From $2M to $4M: How Flourish Interiors Doubled Revenue with Houzz Pro

Vanessa Smith’s path to design wasn’t linear; she first built a retail business before pivoting to follow her passion for interior design. Today, she leads Flourish Interiors, a 14-person full service design firm based in South Bend, Indiana, that serves high-end clients throughout the Midwest and across the country.

Before adopting Houzz Pro, Flourish Interiors relied on a patchwork of tools. The team used PowerPoint for client presentations, and spreadsheets for selections and procurement.

As the business grew, that process became harder to manage. Every update required manual changes. Version control was challenging. Tracking pricing, freight, approvals, payments, and purchasing across different tools became increasingly cumbersome.

“We were keeping all of that in an Excel spreadsheet. It was very rudimentary. It worked, but it was so cumbersome. There was so much data entry, no automations.”

Flourish Interiors adopted Houzz Pro back in 2019. Today, the firm uses Houzz Pro across client communication, selections, proposals, payments, procurement, and reporting.

The team introduces the Client Dashboard early in the process, using it to create a more polished and professional client experience. It immediately shows clients that the firm has clear systems and processes in place. “The second clients hear about it, it raises their impression of you as far as professionalism. They get excited about your systems and processes and not just the creative aspect of you as a designer,” Vanessa explains.

To support client conversations and make sourcing more efficient, Flourish Interiors creates 3D Floor Plans in Houzz Pro early in the design process. 

“We put all of our floor plans for every project into the Houzz Pro 3D Floor Planner tool. It’s part of our communication process with clients. Once we have the floor plan scanned in, we’ll lay out some conceptual furniture and have early, preliminary discussions with clients to make sure we’re on the right track. Putting conceptual furniture into a floor plan to start is an absolutely fantastic way to communicate with your clients and get dialogue back from them.”

“We also love being able to share 3D Floor Plans through the Client Dashboard, giving clients one place to visualize their future space, review product details, and submit approvals. 

The team uses Selection Boards for sourcing and as part of its creative process. They organize products by room and section to see how items work together before moving them into proposals.

“That is part of our creative process. We can divide the boards by room and have a collage inside each board to start seeing how these elements play together,” Vanessa explains. They use selections together with the 3D tools. “The ability to import real selections and materials removes the guesswork and helps clients feel confident in the final design before installation even begins.”

With Proposals and Online Payments, clients can review product details, approve items, sign off, and pay directly through Houzz Pro. Once approved and funded, the team can move quickly into invoicing, purchase orders, and procurement.

Once items are ordered, the team uses the Selections Tracker to manage procurement and receiving.

“If you were to walk out into our warehouse, you would see a mobile cart with a laptop with Houzz Pro open. The team uses the Selections tracker to update the status of each item coming in.”

Every Friday, the team uses the Tracker as their source of truth to export a progress report with inventory updates, what came in, what’s still outstanding, and where the project stands. This keeps clients informed and reduces one-off texts and questions.

"Once we started sending that update, we got so many fewer questions from clients. We used to get all these text messages like, ‘When is the rug coming in?’ or ‘How much longer for the dining table?’”

“We have a policy: if they’re asking about it, your process is off. The moment they’re asking, you have made them wait too long.”

Flourish Interiors also uses Houzz Pro to track billable hours, product sales, open purchase orders, sales tax, and payments, giving Vanessa clear visibility into where the business stands financially and what needs attention. “We track all of our hours inside of Houzz, and then that translates to our monthly billing.”

Since adopting Houzz Pro, Flourish Interiors has grown from just under $2 million to $4 million in annual revenue. 

“We’ve certainly doubled our revenue since adopting Houzz Pro. I was sitting there trying to separate what would have happened organically and what was directly because of Houzz, and I realized there’s really no point in trying to separate it because Houzz is the instrument by which my work was possible.” says Vanessa.

The platform has also helped Flourish Interiors scale its project capacity. “Houzz Pro is a massive time saver, and we manage about 50 projects at any given time now.”

Beyond revenue and project capacity, Houzz Pro has helped Flourish Interiors create a more proactive, polished client experience. “The Selections tracker and the inventory updates play a huge role in making sure that clients feel updated and in command of where their project is at.”

For Vanessa, Houzz Pro is more than software. “At this point, it’s part of our design identity.”