We are excited to share the news that we have recently joined the Holland & Sherry, San Francisco showroom.

Bay area friends & clients, please visit the showroom and reach out to Micah Spaniel and his team to interact with our complete line of textiles and wallcoverings that are artfully displayed.

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To learn more about Micah, listen in to our Friday Five conversation or read an excerpt from the conversation:

1 – How did you get your start working with Holland and Sherry and interior design sales?

I went to school for interior design; it was my passion growing up. My dad is a Baptist preacher in a small town in Texas, and I would be the one doing the wedding decorating for the church, and I had a Christmas light business for everyone in town. Design was something I always wanted to do.

After design school, I had a retail job. And it propelled me into being the next thing for me for the next eight years. I learned about managing people and how people shop, which is a valuable tool in my current role. I made my foray into sales for home in Houston at Holland & Sherry when the job kind of fell into my lap.  A friend recommended me for the position, and it was my dream job. It was my experience in retail mixed with my interest in interior design, meeting in the middle. That was seven years ago!

2 – Your passion and enthusiasm for your work show through. It amazes me that you and your team built out your new expanded showroom yourselves. Can you tell me about the expansion from the smaller showroom you were in when you first arrived in San Francisco to the beautiful large space you currently occupy?

A lot of people would probably call me crazy, but I am super ambitious. Especially here in San Francisco, I knew there was a lot of business to be had and many great clients. I knew the expansion would pay off. We doubled our showroom’s size, and the timing ended up being a month before the pandemic hit. Our launch party was two weeks before San Francisco shut down!

3 – How your showroom has handled dealing with the challenges of the pandemic?

It has been challenging. But now, more than ever, it’s been essential to connect and finding different ways to communicate with our clients. It’s necessary to recognize that we are not working in the usual ways we were used to, and neither are the design firms. Most people are working remotely, so we’re not sending a scheme to one person, often we are sending samples to 3 or 5 team members, and we are shopping for them.

We have found successful ways to navigate and have had many clients visiting us in the showroom. In an average week, we would probably have 50 clients coming into the showroom. We have found our way through it. Sylvia is our outside salesperson in the Peninsula. And she’s fantastic; she’s devised a system of dropping off a road kit, with all of our new products and some of our best-selling items: a bag of rug samples, a bag of wallpaper samples & textiles, and just leaving it at a client’s office for three days. And then she goes back to pick it up with a sample request. And we deliver the samples within a week. This has been successful because it allows our clients to view the product on their own time.

4 – What do you enjoy the most about your job?

The thing I enjoy the most is connecting with clients in the showroom. Sometimes, our jobs can be a lot of paperwork, follow up, or sitting behind the computer, and when designers come in and ask if I have the time to help them- that is precisely what I want to be doing. The emails and follow-up can wait; I’m happy to help them to scheme their project. That is my passion. One of the significant differences between clients in San Francisco compared to Houston is the variety of the design projects, budgets, and aesthetics. Our San Francisco- Bay Area clients could be doing a historical 10- bedroom home that requires super-specific rugs to another that could be modern, to French country. It’s enjoyable to see all these products and projects come to life. We do a lot of custom here at Holland & Sherry, and it’s gratifying to do custom things for clients and create something unique for them and their projects. This is one of my favorite parts of my job.

5 – What do you think he would be doing, if not Interior Design Sales?

I have not thought about this until you asked me this question! It’s not anything that I have considered in a long time. Since I moved to California and experienced my first earthquake, I’ve been incredibly interested in Geology, which is the total opposite of interior design! I watch videos every night about geology, and I follow a professor who does all these classes online. And that’s my side passion now, which sounds crazy. But I think it’s fascinating.

And what is something that you cannot live without?

I would say my team here at Holland & Sherry. They are really, really impressive. Sounds cliché’, but we have a fun time at work and every day is enjoyable. We get along very well, and each of us brings something different to the table. They do something that’s better than anything that I could do, which helps fill in the gaps, which I think is essential when you’re creating a team. As you know, you hire someone that’s better than you in certain areas and let them do what they’re good and make a combination of each our strong points.

What is your favorite pattern in our collection?

As we were putting the wings and ironing the displays, I could see the line’s evolution from going through the pattern numbers from where you started to where you are now. I have a few favorites, and I love the wallpapers.

I think they’re really- some of them are versions of your fabric patterns, and some are new. And I think they look authentic. Because they’re coming from a place of pattern making and printmaking. We’ve had a great response from clients, as they fill a gap like no other line is doing.

And my favorite textile pattern would be Chatham in sunflower. I’m really into yellow right now. The color is really happy but not too happy, and the embroidery is beautiful.