Republished from Inspired Insider, May 28, 2024

Andria Santos is the CEO and Co-founder of Fülhaus, an AI-powered interior design and furnishing company providing enterprise solutions for the real estate and hospitality industries. Before Fülhaus, she had a career in law and real estate. Andria’s passion for design and technology led her to start Fülhaus with a focus on vintage designer furniture before pivoting to the tech-driven enterprise it is today. As CEO, she enhances property performance through smart design and cutting-edge technology.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today so different. I’m Andria Santos, a Fülhaus that’s fulhaus.com. And not like the TV show. And Andria, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes, people should check out of the podcast. And there’s been some interesting episode of the year, some of the fan favorites have been the co-founder of Pixar on. And he talked about how the company started. And he talked about some Steve Jobs stories, some George Lucas stories. So that was a fascinating one also, because we’re gonna talk about SaaS as well, with Andria’s journey in the SaaS.

We had some of the founders of Zapier and their journey we had PipeDrive I remember, when I had them on, they had 10,000 customers, I think now they have over 100,000 customers, so they’ve grown quite a bit. And check those out. And MailShake was interesting one to where he’s grown to 70,000 users, and he’s been acquiring SaaS companies too, so check those out on inspiredinsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their dream 100 relationships and how we do that we actually help companies launch and run their podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch on a podcast we do the accountability, the strategy and execution. Andria, call ourselves the magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the company and the host. So they can run their business, develop amazing relationships and create great content.

For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should maybe have questions, go to rise25.com. I’m excited to introduce Andria Santos. She’s CEO and co-founder of Fülhaus. As I said, it’s Fülhaus, it’s an AI-powered interior design and furnishing company. And they’re dedicated to improving performance of furnish real estate properties and hospitality businesses through great design. And her role CEO Andria strives to transform the furnish real estate industry through technology. And that technology actually empowers the owners and managers to design better. And so they have Enterprise done for You Version. And they also have an AI power tool that helps people do it as well. So, Andria, thanks for joining me.

Andria Santos 2:59

Awesome. Thanks so much for having me here.

Jeremy Weisz 3:01

Start us off, talk about Fülhaus. And we can then talk about how they all got started. Inception.

Andria Santos 3:10

Yeah, well, so exactly. You said it perfectly. Well, Fülhaus is an AI-powered furnishing and AI design platform, which just launched last year. So we’re really excited about that. And we’ve been furnishing properties for real estate owners, managers, operators, since 2015. So, it really was about time that somebody created a little bit more innovation in this world. And we were really set out to do that. So here we are.

Jeremy Weisz 3:38

So how did Fülhaus get started?

Andria Santos 3:42

Yeah, so at 2015, I had originally had a career in law, and I had worked at Air Canada and their legal department and then went into private real estate firm in Montreal, and there was a lot of Airbnb hype, obviously, happening around that time. So we had this microphone and I kind of started this e-comm site. It was vintage designer furniture online. We started, you know, came up with a branding Fülhaus the .com was available. And sure enough, we got picked up by what was BlackBook at the time is now Sonder. And from there it really just kind of caught wind snowballed opening across Canada and the US. And yeah, we’ve been servicing the furnished rental industry ever since. So we really focus on either multifamily single family rentals, helping properties ultimately perform better through good design.

Jeremy Weisz 4:40

Early on with the e-commerce site, what would be an example like something on the site, and the company went and purchased something. What did that look like early on?

Andria Santos 4:50

Oh, man, that was like the best time that was driving around in a U-haul picking up vintage furniture from what I like to call the heyday of Montreal, which is where I’m from. And Montreal was lucky to have both the 76 Olympics and Expo 67, which allowed it to really harness — be this kind of epicenter of design. And that mid-century modern aesthetic. So there’s a lot of that kind of lurking in various places around the country and the province. So yeah, so really just kind of focusing on that focusing on those design heroes of the time. We built Fülhaus, which is based on actually Buckminster Fuller and Bauhaus. So that’s where the Fülhaus comes together. And it was, it was a great time we’re literally squatting in one of the properties that I was, managing, and just revamping and refinishing furniture, and yeah, just kind of getting a lot of people involved. And it was really early days for e-comm too.

