“If you’re not a success, you’re not an ‘original.’”

Those words, shared at by a presenter at a conference I attended last week, got me thinking about our industry.

So many design professionals and industry partners are so creative and innovative and visionary.

Yet so few come across as “originals.”

So few can explain what differentiates them and their design products and services . So few can list the unique benefits that they alone offer.

So few can share their “only.”

I remember a conversation years ago with a Market attendee at High Point, the world’s premier home furnishings center.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Well,”  he replied. “I’m beginning to think that once you’ve seen one armoire here, you’ve seen them all.”

All those furniture companies paid all that money to exhibit at that show, yet none of them stuck out as an “original” in this designer’s mind, anyway.

Makes me think the design industry should take to heart these words of Walt Disney: “To be successful, you have to be unique…so different that if people want what you have, they have to come to you  go get it.”