By Donna Sapolin
Shane Reilly, a San Francisco based interior designer and entrepreneur, is a fitting leader for an enterprise rooted in the rapid transmission of data- today’s most valuable currency. 
Smart, passionate, self-assured and on-the-go 24/7, she founded and directs Decorati- a web business that is all about the rapid relay of interior design information. At a time when the businesses most likely to succeed are those that can meet unanswered needs in revolutionary ways, Shane’s site fits the bill by solving the industry’s longstanding inefficiencies while reinforcing its sense of community.
Founded to change an arena that is as notable for shrouding information as it is for beautifying surroundings, Decorati is bringing product sourcing and design services into the 21st century. Since its launch in 2007, when many manufacturers still did not have web sites, the site has grown by leaps and bounds and turned into a must-visit destination for anyone seeking to outfit a residence with luxury products.
“Designers are now embracing the web,” says Shane. “And, as a result, they have more freedom to spend their time designing and building their businesses instead of sourcing products.”
Photograph by Adrian Wilson
Now that Decorati has built a strong designer membership base and pooled the online catalogs of over 400 top trade-only manufacturers into its database searchable by brand, showroom, type, price, and lead time, the company is setting its sights on connecting consumers to its designer members to round out its offerings.
Overhauling the foundation of an industry without toppling the entire edifice requires the guidance of a knowing insider and the imagination and drive of a creative entrepreneur. Raised primarily in Westchester, New York, Shane painted at an early age, and was surrounded by her mother and aunts who continuously worked with an interior designer. “At Thanksgiving, when the turkey went away the swatches came out,” she recalls. During her college years at Stanford University, she further trained her artistic eye by amassing credits in painting, photography, and art history while pursuing an honors degree in American Studies. Always drawn to the opportunities technology brings to design, in her free time she taught herself Adobe Photoshop so she could pursue projects like illustrating a textbook for the Human Biology Department and teaming up with a Stanford Business School student to design one of the first online communities for women.
Photograph by Margot Hartford
But it was her first job out of college as the ninth employee at an Internet company that gave her her critical exposure to an enterprise geared to a new generation’s way of doing things. “I saw that you can turn your perception of value into a business,” she says. “And I experienced the culture of a start-up–it was seven days a week of work and that’s pretty much how it’s been for me ever since.” Within five years of working in various capacities, she had resolved to start her own business somehow in the field of interior design and decided to earn an MBA. While absorbing valuable lessons in marketing and finance, Shane devoured books and magazines about interior design, set up her own design business, and explored the possibilities for interior design in the media. “It was around the time that HGTV was getting going,” Shane recalls. “I became interested in the intersection of design and media and began brainstorming business ideas.” After graduation, she returned to San Francisco and began taking on interior design jobs that came her way via Stanford friends who had prospered during the dotcom boom.
Photograph by Adrian Wilson
She moved to Manhattan in the fall of 2003 and soon established a bi-coastal interior design practice along with a Blackberry-driven lifestyle. If necessity is the mother of invention, the demands of her mobile existence and those of her clients, many of whom had homes in both Silicon Valley and New York and wanted their projects to be completed within short time frames, gave her the eyes to see the thwarting inefficiencies of offline-only showrooms. “They couldn’t deal with someone like me who had no defined borders,” Shane says. “Many showrooms in New York wouldn’t call me back because I had a 415 number, even though my NY office was four blocks from the D&D building. My 866 digital fax number became an absurd stumbling block on both coasts. I found that the showrooms operated according to defined territories but that didn’t make sense with how I lived and worked.”
So exasperated was one showroom manager with her bi-coastal customer that she blurted out “Where are you sleeping tonight?!” Shane chuckled, declined to comment, and vowed to start an Internet business.
Shane’s recognition of the problems and the strategies she developed for a “without borders” way of working quickly led to the Decorati concept. “The bottom line for me as a designer was that nothing could happen fast enough,” she says. “I knew there were lots of solutions out there for my design projects, but I couldn’t get at them in time. Showrooms close at 5:00 P.M., but I work into the night.”After a number of exploratory meetings, and the selection of two showroom owners for her Advisory Board, Shane became more aware that showrooms were only one part of an interdependent eco-system comprised of design centers, showrooms, manufacturers, designers, and increasingly, consumers. 