Jeremy Weisz 5:58

How are you finding where you just going on estate sales, and then going picking this stuff up and bringing it back? What does that look?

Andria Santos 6:08

Literally, yeah, that’s literally it going to state sales and flea markets. And luckily, my co-founder, who’s really the design mind behind everything, had a really good eye for design product design or product, right. So, you know, finding those themes, loungers, and a lot of those quintessentially beautiful product from the heyday of that time. So yeah, so it was cool to source and find and collect and revamp and bring back to life. Until of course, we saw scale. And then the whole world changed.

Jeremy Weisz 6:46

So the first version, it’s pretty labor intensive, where you’re going around, you’re picking it up, you’re bringing it back, you have to maybe, restore it a little bit, and then you have to sell it. How are you getting people to your site?

Andria Santos 7:00

It wasn’t so hard at the time. Instagram was really early days, right? So you make a little bit of noise on some social media, and some people show up, I remember we had this really fun warehouse, this garage, that we collected all this stuff in and we didn’t think anybody would show up. And we came, we had this little garage sale, and we open the door, we arrive at our studio, and there was a lineup outside. And we were just kind of like, whoa, how did this get around so far, and within hours, everything was gone. And it was just, it really just picked up steam really quickly. But yeah, to your point, it is really difficult to do all of that labor intensive work and get it all really up to speed. So, yeah, so we had to pivot a little bit away from vintage, sadly, as much as I really do love it. But it’s too hard to actually scale vintage right now.

Jeremy Weisz 8:01

We’ll talk about the pivot points a little bit. And, you know, so it sounds like early on, you were getting this kind of antique furniture, and you use social media to really drive demand. And then what was the next pivot point from and that’s also, it’s time intensive, is capital intensive, to because anyone in e-commerce, you have to buy the stuff, typically, unless you’re doing drop shipping, and then sell it. So what was the first the pivot point then from there?

Andria Santos 8:34

Yeah, so we got a couple of really large volume contracts, and people just wanted more, they loved what we’re doing, they wanted more of it. So, and again, you can imagine that this time 2016-17 everybody’s just buying up units and occupying spaces whether it’s leasing it long term to sublease it short term. It was that time where there was just so much drive in the market to pick up a lot of this sort of Airbnb, coattails, right writing those Airbnb coattails. So there was a ton of demand for this type of Quick Install, quickly, turnkey furnished property that could get up and running as quickly as possible. So that’s when the vintage labor intensity could not really withstand what the demand was asking of us. And, and it was interesting, because we really didn’t know what to do, right?

Like, how do we then procure stuff and still maintain a certain amount of margin that’s going to keep us alive, right. And so yeah, so we had to pivot and we started, we got a friendly tip from somebody to go check out one of the furniture markets and they’re like, just go, you’ll understand it. Just go, and it’s in High Point, North Carolina. And once we got there, that’s when it really opened up our eyes to the wholesale vendor approach to this kind of business. And we’re always on a mission to do this kind of packaged furniture product where you can get this well-designed turnkey product, which is the hardest thing to really achieve is you can buy furniture anywhere, but how do you do it with good design quickly? That’s really the hardest thing to achieve. That’s been kind of a mission ever since is offer turnkey packaged homes furniture, and do it with good design.

Jeremy Weisz 10:34

So the first iteration was people are just getting the furniture from you and then placing it themselves. The next is you’re getting demand, and they may want you to furnish like a whole house or apartment or something like that. What did you figure out from that point? Were they asking you? Because at that point, I don’t know, if they’re just only asking for furniture? It sounds like they weren’t sure what they should do. How did you then price the service? Now you’re doing a service and the product right at this point?

