Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marjan Sattarzadeh. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Marjan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

At Jan Studio our goal is to allow clients to dictate what their needs are and for us to find a way to work with them based on those needs.

My educational background is in Interior Design, out of school, I worked as a textile designer in New York City, and it was in that job that I fell in love with product design and production. It was also then that I quickly realized a career in design always meant extending beyond designing. Design is and always will be a small part of the job. Design is about budgets, delivery, installation, coordination, the psychology of working with people and so much more!

I’ve continued to carry that understanding throughout my career and always wanted to have a realistic approach to the “design problem”. The industry standard is usually to hire an individual or company based on a “look” or specific service that they can provide but interior design, decorating, staging and anything alike are so far from that. It’s really about understanding what needs to happen, in what order, and how to execute. Generally speaking, some designers won’t move forward with a client without taking on the whole project, room , or space, but for me, it’s not about having an ideal outcome. My job is to make a project the best that it can be given the parameters and to take my ego out of the equation.

My services now mostly fall under consulting and helping clients achieve realistic goals with realistic budgets relating to spaces, styling, and staging for real estate, and photography, in addition to overall project management. I still actively pursue licensing agreements as an outlet for product development.

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 background and context?

When I started Jan Studio, I was working out of my East Village studio in my living space. I was freelancing and designing for other companies based in New York. After a few years in New York and a year of working on my own, was when I finally decided to make the transition back down to Miami where I grew up and my family was.

Shortly after arriving in Miami in 2016, I decided to come out of the service part of the industry and to start creating a product line. I was interested in production, design, and development, and onward I went to create my home product line in India, Jan. The line consisted of many categories, ceramics, textiles, small furniture items, and more. I will always hold onto the memories of importing, traveling, and designing my brand. Jan is and always will be my baby, but when the pandemic hit, like many others, supply chain issues happened, shipping costs were sky high, and forget about traveling overseas to manage production. I kept getting asked the same question, “what will you do with Jan”?

I am so proud of myself for going to India and following my dream to curate and create something beautiful, but my biggest message is if something is no longer working, the best thing to do is move on, not fight it, and fast. We all have attachments as business owners but after almost 6 years, that chapter was evolving and it was time to move forward. There was no liquidation, no big moment of “everything must go” or shame, (you can still in fact purchase some items through my website and select retailers) but better yet a new approach, and reinvesting money back into inventory was not something I wanted to do.

It was in 2021 that I slowly started to transition back into service again. Sometimes it takes trying one thing to recognize your strength in another, most business people will tell you that. For me the key to business has always been flexibility and having different income streams.

Is there a mission driving your creative journey?

I’ve always been interested in helping people. Some people are doing that through teaching, psychology, medicine, meditation, yoga, etc, but my mission is to help people live and experience comfort, functionality and beauty, to help in a way that they didn’t know they needed.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

You can move on from something and not fail. Vulnerability is the key to becoming successful in business. Things are in a constant state of change and business is no different, you must always be there to steer the ship and to be accountable even if things aren’t going your way.

Contact Info:

• Website: jan-studio.com
• Instagram: mrsmilovanovic
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/marjan-sattarzadeh-63b78a5a

Image Credits
James Jackman