Mary Byerly:  Good morning, Christine, thanks a lot!

Christine:  OK, so, how did you get into furnishing vacation rental homes?

Mary:  Well, when we go on vacation, we would ‑ my husband and I went a lot ‑ and we would find that we would go to a really nice place, like we went to Topsail Island, we rented a home. It was beautiful, the view was beautiful, and the furniture was awful. It was uncomfortable, the bed slept terrible.

And this was this great house, with this great price, and we never wanted to go there again. So I wanted to make sure that my clients, when they did their homes, not only did people want the view, they wanted to come back and experience the house again.

Christine:  Oh, absolutely. I can totally understand that. You know, when you look at our websites like Homeaway.com, sometimes you'll see these absolutely gorgeous homes, and then just like minimal furnishings and, you know, minimal decor.

You know, I always say, what does it cost to throw up a coat of paint? It's really inexpensive, and it's amazing what it can do for you. I've actually had people tell me that they rent my place because of my furnishings, which I think is kind of funny. But, you know, it shows really well.

And you know, some people go "Christine, you do such a great job furnishing." Yeah, no, I do a really good job of hiring somebody to furnish.

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You know, I suppose it's true with a lot of your clients as well, right?

Mary:  Oh yeah. I definitely tell them when we get through, it's like I tell my clients all the time, it's not my job to tell them what their taste is, it's my job to take them to their style and taste, to lead them that way. And when they get done they say "Oh, you know, I'm going to tell people what a great job you did." And I tell them, no, tell them what a great job YOU did. I just assisted you in doing it.

Christine:  Oh, that's so neat. Now, when you go to furnish a vacation home, how is it different than furnishing a regular home that you're going to live in?

Mary:  You know, if you want to go on vacation, and want to go to a place that looks like the place you live in, stay home. Save the gas money. You know, save the eating out money. Just stay at home and just turn the phones off.

But if you want to go some place that makes you feel good about life and you want the kid in you to come out, to be lighthearted and to remember when you were a kid and you went on vacation ‑ this is the time when you can get out and be a little whimsical with your house. I mean, have a good time. Make it completely different. Bring out the fun in your heart.

Christine:  You know, that is so true. It's so funny when we go to decorate our home ‑ I lament over decisions. You know, oh my gosh, do I like this bookshelf? Is this the right color? Is this going to be the right thing for the space?

But when I go to buy stuff for my vacation rentals, you know, I just go boom, boom, boom, boom. And it's not necessarily stuff I would ever live with in my own home. You know, I pick out some real crazy beachy colors, but that's what's kind of fun about furnishing our vacation rental.

Mary:  Absolutely. Let's say you live in a Victorian and you have antiques, and you're working with mahoganies. Lord knows you're not going to go out and buy a little red table to go into your den. And in your vacation home, red is a very festive color.

Many people who do impulse buying, it is the red color that makes them do the impulse buy. So, in your vacation home, buy that red table, stick it in there. When you walk in, put your hand to your heart and go "Daggone, I like that table." That's what you're going for.

Christine:  How do you convince the homeowners to really get to be more bold? Because I would imagine there's a lot of people out there that are kind of afraid. I mean like I say, I see these pictures on the Internet where they all have white walls, and people are generally afraid of color and afraid of bold things like a big red table. How do you convince them?

Mary:  Well, you wouldn't go on a rollercoaster in downtown Pittsburgh but you'd surely do it on Coney Island. So I tell them, get on the rollercoaster, you're on holiday. You should always, when you walk into your own holiday house or your vacation home, you should feel like you went to another world.

Christine:  OK.

Mary:  You definitely should say it's not hard. For one thing, we've got a great Starbucks in our store. And I start them out and get them to go down, order something from Starbucks they would never order, some kind of latte or something, get them a muffin, take them upstairs and say, OK, you're out of the box, let's start working.