Andria Santos 11:04

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the scale was coming in more like we want 30 units a month, 50 units a month, 70, and it just kind of, that volume of buying just had to be done through different channels. Right. So pricing is always tricky. And I think anyone will tell you that right? In furniture, it’s kind of we learned later on that there’s a lot of benchmark pricing to just kind of work with, given how old this industry is, there’s a lot of benchmark pricing out there. But including the service, including the logistics, including all of the very many pieces that we’re just starting to understand and trying to appropriately price. Obviously, we didn’t do so well in the beginning and have since improved upon. But yeah, it’s interesting to see, and I think a lot of the market has changed in its learnings around what is the stuff cost inflation has greatly changed the cost of products today. So, yeah, so it took us a while to learn, but you got a test and you test into it, and you figure it out.

Jeremy Weisz 12:15

At that point, were they I’m just curious, were they taking pictures of their house, and you were making recommendations? Or did they kind of knew what they wanted, and you are helping order for certain rooms.

Andria Santos 12:28

Interesting. So the way that I say it is that everybody comes to you with two pieces of information, a floor plan, and a dream. Right? So they have this idea of what they absolutely want. And they have a floor plan. So that’s really what we get. And now we have to interpret that floor plan, interpret that dream, and provide them something that they can afford, right. And that’s usually the hardest part, sourcing and procuring and trying to maintain that idea of that dream alive, right? While you’re also being filtered through budget and timelines and availability, its stock levels and all that stuff. So that’s where the wheels started turning into this is a data problem. Right? This is a data aggregation problem, right? So we need to know, inventory stock levels and images of the product, right? And there’s so much of it out there, right? There’s no lack of furniture in the world. So if we could figure out how to bring all of this data and centralize it and standardize it, then we can figure out how to sort it and get us our answers faster. So that was what we set out to do that.

Jeremy Weisz 13:41

We’ll get there because the kind of where you want to scratch your own itch and build a tool to make it faster, easier, and also give people what they want. From a service perspective, what was a major milestone for you in the company as far as clients or customers go?

Andria Santos 13:59

Oh, man, major one. I mean, Sandra was great. And they were a great, great client to have. But one of the major ones for us, which unfortunately didn’t materialize was Airbnb. We had started, we kicked off a pilot program with them early 2020. So sure enough, by the time we were rolling it out, and they were getting such a demand as well for like help to refurnish properties, right. So help us get up list and optimize our properties. Right. So they were seeking a service that could help them help their users, right.

So that’s where we came in. And so we started a pilot project with them, just in San Diego, and the volume that came in just with that small, pilot was more than even we can handle and unfortunately, it was March 2020. So do an after the World shutdown, and that kind of ended, but that was a really exciting time in which really shed some light on the fact that this was kind of a problem that people were finding everywhere. So, yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 15:07

I’m surprised, I like your philosophy on there’s a lot of people who are just renting or they’re moving Airbnb and they don’t want to buy their own furniture, you just, I’d rather show up. It’s there, and I pay extra amount per month. And you know, the owner probably makes a bit of money off of that rental, and the person doesn’t have to buy all the furniture, and then figure out what to do with it when they want to move in six months or a year. So have you found that over the years, the mentality has changed or not really?

Andria Santos 15:43

Absolutely. The interesting thing is whose mentality has changed? So, yeah, the tenant is definitely in that space, in fact, I just shared it on LinkedIn a few days ago, CORT Furniture recently shared a survey on 70% of tenants that they had interviewed, had wanted to move into, or would consider moving into a furnished rental as their next property versus 40%, the year before, right, so like, that is a huge increase over one year for the amount of people that are actually looking for a furnished rental. Right. So and it’s not just in the short-term rental world, or flex living, as they’re saying. Now, it’s really like long-term tenants, it’s coming to me that if I don’t own this real estate, why do I have to lug around all this furniture? Right? It makes absolutely no sense.

