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COVER STORY
3-In-1
Even with multiple outlets for talents, Scot Robbins is happiest
creating at his worktable.
By Howard Shingle
Scot Robbins couldn’t
do more if he were three people. As it is, he is partner in Scot
Robbins Interiors, Hermitage, TN, a custom drapery fabrication studio
featuring high-end window treatments sold wholesale to designers
and fabric stores. He also runs Scot Robbins & Co., the sole
U.S. distributor of the Parkhill Royale Swags and Tails System and
a supplier of other workroom-related equipment. Finally, he’s
an industry speaker teaching full-day seminars around the country
specializing in tips and shortcut techniques that speed up workroom
production.
Whew!
Which of these avenues Robbins enjoys most is difficult to determine.
As a teacher, he knows he can help those with less experience than
he to avoid the rigors of trial-and-error learning. As a supplier
of workroom equipment, he has had the opportunity to travel across
the United States and Europe demonstrating products that make fabrication
easier and faster. But perhaps he’s happiest at his table in
his workroom at his home. All his life Robbins has been around things
being fabricated. As a youth he watched his mom at a sewing machine,
and his dad upholstering and manufacturing furniture. “I’ve
always needed to work in a three-dimensional element,” Robbins
says. “I’ve tried graphics and fashion design, but I need
the outlet to actually make something tangible.” That’s
how Scot Robbins Interiors came into being; the other jobs followed.
“It is, sometimes, very challenging to carry the workload that
I do,” confesses Robbins. “But I wouldn’t have it
any other way. I’m extremely happy that I can use the talents
that I have.”
THE THING ABOUT WHOLESALE . . .
Scot Robbins Interiors is celebrating 10 years in 2005. Scot and
his wife, Kim, partnered in the business during what turned out
to be their most trying experience. Kim was eight months pregnant
with the couple’s first son while Scot was working for a drapery
shop but was at the point of starting his own business. “The
stage was set,” he remembers. “I was getting there. A
creative person is usually limited working for someone else. I felt
for me and my talent to grow, I needed to open my own custom drapery
studio.”
One morning, as he arrived at work, he was told his wife had called
and their house was on fire. “It was one of the most devastating
times I’ve ever had to go through. It was like our world had
crumbled around us,” Robbins says. Fortunately, the only thing
the Robbins lost was their home, but the incident set back the start
of Scot’s business by two years. “I’m a stronger
person because of those things,” he says.
When it finally got started, Scot Robbins Interiors was a retail
business, but three years into it that changed. Robbins got an opportunity
to work with the Nashville, TN, Calico Corner store doing its top
treatments and Roman shades. That work started the wholesale part
of the business and Robbins began adding decorators. Now the business
is 90 percent wholesale with a few retail customers by referral.
“The thing about wholesale is that either you like it or you
don’t,” Robbins explains. “You don’t get a lot
of credit and glory for wholesale work, but I’ve learned that
if that work is coming in and I don’t have to get out and beat
the bushes for it and chase it down, I am much happier here at my
table and workroom than having to go out and hunt and look for a
job.”
Robbins also enjoys the challenge of working with creative decorators.
“There is a difference between wholesale and retail sales.
Sure the retail sale is great because you get to charge more, but
the wholesale price is still good and while the decorators that
I work with might have other workrooms that they send things to,
when they’ve got that difficult window and they’ve got
that special, it’s-got-to-be-perfect job, they will send it
to me,”
he says.
“To me that is the challenge. Give me a photograph or a drawing
or your idea of something you have come up with and let me figure
it out. That’s part of the challenge; that’s the creativity
part of what I do, making that which is on a piece of paper into
something that is creative on a window—it’s the three-dimensional
part of me. I need to create stuff. That’s what is so fun,”
Robbins says.
“I personally have found my niche,” he continues. “I’ve
taken the sewing talent and went into this area. There are a lot
of areas that a person can go into using the ability to run a sewing
machine. Our industry is so much more than running a sewing machine.
We’re building, we’re creating, we’re upholstering,
we’re designing, we’re doing all kinds of things. When
it gets down to it, sewing is a minor part of the actual construction
of that window treatment because you have to be able to draft patterns,
you’ve got to be able to alter it to fit whatever size you’re
working on.”
