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COVER STORY
Step
by Step
From a novice workroom to WCAA president, Beth Hodges has done it
right.
By Howard Shingle
Can someone working
in window coverings earn respect in the industry while working out
of his or her home? They can if they do it right. “I want people
in this industry who want to work out of their homes to know that
you can make a viable business out of it. You can do it, you can
do it the right way, you can be a respected professional,”
says Beth Hodges.
Hodges has been working out of her home her entire career in window
fashions—that’s 20-plus years—and has gone from being
a novice to the current president of the Window Coverings Association
of America (WCAA). She has done it though professionalism, service,
education, networking, by having a knack (she calls it a gift) for
putting things together and by being a people person if ever there
was one.
Within minutes of meeting her anyone can tell Hodges likes people
and establishes relationships with them. One of the keys to the
success of Beth Hodges’ Soft Furnishings, Elberton, GA, is
the personal relationship Hodges has with each person to whom she
offers her service. “We try, we really do try, to give every
client more than they expect,” she says. “It has never
been about just getting away with what we can get away with. It’s
doing it right; it’s trying to give them more than they expect.
It works!”
PUBLIC, INDUSTRY RECOGNITION
In addition to the responsibilities of running her own business,
Hodges has been using these same skills and talents to further WCAA’s
long-term goal: To be as recognizable and as synonymous with industry
education as ASID.
“We are always trying to be an education source,“ Hodges
says. “The two certification programs that we have are beyond
anything anybody else or any other program offers. It means something
to me when I see somebody with that little [certification] pin.
I really do believe that when somebody has gone through the trouble
to educate themselves, to take that test—which is not easy,
it’s a hard test—it should be recognized.”
The tests Hodges refers to are the Certified Window Treatment Consultant
and the Certified Workroom Professional examinations, both offered
through WCAA in on-site testing and on the Web. And, as she says,
the exams are not easy, only about 80 percent of first-time takers
pass, although, as in many other professions, the others are allowed
to retake it.
The purpose of the WCAA certification programs is to establish standards
of professionalism for window coverings dealers and workrooms from
business ethics to fabrication. Along those lines, Hodges notes
that WCAA is busy re-doing its Industry Standards Booklet. “There
has been such an outcry for standardization,” Hodges says,
“so that when I say ‘cascade’ to you, you know what
I’m talking about.”
For window coverings professionals, passing the exams is like being
board certified in their areas of specialization. For the association,
membership and certification is aimed at getting the public to recognize
WCAA as much as the industry. “We want people out there, when
they go to buy window coverings, to look for somebody who is a member
of WCAA,” Hodges says.
Public recognition of WCAA-certified professionals is seen as a
big step toward heightening the level of interior decorating that
is done and improving customer satisfaction. “I have had people
who have come to me and said that they just can’t decide what
they want,” Hodges says. “They’ve ordered from a
catalog four different things in the last four years and they just
get tired of them. Yet, if they could spend the money to have it
done right, professionally, it would last longer and they’d
be happy with it. Because they’re settling instead of actually
having it custom done for them so they can really get what they
want.”
Hodges first became aware of WCAA about eight years ago through
LeVelle Pinder, a long-time and ardent supporter of the association
and, herself, a past president. Hodges joined and, in her words,
has been joined ever since. “I thought, this is what we need,”
she recalls. “This is great to have some sort of an organization.
I also felt like it would give me credibility. I felt like being
part of a national organization would help the business.”
“I see nothing but up from here for WCAA,” she adds. “I’ve
seen so many changes in the last eight years. We’ve come so
far. I think the industry benefits from WCAA because people are
so much more educated.”
THE SMARTEST THING SHE EVER DID
The value of a good education is one Hodges learned in her own career.
She confesses to coming to sewing relatively late, after her first
two children were born. She began making clothes for them, then
doing alterations for others. Her move into the window coverings
industry came rather suddenly.
A woman in town had an account with a fabric supplier and would
go to people’s homes to measure and order window coverings.
“I stopped her in the store one day,” Hodges remembers,
“and I said, ‘I think if you need anybody to help you
with altering your draperies and things like that, I think I might
be able to help you do that.’ And she said, ‘Why don’t
you buy me out?’ We thought about it, and I thought if I bought
her out, at least she won’t be doing it.”
Hodges bought the woman’s business and everything that went
with it. “When I bought her stuff she put everything she had—all
the hardware, all of the papers, all of the fabric books—she
gave me all of it, and in there was a copy of D&WC magazine.”
From that issue, Hodges first learned about the World of Window
Coverings trade shows and educational seminars.
She decided to try a seminar, and just continued from there. “My
appetite was just whetted,” Hodges says. “I can’t
tell you what it felt like to sit there and talk to people who did
this same thing I had been stumbling around in the dark doing for
a couple of years—and the business was growing and growing
and growing—but I really didn’t know what I was doing.
