Meet Kymm Clark

 

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kymm Clark. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kymm, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I was an adult when I learned what impostor syndrome was. I read the definition and thought nothing could be more clearly me. I felt like I had finally discovered a term for that dark little voice at the back of my head, telling me I wasn’t enough, or that I would always be stuck, or come up short of my goals. Once I heard the term though, I felt like it gave me permission to take more risks and push the boundaries of what society thought I should be allowed to do. Ever since I was a child, I thrived on doing what I was told I couldn’t, but it didn’t stop me from feeling out of place, every single time.

13 years ago I found myself laid of from my career as a Lead Designer for a marketing firm looking for something to fill my time as a stay at home mom. That happened to be pulling furniture out of the trash and restoring it to make it my own. Throughout the process I would post pictures and video of my work, and friends and family would line up to get the next project customized for themselves.

Before facebook marketplace was a thing, I would post pictures and video of my work in the more affluent community groups in my area and before you know it, I was being contracted to complete projects for residential spaces all over town. It wouldn’t be long before my husband would quit his job to help me pull staples.

We went hard for more than 6 years offering our design and fabrication services to clients, designers, and architects all over the metro Detroit area. For us COVID spiked our workload like we have never seen, and what you might think is a good problem to have, soon buried us in work that became unsustainable to complete on our own with just the 2 of us. With no one to hire (because of lack of education in the trades), we closed our successful fabrication business so we could try and catch up, and find some sense of normalcy again.

While my husband found it easy to walk away, I felt like I had been robbed. I spent nearly a decade getting so good at something, and now I felt like I wasn’t allowed to do it. Not only that, but after the stress of that last year in business, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to put myself through that again.

My goal was to pivot my focus to teaching the upholstery and furniture restoration trade to as many people as I could in hopes of one day being able to begin again, maybe with a little bit of infrastructure under my feet. I reached out to my peers of designers and architects, in hopes they would rally behind the effort, but I was met with radio silence. It was heartbreaking. We were left in the dust, and friends only came out to pick through the bones of what was left of our business. Had I imagined our impact of changing the landscape of our community with our design and fabrication services?

We moved to a town where there just happened to be a community Maker Space, and I began teaching on the weekends. My goal was to help build confidence in individuals who maybe didn’t quite possess the skills, but they possessed the ambition to learn. It’s hard to get your foot in the door of this business without having a formal education, and the problem is, there is no longer a formal education for it available here in the US to learn the skills. I needed to build confidence in others and GROW creative and skilled trades people to follow in my footsteps, so I created this sort of “transitional” education for anyone around the world to learn the skills from me either in-person, or over Zoom.

It’s been 3 years now since I made that move, and today I am sitting at my desk in my new 6,2000 sq ft. industrial design studio. In those 3 years I have had more than 500 people come to me to learn Upholstery and Furniture Restoration. Dozens of them have gone on to create their own brands and start their own businesses. I have even placed students in local upholstery shops, and helped them become the ONLY upholsterers in their town, helping them to open their own brick and mortar businesses.

My goal in my new design studio is to offer a space where people can have access to affordable upholstery services, as well as accessible education to the craft. When you come to my shop you can bring your own furniture project, or choose one from my collection, and either select a skilled trades person to do the work while you wait and watch, or purchase everything you need to do it yourself right there on the spot, with or without hands-on support.

Through my sponsor a student program students will learn to complete client work, while clients save 2/3 the cost of labor by supporting that students education, paying for just the cost of classes and materials to have it completed. Alternatively, already skilled trades people, without the access to space and tools, will be able to pay small fees to access the space and work on their own client work independently. Sometimes the legitimacy of working out of a brick and mortar space is all you need for people to take you seriously as an artist. I also hope to have several regular artists on-site to take on client demand in real-time.

Through these efforts I hope to train the next generation of furniture designers and fabricators on the ins and outs of the industry and allow them to play in this space without having to take all the risks.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My name is Kymm Clark and I design, fabricate, and restore furniture. As a kid in highschool I wanted to be a fashion designer. It wasn’t until I was laid off in my 30’s that I discovered the fashion of furniture and fell head over heels in love, but it was something I always had in me.

When I was little, my siblings and I escaped reality in the woods every day from dawn til dusk, dragging the neighbors trash into the forest and finding more discarded along the way. We would employ abandoned(?!) deer blinds, hoist tarps for roofs, and build forts with our trash treasure. We were the living embodiment of the show Craig of the Creek. We would convince the neighbor kids to truck out to the baseball field in the middle of a clearing and host ‘carnivals’ for them using old broken water heaters and rusted iron gates. I’ve got the scar to prove it. Even the kids who bullied us would sometimes participate in the fantasy. Not all of my childhood memories are great, but these ones rule my world.

Never in a million lifetimes did I think it could be a business, and one that I would build over the course of 13 years. It’s my longest career ever, and its something I am very proud of.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I am in the fortunate position of being able to say “If you had it all to do over again, what would you do?” So here is what I changed…

1. I created project management automation. This saved me a million hours in giving estimates, talking to clients and tire kickers, and it helped me to have a physical place where I could see the work on my plate. It also automated my communications with clients, so they didn’t have to follow up as often, and projects completed faster without issue.

2. I’m bringing a team! My husband and I got thrown into the deep end of business without any experience. After 3 years of training individuals from all over the US, I have nearly a dozen who will be joining me on day one for this next effort.

3. I’m seeking out and using as many community resources there are out there for small businesses like mine. Most cities have organizations who can help you put your plans and infrastructure together to ensure a more likely path to success. I will be working directly with Ann Arbor Spark, and documenting my process along the way so my followers and students can learn about it passively through me.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I have 6 empty offices in my design studio that I am looking to fill with local free lance interior designers, stylists, architects and contractors. The hope is that we can all collaborate on our projects together and pool our client resources to create a designer firm to offer a one-stop-shop for interior design and fabrication services. they will get their own pricate office and have access to the entire design studio.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

All of these images were taken by me. I have exclusive rights.

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