Selections at Scale: How an Ottawa Design Firm Delivered 30 Homes in One Summer

Based in Ottawa and specializing in kitchen and bath remodels, the five-person Bex Interiors team manages 100–150 projects annually and needed an operational system that could support their growing workload—especially for high-volume projects like new home developments.

Geoffrey Powell oversees operations, systems, and the business side of the company, while his wife, Rebecca — a registered interior designer — leads the design work. 

They were using an outdated tool for pricing, quoting, and reporting that could no longer keep up with the needs of their growing business.

Geoffrey looked for a platform that could unify estimating, invoicing, project management, client communication, and—most crucially—manage selections at scale.

After evaluating platforms like Buildertrend and Asana, Geoffrey was "hooked" by one clear differentiator in Houzz Pro: its powerful Selections tool.

"When I saw what Houzz can do with the Selection Boards, that’s what hooked us. It did everything that everybody does, plus it had the selection boards.”

Shortly after adopting Houzz Pro, the team took on one of their most demanding projects: a 30-home development — all during a single summer.

“We took on a builder project, a development that has 30 homes in it. We had to meet with about 20 homeowners over the summertime to get their selections”

Instead of juggling PDFs, emails and spreadsheets, they built everything in Houzz Pro. Using Selection Boards, they created clear, visual lists of options for each homeowner, tracked approvals, and kept pricing aligned with what the developer needed. 

On different projects where selections are reviewed directly with the developer managing the build and sale, instead of a vague “yes” over text, they get a digital record of each approval.

“We send a selection to choose between two sinks… the contractor’s able to look on his mobile device, see the selection board, pick the one he wants, click approve. We’ve basically got a contract in place when that guy’s just sitting in his truck at a job site. That would never have happened for us without Houzz.”

And because everything lives in one system, payments move just as quickly as decisions. Geoffrey’s team can turn approvals into invoices and payments almost instantly:

“We are able to easily move from an estimate to an invoice and get that to the client within seconds if we want to. We can get from an estimate to an approved invoice to a paid invoice in a matter of minutes.”

But what impresses Geoffrey most is how the platform continues to evolve. He is excited about the upcoming features on the roadmap and shares:

“Houzz is continually getting better. That keeps me hooked. It is all-inclusive. It’s the all-in-one tool that is the end-to-end process for my customer.”

For this five-person studio handling 100–150 projects a year, Houzz Pro now acts as the all-in-one operational backbone of their business, from selections to billing. Guiding 20+ homeowners through a summer of decisions would have once caused chaos. With Houzz Pro, it ran smoothly.

Their consistent, structured selection process is now a major market differentiator, giving the five-person studio the confidence and scalability to take on complex, high-volume projects.

“I think Houzz has given us confidence that we are presenting a consistent experience for our clients. The experience is really what people are buying, and with Houzz Pro, they’re enjoying going through decision-making –including selections.”