So that whole, like built-to-rent world, which has really been commonplace in Europe for a long time, people have been renting furnished rentals for a long time, because it makes no sense to move sofas around London. Right? So we’re starting to see that mentality migrate over here as well. And we’re seeing I mean, I, myself live in a lot of places. And I couldn’t imagine having to furnish that and I own a furniture company. Right. So it’s just, I just see a lot of generational change in that mentality. The problem is, is it actually changing the mentality of the owners of the properties? Right, so to invest that extra amount into the property to furnish it for a few extra dollars? Right? Is that shift really happening amongst owners and operators, owners specifically, because they’re generally the ones that have to invest in the property that way.

Mildly, mildly, there’s interest, there’s definitely, we’re seeing a lot of operators and property managers who do understand the benefits of renting, burnish really kind of egging them on in that direction. So you are seeing some shifts where they team up with operators, the better than going to manage this property. Yes, we’re seeing those owners and those managers come together to kind of nudge them in that direction. Like, we attend a lot of conferences, we talk to a lot of owners, and it’s still very tough for some of the large real estate owners to imagine why they would invest that additional cost. And also to have it easy for them to do, which is where we’ve set where we want to come in, right, we want to just make it really easy for you to like, understand what the cost is. See your return. If there’s management of this product, it’ll be easy to deal with. That’s kind of the goal. Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 18:41

At what point do you decide, we really need to create something to make it easier. And that looks like an AI SaaS tool?

Andria Santos 18:51

Yeah, so it came to be when we’re having so many of these discussions with clients where it’s show me your dream show of your floor plan, continue. And it was again, 2020 So we had just raised our first round of financing, and 10 people and a ton of time on our hands. So, we kind of put our heads down and we’re like, okay, if we’re gonna do this at the scale that Airbnb just showed us, we can do this and the demand that there actually is then we really have to build the tool that will get us there the fastest, right, and that will accelerate and scale that type of demand. So we started to look at how does the funnel currently work? Right?

How does that client command and how would it invitation signal cetera? So we ultimately realized that to get the client from when they enter the funnel into an order, right to do that, we have to always have this designer handhold them through every piece of the puzzle, which is like what do you really want and all of those very many filters that identified earlier. So we ended up asking, realizing that a very poor way to have that communication with a client is language. So language is a really bad thing to use when you’re talking about design. And I’m not saying that there’s not a design language to be had or design communication to be had or conversation. It’s more so that when a customer comes to us, and they tell us, okay, I want modern, what does that mean, right?

And what is their interpretation of modern or contemporary or mid-century. So, we realize that if we can understand what they mean by their image, and by that dream, and we can interpret that, then we know exactly what to procure for them. Right? So exactly, as you’re seeing right here, you come right, and you upload that inspiration image. So that dream that you have, you upload that there, and you can select a room or a unit. And there you go. So if you select a unit, the zoom controls in the way, which room you ultimately want to start with, and boom, Ludwig presents you a furniture package comprised of everything you need for your unit. So you have your living room, bedroom and dining room. And it’s based on your image inspiration that you have uploaded in advance.

So then you go in here, and you actually filter everything, you can see stock levels, you can swap items, so you don’t like the sofa, you’ll get liquid recommendations, and also see all products in the library. You can filter by budget by size, by availability. And I mean, the best thing about it is it just allows you to do all of that fun little design tooling that’s ultimately necessary to visualize how it all comes together. You can add your backgrounds, so you have assets, you can upload and do background, and you can add your doggo as well. That’s a must. Yeah. Finally, yeah, what’s great, as you see it all come together in this really simple item list. And you can see what’s available, and checkout in one place, and you don’t have to manage multiple orders, multiple arrivals, multiple products coming from different suppliers. So you can imagine this is really easy to use in a single-unit format.