For Robbins, all his time spent in the workroom is worth it as a
creative outlet, as a way to ensure his decorators have the best-looking
window treatments, and as a source of income. “My objective
is to make [my designer clients] look good because when they look
good, I’m going to look real good in my bank account because
they are going to continue to send me business! I have, over the
years, been able to charge more and more and more, and now it has
gotten to where it’s the reputation of the quality that I provide
that means I can charge the prices that I do,” Robbins says.
To help, Robbins has invested in professional workroom equipment
and urges others in the business to do the same. “I am a big
believer in purchasing the right equipment to have a professional
workroom,” he says. “Sure I started out on the kitchen
floor like everybody else, but when I went professional I had everything
in place. I had industrial machines and added better equipment as
I went along. If I had it to do over, I would have borrowed the
money to have that döfix iron and to have that expensive industrial
serger and on and on, because the equipment that you have speeds
up your production and it gives your work a much more professional,
finished look.
“I’m a firm believer in purchasing the right equipment
to do the right job. That way you make more money because you cut
your time spent on a project and you don’t charge any less
for that product.”
A NIGHTMARE
If there is a downside to working wholesale, it’s the level
of communication necessary with the decorator. “I work with
a couple of decorators for whom I go out on the initial measurements,”
Robbins says. “Now I am responsible for those measurements.
If the decorator sends me the figures, then they are responsible
for those measurements in case there is a problem. But I am real
big on asking a hundred questions—‘Did you take this into
consideration?’—because I only want to make that window
treatment one time.”
“I have an installer’s background,” Robbins adds,
“so when I go out and measure a job, I am looking at it from
an installer’s view. I take the knowledge of what I have measured
for and consider it during the actual fabrication process. I know
where it’s going to go, and I can fabricate it to its best
advantage depending on how it’s going to be installed. You
get into all types of tricks for bay windows, or transoms, or Palladian’s,
or whatever it is. You may have some difficult challenges. You have
to be able to figure out how to install it.”
Robbins remembers one horror story from much earlier in his career.
He created an oversize (150-inch) hinged cornice that was to be
installed wall-to-wall in a high-rise apartment. The measurements
were incorrect and the cornice ended up being too wide.
“The cornice had a stair step at either end, so I couldn’t
tear it down and cut if off on one end, I had to do it on both ends.
That was a nightmare,” he says.
NEVER SACRIFICE QUALITY
If Robbins were to select one area he had to specialize in it probably
would be top treatments, swags, cornices and Romans. “But with
the trend of drapery panels coming into play more and more, I am
having to get more involved in those,” he says.
That’s fine for Robbins because these treatments call for all
the extra touches. “Through the nineties we went through the
trend of having mostly top treatments, and now it has changed to
a lot of drapery panels, a lot of the pinch-pleat draperies that
open and close. But those panels now have embellishments and trims
and a banded edge or a corded edge, different types of pleating
at the top with a gorgeous rod. The hardware industry is in such
a boom right now, whether it’s wrought iron or resin or wood
or carved wood or inlaid in all the different finishes—faux
and custom finishes—to match the fabric.
“The fabrics coming now are so interesting with the designs
and the technology,” he notes. “I did some work with two
pieces of sheer with raffia spun through it. The fabric designers
have expanded what they can do and what they can come up with.”
With decorator clients in and around Tennessee and as far off as
Chicago, IL, Robbins finds the market for beautiful fabric treatments
is as strong as it ever was. “The people who can afford the
custom window treatment have always had those custom treatments,”
he says. “The trend of having just a blind and nothing else
on the window . . . well, a lot of it was because the homeowners
just couldn’t afford nice custom window treatments. Custom
work, to some degree, has always been there.”
As the only person in a custom window treatment workroom, does that
mean Robbins will be looking to add employees? Doubtful. If the
workload gets heavy, he is a believer in sub-contracting some out—basic
items such as drapery panels that don’t have a lot of embellishments
or add-ons. But adding employees is not something he’s looking
to do. “That’s an expansion that I personally am not ready
to do because of taxes and insurance and all the other things that
would have to take place for me to have employees,” he says.
No matter how much work he has, there is one thing that will not
change: “Never sacrifice quality,” Robbins says. “My
name in on the product that is being installed. I am responsible
for the outcome and success of each job. If I have to work all night
on a project and lose money in the process, I will not sacrifice
the quality. If I have underbid a job, it is my loss. The quality
remains the same.”
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