Meet the Pro

Briana Hall is the owner of Wilder Roots Design, a full interior design studio based in Huntsville, Alabama. Her firm specializes in "mainly full scale remodels, but we do anywhere from kitchens, bathrooms to whole homes and additions." What started as a one-person operation has grown into a thriving design business with a team of five designers taking on increasingly complex projects, including a recent 6,000 square foot whole-home remodel and an ambitious basement transformation featuring a wine cellar, whiskey lounge, movie room, and more.

The Struggle

Before Materio, Briana Hall of Wilder Roots Design struggled with the chaos of managing interior design projects. "I feel like you have it in all these different locations. And then you're just printing out and sending a PDF through email floor plans. And then maybe someone found a PDF in their email that wasn't the most up to date," she explains. "Nobody knew like 'oh, this is the latest one' or you just had your contractors like calling you or sending emails about like, what are we using here? What are we using here?"

The scattered information led to miscommunications and errors: "It was just all over the place, and nobody knew a hundred percent what was going on."

Briana's business faced multiple challenges that prevented growth:

"I don't know if it was necessarily a mishap, it was more of I was just tired of sending floor plans here, or doing the spreadsheets and having to like print stuff off. Or you know, getting phone calls 800 times a day of like, what is this? What is this, what is this? And I'm like, look here, look there, or look, you know, somewhere else, and it's just like it was a cluster."

Her information was scattered across spreadsheets and Honeybook, which "was not efficient enough for all of the things that we needed to use." This disorganization created numerous problems:

1. Outdated specifications: "The scariest part [was] nobody knew like 'oh, this is the latest one'"

2. Miscommunications: Contractors constantly calling to ask "what are we using here?"

3. Ordering errors: "You might have put something in like tile or whatnot, but you then maybe didn't write out all of it. So then, whenever the contractor ordered something, it was not a hundred percent what you wanted."

Meeting Materio

Briana decided to try Materio, which provided a clear system to organize her projects. "Having something all in one location where you're like just go look here, and you can get all of your answers" became the solution she needed.

A Plan for Success

Materio provided a clear path forward:

"Now that we are using Materio, we all have different jobs and different roles, and we can all see who's done what. I create the vision, I create mood boards, I put them into Materio because I have the meeting with the client, and then we have another girl who takes all of that that I have done, and she will either make the selections, or if I've made the selection, she will then fill in the pricing, which is then really great, because it's all right there, and we know what it is that we're having to price out."

This chain continued with another team member creating final drawings and detailed elevations using Materio's data and handling the final ordering process.

Transformation

With Materio as her partner, Briana's business transformed:

"I would say, with Materio, it makes it very easy for us to understand everyone's roles... I think the efficiency that Materio has created has allowed us to take on certain roles and then see that we just have so much going on that I just need a helping hand to be an extension of me."

When Briana first started with Materio, she "probably had like one, maybe 2 projects." Now they've expanded to 25 projects and continue growing: "I know it's gonna grow and I'm like, let's go. I'm here for it. We're organized. We got this."

Her team has grown from just herself and her husband to five people, with a new designer starting soon: "We will be a team of 5, which is a big deal."

Success

The biggest win came when Briana saw what Materio could do with their designs:

"The first time that I really realized wow, like nothing else really does this for interior designers... [was] when we started drawing up elevations, and it was the first time that we did a kitchen remodel using Materio. When we drew up the backsplash we were able to scale it all... we were like, wow, like we literally can use what we've already drawn, and be able to know how much square footage of this tile to use and how much to order."

Another key success came from Materio's floor-plan mapping: "The first time that we had more than one room remodel that we use Materio in where we had to then show where all the lights go... the contractors like, 'well, where does this one go? Where does this one go?' And it was already all tagged in Materio. And they're like, 'Oh, I mean, every single time that I show the contractor they're like, oh, what?' And I'm like, 'Yes, it shows you where it goes.'"

As Briana puts it, "that's probably just like the most exciting feature, honestly, is letting people know like we've selected this, yes, but this is exactly where it goes."

The system has impressed clients as well. Briana recalls one client visit to a tile store: "She got in the car with me, and she [said], 'Brianna, she just said, you are just so organized.' I'm like, 'it's Materio.'"

When asked what she would tell other designers considering Materio, Briana enthusiastically responds:

"It's more of like a word vomit of 'you have to get it. You have to use it. It is amazing. It's everything, all in one place.' I think that's the big kicker for me. It's like everything is all in one place. I love that you can put all the selections in. It has the link to where you need to go. I love that it's like you have our price, the client's price, you see all of that, and then you see all that on the back end too... The fact that [clients] get to approve things, I think, is the biggest thing for me... it literally shows you who actually approved it, what day? You just can't get any better than that."

When asked what she'd miss if Materio disappeared tomorrow? "All of it, like all of it." Briana would particularly miss "the fact that we can grab the selections off of the Internet and put it into our design library... it captures all the information that you need per selection, and I love that it has like the place for the link, so that we can easily go back to it and see what it is that we're looking at. I feel like that's the biggest game changer for me, because that is where spreadsheets go awry and they're just all over the place."