Habersham Interiors operates with new owner

Jeris Ferguson is still a familiar face around Habersham Interiors, 3021 E. Sunshine, even though she no longer owns the company.

Ferguson sold Habersham Interiors to Joe Frazier in January, and these days she's an interior designer on the store staff.

Ferguson said she decided to put her company on the market so she could spend more time doing actual design work for her customers. "The actual management part of it, as the business had grown, was increasingly becoming a full-time job, or at least a three-quarter (time) job to manage it. My true love, of course, was the interior design and the buying part of the business, and the last several years, I found myself working 14- and 16-hour days trying to do management and my design."

Victim of success

Frazier added, "She was a victim of her own success. ... She found herself spending less time with customers, which is what she loved, and more time with accountants, which is not necessarily what she loves. So she wanted to escape that."

He added, "It's important that everybody knows that Jeris is still a part of this. ... She's actually, in the customers' eyes, more important today than she was a year ago, because she has more time to spend with customers. She is extremely important to the future of the business."

Focus on design, buying

Ferguson still plans to work full-time at Habersham Interiors, by focusing all of her energy on designing for clients and buying for the store's inventory.

"It's worked out just fabulously," she said of the sale. "He's taking care of all the management responsibilities, and I'm doing what I really enjoy."

Frazier used to own Modern Distributing Company, which he sold to Toro. After the sale, he wanted to find a business opportunity that would keep him in Springfield.

The right company

"Modern was a very large organization, and for me to just go out and get a job, I would have probably had to leave Springfield," Frazier said, but he really loves the community and didn't want to leave.

Habersham Interiors fit the bill as the kind of company Frazier wanted. "I looked for businesses that were ... successful, profitable, but also service-oriented, where you're providing a lot of value for the customer, and not just products where you could be out of business with the Internet in three years."

Habersham's designers, Frazier said, create unique atmospheres in clients' homes, a process which he said is very hands-on and customer-service oriented. "That uniqueness allows this business, I think, more sustainability in the future," he added.

While Frazier said he'll do whatever he can to help the company grow, he'll likely leave the decorating in the hands of Habersham's interior designers. "I'm not an interior designer, and I'll probably never be an interior designer. There are certain aspects of that that I don't know that I would ever try to tackle. But the business side is something that I know, I enjoy. I've run big business. The operational side comes to me very naturally."

Frazier has gone to market with Haber-sham's designers, and he said that thus far, his newest venture has been a learning experience.

Talent

"At my old company, I had 120 employees, and I could do every single job ... this company, I have 11 employees, and there are six or seven of them that I couldn't do any part of their job. ... I don't know that I appreciated the talent of interior designers until I got involved."

Frazier doesn't have any major changes planned for Habersham's Interiors, but he said he'd like to do a better job communicating the value of what the business provides for its clients.

Habersham Interiors offers upscale home decorating items in the store, and the designers on staff offer their services at an hourly rate.

Frazier said that generally, for a client intending to buy merchandise from Habersham Interiors, there's no extra charge for designers services; but, he added, that is determined case-by-case.

Builders & homeowners

He noted Habersham's designers work with several area home builders on new homes, and also can be involved with homeowners' remodeling projects.

"The designers can go out and do a house call, and look at the colors, help them decide what colors they like, what sort of look that they like, and do some furniture layouts measure the size of their home and say, This is the size of furniture that will fit.'"

He added, "We prefer to try and really help the customer, and we can find things in a number of different price (ranges), but if a customer doesn't want to buy anything, we certainly have a good service available."

Getting advice from an interior designer about a remodeling project, Frazier said, "is no different than getting advice from your accountant about how to do your taxes."

He said the designers can help with a lot of areas in a home that they don't sell products related to, such as lighting fixtures, tile, and paint.

"We pride ourselves on our work, each home being extremely unique," Frazier said. "We're not really into trends as much as creating something unique that each individual customer really appreciates."

Ferguson established Habersham Interiors in 1980.