David Hoffman on Growing a Third Generation Hotel FF&E Company Through Service and Systems

Anthony Codispoti (00:01)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Codaspote and today’s guest is David Hoffman, managing partner at Furniture Industries, a third generation company based in New Hope, Minnesota.

Since 1952, Furniture Industries has helped hotel owners turn ideas into welcoming spaces. The team handles interior design, FF &E purchasing, project management, freight, and on-site installation, giving clients a full service path from concept to grand opening. They are an approved purchasing agent for IHG Hotels and Resorts and a listed procurement services provider for Hilton Brands.

These partnerships speak to the company’s track record for quality and on-time delivery. David leads sales strategy and client growth. He is a Miller-Heinman trained and has spent more than 20 years guiding hospitality projects across the country. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency. Listen, if you run a business, you’re likely stuck in the cycle of rising insurance premiums. You’re paying more, but your team is getting less.

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Results vary, but the consultation is free. See if you qualify today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, managing partner of furniture industries, David Hoffman. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

David Hoffman (02:09)
Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:11)
So you’ve got a pretty diverse work background before joining furniture industries over seven years ago. Pick one of your stops prior to joining the family business and tell us a memorable story from there, a potent lesson that you learned.

David Hoffman (02:29)
Yeah, you know, I think I spent a fair amount of time in the litigation consulting industry and I was with a company called Trial Graphics. I was working in Chicago in mid 2000s and I was a sales rep there trying to work with trial attorneys to get their cases for us to help them on a consulting, you know, for us to provide consulting services. And I remember I had set up a meet, you know, we had to set seven to 10 meetings a week was our quota.

And I set this one meeting and I was so disappointed because it was just a paralegal. And I’m trying to get to these Amlof 50 partners at these firms. I’m like, ah, you know, and I met me in my court. I’ll go have the meeting. Had a fabulous hour long conversation with this incredibly gifted paralegal at a very large firm. And it turns out she was working on one of the largest cases that our firm ever ended up working on.

In fact, we worked with them for over two years on a massive arbitration. It was the biggest deal I’d ever closed in my entire life to date. ⁓ And so it was a really good lesson learned that every opportunity is an opportunity that should not be prejudged.

Anthony Codispoti (03:44)
And so what was different about that? Because traditionally you would think like, paralegal, they’re not in a position to make a decision. What do you think was different about how that conversation or what followed unfolded?

David Hoffman (03:59)
Yeah, we had a really cool tool at the time, which in today’s standards would kind of be, you know, pretty boring or pretty standard technology. But we were we had a tool that allowed you to have hours of videotaped depositions and it would transcribe it with closed captioning, which wasn’t really readily available in this particular case had hundreds and hundreds of hours of deposition. So imagine being a paralegal or a young associate.

on that team and trying to figure out who said what and when and provide reports to the team. Well, now with the transcription of these hundreds of hours of videos, they could just search for keywords, ⁓ find the video clips they were looking for to pull. And she was the lead paralegal on that team. And when she saw that tool, which came from our conversation about what she was currently working on, like her eyes went wide and it was an immediate change in course we.

really focused on that. We ended up providing them a lot more services than just that, but that’s what got us in the door. So that was, you know, ⁓ just a conversation. What are you working on and identifying a need? And I just so happened to have a tool that exactly met her needs.

Anthony Codispoti (05:14)
Hmm. ⁓ I’m curious, do you carry that lesson with you into today, the work that you’re doing in furniture industries, like every time where you’re like, ⁓ you know, this person, they’re not sort of at the decision making level that I would like to be speaking to. But you think back to that and you take a different approach.

David Hoffman (05:34)
I do. I think measured though, ⁓ to be fair, we want to meet with the decision makers as soon as we can. You had mentioned my training with Miller-Heinman strategic selling. One of the pieces of that is to make sure you’re on board with every buyer in the process. So I do think that still sticks that even if it’s someone who’s not inevitably who’s going to sign our contract, them being interested in our services is really important. I also think that’s when I say measured, ⁓

We are unlike a lot of the companies in our industry. We’ll work on pretty much everything. We do replacement orders, which are not lucrative to do just onesie twosie items that, for example, a hotel might need, but we want clients to reach out to us for everything. So I think we could put those stories together in the sense that it seems small at the time, but some of the smallest things we do lead to our best clients and our biggest projects.

Anthony Codispoti (06:30)
Yeah. You guys leveraging technology much in the way that you’re interacting with your clients?

David Hoffman (06:37)
every day. And I truly believe that I preach this. We have a daily meeting every day and I preach this, you know, we can only do it’s in our control. But one of the things that’s in our control is how do we get bigger, better, faster every day. And if you’re not doing that, think if you’re not doing it every day, I think you’re losing opportunities to get better and grow. And so we are utilizing as many technologies as possible.

to work with our clients, whether it be on the design side with Revit and having interactive drawing sessions. On the business development side, we try to use, ⁓ certainly Microsoft has 365, there’s lots of other online tools. We like to use the Google Documents, like Sheets and Docs, to work in conjunction in real time. ⁓ I will say that our delivery schedules are in real time.

utilizing technologies because people don’t, you know, ⁓ I don’t believe sending a PDF on a Friday is as good as what was everything on that PDF up to Friday being available to them every hour of every day up until then. So that’s an example. just think that ⁓ some of the old, you know, I, if I may.

Sometimes I see fax numbers still in people’s email signatures and I worry very much about their existence for much longer as a business. I think we do have to move with the time. We don’t have to exchange the level of service or what we provide, but we do have to stay current with the technologies we’re using.

Anthony Codispoti (08:12)
And speaking of staying current with technologies, are you guys leveraging AI in any ways that are replacing some of that human interaction?