Christine:  Oh, neat. That's a very interesting perspective, you know. An interesting way to do it, is start them right from the beginning. You know, I suppose that when you're choosing the furniture, the homeowner probably has a lot of say‑so. But do you steer them in a direction? What if they continue to just go back to the stuff in their comfort zone, the stuff that looks like furniture in their home? How do you handle something like that?

Mary:  I let them put it in there. If that's what they're comfortable with...I want them, when they go on vacation, I want them to be comfortable. And if they are truly comfortable in the same surroundings that they have at home, I put it in their vacation home.

We may spruce it up a bit, give it a little whimsical, but if that's their comfort zone, again, I'm not there to tell them what their taste is. I'm there to tell them, you know, to take them to what they're going to be comfortable with. And I'm not going to put something in there that they don't like just 'cause I like it. I'm not going to do it.

Christine:  Now, when you have done vacation homes on the Outer Banks and Bethany Beach, are you doing mainly homes or homes and condos?

Mary:  Well, in Bethany Beach I have a builder that I work with up there that I, actually I've become very close to his family. I absolutely adore him. And it's gotten to that I've done so many with him that he just sends me the plans and says, “Do it, and I'll send you a check.”

Christine:  Oh, nice.

Mary:  He just says, “Do it.” And these are homes though that will sleep sixteen people.

Christine:  Oh, wow.

Mary:  And you have to know what's going on up there, what the homeowners want you to do, what I can do. Like, a lot of, when you do vacation rentals, in a lot of these properties if you sleep 16, you had better be able to sit 16 people down at the same time for dinner.

Christine:  That's so true.

Mary:  So, I've got to know the tables I'm going to use and be able to do that. The only thing you've got to do ‑‑ people say, "How do you know what they want?" and this is the easiest thing to do. Ask them; sit down, shut up and listen.

Christine:  [laughs]

Mary:  Just listen to the people. They will tell you what they want. Just listen to them.

Christine:  Right. Can you hold on one second? We just need to take a break for a word from our sponsors.

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Christine:  And now, back to our show. It's funny I can recall one of the times when we last furnished our property. We walked into a design center, and the decorator just kind of walked us around. They had some rooms set up, just with the different beachy themes and stuff like that. We walked around, and we chose one that we liked.

And we were like, we really like this, but it was funny because we like it but I'm not sure if it will match the drapes that I have. I'm not sure if it will match some of the other pieces in the room, and we certainly need to repaint. I have no idea what color I would repaint when I'm buying an orange sofa, but an orange sofa? I would never buy orange.

She came right over to the house and was able to tell us which colors, and she was like, yes this will match. She definitely made that decision a much easier decision process.

Now, when you are furnishing homes, do they come fully turn keyed? Do they have the sheets on the beds? Do they have the comforters, the curtains, all of that stuff?

Mary:  If that's what you need, we can do that, also, but we do farm out a little bit of the kitchen appliances, silverware and things like that to a company that does that. A lot of people, they'll bring to us the color combinations that they want.

We have here a full wall of any paint color that you want. We work with a couple of different companies. We can help you like that; if you want faux painting we can help you like that. We can help you with your draperies, rugs, mattresses; I mean, pretty much turnkey.

We have our showroom alone is 1.1 million square feet.

Christine:  Holy, molly.

Mary:  If you want to see it, touch it and sit on it, by golly, I've got it.

Christine:  And you're in North Carolina which is the furniture capital.

Mary:  Yes, I am.

Christine:  Where you are probably getting things a lot less expensive than if people were to buy it at the beach. Is that so?

Mary:  Oh, absolutely. Not only do I have a huge assortment, I am easily 40‑45 percent off of what the retail price is, and my design fee is complimentary.

Christine:  Oh, nice; very nice. OK, so I'm thinking this in my mind. You've got this big, great showroom. You've got the design center. I can choose fabrics and all this. What if I live in California and I want you to decorate my place in California? Can we consult over the phone and via the Internet? Is this effective?

Mary:  I love the Internet. I am here to tell you I've done many homes. I also have some designers that can tweak it for you out there in California.

