1210: What Would Lu Do: The Discount Lie

1210: What Would Lu Do: The Discount Lie

From A Well-Designed Business® | Interior Design Business Podcast by LuAnn Nigara

July 17, 2026 · 49 min

About this episode

LuAnn Nigara discusses the misconceptions around pricing and profitability in the interior design industry.

Today With LuAnn Nigara: Somewhere on a coaching call this week, a designer told LuAnn the same story she hears constantly: her client is insisting on seeing the invoice, certain she's entitled to know what that ten thousand dollar sofa actually cost. It feels reasonable in the moment. It isn't, and in this episode LuAnn walks through exactly why, using the same standard your clients already apply to a restaurant, and to a national retailer like Restoration Hardware, without ever questioning it once. From there, the episode moves into the number most firms get wrong without realizing it. A 35 percent markup, the default for most of this industry, doesn't produce a 35 percent margin. It produces something closer to 26 percent, and that gap is quietly the difference between a business that pays you and one that just keeps you busy. LuAnn backs the target margin up with real, named sources, not opinion, including CPA Greg Crabtree's philosophy that gross margin, not revenue, is the true top line of a business. She also breaks down what she calls the checkbook lie: why a healthy-looking bank balance in a growing firm can quietly mask a business that isn't actually profitable, and why…

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