Why Go Instant?

Our motto is pretty simple. “Exceptional Home Staging, Made Easy.” But it has not always been that way.

Spade and Archer has been staging homes since 2009. For those of you counting, that’s 13 years. For the first ten years, we used a fairly traditional system to price our projects. A client would call us or click on our “schedule a site visit” button and have one of our staff come out to meet with them on site to review the project. The team would then head back to the shop and put together a custom price based on that project. The entire pricing process took around a week or two and required the seller or seller’s agent to put in a least an hour of meeting time plus any travel time.

We started hearing complaints that we were difficult to work with. That was the last thing we wanted. “The pricing process took too long. There was too much correspondence. Our emails were too detailed.” To figure out where the largest breakdowns in our staging process were we started tracking each and every phone call. We found that 90% of the phone calls received asked the same question: “How much?” or some variation on that theme. We heard the term “ball park” a lot.

We needed to find a way to get a price in our clients hands quickly. This was how we developed the instant pricing tool. It took months of research, digging through historical data, finding first one, then two, then three, then ten different types of software to make it work. Once it did work, we had to convince our customers to trust it.

We launched the Monday after the COVID lockdown started. We had planned to call it “Instant Pricing” for months, but when COVID hit the biggest thing on everybody’s mind was not touching anything that somebody else had touched before. At that time we all thought COVID spread through touching surfaces. Over the weekend prior to the launch of instant pricing 1.0 we changed the name to “Touchless Pricing” and emphasized the fact that it was still safe to work with Spade and Archer, even if nothing else in the world was.

Very slowly, as we started to go through lockdown and learned more and more about COVID, we continued to emphasize how “safe” our new pricing tool was while at the same time also mentioning how fast it was. By the time the world started to normalize again, instant pricing had become a comfortable, reliable way to price home staging projects.

Every once in a great while we get a new customer who wants us to see their property prior to us giving a price for home staging and we gently explain that we would be more than glad to come out and take a look after they see our price and decide they would like to move forward. They almost always agree that the old system is more familiar, but the new system make more sense. In the end our clients in Seattle and Portland always find Spade and Archer provides “Exceptional Home Staging, Made Easy.” What more could you ask from a home stager?

COVID was hard, but it changed the entire way Spade and Archer operates for the better. How did COVID effect your business? Did you keep the changes or did you go back? Comment below.

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Meet Bella, A Millennial and our Communications Specialist

Let's talk millennials and home buying. With millennials currently being the largest buying demographic out there how has communication changed? My name is Bella, I am Spade and Archer’s Client Service Specialist, and I am a millennial. I am also a second time home buyer who bought a home in this ridiculously competitive market.

Bella Rubio is the voice on the other end of the line when you call Spade and Archer.

Millennials have grown up in an era of technology that has streamlined many things in our day to day lives and changed the way we communicate. While we grew up with Gen X teaching us to be respectful, educated and thoughtful in our interactions we have taken these values and made them our own.

We know how to present ourselves in a formal and polite manner. We have had to do so while we compete to get into the best colleges and land our next dream job. We have inherited the ability to present ourselves in a matter that older generations deem ’socially acceptable’. And while we have the ability to communicate this way, when needed, it isn’t always our preferred method of communication. We have big dreams and little time and we know it. We have a fire lit to be the best and do the most. And sometimes formalities get in the way of that. We enjoy being casual and straight to the point. We don’t need the fluff in every conversation, rather the take away.

The experience of buying an out of state home was nothing short of a miracle. The excessive amount of Facetime calls, DocuSigns and online interactions were nearly overwhelming. As a millennial, I understood the processes and I appreciated the promptness they provided. My real estate agent is a Gen X and while she had her strengths the way we communicated was evidently different. She gave a longer message that could have been a couple sentences or the occasional call that could have been a quick text. While I trusted her (and am eternally grateful for her) we each approached an interaction in a different way.

Communication can be tricky regardless of generation. There’s what I say. What I think I said. What you heard. What you say. What you think you said. And what I heard. Now while all millennials aren’t the same, we can agree the way we communicate is different from other generations. Weather we have social media, iPhones or the internet to thank for this we are here for it. So, pull up a chair and listen up as millennials buy homes and raise families. How will communication from one generation to the next continue to transform?

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To hear more about how Millennials communicate listen to our episode of Behind the Yard Sign with special guest Jacob Donahue.

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Let’s Get Uncomfortable!

