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As an interior designer, more experience doesn’t only mean more knowledge and hand: it’s also a direct line to a bigger and better product library. If you don't yet have one, what are you waiting for? Let’s go through the stages of creating a product library, and how to make sure you’re setting yourself up for success. If you’re curious about this topic, try out our software for free and see for yourself how to improve your interior design workflows – all in one space.
What’s a product library?
A product library is a digital or physical collection of your favourite products’ details, which generally include the name, size, finish, material, trade price, lead time and supplier name for each. These products are generally then organised in different folders, whether by project, style, budget or product-type.
Why do I need a product library?
Product libraries help interior designers source and schedule materials with a head start. Instead of starting from scratch every time a project comes along, having a product library helps you choose products that have been pre-vetted and loved by yourself and your previous clients. Having this database will help you make good decisions when sourcing, and will save you massive amounts of time in the long run. And not only time, but unbillable hours!
How do I set up my own product library?
Normally, interior designers use offline sheets to organise their products, which has some serious drawbacks. To start, the information is on the desktop, which makes it vulnerable to outdated information and the computer crashing irreparably. Second, the system is not created for interior designers but for accountants and data analysts and scientists. This makes for an underwhelming and clunky user experience. Third, all information must be logged in manually – a total waste of hours. Finally, the platform is not created with collaboration in mind, which makes it difficult to edit across teams without creating massive amounts of versions and tracked changes.
This is where we come in. On Portaire’s platform, you can build your product library with little to no manual input and a variety of collaboration options. Let’s go through it.
Step 1: Import your product information
With our Chrome extension, you can clip all of your product information via the lightning tool (where all of the information is added automatically), or via the select tool (that imports any information you select with your cursor). This product information can then be added to your product library, or to the folders you build in the “spaces” section.
Step 2: Organise your ideas
In the Spaces section of our platform, you can organise your products into different subsections, you keep track of the files that matter.
Step 3: Broaden your horizons
The bigger your product library is, the better use of it you’ll be able to have. If you want to source pre-vetted products, you can access our trade portal and explore 80+ European and British suppliers, with over 3000 products to choose from.
Interested? Join Portaire for free.
