Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
WaterMark Living Partners with Steelyard to Reach Designers
September 5,
2018 by Jane Chero in Business Strategy, Designer Weekly, Industry
In an effort to elevate its presence in the design community, casual furnishings resource WaterMark Living has partnered with Steelyard, the trade-only digital platform, to showcase the company’s digital catalog.
“As a new resource for the design community, we see Steelyard as one of the best vehicles to share our story,” says Ashley Newton, executive vice president, Watermark Living. “Whether they are working on creating a backyard haven or a major hotel project, designers need to make timely and dependable product decisions and they trust Steelyard to provide access to products from reputable companies. We believe our partnership with the online platform will help us quickly establish Watermark Living as a one-stop shop for fashionable and customizable contract-grade products in a broad range of materials.”
“Our members are always asking us for new, fresh and amazing, and Watermark Living checks all of those boxes,” says Michael D’Imperio, vice president of sales at Steelyard. “Steelyard is committed to only partnering with brands that are designer-friendly and we cannot wait for our members to start exploring all the wonderful products that Watermark Living has to offer.”
Along with its new digital strategy, Watermark Living is encouraging designers to visit its High Point Market showroom where the emphasis will be on an expanded presentation of the company’s popular PoliSoul offerings, a poly lumber with the hues, heft and texture of vintage teak. Pairings this season will focus on larger-scale woven pieces that offer high-back comfort, as well as a variety of mix-and-match materials that allow for a more eclectic decorating approach overall.
“Given the popularity of open-plan design and collected looks, consumers today face more decorating conundrums than ever before,” Newton said. “It just makes sense that more and more are turning to professional designers for assistance. Our goal is to make it easy for designers to help their clients bridge the divide between their indoor and outdoor spaces with furnishings that are specifically designed and tested for outdoor environments.
“From the standpoint of design, all the products we create work together in multiple settings,” she says. “In fact, any product that makes it into our line has to integrate with others that came before—making them easy to work with and easy to own. At Watermark Living, we’re a bit unusual in that we don’t do stand-alone collections, as in this is our Mid-Century Modern collection, or this is our Traditional Collection. Ours is a much more eclectic, curated style that is not overly ornate because people don’t walk into stores and buy everything from one collection and plop it in their living room anymore. They pair what they purchase with things they have collected over time and that’s not easy to do with a lot of outdoor lines. That’s exactly what sets Watermark Living apart and why we call it ‘Outdoor Made Easy.’ ”