Christine:  Oh, neat.

Mary:  You send me your floor plans. My father was an architect, so I learned the color of floor plans, right? I can do those. You send me floor plans. I'll do it up, and I can put you together a Power Point presentation and send you a disk and say, "Well, what do you think of this for the house, or how do you feel about this?"

You can send me a swatch or you can send me a vase. You can send me a color of a vase. This blue, I love it. Can you do a room around this vase and yeah, I can do it.

Christine:  I think one of the things that people probably listening are saying, "Oh, wow. There goes Christine talking to this person, this high end furniture person". No, what a lot of people don't realize is they think if I hire a designer it's going to be much more expensive.

In my opinion and in my experience, first off a lot of designers who work for the company, such as yourself, are complimentary. Most of the designers I've ever used have been complimentary or small minimal cost, just the trip fee or something like that, not really exorbitantly expensive.

You are obviously making your money from commissions from the sales because you work for the company, but I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize that using a designer is not expensive. It could actually save you a lot of money in the long run.

I personally early on had one of those mistakes where I went and picked out some colors to paint one of our properties. By the time I got everything all cleaned up and ready to paint, it was evening. So, I started slapping that paint on in the evening. It looked beautiful. It was a salmon color, and it looked gorgeous.

Well, I woke up in the morning and guess what happened to that salmon color? It turned pink overnight. [laughs] So, even that with the right designer you are not having to redo things or make mistakes like that.

Mary:  Absolutely. What's your best bet on the paint and it's a little bit of a pain is go buy a piece of sheetrock. Get a quart of that paint. Paint the sheetrock. Lean it up against the wall for a couple of days and see if that's what you love because husbands get mighty nasty about it when you have them paint a whole room and that's not it.

Christine:  [laughs]

Mary:  They are much happier with about four swipes of a roller on a piece of sheetrock. That's really the correct way to do it or have your painter do up a paint pallet if you are going to faux paint. Never just start and faux paint it. Have him do you a couple of samples.

Christine:  Right.

Mary:  Then show it to you.

Christine:  I found that Sherwin‑Williams ‑‑ they have these little sample packets. They'll mix it up in any... I think they are three or four dollars a piece, and it's a little, maybe, pint or so. Like a half pint, I think it is of paint, and they'll mix it in the exact colors you are looking to do it. So, you can just go buy you a heap of them, much less expensive than buying a quart of paint, and this way you get to try a whole bunch of different colors.

Next time you go to paint, you might want to go to Sherwin‑Williams and pick up some of those samples. It's kind of neat.

Mary:  We have a complete Sherwin‑Williams paint board here.

Christine:  Oh, neat.

Mary:  We have a complete Sherwin Williams paint board here with all the different colors on it. That's the way to do it because your walls actually are your palette. Your walls and that orange sofa is your palette in your room.

And do you know when people are doing; a lot of vacation homes, orange is big. Red, yellow. You're not really going to do that in your everyday living room. You tend to stay very neutral, but this is the place. Doing an orange sofa, I think, is wonderful.

Christine:  Can you give us a price range? Let's just say the average two bedroom, two bath condo that sleeps maybe six people; if I wanted to come in from head to toe with window treatments, and bedspreads and the headboard for board dressers, kitchen, dining area, all of that, what would I expect to pay?

Mary:  First of all when you do this people need to know that the laws have changed. You are going to pay your state tax and you don't need any crazy person down the road going, "oh, no, you don't have to pay that state tax." They may not collect it if from you; you will get a tax letter.

Christine:  Right.

Mary:  So you've got to put that in, you've got to put in the delivery. Our delivery is complete turnkey, our guys set up the bed, they do everything.

But to do a package, it's kind of scary; Christine for me to say anything because I don't want to scare someone off, but $25, $30,000 is pretty realistic. But if you don't want to spend that, we can back off. We can do headboards instead of complete beds, one nightstand instead of two, we can go into a lower priced line but still keep some quality in there. You don't have to put [inaudible] in there to make it look great. But if you want to, I have a home right now that I'm doing the kitchen in Haversham and their kitchen alone is going to be $65,000.

