We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Toro a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Melissa, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
Like almost all business owners and entrepreneur, we started Milan Home Staging from our home garage. Literally, we bought the first set of furniture, art and decoration and these items were in our garage waiting to be used in a listing. After our first staging, we bought the second set of furniture and so on until we reach enough inventory to stage five homes at the same time. Staging requires tons of items, from a little napkin or glass ware, all the way to sofas, rugs, and large canvas. Since Chad (My business partner and husband) and I were living in a 3 bedrooms home, we decided to set-up one bedroom as an office and the other one as a second storage for décor and accessories. When we launched the company back in 2018, no one knew who we are, obviously, and it took us few a months to start getting jobs. How did we scale up? we met with many realtors and builders face to face, we sponsored sales meetings in real estate offices, we made cold calls to realtors we found on HAR or Realtor.com and this how we started putting our name out there. We joined different professional associations, like HAR professional, GHBA, RESA, among others. We networked with hundreds of people every month and little by little people started knowing MILAN STAGING. At that point, our house was to small for our inventory, so we rented a storage unit, then a second one, until we had 6 storage unit. After that we took the risk of leasing a a small warehouse and the rest is history. We are know in a large warehouse, with inventory to stage 50 homes at the same time and since we open MILAN STAGING back in 2018 we have staged more than 300 homes.
Melissa, 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?
Chad, my partner and co-owner of Milan Staging, has been in the residential remodeling industry for a while. He saw the need in Houston of a professional staging company that could offer nice and pretty staging but yet affordable. We brainstorm the idea of opening a staging company, since overlaps with remodeling and real estate, and that is how Milan Staging was borne. Some of the staging companies we knew, offered amazing staging but at a very high price. We wanted to be different and offer staging services to Houston realtors and builders at a reasonable price. Professional Home Staging is the number 1 marketing tool in real estate, besides showcasing the house features in a better way, home staging helps buyers visualize the functionality of each room. We are proud of being able to solve issues for many real estate agents and home sellers. For example if a room is too small or lack storage space, through staging strategy we can make a space looks larger and with furniture pieces, like for examples dressers or console tables we can show the storage options for a space that is lacking storage.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
We used some savings and credit cards to put together the initial capital. After that we got a small loan from the SBA, small business association, and that is how we started building up the business.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
We had to pivot after the pandemic and we became very creative. For example we started offering our home staging consultation online, via Zoom calls. Which it was a great service because we were able to performed home staging consultations with clients out of Houston. We would make the walkthrough or tour the house via video and provide our recommendations and tell them which items must go and how to stage each room.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://milanstaging.com/
- Instagram: @milanhomestaging