But when you’re doing 100, and you’ve got 100 units, and you have 100 sofas, or 30 different ones, and one needs replacing or there’s changes to be made properties change, and things happen. So, when you’re in that world, and it’s such a big expense, you really do want to come back somewhere and manage all of this and be able to scale that cost and those assets.

Jeremy Weisz 22:54

Talk about, up to that point. You’re bootstrapped. Right, what made you decide to say, okay, we need to raise our own capital for this.

Andria Santos 23:07

Yeah, it’s funny, because, you know, we started this company with $600. That was the first spend that our first auction, right, so just like 600 bucks and a website. Yeah, so then we started to raise, I guess, after in 2019, we did our first million in sales. And so we started to raise at that point. And it really was to kind of, we know that the demand is there. Now, we just kind of need to scale it. And it required this tool to help us kind of get access to everything immediately, in this format. So that’s really when things kicked off.

Jeremy Weisz 23:49

Yeah, I mean, it’s a capital-intensive industry in general. Now, you’re talking about developing a SaaS tool, which can be complicated. How did you go about? Now, you go from being in the legal field, you have shipping experience to furniture now. SaaS? Right, so who are some of the resources you use to start to get this project across the finish line.

Andria Santos 24:17

So we are based out of Canada, which is a huge benefit for most companies that are developing technology of any kind. So we really had a ton of support from various institutions out here from grants to other types of lending and financing. But it takes convincing, right? And it took a lot of legwork really convincing these people that we’re going to go from this furniture provider to this app company, and this is what we need to do it. And technology had just, AI was just kind of becoming a thing at that point. Right? So it was very much the time when we started to see AI being able to identify certain X-ray images and certain things across the medical field, one of the big ones that you may know is the Chihuahua muffin comparison. I don’t know if you’ve seen that graphic where it’s like, is it a Chihuahua? Or is it a blueberry muffin? So I haven’t seen?

Yeah, sounds like there’s a lot of like AI kind of working on imaging technology, which was really important to what we wanted to achieve, we wanted to go from image to multiple pieces of furniture that make up that same style. Right? So that was kind of just starting, and we really were testing into it. And luckily, we got some help to work with the Computer Research Institute of Montreal, to help us understand, like, is this technically feasible? Hypothetically, is this doable? And so they were kind of saying that, yes, it was. So at that point, we got some funding to be able to hire the necessary machine learning. And developers that we needed.

Jeremy Weisz 26:06

Take me to the evolution of the team? A little bit, obviously, early on, is just two of you, it sounds like, how did that evolve over time?

Andria Santos 26:13

Oh, man, it’s the fun thing about being in a garage is that people walk by a lot, especially when you have the doors open. And that’s how we acquired our first, not necessarily always the case, but a lot of times, you know, people had heard about us, and they kind of just walk up and they’re like, I have these tools, and I have these skills. And like, can I help, and it was just kind of like, it was at that point that I started to understand, the value of employees and how they can actually help you scale your business a lot faster. But there was a time when, of course, we’re hard-pressed and we’re bootstrapped. And we had this giant Studio, it’s like, the first thing we signed was a five-year lease when we made our first $50k. Right, so we have this huge garage studio, and we have bills to pay. And so we’re like, okay, what do we do, we need money, blah, blah, blah, it’s not easy to find this and that, like, you know what we actually need, we actually need people.

And what we have is space. So let’s offer the space for free in exchange for help on the company. And that’s exactly what we did, we started offering free co-working, and you’d contribute time. So what happened was, we turned this giant warehouse into a co-working space of some kind with all of our vintage furniture, and neon lights, and like pinball machines, one of our first people was a website designer, so he then designed our website, another guy was a pinball mechanic. And that’s how machines came from. And so he did all of our installation and ops. We had other people come in from different walks of life that would just assist in this product. And then it was incredible, because everybody had this kind of common goal. Outside of just, you’re a freelancer, you’re working on a client project and everybody was kind of like working together also part-time, which really created this amazing community. And yeah, it was a great space.