At Spade and Archer we are constantly thriving to become the best version of ourselves, professionally and personally, and sometimes that means getting outside our comfort zone. We sat down with Amy Romberg of Windermere, co-host of Behind the Yard Sign and Justin Riordan, Spade and Archer Founder to explore how they each are stepping outside their comfort zones.

Amy is learning all about her new career in real estate

In this season of Amy’s life she is allowing herself grace as she is constantly learning about real estate. After leaving a comfortable career where she had reached the ceiling of growth she took the leap into her new chapter of real estate. She speaks on how when we become comfortable we become complacent and how she is constantly looking for the 'next thing' that can help her on her journey of growth. Amy states, “we have the opportunity to learn so much as we step outside our comfort zones”. It’s when we step outside of the things that make us comfortable that the possibilities around us become limitless.

Justin in headed to Belize to learn to Scuba dive with his husband for their 20th anniversary.

As Spade and Archer grows so do the opportunities for Justin to step outside of his comfort zone. He touches on the growth of the company and the shift he has experienced as a result. This shift has allotted him the time to pour into his self growth. He shares, on a personal level, how he is taking scuba lessons so he can go scuba diving on his 20th wedding anniversary in Belize with his husband. Which is quite unfamiliar territory for a man of habit who vacations the same city, hotel, and even room twice a year. He shares how stepping away from things that are familiar and comfortable "Forces us to ride an edge where there’s so much learning and growth and vulnerability that takes place.”

So, next time you are given the opportunity to co-host a podcast, learn something new or grow into the next version of you don’t hold yourself back because it’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Take a leap and do it BECAUSE it’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar. You might just be surprised what you learn along the way.

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Spade and Archer Secrets

Spade and Archer has had a rich history since 2009. During that time an awful lot of folk lore and tall tales have been spun around our storied little business. Here's a collection of some of those fun facts about your favorite home staging company. From the origin of our name, to all the easter eggs we leave behind, to how we avoid putting fake items in our houses…

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Spade and Archer was named after the work place of the main character, Sam Spade from the The Maltese Falcon. His partner, Miles Archer dies in the first paragraph of the book. Poor Miles. Our founder, Justin Riordan, was living at 891 Post Street in San Francisco, California when he read The Maltese Falcon for the first time. The novel was not only written in the very same building by author Dashiell Hammett, but also the main character Sam Spade also comes home to 891 Post Street after investigating Miles Archer’s murder. That’s how Spade and Archer Design Agency was named. One of the many mysteries surrounding our colorful company culture.

891 Post Street in San Francisco

HONORING OUR CORE VALUES

At Spade and Archer we talk an awful lot about our core values. Every once in a while you can find a Scrabble game, shopping list, or stack of books that gives clues as to what we hold dear. Keep an eye out for these four words: Graceful, Adept, Tenacious, Thoughtful.

Check out the words on the board, they tell a story about how we tick.

CALLING CARDS

We love to leave small clues, or “easter eggs” that we have been in a house. Next time you are in a staged home and find a typewriter in place of where a computer would go, be sure to check the script left behind. If you spot page 17 of The Maltese Flacon you are sure to be standing in a Spade and Archer Home Staging. Also, near that typewriter there is most likely a tin of brand new No. 2 pencils with perfect erasers.

The typewriter both replaces the fake computer and holds the script from the Maltese Falcon.

As you wonder into the kitchen and near the open cook book you spot a vintage radio you can also be assured Spade and Archer has been there. Not only are these vintage radios out on projects, Justin and his family enjoy this tradition in their home as well. Every morning it takes five minutes or so for the antique “tubes” to warm up in the radio before the day’s headlines float across the air and mingle with the smell of cooking bacon and brewing coffee.

Antique radios can be found in most of the kitchens we stage or in collections filling a bookcase.

REPLACING THE FAKERY

One principle Spade and Archer abides by is ’No Fakery’. No blow-up beds, no fake TV’s, no fake computers. If you are staring at a wall were the TV would normally go and you spot artwork, take a step back and look for a projector near by. This fun throwback replicates were the TV would go while inviting you in on joke of it not being there.

The antique projector and art work takes the place of the fake flat screen monitor.

Next time you are in a staged home be sure to look for us, Spade and Archer, around every corner. We will let you know we have been there in the smallest of details. Here are a few shots of Easter eggs we have left behind, see if you can spot them. The answer will follow.

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LET’S PLAY!