Real Estate Blog - CORT partners with home stagers to bring staging services to a growing segment

Home : Blogs : Karen Otto, Home Stager, Plano, TX 469)964-0516 www.homestarstaging.com : North Texas Home Staging - Not Your PlanO Staging Blog!

CORT partners with home stagers to bring staging services to a growing segment

Yesterday CORT furniture rental company announced that it was launching a "national home staging services" segment of their business and it may have set off some red flags in the staging community, especially if you read one of the releases that was "tweaked" in the Bizjournals article. It was certainly confusing and misleading to some degree.

After speaking with the media representative, Amanda Denton, and my local CORT representative, Kathy LaMarr I received permission to post the original press release as correctly written here on my blog.

I have taken the liberty to highlight, in bold blue, the areas I hope will help you understand that this is a benefit to home staging professionals not a form of competition. Having personally built a relationship with my local CORT representative, understanding their desire to partner with home stagers and in turn help me grow my business (because I personally DO NOT want to be in the furniture rental business) I am encouraged by this new segment of their business they are offering large corporations to help them sell their inventory of homes faster and for the most profit.

They are not only leveraging the longstanding relationship with home staging professionals across the country with this new program, they are leveraging their influence and power to help home stagers grow their businesses as well through this mutually beneficial partnership.

Posted by Karen Otto, Home Stager, Plano, TX 469)964-0516 www.homestarstaging.com on 05/07/2009 07:09 PM

Comments (24)

cort, national home staging segment, home staging professionals

Originally posted at: North Texas Home Staging - Not Your PlanO Staging Blog!: CORT partners with home stagers to bring staging services to a growing segment

Post is included in group: Stage It Forward...
Post is included in group: Real Estate Staging Association

24 Comments on CORT partners with home stagers to bring staging services to a growing segment

MAY

I've been waiting for you to post this since our conversaton yesterday. Hopefully some of those red flags will come down now...

thx for clarifying Karen O. -- I am sure Cort is grateful.

Hi Melissa, there really wasn't a need for red flags but understandably some of the articles were skewed a bit and caused some confusion. Nice talking to you!

Hey Karen D! I need businesses like CORT to keep my business running! Hope all is well with you! :-)

Karen, I tweeted this press release yesterday. I'll tweet again with a link to your blog.

There are still very few details regarding this program in the press release. Just how is this supposed to work? Does CORT have a list of preferred stagers that they will refer business to? Do they have in-house stagers?

Saying they are "serving businesses responsible for managing the sale of homes" is very vague. I thought that that was what they were already supposed to be doing?

Hi Karen, thank you for posting this. Like Kathy says it's still unclear on all the details, but thank you for highlighting the important parts.

MAY

Thanks for sharing this, It makes good business sense for Cort to adopt this marketing strategy. Hopefully the relationships they form with stagers will be mutually profitable.

Thanks again, Jess Graves

Thanks for the tweet Donna!

Hi Kathy, I suggest that you to call or stop by your local Cort Showroom and ask about what you commented here - I can say for my market here in Dallas that there are no "in house stagers" in our CORT Showroom on the payroll,

Hi Annie, call or stop by and speak to a local Cort rep.

Hi Jess, I agree!

Contact your local CORT and see what it takes to become part of the National program just launched. This is in no way in competition with stagers, much to the contrary CORT is partnering with stagers to offer more services to their corporate clients.

There is a recent article circulating that is poorly edited that makes it LOOK like CORT is actually doing the staging, but in truth CORT has developed this program specifically including home staging professionals. Yes, if asked CORT will say we offer home staging services...and here is HOW...we contract WITH stagers to do the staging portion using CORT furniture where necessary. CORT's national corporate clients require "one stop shopping' and this is how can accommodate that client.

The program is truly and exciting development for home staging as it will serve to generate more services for professional stagers through more awareness on the corporate level. These are large relocation companies and banks that CORT is contracting to that have millions of dollars in inventory of unsold homes looking for a national answer to assist in getting their homes sold. In a nut shell it allows the National Client to have one contact with CORT that can then partner them with a local stager across the country rather than the National client having to do the research in every city they have a need.

I welcome your call is you are interested in learning more about how partnering with CORT can help grow your business.