David Hoffman (08:23)
That’s a really great question, Anthony. I am wildly against replacing human interaction. In fact, we have a hybrid workforce here since COVID didn’t really change it to everybody being back all the time with everybody’s here. ⁓ Many people are on different schedules, but everybody’s here on Tuesday. And the importance of that is when everyone’s here on Tuesday, I say no instant messaging.

unless you’re on a call and you can’t get off, get up and go talk to somebody. And so to come back to your original question, I encourage that same thing. I don’t want AI to replace interaction ⁓ face to face, whether it be video, I prefer in person, but certainly video has made that better for all of us. ⁓ But AI absolutely is in every single day, we’re trying more and more ways to remove the administrative tasks.

that people with certain skill sets used to have to do so that they can use their time more efficiently on what they are great at. So I know that sounds pretty vague, but that’s kind of our philosophy.

Anthony Codispoti (09:32)
No, makes a lot of sense to me. And I want to come back to the consultative selling that you’re talking about from the Miller-Heinman training. But I want to go back to how was it that you ended up joining the company? You were off doing all kinds of other things in different fields, finding your own success. Tell us how this path works.

David Hoffman (09:51)
Yeah, I’ll try to be brief. My father-in-law who started this part of the company with his father-in-law, Elliot Gensler, who started Park Opulstery back in 1952, about five years into my career said, hey, David, looks like you’re having success in sales out with another company. I’d love for you to come sell for me. And I was looking at him and I’m like, furniture, hotels, design.

installation, no thanks, I’m doing litigation technologies and all this cool stuff. About five years later he said the same thing, why don’t you, you’ve been doing this long enough, why don’t you come sell for me? And I was like, know, it’s just not for me. And he never asked again. He obviously put it out there for me, which I greatly appreciated. About 20 years into my career, I said, wait a minute, I’ve done sales and sales operations and…

process, process management, technology, incorporated Salesforce into a couple of smaller companies that I worked with and had been on the team of that. like, I have learned so many things that I think I could bring to a family business like furniture industries that maybe I would be of value in that respect. And so that’s what I went to him and I said, you know what? I’m very interested if you’d have me at furniture industries to help you with process management and infrastructure and all this. And he looks at me he goes,

Do you want to sell for furniture industries? Got it. Understood. Let’s start there. And so that’s how I came to here. I learned so many valuable skills working for bigger companies, smaller companies. I really thought I could bring something to the table for this family business.

Anthony Codispoti (11:35)
So his comment to you, his question to you after you said all of that, do you want to come here and sell for furniture industries? He was making the point that you’re going to start in sales and then you can work your way up. Okay.

David Hoffman (11:47)
That’s right. You know,

it’s nice that you have all that that skill set, David. This company’s been around for 42 years without you. ⁓ We’re going to be just fine for right now. Yeah, it was a nice for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (11:57)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So, okay, we touched on it in the intro, but in plain English, what is it you guys do and who do you serve?

David Hoffman (12:07)
Sure, design, you mentioned the design, procurement, logistics, install, services. We do, the way I’d to explain for people who don’t know the hotel industry very well, FF &E is furniture, fixtures, and equipment, but basically an easy way to explain it is if you picked up a hotel and flipped it upside down and shook, anything that falls out would be considered furniture, fixture, and equipment. So, beds, nightstands.

mirrors, art, lighting. When you walk into a hotel room or a lobby and you see all that furniture, that’s what companies like ours help provide. ⁓ We also in the last probably 10 to 15 years do all the finishes, generally speaking, for hoteliers too. So carpet, tile, any kind of flooring, wall covering, things like that. Because we buy in mass, we can really help them. ⁓

from a budgeting perspective and also logistics of getting it there on time. So the question I sometimes get back and I’ll ask for you so you don’t have to Anthony, ⁓ why can’t owners just do this themselves? can’t Hilton and IHG and Hyatt and Marriott and on and on and choice and I don’t forget all of the brands, but ⁓ they all have programs, it’s easy.

The program, you walk into a Holiday Inn Express in one city, it’s gonna look the same in another. And a home too by Hilton, and a courtyard by Marriott, right? So why would they need a company like us? Every hotel is different. ⁓ The build is different. ⁓ What people draw in their initial Revit or CAD drawings from the architect oftentimes isn’t exactly what’s built. ⁓ So measurements are required. ⁓ People change their mind. People miscount.

So those are some of the things we can help with on the drawing side, really showing them what will fit, especially in today’s world. Renovations are huge. There’s not as many ground up as there is people buying up distressed properties and changing the flag or things like that. Well, what’s gonna fit? How do we know that this type of hotel will work with, know, here are some things you’re gonna have to remove or add, et cetera. So we help on the planning side there. But I’m telling you, getting thousands of items

to hotel within a few weeks time frame is a lot harder than you think. And that’s why service, so that’s the service side of it from the, once you order, making sure the vendor’s actually producing, making sure they’re actually going to get it to you on time, aligning the trucks to get with the site to make sure that it’s able to get to site at that time, that there will be people to receive said truck, unload it, unpack it, install it, and.

we’re at the part of the business, the very end, where they just wanna get the hotel open. So it’s the highest, hottest moment. And if stuff misses, they can’t open the hotel. So a service like ours is really critical. And a lot of our first time clients are their second hotel. They maybe tried to do that part of it themselves. There’s just so many things that go into it. ⁓ And you know,

Anthony Codispoti (15:20)
Bye.

David Hoffman (15:25)
The people we have here, all of our project managers have interior design backgrounds and degrees. So not only can they manage the ordering, but they know the stuff they’re ordering. They know how it should look. They know where it should go. know if there’s any ⁓ incorrect items versus someone who maybe is strictly procurement, said, well, I ordered 10 of these. Why didn’t you provide 10 of these? ⁓ Not as much product knowledge. So I don’t want to get.

too deep, that’s what we do is from start to finish. get architectural drawings. Sometimes we help with the actual design of the hotel all the way through it and everything’s been installed and the punchless walk and making sure anything that got broken gets replaced and the hotel gets opened. So we’re there with them the entire way.

