. It drives more time on site, higher volume in cart orders, and confident purchasing ultimately reducing the number of returns. Home Retailers can also advertise their pieces and collections on homekynd.com to populate at the top of the list for users to view for potential purchasing.
It was very important to Kate to ensure the longevity of the business, she has made a point to say “We need to go to where the people are. The embedded design studio gives us the ability to <b>help</b> even more people <b>imagine their house into a home</b>! We need to meet them at every stage. While the design studio on Homekynd.com gives users access to every retailer they can imagine, customizing for every life change!
Knowing your industry is dependent on ever-evolving technologies, is not something to fear, it is something to embrace! With women at the forefront of purchasing decisions, it is vital that we drive tech that meets their needs to build home. We must Think bigger, and not get boxed in!”
Any advice for managing a team?
HomeKynd is a small but mighty team that works remotely. The team is spread across the world with employees in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and on different coasts of the US- Kate makes it a point to ensure that everyday begins with ‘Morning Standup’ where we are able to discuss the good, the challenging, and the need for help! It has been important from the beginning to not only keep everyone in the loop with updates, but also check in on the well being + productivity of the team! Adam Ritter, CRO, is always adamant about finding the best tech to keep us all together. “We tried Slack, but then moved onto an application called Roam. It is more visual which makes more sense for HK. We all have our own virtual offices, and there are also communal spaces that we meet in throughout the day!” The team really enjoy the ability to bop around in each others offices where it feels more like a team, even though there are miles between them. Kate also made a point to say, “At the heart of HOMEKYND, it really is about bringing people together and creating a comfortable, safe atmosphere. This begins with opportunities to listen and be heard. That will always apply to our team and I wouldn’t have it any other way!”
Kate’s advice for managing teams and maintaining high moral is “Find <i>supportive</i> tech for your teams. Tech like “Roam” help our remote team to feel much closer. Tech like “Ask Steve” is a browser plugin that integrates AI support onto every working page- this helps our team work more efficiently on the projects that truly utilize their brilliants minds. And lastly, set up a structure in your meetings that allow for open conversation. We celebrate wins together, we seek help from each other on challenges, and we each give ourselves weekly scores to encourage self awareness for where we can improve! If I am the CEO and I can openly admit that I am operating at a 6, I get to own that to them and work towards bringing a 10 next week! I believe these practices are what are guiding our high morale and growth!”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://homekynd.com/
- Instagram: @homekynd
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/homekynd