Shades by Matiss is a 25-year-old company that began as a retailer and installer and became a window coverings manufacturing company around 15 years ago — now one of the largest in the U.S. The company recently targeted the CI market as a place for growth. Here, Geremie Giancola, senior vice president at Shades by Matiss, explains their plans for this space and how they will work with integrators.
RESI: Why did Shades by Matiss decide to get involved with the custom integration market?
GEREMIE GIANCOLA: Even though I worked with Shades by Matiss for more than a decade, I only officially joined the company a year ago. Before that, I worked for a distributor, and I learned a lot about this channel from that position. I worked with a lot of people in the shading part of the CI industry. I came to find out that working with integrators as a customer and working with them as a vendor is very similar.
Shades by Matiss is principally a commercial-oriented company that has one of its three locations just outside of Manhattan. At least 50% of our business was dealing with NYC subcontractors, general contractors, and developers day in and day out. There are almost a billion windows in the city — and that is all the opportunity a shading company needs.
But the commercial market was highly depressed the past few years — not just in NYC, but also in Chicago, where we have another location.
Related: Finding the Right Shade Partner
When I came to the company, I wanted to make cooler products. We have massive machines, tons of people, and three factories that pump out units all day long, but, generally speaking, they’re boring. We make 100 million squares with a chain that pulls them up and down, and maybe a top treatment. It’s not the most exciting thing, but the numbers are huge.
Residential integrators are not just putting in regular shades — they’re putting motorized shades that are all different shapes and sizes. We wanted to make more specialty and exterior shades — and get into cooler motorization and integration. Every CI order is a word problem because it starts with how important and how massive and how cool and how unique, and how complicated the project is. And that is what we want to do — unique, cool, high-end, special, master of the universe sort of stuff.
It adds an interesting dynamic to our business.
How much training is involved in getting started and becoming a Shades by Matiss vendor?
This is one of the big things that I think we bring to the table. Some of the shading companies are exclusive; we’re not that company. We haven’t been that company in our commercial space, and we’re not going to be that company in this space.
Our barriers to entry are significantly lower, and our onboarding requirements are significantly less. If you want to have an account, you go through one of our rep agents and sign a dealer application. We process that, and we get you into our training program at no cost to the dealer. Plus, it can be taken at their own time — we don’t make anyone get on a plane or take a week off.
We make no money on our sampling; we want the barrier to entry to be low so that people can get what they need to start selling a product. And the trainings that they must take are directly commensurate with the products that they want to sell. So, if you’re not interested in selling drapes and Roman shades right now, fine — we don’t have to talk about it.
When you want to start, we have some basic trainings. We walk people through our online portal, our terms and conditions, and our self-service website. We have modules for various products for which we have training. If you have a project coming up and you want to have a more installation-focused meeting, we can do that. It’s more of a collaborative engagement.
Our initial price points to our wholesale dealers allow for 40 points off retail, and we don’t tell our customers what they have to sell for. They can apply the amount that makes sense to their customer and their job.
What are the startup costs to become a dealer?
There is one thing that you have to buy — our shade binder, which has both our interior and exterior fabrics in it. It is $75. Going forward, we don’t have minimum amounts, and we don’t have ongoing marketing expenses.
What control systems do your shades work with?
All of them except for Lutron — that’s the long and short of it
What power options do you offer?
Whether it’s a low-voltage battery, solar, or line voltage, we have all the options for this channel. We’ve launched a series of three PoE motors, and we love them. From a manufacturer’s point of view, selling a PoE motor is the easiest thing that I could ever possibly do. It’s amazing — it puts all the power and all the integration capabilities in one package. It makes it very easy for the integrator.
Do you offer any on-site support?
Right now, we empower our rep agents to do that for us.
Do you have any ongoing dealer programs that you offer?
Right now, no. Again, we try to be as simple and easy, and straightforward to do business with. We offer a flat, low price point with a pretty deep dealer discount and, for our rep agents, one straight percentage. For our dealers, we don’t have rebates because we don’t charge enough to make it worth their time to chase a rebate.
How long does it take to fulfill orders?
We have three factories all over the country right now, and we’re looking to add two more inside the continental United States; nothing outside of the U.S. That would make us the local source for almost everyone. We want to be that local source, which is one of the ways that we use to build our business. We need to put one factory in the South and one in the Southeast, and then we’ll be everywhere except for Alaska.
And if we’re too busy in one factory due to one thing or another, we can make your order somewhere else. If your project site is closer to the West Coast, even though you’re an East Coast CI, I can make it out west and lower your chances of shipping damage, shipping loss, and shipping costs.
Made in America is one of those things we really believe in. No part of our product is fabricated in any other country.
Related: The Shade Partner Checklist
What’s the best way for a dealer to start working with Shades by Matiss?
Reaching out to Shades by Matiss through our main number or any of our websites. Or you can reach out through your local vendor network. Right now, we work with Elite 3 Pro in the Southwest, LIT in the Southeast, and Progressive for two territories in the Northwest. We have rep agents that we’re launching with in all other parts of the country soon. We’re just going one territory after another.
For more information, visit https://www.shadesbymatiss.com.