Anthony Codispoti (16:09)
You know, and it strikes me hearing you talk that coordinating those timelines right there at the very end, it’s got to be really tricky, right? Because you’ve got, I’m going to make up some numbers here, but maybe lead time on carpeting is five weeks. Lead time on mattresses is eight weeks. Lead time on couches is nine and a half weeks. And what you want to do is get all this lined up to basically arrive around the same time. So that, you know, it’s.

Stuff isn’t sitting outside in a loading dock because they’re not finished with the construction inside and construction’s not finished and they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs for two weeks saying, why can’t we open? Because the beds aren’t here.

David Hoffman (16:52)
Yeah, there’s, and by the way, pretty good guesses on your lead times there, Anthony. Not bad, four to six weeks, generally speaking, on finishes. Upholstered items like sofas and couches, you’re looking more 12 to 16 these days. But to your point, all the points you made, we don’t wanna be late, we don’t wanna be early, because we’re gonna put it if there’s no container on site or there’s no warehouse to go to. But also, there’s the third element, which is, and I think anyone can experience this in their personal lives as well.

All the trades have to be close to done. The electrical, right? The plumbing. Everybody’s gotta be, the people laying the carpet, everybody’s gotta be done with their stuff before we bring in our stuff. Because we can’t be sharing an elevator and we can’t be tripping over each other, going into rooms, stuff can get moved or broken. So, so often, and every general contractor’s nightmare is keeping on schedule. And if one trade gets off, kinda everything moves.

So sure, you want us to bring all of your couches to site next week. We’re scheduled, we’re on, it’s gonna get on a truck next Monday, here we come. And then you go, no, we’re two weeks behind, can you hold it? Now if you’re an individual hotel owner and you call a vendor and say, can you hold my stuff? I’m just being honest, most of the time they’re gonna try, but they’re gonna probably say, you gotta tell us a warehouse to bring to or get some containers on site. When you work on as many projects as we do annually,

We have a little bit more pull with these vendors to say any chance you could hold that stuff and not at a cost to our client, which is so critically important to them. So yeah, there’s so many moving parts ⁓ toward the end of a project. really, it’s something that these things get done and get done on time.

Anthony Codispoti (18:29)
Yeah.

So obviously you’re not the only company in the country that does this. What sets you guys apart? What sets furniture industries apart from the others?

David Hoffman (18:50)
Sure, so I think our unique selling propositions are a few, but the two I guess I would focus on is we assign a project manager at the very beginning, as I mentioned, with an interior design background, who stays with the client all the way through the end of the hotel, which may be as many as 18 to 24 months that they become their relationship manager and know everything that’s going on. Are there other people here servicing our clients along the way? Of course.

but they do have one familiar contact. And we kind of talk about these folks are unicorns, because most of the time people are either on the design side of things or the procurement side, ⁓ right side brain, left side brain, whatever you want to call it. ⁓ But we have them do both. So the fact that they get one person to stick with is huge. For someone who doesn’t want finger pointing, which is the same person, it’s hard to point fingers. ⁓ The second piece also is

that’s that finger pointing thing. We stay with everyone. We have our own ability to contract trucks as a licensed broker. We have our own logistics department. We have our own installation management. So there’s less people not talking to each other that can cause problems. And I will tell you, there are many companies that do we do and there are many companies that do what we do very well. We think we do it better because of that all encompassing service.

I’ve heard too many times from clients that they’ll have one firm procure who will pass it off to a three PL third party logistics company who will then deliver to a third party installation company. Just stop there for me. Anthony, what if something is broken or not right? Whose responsibility was it? Was it the vendor who didn’t provide it or provided it broken? Was it the third party logistics company who broke it on the way there?

Was it the third party installation for team that accidentally broke it or didn’t, who knows when it was received? And now imagine that with like 50 POs or 60 POs, like how it can get very hairy and can give you.

Anthony Codispoti (21:05)
There’s a lot

of finger pointing that can take place there.

David Hoffman (21:09)
Yeah. So we try to take the fingers out of the point in that case where if we’re doing, if we’re managing everything, we can feel better. Like we’re in control as much as we can be. Can’t be in control of a steam ship coming from overseas or a truck on the highway that blows a tire in Kentucky. Right. There’s only so much we have control, but we have more control than most. I think owners really appreciate both the relationship aspect with the project manager.

and the ownership that we take to make sure everything’s right.

Anthony Codispoti (21:41)
Well, and it strikes me that, you know, folks are hiring a company like yours because they don’t want to deal with all these headaches on their own, right? They’ve got so many other things that they’re focusing on. So if you want to be done with the headache, it makes so much more sense to hire a company that has all of these services under one roof. You’re dealing with one vendor then. All right.

David Hoffman (21:51)
100%.

You can come sell for me tomorrow, Anthony. That’s right. You got it. You

know, I mean, that’s the basis. I mean, certainly there’s a lot more detail that goes into it. And to say we’re the only company that provides great client service, ⁓ I think would be foolish. ⁓ I do believe we’re the best at it and work every day to get better. So, you know, we do try to instill that and we’ve got a lot of clients that will refer us, you know, that’s…

I don’t care what happens with technology. think you and though we’ve just met, I think you and I could agree that referrals still are the gold. If someone else has had a positive experience with you, it’s better than any salesperson you can have on your team. If they tell another owner, they did a great job, you should work with them. Even better than that is generally for FF &E companies and general contractors, butt heads a bit, sharing the space.

getting stuff on time, the GC wants to deliver the hotel on time, which means the FF &E company has to be done on time. And oftentimes there can be a lot of headbutting ⁓ at the end of a project, not to say ⁓ we have that happen too. We have lots of general contractors who will refer business. That is even, if that’s gold, there’s platinum, right? mean, that’s even higher. if people who usually are spouting are now referring,

Anthony Codispoti (23:28)
Yeah.

David Hoffman (23:30)
That’s pretty great.

