As an interior designer and creative collaborator, I live to harness the power of aesthetics. In my work with clients, of course, we strive for alignment and a sense of wellbeing and consciousness. However, we also strive to optimize customer experience, thus increasing sales and broadening the customer base. What I have enjoyed about building Laurence Carr Design, is encountering burgeoning to well-established businesses in other fields with a similar commitment to wellness and a deep understanding of the power of aesthetics. And this is what drew me to Savour Partnership.
Founders of Savour Partnership, Leslie Carothers and Sam Henderson have combined their hard-earned skills in strategic planning, copywriting, video editing, graphic design, and more to create services that give businesses a strategic advantage through beautiful design in online visual communications. When implemented, Savour Partnership’s offerings drives businesses to grow more steadily, ultimately adding long-term financial value.
Their clients have raved about their experience working with Savour Partnership, crediting their work with an elevated aesthetic, improved user experience, and quantifiable growth.
It is my pleasure to share an interview by Laurence Carr Design with Sam and Leslie on Savour Partnership’s philosophy and work, which promises to shed light on the relationship between beautiful design and success in business.
LCD: Now that Savour Partnership is launched and well underway, do you feel that furniture vendors and interior design business owners now come to you with a better understanding and a better appreciation for beautiful digital design?
SP: The power of beautiful digital design to increase email sign-ups, inquires, and sales is still not well understood by many furniture manufacturers because they have not yet invested in conducting A/B testing. An exception to this would be our client, Seasonal Living, one of the USA’s premiere boutique indoor/outdoor furniture, lighting and decorative accessories manufacturers, who have done this testing and who has experienced an increase in inquiries from designers as a result of elevating Seasonal Living’s visual online presence through their new consumer lifestyle magazine, Seasonal Living.
For those interior designers who are our clients, (found on our site at www.savourpartnership.com/clients) they have definitely experienced an increase in email sign-ups as a result of having their own email opt-in digital magazines on their sites and, in some cases, they are experiencing 24/7 revenue generation from the affiliate product links contained in those magazines. For a testimonial about this, see the blog of interior designer Carla Aston on www.carlaaston.com/designed.
LCD: In a world of AR and VR, what does the unprecedented convergence of digital and interior design look like for Savour Partnership? What do you foresee that could happen in terms of projects and collaborations?
SP: We can foresee collaborating with major brands who want to incorporate AR and VR experiences and/or outbound links into the digital publications we produce for them.
For instance, we could foresee producing a digital magazine or publication for Amazon, or any major e-commerce brand or manufacturer, with AR links embedded into the magazine so that their readers could click the link to be taken to an augmented reality landing page site, where, if they sign up, they can play with all the pieces in a new collection – in augmented reality.
LCD: How does this new technology period in the architecture and interior design industries translate into the experience for next generations of luxury buyers?
SP: The next generation of luxury buyers values experiences more than *products.* They are, in general, living smaller, traveling more, and have health and wellness as a primary focus in their lives.
They still need *products* for their homes and workplaces, of course, but for them, luxury is about an experience that surprises and delights them – and saves them time. That could mean providing them with an augmented reality experience in your office, on your website or on your phone so they can make decisions faster, and it could also mean taking them on luxury trips to meet makers, so they feel part of what others have limited access to seeing. It could also mean taking them to the Consumer Electronics Show, to experience for themselves all of the technology that will be incorporated into their homes or workplaces.
LCD: How does your core belief about the impact of beautiful digital design on the customer experience translate into the physical commercial realm?
SP: We believe that beauty heals our souls. We believe that all humans are attracted to the core elements of beauty: rhythm, proportion, scale, and harmony. We all sense beauty in nature, immediately, even if we don’t have words for what we are feeling. We need beauty. It is through our business, Savour Partnership, where we design and write these gorgeous digital publications for our clients, that we are able to design in these elements of beauty graphically, while also incorporating 24-7 revenue generating opportunities. This is how we help businesses translate this core need we all have for beauty into the commercial realm.
LCD: Your digital and graphic design style evokes strong, visceral feelings. What does your work process look like?
SP: Sam Henderson and I (Leslie Carothers/ @tkpleslie ) are the two co-founders and owners of Savour Partnership.
Sam lives in Dallas ( but will be moving permanently to Paris in early 2019) and I live 30 minutes south of Houston, Texas, in League City, TX. We work together, long distance, and for us, this works perfectly. Sam, our Creative Director, gets the concentrated, quiet time he needs to focus on and complete the design of the digital publications and newsletters we create for our clients and I get the same for the writing, content creation, client communications, outbound marketing and sales work that I am responsible for within our business.