Christine:  Sixty‑five thousand?

Mary:  For Haversham.

Christine:  Holy molly. [laughter]

Mary:  It's pretty spectacular. You can get as high as 130 to do your kitchen in Haversham, but it's one of those things that makes your heart beat very, very fast. But you know you don't have to do that. Some people when they think Furniture Land styles, they think of it in the upper‑end. No, our bread and butter is the sofa, it's the thousand or $800 sofa. My bread and butter is the $2500 to $3000 bedroom.

Christine:  Right, right. Which is difficult to find in a lot of different furniture stores. You know a couple of years ago I went to a conference and we got to go to the furniture mart and it was pretty interesting and what I found really refreshing was the amount of beach furnishings out there that I'm not able to find at home.

So I picked up the cards of all these different manufacturers at this furniture mart and if you're looking to purchase a complete, total package, going to North Carolina is probably worth the trip, wouldn't you say?

Mary:  Absolutely. You can go into a vacation home, it doesn't have to be all beachy. You've got about three different kinds of beach that you can use. You can do the sailboat, whimsical beach, you can do the lighthouse beach, or we can do the Cape Cod beach which is done with the sea foams and the browns and the sand colors, the real earthy colors. There's lots of different ways you can do it and you can do all of them here. We can do it any way you want to go.

Christine:  And you guys will deliver it right to the vacation home, and all of that, right?

Mary:  I have actually even done homes in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Christine:  Impressive.

Mary:  We will take it anywhere you want and the guys bring it in. And the most wonderful thing about me being here since I think birth is that you've got me until the very end. I'm not going to sell you furniture and just walk away. You need me, you call me. I'm the person who took your money. And our guys bring it in and they set it up and if something's wrong on the delivery, you call me and we absorb any cost that comes back, or damage, or anything.

In our warehouse we have 55 miles of racking system where your furniture is stored, it's not out on a dock somewhere, it's stored in the same climate that you're sitting in right now.

Christine:  Amazing.

Mary:  We're first class all the way, I'm proud to say.

Christine:  Mary, we've run out of time. I'd love to talk for a long time, but before we leave can you give us the information in case someone wants to contact you?

Mary:  You can go to FurnitureLandSouth.com. And if you want to do travel plans, you can go to the top right corner and it says, planning a visit with us, and you can call me or send me an email and I'll walk you through it. And my email is MaryByerly@furniturelandsouth.com.

Christine:  And we'll put that on our website. How about a phone number?

Mary:  It's 336‑841‑4328. And my extension is 2276, and I also have a direct fax to my computer if you want to fax me questions. And it's 336‑822‑3761.

Christine:  Just to reiterate, if you want to get a hold of Mary, her phone number is area code 336‑841‑4328. And as always we will have this information available on the Owner Community. You just go to OwnerCommunity.com.

Mary, thank you so much for all this wonderful information. I really appreciate it, I learned a lot.

So I guess the main thing that I learned from this conversation is that when you think of having a designer come, decorator come, design and decorate for your home, you automatically think big, dollar signs, and from our conversation it's clear to me that it's really not more expensive to hire a decorator that you work, basically, you get paid by the company where you're buying the furniture from. The prices for your furniture are certainly a lot more reasonable than even me going to some of the discount places nearby.

So again, if you're looking to hire a decorator or even thought about it, certainly entertain it, talk to a few, it could make all the difference in the world with regards to renting your home.

Again, Mary, any last words before we close?

Mary:  I think the main thing that I want to get across today is that, I was called, we're big, we're top notch, and we're first class, doesn't mean you can't call me for a recliner going in your vacation house. I do a little bit for everybody. Every sale is important to each customer.

Christine:  Mary, thanks so much. Perhaps we can have you back again some day.

Mary:  I had a great time. Thank you very, very much.

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