We recently connected with Kristen Yonson and have shared our conversation below.

Kristen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Is your team able to work remotely? If so, how have you made it work? What, if any, have been the pitfalls? What have been the non-obvious benefits?

SwatchPop! was founded on the idea that both designers and clients alike should be able to work together from the comfort of their own homes. It’s no longer necessary to be in-person to have beautiful and functional designs come to life.

Swatchpop.com was created as a marketplace for customers to get quick, affordable and easily implementable design advice from an interior designer virtually. From bite-sized recommendations for art or throw pillows, to full room layouts we created a web platform that made it easy for consumers and designers to connect and collaborate. From the on-set we fulfilled a need for customers that eliminated taking time to find an interior designer or ask a friend for recommendations, setting appointments and cleaning their homes, long turn-around times, high rates, etc. It made professional design accessible to everyone.

The marketplace serves designers too. They login to the platform, are sent projects without seeking them themselves and are able to do their craft from the comfort of their home offices. The designers love it just as much as our customers do.

With the success of our e-design company, we began offering a more full-service/all encompassing design solution like traditional interior design services, but all virtually. We completed an entire home in the San Francisco 100% virtually, starting with architectural plans, selecting all construction specs/finishes, planning, ordering and delivering furniture and styling accessories by working from the comfort of my own home. I still haven’t met the client in person! We are also working on a 5,000 square foot new construction build in the Bahamas and with the help of our friends at Bond Street Design Studio, we’re able to show them our ideas through virtual renderings. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s if there’s a will, there’s a way. With technology there is always a way.

One of the aspects of our company, that I am most proud of, in this fast paced world, is that SwatchPop has created a great work environment by prioritizing quality-of-life over steadfast growth. Of course the design details and timelines are important, but as business owners, we agree that it shouldn’t come before family and personal needs, which is why our team is able to work remotely and set their own schedules.

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?

Kristen and Jessica are high school classmates that created SwatchPop.com to fulfill their dream of getting quick and affordable interior design advice from a professional in a snap so they could spend less time worrying about their homes and actually enjoying them.

In 2014 they built a prototype to test their idea. Within two months the site was already so overwhelmed by clients and designer applications that they went on to build a more robust version they have today. SwatchPop! has been featured in Tech Crunch, HGTV, Inc. New York Post, Modern Home Builder, Jezebel, Fast Company and Family Circle Magazine.

What they are most proud of is the ability to bring their design expertise to anyone, from anywhere, with any budget or need.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Being a business owner you wear many hats. Being a creative you need time and space to feel inspired and allow the creative juices to flow. Non-creatives may struggle to understand that the creative process isn’t on-demand. Sure, there are rules to interior design, but for a great design a creative/designer needs room, separate from specifications, measurements, math deadlines and requests to come up with really unique ideas. The creative process takes time. It takes, days, weeks and even months of pondering, researching and finding inspiration through travel, music and nature. Creatives are like fine wines, they get better with age (and experience).

Another area that non-creatives may struggle to understand is that creatives, especially interior designers, or those in the service industry, get a lot of push back for their fees. Creatives spend years learning and refining their craft, just like a doctor spends years going to school and learning in hands-on environments. Intellectual property is worth a value unlike anything you think you can put a worth on, so when a designer/creative sets their rate, they do so according to their creative value, experience and expertise. Their intellectual property holds a lot of value that many times is underestimated.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Jessica’s sorority sister was a designer in Charleston. With Jessica in Atlanta, she would text her friend to ask questions about how to style her foyer or her coffee table and her friend, Shay, would text back telling her exactly what to buy and how to style it. After that, the idea for SwatchPop! was born.

When Jessica approached me about her idea for SwatchPop, I was working a 50-hour week at an advertising sales start-up. I lived in New York and Atlanta simultaneously, had an interior design blog (for fun) and had two small kids, ages 2 and 4. Jessica and I were high school classmates who had lost touch, but as everyone did, followed along in the background of Facebook.

After one meeting at Starbucks, Jessica and I agreed that her idea combined with some of my areas of expertise may actually be a unique business idea – everyone’s virtual interior design friend. It could also be a place interior designers could do their craft without a lot of the hassles they faced at the time.

First, we did all the business-set-up things and created a prototype to test out our theories. We then started gaining a social media following on Facebook, Both helped us apply for pitch competitions in Atlanta, of which we won and lead us to get funding.

Jessica, being much better at English than me, hence why I always asked her for help in High School, took on the marketing and customer service roll as we began to grow our business through Facebook Ads. I managed most of the business financials, growth strategy, managed investors, etc. We both would stay up late at night collaborating in Google Slides to make sure every design that went out was just right, that retail links worked, formatting was beautiful and that our customers would refer their friends.

Those first few years were challenging. We had a lot of accountability to our investors and pressure to continue to grow, scale and take on more funding to keep up with competitors popping up in the market. We didn’t know they existed when we began, but about 3 other virtual interior design companies with similar concepts were working around the clock too to grab ahold of the new market. We spent hours creating social media ads, posts and staging photoshoots at our homes. We had a PR agency who got us write ups in magazines and even a couple of local news interviews.

We began to hire local moms who were looking for a few hours of work while their kids were at school to quality check designs, handle customer service issues, and grow our team. Jessica and I were focussed on the growth of the business and became, what we felt like anyway, professional fundraisers and faces of the company.

One Summer though, our financial runway ran out. We realized that the amount of funding we raised just wasn’t going to keep the business going at the same rate and with the same resources. We had to let go of our team, immediately. and bootstrap from there. Jessica and I had not been paying ourselves for any of the work we had been doing for 4 years in hopes of an eventual sale of the company. Coincidentally, one month later, I lost my full-time job. We had a choice, do we shut down the company and say we gave it our best or do we continue and do it the hard way, one penny at a time? We decided to continue on because we believed in each other and the company and had so many customers who really loved our platform. We downsized our home so that I could pursue a career in design with SwatchPop full-time. Meanwhile, Jessica was experiencing many life changes of her own so we had to pivot and determine how we were going to keep SwatchPop.com alive while also making ends meet at home.

Local friends had been hearing all about SwatchPop and begging us personally to come into their homes and do more of a traditional interior design service. In order to keep SwatchPop e-design alive, SwatchPop full-service was born. Through Covid, we ended up taking on a lot of new projects, especially renovations. and expanded our reach both nationally and internationally. With our expertise as an e-design company we have expanded our reach both nationally and internationally, designing full homes from the ground up virtually.

Continuing to believe in our journey and what we had built was truly what has kept us going. Really understanding what our product was worth and increasing prices, even when it was against what we believed or for fear of pushback, really helped stay afloat. Understanding our bottom lines has really helped us keep the dream alive as we continue to learn and improve upon what we do each day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.swatchpop.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/swatchpop
• Facebook: facebook.com/swatchpop
• Other: Other instagram handles: @swatchpopjess @swatchpopkris

Image Credits
Images by Lauren Liz Photo, Bond Street Studio and Jeremy Segermeister.