Jeremy Weisz 26:53

And then what about the development side? How many teams did it take for you to get that off the ground and also maintain it?

Andria Santos 28:30

Yeah. So we started with, like, our first developers, we went to the universities and went to the kind of career days. We hired developers, which then they’re like, okay, we need a machine learning guide, we need this person and we need that person and we’re learning our way through this entire thing. Yeah, my family is quite technological as well. So my brother works in software, and my father has a few patents as well. So I’ve also been kind of exposed to that reality of understanding what our needs are, and just kind of in that entrepreneurial spirit, and kind of just get it done, and find the people to do it.

Jeremy Weisz 29:13

Andria, if you’re looking back, what do you wish you would have known now that you’ve gone on this kind of SaaS journey in the beginning, when you first started?

Andria Santos 29:27

How expensive it is. I think that of course, we went through crazy changes, but we could have never expected I think what we’ve seen over the past few years, we’ve been developing this like I said since about 2020. So we can only plan so much obviously right? But I think when we had set out to endeavor to do this, I don’t think we thought that it would take three years and X number of dollars to invest in this idea which has proven to be incredibly fruitful. But, you know, I think that planning would have been hard to plan, but ultimately would have been really interesting to have known in advance.

Jeremy Weisz 30:12

I mean, there’s obviously a lot of changes, and the only way to do that is to, for you to use it and other people to use it, what were some of the key things that you implemented into the software because of, maybe it’s your team’s feedback or an external feedback?

Andria Santos 30:30

Removed background. So one of the really annoying things that I think a lot of designers will understand is that, whenever you’re creating your vision or mood board, or whatever you want to say, to present to a client, you have to remove white backgrounds of all the products, right. So that was definitely something that they were like, if he could just solve that one thing in one place, that would really help. So that’s a fun one that a lot of people when they see it, they’re like, you know, that is just such an annoying thing that everybody has that we step outside of their tool to figure out and fix. So that was fun. And there’s lots of things. Ultimately, this was built based on an industry that we already understood really well. So it wasn’t like, let’s make up SaaS, let’s make up a tool that we think might work. It was that no, we actually had tried tested this, and we know that this is a huge improvement on the current state of affairs.

Jeremy Weisz 31:30

What about little features, like, when I showed the if, by the way, if people listen, the audio, there was a video version, and we were actually walking through a demo. And what’s kind of cool about that is, if you’re watching, I’ll bring it up again, for a second. It’s this, and I’ve not seen that on other sites before. So it’s pretty cool. But there’s a little red dot that actually from a user experience is pretty cool, right? And so this little dot kind of follows you on like actually brings you I mean, I’ve seen like, there’s maybe a next button, but not quite like this. So I don’t know if this was like a major conversation or how you came to this user experience, I guess you could say.

Andria Santos 32:18

So funny story. But let’s give credit where it’s due. So that is actually Storylane, which is this demo, Creator tool. And they actually create this demo for you. So you can walk through an example of your entire software. So yeah, so this is actually created in Storylane. So yeah, very great UI, definitely. But it’s, this is kind of the demo version. So when you actually get out of here, and you actually do log into your own platform in your own dashboard. That’s when you really start creating.

Jeremy Weisz 32:53

Awesome, bringing it back to what you were saying before I kind of pulled this up. So you reframe it to our or muffin? So talk about what you’re explaining here related to AI?