Our work process is simple. We meet every Monday morning by phone at 9:30 am, discuss what we need to get done that week for our clients, and then we execute. Other than that phone call, we don’t have a lot of communication during the week, as we each know exactly what needs to be done.
When we start working with a client, we have a very easy and clear onboarding process that makes it easy for them to get us what we need so that we can execute for them in a timely fashion.
This includes visual templates, premade Dropbox folders with documents that contain easy to follow instructions and a 1-hour onboarding phone call. In addition, our clients are free to contact us, by phone (me) or email (Sam and I) at any time.
LDC: What would you say is the key to artistically and visually capturing a company’s unique ethos?
SP: The key, for us, is visual observation and deep listening wrapped around our depth of experience within the lifestyle content production, furniture and interior design industries. Sam and I have over 60 years of combined experience within these industries and have created, between the two of us, many thousands of pieces of visual and written content that have generated conversion actions on the part of luxury consumers.
Sam, our Creative Director, is also one of the main visual content producers for the Discovery family of brands: HGTV, The Food Network and The Travel Channel and his work producing visual and written content for these brands gives him unique access to the mass consumer’s mindset. He knows how to capture a company’s artistic and visual ethos in order to generate conversion actions on behalf of the mass consumer.
Because of this depth of experience, we are easily able to pick up and elevate the visual language of our clients and interpret it, visually, graphically and in the written word so we can help our clients inspire action in both the luxury and mass consumer segments of the market.
LCD: Are there tech advances on the horizon that you are particularly excited about?
SP: I am excited about 4D printing which adds to 3D printing the dimension of transformation of materials over time. It means that matter is programmable and is a relatively new advance in biofabrication technology. Imagine being able to reprogram the foam in your sofa so that it sits comfortably for each person who uses it! I spoke about 4D printing when I keynoted the Interior Design Society’s National Conference in Las Vegas a few years ago, and the advances in this technology are very exciting to see and will have a major impact on home construction methods in the future.
LCD: You started creating videos for businesses. What played into that decision and how do you see it benefiting your clients?
SP: Yes, we are creating animated videos for our clients now because our experience has shown us how much-animated videos increase conversion actions for our clients, especially when they are used in the online advertising campaigns we run for them
LCD: Congratulations on issue 2 of Seasonal Living. It is a stunning edition. You have created a truly unique reading experience and I am sure, like me, readers can’t get enough. As you begin to integrate travel into your content program, how do you see that coming to life? What aspects of travel are you most excited about integrating?
SP: Thank you! We are so glad you are enjoying the new bi-monthly Seasonal Living Magazine. We are so excited to be designing and editing this new magazine for publisher, Gary Pettitt, the CEO of boutique indoor/outdoor furniture, lighting and decorative accessories manufacturer, Seasonal Living Trading Company.
Seasonal Living Magazine’s travel content is an integral part of the magazine, whose mission it is to inspire consumers the world over to live a life of wellness and sustainability, in harmony with the seasons, through images and articles on *off the beaten path* travel destinations, seasonal foods and recipes and seasonal entertaining and design ideas.
In every issue, we will be taking readers to a new *off the beaten path* travel destination and giving them insider tips on what to see, do and eat while they are there. As for what we are really excited about? We are excited about integrating the perspectives of others into the travel section, and for the first time, in the upcoming issue debuting on Dec. 1st, we will have a travel blogger as a guest contributor sharing their thoughts on our Dec./Jan. travel destination!
For any of your readers that would like to see the magazine and read about our current travel destination, San Miguel de Allende, please click here to flip through the magazine, for free.
LCD: As the furniture industry is moving in a more sustainable direction, do you feel that will impact your decision on brands you will feature in Seasonal Living?
SP: Yes, it will. The publisher of Seasonal Living Magazine, Gary Pettitt, has sustainability as a core focus of his main furniture, lighting and decorative accessories business, and supports MANY small, artisanal makers through his production process. Makers that leave a light footprint. We will only feature brands in Seasonal Living that align with his personal mission and the mission of the magazine to further this focus on sustainable production methods and supporting small artisanal makers.
Video created and animated by Sam Henderson of Savour Partnership for Seasonal Living Magazine.
For more information on Savour Partnership, follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and check out their blog here.
If you wish to contact them directly, you can do so by clicking here.
