When was it created and how did the idea of creating to Covet House came around?
COVET HOUSE is a Covet Group Brand/Service and was born in 2016. It was born because we listen to our customers and their needs. Our customers had the needtobuyseveralbrandsof the group, so we created Covet House to have a single bridge of contact to facilitate the entire buying process. Several wishes have been added and this great online Marketplace, the Covet House, was born. Our main goal is to inspire interior designers, architects, stores and all other stakeholders who are present in the brand universe, helping them by giving solutions and solve their projects. By representing different brands and different styles, it offers all you need in just one place. We then became a powerful platform that supports all professionals.
Covet House is one of the brands in the Covet Group. What is the big challenge of being part of the largest Portuguese design group?
The great motto of the Covet Group is to ELEVATE THE DESIGN AND HONOR THE CRAFTMANSHIP and that, consequently, spread to all the marks of the group. Our daily work must always meet this purpose; if it is not, it is best not to move on. That is why we have this great responsibility, which is not ours alone, but of everyone: to contribute so that the Portuguese arts and this legacy do not disappear and make this witness endure. Inaddi-tion to that, we are constantly learning and changing to be always one step ahead and fulfill the market’s needs.
When customers think of Covet House, what word or phrase do you?
We think that we are growing and making this message more and more spread in the minds of our stakeholders. Our job is to make life easier for professionals and give them tools to help them make the best decisions, such as our website, where we can show them more than 1300productsandinspi- rations, a concept that later covers our catalog, where we present all brands and pieces divided by product typology and our Book Inspirations which, as the name implies, has as a function to inspire since it is made of images that cover the divisions of the house. Our projects like Covet House Douro, Covet London, Covet Paris, Covet on Tour, Covet Lounge and Covet New York City in the future, have the same purpose.
COVET HOUSE represents some of the best design brands. Which are they? Being a service, they have as purpose to ally themselves with other brands. Which are?
We are currently representing 12 brands, whether internal or external to the group. Bocado Lobo, Delightfull, Brabbu, Brabbu Contract, Koket, Essential Home, Maison Valentina, Luxxu, Circu, Rug’Society, Pullcast and Miyabi Casa. Our goal will always be to complement our offer; we wanttocontin- ue with the same motto and offer products to our customers with different styles, so it will never make sense to have brands competing in the same space, but complementary brands, so that our offer to professionals becomes even bigger and so they still find more solutions not needed before, therefore, look elsewhere.
We know you are highlighting a new accessory category. What is the success or failure of this new strand?
This category arises because, once again, we hear our customers andthedif- ficulty they had in finding this type of different decorative objects to com- plement their spaces; On the other hand, I think it was the obvious way, because when we presented ourselves at the big design fairs, we had this need to decorate the space to make it more welcoming and to get through the concept and it was a typology that was lacking in the our portfolio.
We have not yet fully communicated this collection as we are adding new brands and improving communication. However, I think that by focusing on the individual category we can have an increase in the notoriety and sale of this type of products, which in essence are a complement to the house and all the other types of product that are already part ofourcatalog.
We know that you don’t have physical stores. Future strategy or project?
Stores are a difficult subject,however we have been learning and studying the markets and for us, at the moment, it has a significant weight in our next strategies. We have already had a first experience with COVET PARIS and this was also the motto to move forward and start designing this new Covet Franchising project that, basically, we can find local partners for these shops / showrooms with all our brands. We have already been approached by several clients interested in this type of project and when we realized this will by these pro- fessionals, we started working to make this project a reality in several cities and countries around the world, so that we can be closer to our customers.
The presence in the digital world is one of your main weapons, just look at the numbers in the main social networks of the brand and your active participation on the web. How did you create this online culture?
We realized with the experience of the otherbrandsof the group that the world is online. So, from an early age we start- ed to adapt the different networks/platforms that existed in the virtual world to our brands, and we tried to understand how we could play this “virtual game”. In order to give visi- bility to our brand in the world we created a website where all 1300 products and inspirations, experiences, catalogs and different graphic materials explain and show how great the brand’s online heritage is, but that alone is not enough, through the social networks and the strategy that we have, we potentiate the contents produced and create engagement in the different networks. To help bring more people into our website we also have a blog brand and three product blogs. The brand blog speaks of the brand world and everything that can be related to this world, you go from new products to the best restaurants and hotels. Product blogs help people who are looking for specific product categories to find our brands more easily.
