HART: LDN Home Décor is an online homewares store specialising in Australian designed products founded by Tiffany Jade Benn in Sydney in late 2014. The company was crafted by a vision of bringing a positive impact to the lives of others by encouraging and enabling Australian designers to get their products out to a broader audience across the nation and, eventually, worldwide.

The ultimate aim is for HART: LDN Home Décor to be the #1 online spot for Australian designed homewares; a place that can not only be easily found by customers, but also provides interior designers inspiration, advice, and ideas, whilst supporting homegrown talent which absolutely rivals international competition.

FOUNDING THE BUSINESS

What makes HART: LDN Home Décor unique to your industry?

Our uniqueness comes from specialising purely in a huge range of Australian designed homewares. We love supporting Australian design and treat each designer as one of the family. We also provide masses of interiors inspiration for our customers. Our website isn’t just a store – it’s a place to come and discover new designers, new trends and even new music! All this is housed on our website in our ‘Hamlet’ which is an English term for a small village.

We also publish twice weekly mood boards to give customers ideas for their homes and we have a styling competition that runs each month. We get huge amounts of people sending in photos of their beautiful homes which we share to our followers. This provides a wonderful sense of community and everyone is keen to share their ideas and styling tips!

Beyond that, we are also working together with a number of charities to assist them in raising funds and developing products in creative ways that will benefit the charity, the customer and designer too!

What were the toughest challenges you faced when first starting out?

The main challenges were and continue to be marketing the business on a budget. Social media has been the main way to advertise. We are constantly coming up with creative ways to get our message out there whilst keeping up with the ever changing landscape of social media. What works one day may not work the next.

What do you wish you’d known at the beginning that you had to learn the hard way?

Magazine advertising is a waste of time and money unless you have Harvey Norman’s budget! It’s over-priced and impossible to track. There are so many ways to track your advertising now via Google, re-targeting, and social media that print advertising is horribly archaic now.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

What do you find is most important in ensuring you remain at the top of your industry?

First and foremost, a stunning customer service is one of our main focuses alongside ensuring the designers that work with us are happy. The competition is fierce so we have to be truly at the top of our game with this. We also want to keep our customers truly entertained with our ‘Hamlet’ content and social media accounts – these aren’t just advertising channels.

How do you see the industry changing over the next 5 – 10 years?

I feel the homewares industry as a whole is going through a very exciting period. So many people are involved and coming out with some stunning products. Plus more and more consumers are wanting to shop locally. They want original items that aren’t mass produced, which is fantastic news for small designers.

How will HART: LDN Home Décor adapt to the change?

We are already adapting to this change with the products we offer. We will continue to promote and support our fabulous designers and do our best to help them get their products out to a wider audience.

What is your vision of ultimate success?

Our vision is ‘to have a positive impact on others’ – ultimate success will be enabling small designers to happily achieve their own successes and give our customers a huge choice of Australian homewares for beautiful spaces to make their houses a home, here and worldwide.

Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs who want to follow in your footsteps?

Yes: just get started! What are you waiting for? Invest in your own education for running a business but the true education will begin once you start. There’s nothing like jumping in at the deep end!

Our thanks go to Tiffany for taking part in this interview.

For more information on HART: LDN Home Décor and their products, visit www.hartldn.com