Creative Design Group

Setting the Stage for Sales Success

By Tonya Poole

Interior design industry veteran Sharon Moore of the Bay Area's Creative Design Group has spent the last three decades mastering the art of... sales. At first glance, the fields of sales and design may not appear to have much overlap, but for builders committed to getting the most from their model homes, the two are inextricably connected.

"I studied interior design in college, it was my major," says Moore. "I finished a five-year degree in interior architecture at the University of Florida, which involved three years of architecture and two years of interior design."

Moore worked with a variety of major design firms in Florida, Chicago and Atlanta before she and her husband relocated to Northern California. Having worked on staging model homes for a handful of clients back in Atlanta, Moore says she was prepared, and excited, when a builder in Danville asked her to design the interior of a model home there. The home later won the MAME award for Best Model Home in Northern California that year, and Moore says her career quickly took off.

First learning the ropes of design through major firms in the early part of her career, it was her work with new home builders that led Moore to become savvy in the business of sales - blending the two to help her clients achieve their sales and marketing goals in new home communities. Clients send over model home floor plans in the early stages, and Moore works closely with them to determine how furniture will work in each of the rooms, and evaluates the plan for overall feasibility. She recommends any minor changes necessary to improve the home's aesthetic value or layout, including window placements and adjustments to appliances, before the official architectural plans are produced. She then begins placing "hard furniture" in the home's plan. Oftentimes, she says, the results from catching a minor mistake on paper before it's solidified into the plan make big differences in the model's sales appeal.

"What I do is about more than just decorating a home," she says. "It's about working with a builder from the foundation up, starting that collaboration as soon as the community is in the planning stages, and throughout the permit and construction phases. I get a set of plans, we do some architectural critique - many times I'll even sit in the drawing room with the builder and architect. I'm involved and a part of the team through-out the process. It's much easier to move walls on paper than it is in the field."

Moore works with building industry clients to identify the target market and to merchandise and decorate the models with the interests, tastes and lifestyles of that target market in mind. The result? "When a potential buyer walks into the home, they feel right at home immediately."

Enhancing solid architecture and showcasing a home's unique features and appeal without overdoing it is Moore's calling card, and her work adds value to a home's ambiance without hiding its details. Her knack for knowing what design elements speak to each market segment - be it first-time buyers in condos, move-up families in spacious suburban homes or empty-nesters going for urban high-rise - has earned her the trust and business of builders from as far away as Sacramento to Fresno to Monterey.

"With first-time buyers, we want to accentuate the family gathering areas like the living room and family room," says Moore. "It's important to make family gathering easy, and not make rooms feel smaller with overstuffed furniture or too much going on. For similar reasons, scale is important, too. We need to make sure we aren't intimidating the first-time buyer with décor that's not intimidating, to be careful not to make the home feel out of their price range, even when it isn't." In contrast, Moore notes that mature and move-up buyers tend to respond to impressive details that can showcase their tastes and accomplishments. Spiral staircases, mosaic insets, silk window treatments, Old World charm and other fine features and materials are the sale-closers here.

Merchandising a home to fit specific market nuances requires more than just design sense, it requires the ability to evaluate - emotionally, economically, psychologically - the eyes through which potential buyers are seeing a home, and it's that intuitive ability that has won Moore and her design firm numerous awards throughout Northern California. Interest in her work has come from outside the state, too, though Moore says she prefers to keep it local and serve a small number of clients with a more custom approach.

"Because I do frame walk-throughs and drywall walk-throughs and make on-site decisions, it's really important for me to work locally and to be available to be there on short notice when necessary," she says. "I need to keep it close to home." In addition to designing model homes, Moore and her team of 30 professionals also work on the sales, welcome and information centers for many of her clients' communities - including the popular design centers where clients are able to come and select colors and materials to customize their homes. The complete package makes both design and economic sense for her clients, and helps to unify the feel of the community woven throughout its architecture.

While the bulk of her building clients work in the single-family, production sector, Moore says she'd love to take on more projects in the semicustom and custom arenas as well, including high-end, high-rise units in urban centers around the Bay Area.

Moore and the team at Creative Design Group work closely with clients as part of the project team, approaching each job first from an architectural perspective, and later, achieving the design, décor and merchandising of the home that reflects the values of the client's target market - an approach she believes goes above and beyond the decorator services offered by most staging and merchandising professionals. "It's a complete package, inside and out," she says. "And making it look beautiful is one thing, but I build that environment from the ground up based on the ultimate goal of selling homes for my clients."

For more information, contact: Sharon Moore Creative Design Group is located at 12907-H Alcosta Blvd. in San Ramon. Contact them at (925) 866-8007, info@smcdg.com or visit their website at smcdg.com

June 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue

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