I was doing OK, and what I did looked good, but I knew it could
look better.
“I made it a policy right from the beginning—still working
all by myself, doing everything all on my own, all of the design
work, all of the selling, no wholesale, all retail, installation,
everything—to start going to seminars. I went to at least one
a year and it cost me a bunch of money, but it was the smartest
thing I ever did. I learned the right way to do things.”
Hodges also learned she can run a real, professional and successful
business and still work out of her home. Today, Beth Hodges’
Soft Furnishings is about a 1,000-square-foot workroom in the basement
of her home with separate office and storage space, three worktables,
several industrial machines and four employees—three full-time
and one part-time. But the business grew slowly, over time, and
Hodges sees that as important to her success.
One of the things she says she has learned from her association
with WCAA and its research is that the businesses that last and
stay in the industry for a long time are the ones that have grown
slowly. The training and experience gained by starting small and
growing are invaluable. “You can’t go out and hire people
to do everything—you have to know how to do it yourself, step
by step,” Hodges says. “It can be overwhelming, and you’ve
really got to know what you’re doing.”
DO WHAT YOU’VE GOT TO DO
Besides knowing what to do, you’ve got to it, and at one time
or another Hodges has done just about everything. But now, she concentrates
on running the company. That can include answering the phone, talking
with customers and doing the public relations work. The fun part
for her, however, is the engineering work, which includes planning,
ordering and whatever else is necessary to prepare a job for sewing.
“I plan all of the jobs,” Hodges says. When the designers
that we work for send me a picture and a description of what they
want, I figure out how to make it. Then I engineer the job so that
it’ll turn out the way they want it to turn out.”
Her ability to do that comes from everything she has learned throughout
her career, but it’s also partly a gift. An admitted clotheshorse,
Hodges had two girls and wanted to dress them up. She had friends
who made clothes for their kids, so she thought she could, too.
“It almost came naturally,” she says. “From the first
thing I picked up I just knew how to put it together, how to engineer
it to make it work. That must be a gift because I don’t know
where that came from.” (Her mother sewed as a hobby, but Hodges
remembers often overhearing her cursing the sewing machine.)
When it comes to working with fabric, Beth Hodges’ Soft Furnishings
does it all. “We do draperies, shades, top treatments, cornices,
cushions, bedding—I can’t think of anything we haven’t
done,” Hodges says. “I try to do anything that the client
wants. Anything made out of cloth, basically.” Currently, she
finds the workroom doing lots of fancy drapery panels with more
use of interlining now, too. And silk. “Silk is just king,”
she says.
A few years ago, Hodges’ business grew to the point that she
didn’t want to handle it all by herself anymore, so she looked
to hire her first employee. That changed everything. It absolutely
changes what you do,“ she says.
As a result, Hodges did less sewing and more of the fun stuff. “I
would have to learned to sew all over again,” she admits. “There’s
no question in my mind that I could do it. Do I want to? No. I like
what I’m doing. I like working with people, and I get to do
what to me is fun stuff—figuring it out is fun to me.”
It also has meant her business grew even more. “When you refuse
to hire employees you limit the amount of money you can make,”
she says
.
A local manufacturing company that made fine ladies blouses downsized
and Hodges was able to have two women from the plant come to work
for her. “They are wonderful. They have a wonderful work ethic.
I am truly blessed by God for the people who work for me.”
At about the same time, Hodges did a gutsy thing: she hit the road
cold calling on designers. “I loaded up the samples and got
in the car and went cold calling. The first thing I did was I took
out the phone book for Athens (GA) and I looked to see who was ASID
because I thought they’d be serious about what they were doing,
and I called th
em up and made an appointment and went to see them. I didn’t
realize how gutsy it was.”
Her plan was to meet them, and to make it as easy as possible for
them to work with her. Those designers who already had workrooms,
she offered her services for whenever they were overloaded.
“Our economy here in Elberton is static. But I’m not.
When I didn’t get enough work I went out someplace and found
it—put my samples in the back of the truck. I’d ride by
a furniture store on my way to install a job somewhere and stop
and say, ‘See what we do?’ You do what you’ve got
to do.”
At least one of those cold calls is still a very good client today,
and the business has become about 85 percent wholesale to design
clients. “Whenever I take on new designers, it’s all about
elevating their product line so that they have the best window treatments
of any designer around because if their business prospers, our business
prospers,” Hodges says.
And Beth Hodges’ Soft Furnishings is prospering. From Elberton
to Athens, GA, to Greenwood, SC, Hodges has clients in New Jersey,
New York and Ohio. In addition, she has customers from years ago
coming back now for their second round of window treatments.
“More and more people seem to want nicer and nicer things,”
she says. “I think the industry is in good shape. Everybody
I talk to is busy.”
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