Anthony Codispoti (23:32)
⁓ So I hear you talk all about the hotel side of things. Many hotels have bars, restaurants in them. Are you guys doing any of the fixtures for those kinds of installations too?

David Hoffman (23:45)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, we’re not doing, generally speaking, we’re not doing like the millwork pieces, things that are built on site, measured on site. We do booths, but oftentimes if they’re pre-assembled pieces or require minimal work on site, but all of the chairs, all of the tables, all of the decorative lighting, all of the flooring, the artwork on the walls, absolutely, we’re doing those too, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (24:11)
but

not like ⁓ back a house kitchen installations. Yeah.

David Hoffman (24:13)
No, we are

not food and beverage. And people ask me all the time, can you buy my plumbing fixtures for me or my washing, not the washing machines that might be in some suites in hotels. I’m talking about the back of house laundry. That’s just not our game. And we’re not experts in it. And I don’t think we’re the right people to do enough of that business with enough expertise. Food and beverage is a whole nother category.

Operating supplies OS and E, like towels and soap and things like that. Occasionally clients want us to get involved. We typically don’t do that either, because that’s an ongoing thing. ⁓ But yeah, basically anything in the hotel other than the back of house heavy machinery, we can be involved.

Anthony Codispoti (25:02)
So I want to come back to the Miller-Hyman training that you’re familiar with. You position yourself more as a consultant. I think what I’d like to explore with you a little bit, David, is this idea of so many times in the sales process, there are multiple decision makers. It’s not just the owner. It’s not just the CFO or the ⁓ purchasing person. You have to go through several gatekeepers there.

How do you approach a more complex sales process like?

David Hoffman (25:36)
Yeah, I think everyone is a little bit different. think ⁓ the biggest thing for me is actually to not close your scope so quickly. And by that I mean sometimes ⁓ anybody can be guilty of this, myself included or someone in our business development or one of our project managers. I’m talking to the owner. They really like us. They want to work with us. That’s great.

the question becomes are they the only decision maker? Are they the only person who’s gonna be a part of that process? Do they have an owner’s rep? Do they have a project manager on their team who’s gonna be working directly with us? Or is it gonna be them that we’re working directly with? Let’s find out everybody who’s involved on their team, because that likely will be all the people we wanna talk to and at least make sure we’re in front of before they make a decision. And I read that book a long time ago.

was the ability to train in the Miller-Heinman strategic selling. But I do remember one of the stories from the book about this guy was golfing with the vice president and they had the best relationship and he had the biggest deal and it was gonna close. And the guy kept telling him, we’re working with you, we’re working with you, don’t worry, you got this deal. He was so excited. And one day he got the call, hey man, you didn’t get the deal. He’s like, what are you talking about? You’ve been telling me all along that I’m the one, that we’re the one, we’re the best.

In short, the guy says, yeah, but I wasn’t the one making the final decision. you know, like asking those questions, it’s really important. Who else is gonna be important for you? Do you have a GC selected? Can we talk to them? ⁓ What questions do you have? Who on your team are we gonna be working with? ⁓ I think people are really quick and I don’t care where it is in life. We’ve experienced it in many places. I’m sure many people have that.

Anthony Codispoti (27:08)
That’s a gut punch.

David Hoffman (27:31)
People are quick to get to the sales pitch. Instead of listening to what the actual need is, I can, I think, address any of your needs, Anthony, with the same sales pitch that if I gave it to you first, you’d be like, this guy’s just a salesman. Versus listening to what your needs are and understanding what went well and what didn’t go well the last time and what we might be able to better perform on. ⁓

So that is, you know, that’s where the Miller-Heinman piece really comes into play is to understand everybody who’s a part of the buying process, to understand what roadblocks you have, how to overcome them, if they’re even able to be overcome. ⁓ If you really should be chasing a deal, ⁓ if I may for a moment, like I don’t want us to be trying to win projects that are being

bid by column jockeys. That’s what I call it. People who take your pricing and put it into a column and then put the next company into a column and column and column and column. And at the bottom, this company is the cheapest. Boom, we’re going with them. We’re going to lose that every time. don’t want to fight Walmart and no offense to Walmart, but they’re going to beat the corner store on pricing every time. ⁓ If pricing is all that matters, then we should find that out right away and maybe not participate.

If all you’re looking for is the bottom of the barrel and the cheapest way to get it there, a service company is probably not who you want to be working with. I think it’s a fair thing to say. you know, part of that too is being able to say, you know what, this isn’t a deal that we should be pursuing. It’s hard. It’s really hard.

Anthony Codispoti (29:12)
that’s hard

to do from an ownership perspective, from a sales perspective.

David Hoffman (29:18)
But you go through one of those projects where you decide you’re going to cut your margin and do it by just a hint of profit just because you want to get this client in the door, do a project. Those aren’t very rewarding. Generally are harder to work on. Think about employees who are part of your team and the challenges that you’re presenting to them because you just wanted to win at the lowest cost possible.

You know, there’s enough work out there to not pursue every opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (29:53)
So who are the right fits for you? ⁓ Tell us, don’t know, geography, size of hotel, brand, whatever the qualifiers are.

David Hoffman (30:06)
Yeah, you know, ⁓ today, kind of anywhere. We have made our business for many, years off of the select service hotel market. Each brand calls a little differently. So basically, somewhere between like 70 and 140 rooms. Typically not a full service restaurant on site, although some of them do. Smaller footprint, maybe a pool, definitely a breakfast area. ⁓

That for decades, that was like what we did. mean, we did, like going back to the 70s, Baymont Inns, and we were all over Candlewoods forever. And we’ve done to date now 78 home two by Hilton. So the select service market is still very much in our wheelhouse and what we perform really well at. But we’re also doing resort work. We have been doing some work with Margaritaville. We’ve done independent hotels. We’ve done custom.

built ⁓ branded hotels. So we’ve expanded out from just that select service model. And your other question, I think, was who’s the ideal candidate for us? Someone who understands the pitfalls of this industry, the challenges that they’re going to seek, and wanting to get it done on time and trust.

their partner, that’s the best client for us. We have at least 10 clients we’ve worked with on hotels for more than two decades now who continue to build. And that can be large corporations that own 150 hotels now to individual hotel operator who now has 10 hotels under their belt. So it’s really across the board. It’s nationwide. We do a tremendous amount of work in Florida and the Southeast, but we also do work here in Minnesota and California and

⁓ randomly, which we’re very pleased about. We’ve done eight hotels in Montana over the last 18 months. ⁓ So we’re all over the place. don’t really, there’s a lot more than that. Shockingly, Bozeman, Billings, ⁓ several other places in Montana are really ⁓ growing and booming. And we’ve done, we’re on our, so.