Andria Santos 33:08

Yeah, so the question is, this was a time when does AI know the difference between a Chihuahua or muffin? Right, so this was one of the examples of those images. And so, this had only started developing around that time, really, I don’t even know 2017. Yeah, this is all kind of coming to fruition. And people talking about like, okay, AI can tell between these images, what else can you tell? Right? So it was also exploratory at the time, and then it was funny, because when we launched in, I mean, last year, it’s like, every AI tool came out last year, right, in 2023. So it was just like, has everybody just kind of been heads down working on this in the background for the past three years? And I guess the answer was, yes. Right. So, it was interesting to see that, yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 34:03

I didn’t realize the actual resemblance between a Chihuahua and a blueberry muffin until you just showed me that. Talk about Unos. For a second. So like, just, to go back, there is an enterprise version where you can use a tool, but like, you guys basically handle all the back-end stuff. And then there’s the tool people can just use on their own. And that may be for property managers or interior designers that they may use for their clients as well. Was there a thought of well, I’m not saying you’re creating competitors, but why even release it to the public, you could just use it internally and streamline it and help clients with it, you decide to actually make a front facing version. So then we talk about the decision to do that, as opposed to just keeping as an internal tool.

Andria Santos 34:53

Yeah, I think what’s fun is the community that comes together around a technology that’s new and innovative, and that is actually useful as well. So I think it’s beyond only what Fülhaus can do with it, right. And I do have that kind of philosophy about you do have to kind of keep certain things available to the masses and available to other people to use them, if you’re gonna create something new and innovative, you might as well see other users and their use cases for it. So, yeah, so there’s logic and not keeping it to ourselves as well. And we’re very niche at the same time, right?

So Fülhaus is very much focused on servicing the b2b side of real estate, the business, the real estate investor and developer. There’s some amazing consumer sites out there that could really see value in this. And I do think that that would be a great, we’ve dabbled in consumer, and it’s not my cup of tea. So I would much rather put this tool in other consumer site hands and see what they can do with it.

Jeremy Weisz 36:01

So, one use case would be Unos? To talk about you deal with Uno’s? I mean, I’m in Chicago, so I’m very familiar with Uno’s another deep-dish pizza places, but talking about Uno’s?

Andria Santos 36:16

Yeah, so they came to us, because they’re launching kind of a new angle as well for their brand, and they wanted something that was kind of new, and one design forward. So they kind of wanted a brand redesign an interior redesign for their brand. And then okay, cool that you can do all of this new interior design and branding. But then how do you actually roll it out amongst your franchisees? Right? Is it just some booklet with an order form that they have to kind of somehow piece together? So there’s no real tool that can help with that? Right.

So in that real kind of procurement world, especially with franchises, you’ll see the same thing in hotels, right, so you’ll have kind of the HQ in the central headquarters of that hotel chain, or have that franchise, really making all of the design decisions, but no way to properly disseminate that, across their franchisees, there are other sorts of e-procurement tools, but they’re not really designed forward. So they don’t actually help you visualize exactly what you’re buying and eating. So yeah, so that was kind of where they came to us, and they were like, well, this is great, you have won the full-service design agency, and then a place where people can actually purchase this stuff and check out. So it just became a really easy rollout tool for their new chapter of their business.

Jeremy Weisz 37:37

Yes, on that side, like a lot of b2b can be a franchise, I know, they’re short-term, rental hotels and other channels there. And when you were exploring, who would be the best customers for the actual self-service tool? I know we talked about interior design and property management firms, how do property management firms use it?

Andria Santos 38:04

So similarly, right, so property management firms also come to onboard owners, who have properties who need or have furniture, and will always be redesigning at some point in that lifecycle. So having a place where they can see all of the very many properties that they have, what they’ve ordered and purchased, and also to know what needs replacement, because you do need to know if that nightstand is broken? Or if that lamp is broken, what room is it in? And what does that room look like? Right? And if I’m replacing that it has to match the other one, or it has to look a certain way, and it has to overall keep it together, versus just letting the time of procurement chip away at something.

And it’s such a big investment, right? What these hospitality brands do spend on this cost, right of furnishing is huge. And it’s the one thing that really determines where they stand in that ranking of quality. So is it low-end? Is it mid or is it high? It’s largely dependent on good design. So the question is, how do we make it more attainable for some of the mid-tier folks?