We are a brand that segments our market and we are even go- ing to the niche that interests us. How?! Through the online platforms like MOM, ArchiExpo and ArchiProdutcs. In these platforms, we find our main targets and so we work daily in them to attract their attention and gain their confidence, by the integrated offer that they find in one single account. In addition to these three strategies we also have online ad- vertising and we know that advertising is the most effective way to reach a large audience with interests in products sim- ilar to ours; through this we have been able to make our cus- tomers fall in love and demonstrate a solution just one click away. We do not neglect the more conventional marketing, we can enumerate some like e-mail marketing and newslet- ters, each with a different mission but for the sake of a common goal, the brand. Through email marketing, we create our closest relationships, it is the first path to maturity, it is the constant exchange of emails between an ambassador and a client that earns the confidence of both. Through the newsletters, we communicate our highlights and we maintain our contacts aware of the current novelties of our brand, as well as our experiences and inspirations. Finally, behind all the strategies presented before and to be more effective, we do an SEO job, that is, we have a selection of specific keywords for which we want to be found and are part of the basis of all strategies from the website to the content we produce.
The Covet House has several experiences: Covet London, Covet House Douro, Covet Paris, Covet On tour, Covet Lounge, and COVETED magazine. What can we expect from each of them?
We want to be where our stakeholders are and therefore each experience has its own purpose that is to enhance our physical presence in the market. Covet London is a private flat show in the heart of the world’s design capital, Lon- don, which offers an intimate design experience in a totally authentic setting. Conceived with different collections of furniture, lighting and accessories, the apartment and its ambassadors are ready to inspire professionals through a private tour of the amazing stories behind each piece. Covet Paris is a bit similar to Covet London in terms of essence,however, this is a showroom on one of the oldest and most famous streets in Paris. It is open to the public and presents several pieces of the group together in an inspiring environment. A little different from Covet London and Covet Paris is Covet House Douro. An ancient three floor waterfront mansion in Oporto located in one of the most beautiful landscapes of Europe, the Douro, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The house is filled with remarkable architectural details that hold the glory from a noble past and traditions of Portugal. In this timeless scenario, a unique showroom was born and each room was decorated by prestigious design brands. A trulywhismical escape for exclusive clients and partners to be inspired, or simply a destination to relax over a weekend and be im- merse in the innovative The Covet House Experience. We also have the Covet Lounge, which is how we present ourselves at major international fairs such as iSaloni, Maison et Objet, AD Show, among others. It is an inspiring space, the purpose of which is that people can rest a little and spend pleasant mo- ments while relishing good appetizer and taste great Portuguese wine, while at the same time have the possibility to know, through our ambassadors, the pieces of our brands. Among our experiences we have the Covet On Tour, which consists on a special van full of designer parts, samples and catalogs conducted by designers and marketers in across Europe, Asia and the United States. We want to personally meet all the professionals in their own design studios and showrooms; have private meetings throughout the year, anytime in any city. Last but not least, we have COVETED magazine that aims to put our brands ahead of the most creative minds in the world. Articles about the world of design, main events, best restaurants, hotels, galleries, inspirations, among other topics is what COVETED has to offer, intending with this to be a platform where the great brands of Design and Luxury want to show and promote their products.
What are the next COVET projects that are in mind to be created and what is their purpose?
e are already thinking about creating Covet Franchising, where the main goal is to attract local partners to open Covet’s around the world following the franchising model that will allow us to be closer to all our stakeholders and to be even more recognized CITY BY CITY. Another experience is Covet New York City, which consists on a physical space in NYC that is one of our best markets where we will have a team present all year and whose visitors will be able to see our pieces and understand Covet better and each one of the brands and products. We want to close more businesses and establish more close relationships with the contacts that interest us, being always up- to- date with the city’s agenda in order to be present in the many events that will occur there in order to meet our stakeholders.
If the brand disappeared tomorrow, what impact would it have on the world?
Professionals would get poorer, with fewer solutions and with no dailyinpirations to solve their projects and to serve their clients. Nevertheless, if this was a real thing we are sure that our legacy of unique and innovative experiences with worldwide events is built but we are sure that we would be missed by people who seek for daily inspirations through the various channels of communication, both online and offline
What can we expect from Covet House in 2020?
All our projects will already be recognized and will have their own notoriety and specialized team project by project, we will be a team of 50 people. We will have our physical presence in several countries through the various COVET’S franchising (Mexico, Vietnam, Singapore, China ...). We will have some reputed brands as our partners in our Marketplace.
Covet NYC will be a success in flat format, the sales value and number of relationships created will overwhelm the investment made and wewillcer- tainly see chances of replicating to other countries. At this point our shop in London will be a reality. We will be able to reach a new type of stakeholders, the final customer. The first Covet House Hotel will open in January of this year, and Covet Valley and Villa will be taking their first steps.
The “Live Home 3D” APP will already be inserted in our online Marketplace, where professionals will be able to choose a space in the house and combine the various pieces to have a better perception of what could be thefinalre- sult of your project. As a complement to this APP, we will also be looking for our Interior Design service where we will have a team to develop a project for customers who use our parts. Finally, we are sure to fight to reach the 6,000,000 in sales.