Anthony Codispoti (32:12)
There’s eight hotels in Montana?

Yeah.

David Hoffman (32:31)
2026 now, so in 2024 through now, we’re working on our sixth hotel in Bozeman alone. So it’s a booming economy there.

Anthony Codispoti (32:43)
So with your clients, who tends to be your contact person or who’s the decision maker that you get to work with the most?

David Hoffman (32:51)
The best for us is when we can work directly with the owner. ⁓ Less complications in communication. ⁓ Certainly they’re the ones signing the contract and paying the bills at the end of the day. ⁓ So that’s primarily like 50 % or more of our projects we’re working directly with the owner. About 10 to 15 % would be with the owner’s rep. So someone either who works at their development company or they hire externally.

⁓ to be their representative to us. They don’t want to deal with it. You deal with it and just report back to me kind of thing. ⁓ So then if I’m doing my, if I remember my math from what I just shared with you, the other 35 to 40 % would be as either a subcontractor of an architect or general contractor who wants to offer more services. So we provide it for them as their sub in that case.

And then the other one is somewhere in between where like someone at the company is a project manager. It’s their job. They’re the FF &E procurement specialist. So everywhere in between.

Anthony Codispoti (34:02)
So talking about some of these tight timelines before I wonder if you’ve got a particular story in mind that you can share with us. Tight timeline, logistical complication, something where you guys had to get creative in solving the problem for the

David Hoffman (34:18)
There’s a lot ⁓ every other day. Let ⁓ me think of, ⁓ let me think if I can. So we had ⁓ a client who had everything they said ready to go. We saw pictures of site. We said, you’re not ready to go. They did not have containers. They did not have warehousing. And they had told, ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (34:20)
Pick one.

David Hoffman (34:46)
brand that they were going to be opened by a specific date, which we told them based on how everything’s looking, it’s not going to happen. Um, we were able to install an 140 room hotel by holding back deliveries and then basically bringing in a couple of trucks every day for a couple of weeks, 140 room hotel to get them open on time in two weeks. It is not normal.

It is just not a normal thing. of course, you know, four to six, I mean, it just depends on site. If site’s done with all their trades and they let us have free reign on the building, yeah, we could do it in two to three weeks because we would coordinate the trucks according, you know, the key is just in time delivery, which a lot of people will tell you today doesn’t exist. And I will tell you, yes, it does. It’s just harder. And I would, I would highly advise against just in time delivery.

Anthony Codispoti (35:16)
What would be the normal timeline for something like

David Hoffman (35:41)
when you’re doing a renovation. So you’re doing floor by floor, your timeline’s gonna shift a ton. With a new build, just-in-time delivery means I need the headboards to hang on the wall today. Great, that’s the truck that’s showing up today. We’re gonna unload it, we’re gonna unbox it, and we’re gonna go to every room and put up headboards. And you go outside in, and you can do it very quickly ⁓ based on what you need that day, and you’re taking it off the truck and you’re distributing it to the rooms that day.

That’s just in time delivery. Many, many people will swear by, I don’t want to have to wait for my chairs to show up if they’re late. Just bring everything to a warehouse. And

Anthony Codispoti (36:24)
So how did

you guys pull off that two week timeline with limited access? You just have people like working all hours, okay?

David Hoffman (36:30)
Well, we got all the access at the end.

We got all the access at the end, it’s a matter of, if we can get in on this date and the logistics team working very closely with the project manager here to work with the vendors here, everybody hands on deck, ⁓ to say, okay, this date our installer is gonna receive this, this, and this. Good, this date, this, this date, this. You gotta make sure the elevator’s operational and we’re in there. Nobody’s getting in our way.

We will do this, this, and this. You need to provide us access to this, this, and this. And so as we received and distributed, a lot of people don’t believe you ⁓ should do like ⁓ category at a time. A lot of installers believe you should do a floor at a time, which is why they like having everything in the warehouse. Bring everything for these rooms on this floor and we’ll do this ⁓ floor first, or we’ll do a room at a time.

I will tell you, I’m not giving away the secret sauce here, but it’s true. Your installation time is like at least 30 to 40 % faster if you go by category. So that’s why we were able to do it in two weeks. We can hang all the headboards at once. And now every room has their headboards, right? Cause it’s all in the same truck. It’s easier to distribute. It’s faster because you, as an installer, as you’re putting stuff together, taking it out of the box, you’ve done it once, you’ve done it a hundred times, you’re faster than a hundredth time.

If you’re doing a room at a time or a floor at a time, you have to come back to that particular and remember what’s the fastest way to assemble and install this. So just little things like that ⁓ certainly make things go better. on every, mean, Anthony, honestly, every day it’s like, gosh, there’s a truck that’s, you know, two hours out and they’re not, they don’t have anyone. Is there any way we can hold it? ⁓ my goodness. Site told us they’re ready. We showed up in their parking lots, not paved.

finding a warehouse nearby to deliver all those goods to so that the truck isn’t stuck with a container on the back and nowhere to put it. These are everyday occurrences, everyday.

Anthony Codispoti (38:39)
Wow, that’s a fun one. What are some common missteps that you see hotels make as it pertains to interior design choices?

