We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Madonna Collingwood a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Madonna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today 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?

At Studio Institute Denver I teach our Interior Design and Construction Management students how to find key vendors for their projects. We source materials and labor through vendors and distributors for our designs. Vendors in our industry only sell to interior designers at a wholesale price and their products are not available to the general public. Using vendors ensures that the client couldn’t have just gone to home depot and did a DIY and it also ensures that your design cannot be easily copied or replicated – this is why people hire interior designers. we source and create custom products and materials for each project.

I utilize the Denver Design Center on South Broadway to find a lot of our FF&E and finishes. Each student gets a tour of the Design Center during their time in our 6 month program where they are introduced to vendors and have an opportunity to order samples and build custom pieces.

At Studio Institute Denver we also teach our students how to budget and estimate for labor and installation. I teach the importance of including freight, disposal, and prep work in their final project proposal. Through my 9 year career as a designer I was able to build a small network of reliable installers that I loved working with and they have become my go-to people to work with on projects. Each installer has a different niche that they specialize in. I love working with Denver glass interiors for showers, Whitehorse Stone for countertops, and Alvarez tile for flooring.
The process of creating a deal with the vendors we use starts with the concept, as does every other aspect of a design project. I teach our students how to come up with a concept for their design and how to determine what materials and finishes we are searching for as well as who would be best to install them. Once we have determined our FF&E we then contact our vendors and installers to get pricing and build our estimate for our clients final design proposal.

One easy way to determine the best vendors for our design projects is using the SketchUp 3D warehouse. I teach all of my students how to create 3D models of their designs in Google SketchUp during our 6-12 month program.
A lot of vendors will create models of their own fixtures and upload it to the 3D warehouse to scale. Vendors such as Knoll, Herman Miller, and Allsteel have preloaded models of their furniture that is available to use in our 3D models, which makes the entire ordering and scheduling process easier once we are in the final design stages of the project.

I help our students at SID understand how to create and keep a source list of products from their selected vendors that includes details such as color and style numbers, shipping time, and size information. I make sure that my students learn how to complete all of the details on the back end of the design project so that when they present their concept to a client they have physical renderings, samples, and locations of where each product depicted in the conceptual design is sourced from.

The most important lessons that our students leave our program at SID with when it comes to sourcing and ordering are related to the process of selection.
We help our students prepare for their projects by knowing the specifications of each material they have used in their design along with vendor and sourcing information. Our students work on every kind of project from non profit and government work (for example jails, homeless shelters, section 8 multi family – to luxury high end residential and hospitality) so they are prepared to answer questions about budgets and understand every type of material from all spectrums.

Madonna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Meet Professor Collingwood
Founder and educator, and professional in the building trades field. She has designed a 6 month accelerated program here at Studio Institute Denver. She teaches students everything they need to know to start a career in building trades, without the 100K college price tag. Get your foot in the door, it starts here.

Studio Institute Denver Founder and Professor MaDonna Collingwood explores how interior design impacts our physical, and mental health and well-being. Studio Institute Denver offers accelerated programs in interior design and construction management. She helps individuals who are pursuing a career change while still working to keep daily expenses.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I have funded my business completely on my own. I was initially denied a lot of business loans, but I was able to receive a small loan with high interest, and I used it to start my company filing, and initial website creation and then worked really hard to pay it off in the first year. I also was able to get a few small business credit lines, but those have to be paid back as well.

I put together the initial capital that I needed to start the business by working full time and staying determined. I didn’t have any handouts or investors, so I continued to work as a full time employee while also building the business. I worked 70 hour weeks between having a full time job and also teaching and building Studio Institute Denver for the first 2 years. Once the business was more established and we started to break even and pay off the initial debts I was able to explore more financial streams through the school, such as the new Interior Design 101 textbook I wrote that is going to be published this year.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Entrepreneurship in general is an uphill battle. My journey started at 19 years old when I started at community college studying Interior Design. I went through 7 years of college to get my Master’s Degree and learn how to teach. I also worked professionally as an Interior Architect for 9 years to fully understand all aspects of a design project and also gain experience in different companies to best understand the industry culture. I have always worked full time, while I was in college and also while building my business so it has been a long and exhausting journey. When I have students who graduate, finish the program, and start working as professional Interior Designers and Project Managers it makes everything worth it.
I love the feeling I get from knowing that I have helped someone accomplish their dreams without having to take the same long, and expensive route that I took.
My passion in this industry is helping other designers get to where I am, in the most efficient way. I built this program based off of the idea of “If I could go back, knowing what I know now, how would I do things differently.”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.studioinstdenver.com
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