Sincerely, Kathy LaMarr, CORT Home Staging Support Services, Dallas, TX cell214-395-9624

Thank you Kathy for adding this much needed clarity to what I already know to be a great program for home stagers and Cort respectively.

I so appreciate all your efforts personally in bringing home staging to the "masses" not only on an individual residential resale level but corporate too.

You are truly an advocate for our industry!

This is GREAT news for the staging industry. Companies like Cort and Berkshire Hathaway will bring more credibility to the staging profession and will help educate the public about the importance of staging.

I just spoke with my CORT rep here in Albuquerque. She is under the impression that this "new" program is aimed at the big markets like L.A.,, Dallas.. etc.. She explained that it will be for large rental packages and not for the type of biz that I do, renting a few pieces at a time.. So basically nothing will change for us little guys, at least here in my area.

I am very interested in what everyone is hearing that may be different from this onfo....

I think this is wonderful news for our entire industry. It is so exciting and such an honor to have a company/conglomerate like Berkshire Hathaway recognize our industry. Instead of trying to compete with us, Cort will be helping us to grow our businesses- by bringing us business opportunities, by giving us added credibility and adding their name behind what we do.

Other furniture rental companies have tried to stage on their own and become our competitors- just this week a rental company here did an office presentation and told the Realtors that they could stage on their own and just use the rental company! Cort is helping us to reach a larger audience- the world of corporate relocation. I have personally been able to form relationships with relo companies in my local area but the 3-4 national companies would not even consider speaking to me about business since I do not have the power that Cort does.

Cort also has the national name (and budget) that we need to get more publicity.

You are right on target Dan, it can only bring more credibility to our industry. Thank you for commenting!

Hi Anne, I don't know anything about "large rental packages" as you were told, these are homes in all size and scale I imagine and whatever the furniture rental needs large or small are going to be given full attention and taken care of. Kathy LaMarr left her cell phone no. here, feel free to contact her for more information.

I could not agree with you more Kate, You are absolutely right, Cort has the national name and budget to get the industry as a whole more publicity in a way that translates to actual business to help grow ours.

MAY

Karen ~ I came across this article yesterday and took away more of a partnership with stagers feeling, than what I originally had been reading. I kept re-reading what you highlighted in blue too to make sure I was understanding it correctly, and I'm glad you actually spoke with the Cort people to clarify. Thanks for setting it straight here.

Thanks for clarifying this Karen! I saw all the talk on Twitter and it had me wondering :)

This sounds like great news to me. Thanks for clarifying and reprinting the article. I am filing the contact information for Kathy LaMarr. Very good contact to have.

Thank you so much for posting this helpful information, Karen. I'm looking forward to hearing more as the details become available!

MAY

Thank you so much for the post. I only wish we had a good, reasonable source here in Charleston. We have nothing!

Karen, always the level head and voice of reason. THANKS for the fair reporting. I know we at StagersLIST are pretty happy with our Cort experiences as they have sponsored quite a few of our StagersLIST Expos...And we have their support in Houston on June 2nd too. SO, I am sure there will be a big announcement and explanation of the program at the EXPO...Thanks for posting this.

Hi Kathy, I'm so glad this helped you see this more clearly

Hey Wendy, I missed the tweets on this

Hi Sharon, Kathy is great at answering any questions you may have

You can contact your local showroom too Ashley

I'm sorry to hear that Cynthia - I believe CORT has a 50 mile radius, see if there is one within that range

:-) Terrylynn - I am trying to get Kathy LaMarr to go down to Houston with me, especially since CORT in Houston is hosting - she's checking...

Great....I do feel that Cort is way to expensive, and they have too many add ons. When I quote from them the client goes no way most of the time.....

Hi "B" - when you consider the carrying costs of vacant properties month after month and the price reductions that are inevitably taken on these properties the investment to stage with furniture is a much better bargain! Starting at $300/month for the base rent, and mixing and matching the pieces you need for the property (and I'm of the school of less is more when it comes to staging), I believe that a seller can't afford NOT to do this.

But it's an education process that we as home stagers need to continue to share and with a corporate giant like Berkshire Hathaway backing the home staging industry now, a louder voice is sharing that message!

MAY

I have been using a Cort company here in Toronto are since starting my business. They are supportive in my staging business and very accomodating on deliveries.

This blog does not allow anonymous comments