David Hoffman (38:49)
Great question. Recently, forgetting about commercial grade fabrics and forgetting about commercial grade construction. If you’re using a branded hotel, ⁓ they’re only gonna be working, generally speaking, their preferred or vendors that are approved are gonna be commercial grade. One of the folks here, Mark, one of the partners and owners here,

He always says, families with two kids and a sleeper sofa in your hotel room, you’re guaranteed those kids are gonna be jumping on the couch. The parents wouldn’t let them do that at home, but at the property, So that’s just an example of like, people treat things differently. They bang their luggage into the case goods. They don’t treat the sofas and beds the same way they would at home. It’s gotta be commercial grade. have a different person in there.

you know, every week or whatever it is, people don’t treat it with the same care they would their own personal items. see the mistake. Hotel owners make this residential stuff looks beautiful. This finish looks awesome on that coffee table. I know we were going to go with this commercial grade finish, but they said they have a color like this. Let’s just go with it. And then people put their water glasses down on a coffee table. That’s not finished right. And

Three months after opening, they’re replacing 150 coffee tables because it’s bubbling. ⁓ What type of flooring? Are you in an area where there’s gonna be a lot of people who are working out in the oil industry or out in the field and coming back with dirty, muddy boots? ⁓ Typically, you would have carpet tile or broadloom carpet in your hotel.

Should you be considering LVT, the flooring that’s much easier for your housekeeping to clean and will last longer? These are some of the things our designers talk very early on about. And then design choices, are you going out there just to go out there today because today’s fashion looks really cool, but in six years your hotel’s not gonna look ⁓ as presentable as it did today? Things like that too. And I’ll tell you,

There are so many, know, people don’t like the term value engineering because it means I’m cheapening my stuff. I don’t necessarily agree with that. There are two different types of value engineering. There’s, I really like the way this headboard looks, but if I made it in straight teak wood, it will cost me $6,000. If I make it in a wood that looks like teak and still appears very nice, but is more durable in a different product and cost me 1500,

Am I really ruining the design or am I making a smarter choice? So those are the types of things we do like to talk both from the budgeting side because you can go out and find fabric that’s $250 a square yard that’s designer fabric. You can find one that’s $25 a yard and looks almost the exact same. It won’t feel the same. So things like that. And then in things like the senior living space and most senior living facilities would know this, but as an example, like,

Anthony Codispoti (42:03)
Yeah.

David Hoffman (42:08)
you have to have different resistance on your fabric to liquids and things like that. And there are ⁓ variables in every product category that one needs to think about, not just from how it looks, but how it’s going to perform. And will it last a long time or are you going to be replacing?

Anthony Codispoti (42:28)
So we’ve been talking all about hotels, but then you just dropped in senior living centers. Are there other verticals that you guys work in?

David Hoffman (42:36)
Yeah, I we’ve done a fair amount of senior living work. It certainly doesn’t, it’s not one of our larger verticals, but we do play in that. We have clients who are both in the world of hospitality from hotel, but also have senior living clients who’ve come to us from referred from architects or other designers to do the FF and ECS. We do senior living, we do restaurants, we do multifamily. know, our, our needs are greatest typically in the hotel space because

Things like multi-family, the apartments or condos or whatever aren’t outfitted with furniture. So it’s just the finishes then that we’re dealing with and maybe the public areas. Similarly for most senior living facilities, unless it’s memory care or something like that, people are bringing their own stuff in. it’s not as, ⁓ our clients needs for us aren’t as great, maybe on the design side, but certainly not the FF &E, which is where we play heaviest.

Anthony Codispoti (43:35)
David, behind most success stories, there is usually a chapter that almost broke somebody. Can you share a serious challenge that you’ve gone through, personal or professional, how you got through that, what you learned?

David Hoffman (43:49)
Yeah, you got me so excited talking about our business and industry, ⁓ Anthony. Sure. ⁓ I guess for me, from a personal standpoint, ⁓ I started in sales and in my early 20s found some success in a few industries. ⁓ And what I learned, what I thought I learned at the time was that I was really good at sales and that all that mattered was that I could close a deal.

And then whatever one else at the company was doing didn’t matter. I was just there to close deals and make it happen. And then would want both the, guess, the financial piece of that, but also the accolades. You’re great at sales, David. Good job. Awesome. And I’m pretty sure I, well, I definitely had one manager at one point tell me as much, but I know looking back in life, I carried myself very differently than I think I do today, which is that my chin was

farther up in the air when I walked in a room than maybe when I do now, which is that I thought I had a gift and I am great at this and therefore everyone should acknowledge my greatness at sales. And what I learned when I mentioned ⁓ the company I worked with toward the beginning of my career in litigation consulting, ⁓ I started to rub a lot of people the wrong way. And when your consultants who are doing the work that you sold,

don’t want to work on a project with you or that you sell, you sell, they aren’t going to work as hard in the background or be as interested in the win as you are. And that starts to affect your ability to sell when you don’t acknowledge that there are other people around you who are helping make the company or you great and you’re taking all of the credit. And I felt pretty flat one.

three month period of time where I thought I wasn’t gonna be working there anymore, because nobody wanted to deal with me. I was just a ball of arrogance walking into the room. And it took some mentorship, some own personal acknowledgement and reflection and work myself. But I’d like to believe over 20 years later ⁓ that while I still feel I’m pretty good at sales, I understand the importance of everyone around me ⁓

having to be as great or better and acknowledging their greatness and acknowledging what it takes as a team to win versus just individual personal satisfaction, which I was too focused on.

Anthony Codispoti (46:25)
You know, ⁓ I gotta applaud you on that. It’s really hard to be that self aware and that self critical and saying, you know, shifting this mindset of, ⁓ I’m a gift here. I am a blessing that’s bringing all of these deals into Holy cow, I’ve really got to make some changes. Can you kind of walk us through

the moment or moments when this realization to you really started to unfold.