Jeremy Weisz 39:16

Andria first of all, thanks for sharing the journey from a garage until now AI SaaS tool. Probably at that time, you weren’t thinking we’re gonna have an AI SaaS tool someday helping large organizations in hotels and franchises. But my last question, and people can check it out all their what they have going on at fulhaus.com It’s fulhaus.com to learn more. My last question is, through this journey, we all have mentors, and some of the lessons that we learned from our mentor so I love to hear a few of those. I know you come from a family of entrepreneurs, so maybe a lesson you learn from sounds like your dad had some patents and a business as well. So maybe start with him and any other mentors that have helped you along the way in a lesson you learned?

Andria Santos 40:10

Yeah, I think, you know, my mentors are very personal to people I know, personally, right? So I find it really hard to kind of hold people too highly if you don’t personally know them. You know, there’s a lot of other things going on behind the scenes, and it’s never a full story, right? So yeah, to that point, my dad is a huge inspiration for me, I saw him build his business from our basement and into multiple offices around multiple countries. And it was very inspiring to me at the time when I saw the ups and downs of that side of things, right of being an entrepreneur. So, it’s huge to be able to see it live and be a part of it. And like, the conversations around the dinner table are so interesting from a young age, right, when you’re talking about shipping and cargo and international and an iron ore going from South America to China and why and what are they building? Why do they need so much cement and you really understand the global economics of the world? Right, and why things are happening? Crazy inspirational. Right, so definitely one of the ones I hold highest. But another one.

Jeremy Weisz 41:23

Do you think, Andria, before you get to the next one, obviously, you’re around it. Did you always have that inkling that you were going to be an entrepreneur or like you said, you saw the ups and the downs. So that could be like, yeah, I’m going to definitely do this, or there’s no way I’m ever going to do this. What was your thought when you were growing up? Did you have any thoughts, no, there’s no way this is to up and down, or no, this is for me.

Andria Santos 41:55

I mean, it was so exciting to see, seeing it all kind of happen in front of you, and really going from nothing, like I tell you, my parents build their own house, their first house with their own hands, right? So but turning that into multinational, it’s super exciting to see and you really understand life at a different scale. And understanding the value of freedom, also, and not being tied to that desk job, right. And like, I was going down the path of being a lawyer. So that was a very, very serious desk job. Not something that I could really, it wasn’t a pill, I could swallow very easily. And then, when I was in real estate, and I had a $10 million check that I was bringing to a notary in my hands. And I was like, I will never have my name on this if I keep working this desk job. So that was it. For me, I was like, something’s gonna give and gave. And here we are.

Jeremy Weisz 43:08

So your dad was a big inspiration. You were gonna mention someone else who’s a mentor.

Andria Santos 43:13

Yeah, so the person whose name was on that check was the person which was my boss at the time later became an investor as well. Real Estate, second generation, real estate owner and developer and it was, were these were similar in age. So it was also interesting to see him take over his father’s business and really become that, and take it to new levels as well. So also to become his own CEO and business owner and get a lot of inspiration of the right and wrong thing to do from that angle.

Jeremy Weisz 43:58

Any specific lessons from them that you took either observing or through conversation?

Andria Santos 44:07

I feel like there’s so many. There are so many. Oh, man. There’s one that I always say that my dad would tell me as a kid, and this is gonna sound horrible, but it really added value to my life. And I tell you why. When I used to say I want something and he would be like, ask me if I care. And it was such a harsh reality to look to that person and look at your dad be like, do you care? And he’d be like, no. And that was the end of the conversation. There was really nothing more to be said.

Jeremy Weisz 44:50

So is he saying go after and get it yourself?

Andria Santos 44:52

Yeah, he’s like, you’re gonna have to find another way around this. Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 44:59

Love it. Andria, I just want to be the first one to thank you, everyone could check out fulhaus.com more episodes of the podcast and everyone, we’ll see you next time. Thanks Andria.

Andria Santos 45:07

Hey, thanks so much Jeremy. Take care.