David Hoffman (46:58)
Yeah, I mean, I’d like to take more credit than that you’re like giving me there, Anthony, for like the moment. The moment was when my sales manager and the vice president of the sales company invited me into a meeting I wasn’t expecting and told me to check myself. ⁓ That was alarming and shocking ⁓ and did not see it coming. And for at least a month afterwards, like

what are they talking about? They don’t know a chip on the shoulder kind of attitude. But I give my wife a lot of credit for, you know, kind of helping me be like, why don’t you listen to what they’re saying versus just be automatically assume they’re wrong. And so the self reflection point, you know, from a personal standpoint, I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be the person no one liked when they came in the room. And the only reason maybe the management liked me is because I was bringing in revenue.

I didn’t want to be the disliked team member. maybe more importantly, I want to be able to look in the mirror and like what I saw. I didn’t, know, when you can, so over the space of like six months to a year there, it took that long to kind of be able to look in the mirror and go, yeah, I don’t, I want to do something different. I just want to be a different person.

Anthony Codispoti (48:15)
So did you have any recognition that you were rubbing people the wrong way before you were pulled into that surprise meeting?

David Hoffman (48:22)
Probably should’ve. But no. No, I was completely fucking screwed. Everybody loves me. Everybody loves me. That’s fucking us. Sorry, go ahead.

Anthony Codispoti (48:24)
But you didn’t. wasn’t until then, but even still, like when they first pulled you in.

But even when they first pulled you into that meeting, you’re like, you you said for a month afterwards, you’re like, what are these guys talking about? They don’t know what.

David Hoffman (48:39)
Don’t they care? I’ll just go work somewhere else where people will appreciate what I bring to the table. Why would they say these things? I give them lot of credit too for just being honest. We want you here, but not as this current iteration of yourself. These are behavioral things. This isn’t core. These are behaviors you can choose to change. We’re not asking you to sell differently or not utilize the tools you have with communication and writing and getting meetings or anything like that, but.

The way you’re treating your teammates and the way you’re caring yourself, these are behavioral things that you can choose whether you want to change. And like you just mentioned, like, I mentioned before, like 30 days, I was like, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe I should, you know, I don’t even remember what the, what the tool was. think maybe Monster back in the day, I was looking at all the other jobs that were available and where could I go work? They don’t appreciate me. ⁓ so it took a little bit, but I’m glad I, and it certainly didn’t happen overnight, but I’m glad I took.

the steps to that journey of self accountability, constantly asking for feedback, constantly, not like changing with every piece of feedback I get, but being open to hearing it, to acknowledging that exists, to understanding that other people’s perception is their reality. Now I can’t change their, who they are, but I certainly can acknowledge that their perception of me is this, is there’s anything I am doing to create that perception or are they just out of their mind?

To be fair, sometimes it’s the latter. But a lot more times it’s the form.

Anthony Codispoti (50:11)
Well, and you’re touching on something really important here, David, because having the awareness is one thing. And that took you a little bit to get there. But then once you have that awareness, taking steps to changing behaviors that have just been second nature for you for years is a much more challenging thing. It sounds like one of the things that you did was to just start asking questions, right? You wanted people’s feedback. Are there other things that you did along the way to help?

redirect some of these behaviors.

David Hoffman (50:45)
I think, I think a lot of it was just the, the humility aspect of it, which I’m not a hundred percent great at still today. I’m still working on every day. ⁓ but like understanding that maybe it wasn’t always me that was the reason I won and looking for those opportunities to tell that person you’re the reason we won or your success here helped me be successful. Thank you.

Like instead of spending so much time focusing on what I was doing well, really tried, I really focused a lot of energy on finding what other people were doing well, pumping them up, acknowledging their great work. ⁓ So I think that was a big step too, was like spending less time figuring out what I did right ⁓ and what others either could do right or helped make it win and encouraging that behavior when I got into management.

⁓ I think that was helpful. I think people spend a lot of time, and again, myself included, on what could I be doing better versus how do I do better for us to win versus what are other people doing well that I either want to emulate or what are they doing well that I can say great job doing that so that they want to do it more.

Anthony Codispoti (52:09)
Hmm.

David Hoffman (52:10)
shifting the focus, I guess, a little bit less off myself and more on other people.

Anthony Codispoti (52:15)
I like that. And we’ve talked about sales, you’re very good at sales, continuing to develop other things. But aside from sales, what else is your superpower,

David Hoffman (52:28)
Wow. Well, my children would tell you it’s not the dad jokes, nor would I think the employees here. ⁓ Although I’ve got many of them. ⁓ What’s, gosh, that’s really hard to be, to just come off of the humility speech to you, Anthony, and then be like, not only I great at sales, but no, I think inspiration, you know, I love coaching youth sports. I enjoy being on

Anthony Codispoti (52:45)
Well, I wanted to stop pummeling you.

David Hoffman (52:57)
boards for my kids ⁓ activities. I enjoy pumping people up and getting them excited about stuff. I certainly can yell at my TV enough about my Badgers and my Vikings. ⁓ But my boys enjoy, I think for the most part, watching the games with me because of how passionate I am about the moment I’m in. ⁓ And I think the team here feeds off of that. So I’d like to say inspiration. really

focus on like trying to be inspiring and positive and and holding people to account to what their level of greatness is. I do think I exceed or excel in that.

Anthony Codispoti (53:40)
For people listening, would you have recommendations for anybody looking to get better at leadership, improve their sales approach, a book, a course, a podcast, something that’s been helpful to you?

David Hoffman (53:56)
Yeah, I mean from the sales standpoint, I really think the you had mentioned the Miller Hyman. It’s been years since I’ve like continued the courses on that, but like just the idea of. So if someone’s in business development, the idea of consultative selling is so. Powerful yet so obvious, but it’s not obvious to someone who’s not looking for it, which is to stop selling off the bat, but just understand what exactly is it important to the person you’re in front of?

⁓ So on that, you one example I’ll give you is, and this is from years ago, ⁓ my oldest is now 17, gonna be going to college in the fall, but he was about to be a baby. So let’s say 18 years ago. And I was very excited and I wanna have a video camera. Now we all have phone cameras and it’s really not as exciting, but back in the day, I wanna have a cool camera. And I went ⁓ to Best Buy and I got a camera and I’m like, you know what?

I need a laptop that will actually hold all of these to share with my family and to save them forever. All these pictures. Because I didn’t have a good laptop for that. I got the camera, I went to Best Buy, and I went to the, and by the way, I love Best Buy, it’s not a knock on them. This was the time, something, or 18 years ago. I go to the computer aisle and a guy’s there, wants to help me. Hey, I need,

⁓ to get a laptop. And what did he say? Let me show you what you need. And he took me straight to a laptop that was high powered at the time. ⁓ This thing is amazing graphics and it’s awesome for gamers and it’s really slick keyboard and all of these things. And he goes, this is the one for you. go, for me? You don’t even ask me what I wanted in my computer.

You just gave me a sales pitch on a really cool computer. I’m sure for some people that would have been great. But like what I need is storage because I’m going to be an overzealous dad who takes 8,000 videos. That’s the laptop I need. I don’t care about the gaming platform aspect of it. So I use that example to like I still see that it’s like my gosh let me tell you we are so great at procuring orders and tracking them before they ever get to site.

That is the highlight of furniture industry is Anthony, should work with us. If I had asked that person, how did your last job go? Our logistics company couldn’t get a single truck on site. That’s the only thing I care about. I missed. again, strategic seller, or least consultative, or at least ask questions for people in the world of business development. From a management standpoint, I think it’s really, really important to not just constantly praise, ⁓ I don’t know, so you asked about a book.

⁓ It’s an old one, but it’s a good one for anyone going into management. think the one minute manager, anybody who goes into management here at furniture industries, it’s a required reading by me. I don’t know. Have you read that one, Anthony?

Anthony Codispoti (57:07)
I have, but give us a couple of takeaways from it for our listeners.

David Hoffman (57:11)
Yeah, we spend too much time on the negative and the positive. That’s one of the biggest takeaways. If someone did something good, tell them they did something good. If someone did something they should know better, tell them they should. But don’t sit there and beat them over the head with it if they did something wrong. And don’t sit there and heap praise on it till they’re blushing if they did something well. If you can do it in one minute on both sides, that’s kind of the ideal. I mean, that’s a very small takeaway. It’s not a long read, but it’s really powerful about like,

allowing people to operate and succeed on their own and not micromanage, but still hold people to account both positively and constructively. So I definitely think anyone who’s going into management should read that book as a starter, as a 101, for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (57:59)
What’s

the future of furniture industries look like, David? Growth opportunities, ⁓ interesting internal projects that you’re working on.

David Hoffman (58:08)
⁓ Thank you for asking.

We just talked about this at our annual conference not long ago. Look, we’re still gonna do what we do great and do more of it. We were able to scale because of infrastructure, technology and really great people. We don’t have that many more people this year than we did four years ago, but our growth is well over 50 % from that timeline. Because we’re able to do more work in a smarter way. That’s the smarter, faster, better, stronger.

So that piece, I want to continue. I want us to continue to grow our bread and butter business to be a reliable source for FF &E design procurement installation for select service market. I want to do more on the resort end. think people in that part of the world are finding our service to be immensely positive for them too, in that ⁓ typically resorts have like multiple people doing.

the FF &E, whether it be the restaurant or the pool area or the beach homes or the hotels or the condos, to have one stop shop appeal ⁓ like we provide is very interesting to them and we’re doing more of that. So I’d like to get more into the resort side. Some people here have recommended we try to get further upstream into the architecture part of our industry. I’m not quite there yet, but that’s certainly something on the.

could be somewhere on the horizon, but I really feel like we have created, I mentioned the infrastructure, like we have departments, we have ⁓ processes, we have technologies that we use, we have ways to, we’re constantly improving our systems every quarter for those who have, there’s another book for you, Traction, the EOS Model of Small Business. ⁓ I can’t think of Gino’s last name. ⁓ Thank you.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:06)
Whitman.

David Hoffman (1:00:08)
And Mike Payton, actually was the first time I ever did EOS, he was my coach. He also helped write the updated version. So I’m a big believer in a lot of their things. But one of the things is in a small business, you get so busy doing the business that you forget about looking at the business as an equal part of growth is you have to like be introspective and what can we work on this quarter, this year to get bigger and better and grow. ⁓

So we have those in place now and we’re growing because of it. But definitely the short answer to your first question with the vertical, think is on the resort side of things. And just an expansion of within each of the brands, not just select service, but ⁓ four and five star hotel chains might be part of the resort as well.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:59)
Just got one more question for you today, David. But before I ask it, I want to knock out three quick things. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with David, his email address is dhoffman with two F’s at furnitureindustries.com dhoffman2f’s at furnitureindustries.com. And he’s given us a phone number here to share as well 763-299-

0775. We’ll have it in the show notes, but here it is again 763-299-0775. Also, if you’re enjoying the show, a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards helping others discover our show. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, if you want to get more hospitality employees access to therapists, doctors and prescription meds that as paradoxical as it seems,

actually increases your company’s net profits, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com. So last question for you, David, a year from now, what is one specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

David Hoffman (1:02:07)
A year from now, gosh that’s a good question that I probably should have been prepared for. You know, a year from now I would think… ⁓

increased employees, like I have a number in mind, I don’t care to share it, but if I want to hit that number, because if we hit that number, that means we have gone into the vertical that I was referring to more deeply. ⁓ And to have maybe four or five more of those types of projects by a year from now.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:44)
I like it. We’ll check back in with you to see how that’s coming along. David Hoffman from Furniture Industries. want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

David Hoffman (1:02:56)
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:58)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspire Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.