While the industry was ripe for change, innovation needed to accommodate the existing system, as well as the complex, custom orders typical to the industry, and the need to touch and sit on things – all monumental challenges that produced more skeptics than supporters of Decorati in the early days. “I knew that to create lasting value Decorati was not going to be a simple e-commerce or pay-to-post solution,” she says. “The industry needed something bigger.” Seeking to source top talent to help her execute her ideas, in the summer of 2006 Shane packed up the east-coast half of her bi-coastal life and moved permanently to San Francisco.
“There were lots of problems to solve in the industry but we decided to focus on the most critical one- providing information with product search,” she says.
“I turned to my Internet world advisers and investors to help me shape a business model that could create new value for a convoluted industry plagued by a lack of innovation, a lot of finger-pointing and a staunch belief that things, though problematic, could never be changed.”
By bridging the information and time gaps affecting the field, Shane proved the skeptics wrong. The framework she put in place protects the earnings system that drives the field-designers still get a different price from consumers and are remunerated for the insight and expertise they provide. Showrooms stay connected with their designer customers by receiving digital quote requests and are relieved of the burden of maintaining updated product information on their own web sites.
“We provide value by working within the present system. We’re not causing wholesale change but we are bringing desperately needed efficiency to the scene.”
The digitization of the industry is fundamentally shifting how designers work. “Designers are professional buyers and yet, prior to Decorati, information about products was so scarce it was hard to be profitable,” says Shane. And so, Decorati holds the promise of increased sales through more expedient access to information – not only with the ability to cross reference products by price and lead time, but also via Decorati Access magazine/blog. At the helm of Decorati Access , Shane has shaped a 
“gathering place” to which all the players in the design arena- designers, manufacturers and showroom personnel-can come and engage with one another and consumers anywhere, anytime. A new service, Decorati Design Advisors, matches consumers with professional designers. Design Advisors is a valuable service to consumers who are unsure about how to go about hiring a designer, and to designers, who are interested in meeting new clients in a friendly, online interaction.
Shane fosters this interconnection off-site as well. Apart from directing all aspects of Decorati and its expansion efforts, she orchestrates and participates in panel discussions at industry events around the country and writes her own blog, Shane’s Studio, that keeps visitors posted about timely design topics and happenings as well as her own design projects.
By overseeing Decorati’s digital consumer buying service, Shane stays connected with both showroom personnel nationwide as well as manufacturers’ new product introductions. In 2007, Schiffer published Inspired High-End Interior Design, a coffee table book that Shane authored featuring over eighty renowned designers from around the U.S. Ever expanding on her interests in media, Shane is now contributing articles on interior design topics to Forbes and is finalizing plans for video.
Shane, never a big sleeper, manages her hectic schedule with 5 AM wake-ups and lots of caffeine. Recently engaged, she convinced her fiancé, Michael, a two-time entrepreneur, to relocate their home to one block from the Decorati office. The location is conveniently close to the Sports Club LA, where the couple frequently meets for late-night workouts.
The consistent themes running through all of Shane’s efforts: information, speed, and efficiency. “Decorati’s goal is to play an increasingly bigger part in the lives of designers and design enthusiasts,” she says. “We’re just getting started.”
Shane Shines
By Donna Sapolin
Shane Reilly, a San Francisco based interior designer and entrepreneur, is a fitting leader for an enterprise rooted in the rapid transmission of data- today’s most valuable currency.
Smart, passionate, self-assured and on-the-go 24/7, she founded and directs Decorati- a web business that is all about the rapid relay of interior design information. At a time when the businesses most likely to succeed are those that can meet unanswered needs in revolutionary ways, Shane’s site fits the bill by solving the industry’s longstanding inefficiencies while reinforcing its sense of community.
Founded to change an arena that is as notable for shrouding information as it is for beautifying surroundings, Decorati is bringing product sourcing and design services into the 21st century. Since its launch in 2007, when many manufacturers still did not have web sites, the site has grown by leaps and bounds and turned into a must-visit destination for anyone seeking to outfit a residence with luxury products.
“Designers are now embracing the web,” says Shane. “And, as a result, they have more freedom to spend their time designing and building their businesses instead of sourcing products.”
Now that Decorati has built a strong designer membership base and pooled the online catalogs of over 400 top trade-only manufacturers into its database searchable by brand, showroom, type, price, and lead time, the company is setting its sights on connecting consumers to its designer members to round out its offerings.
Feb 2009 Top Products by Category
(Upholstered Seating)
(Dressers)
(Ceiling Mounts)
(Textiles)
Overhauling the foundation of an industry without toppling the entire edifice requires the guidance of a knowing insider and the imagination and drive of a creative entrepreneur. Raised primarily in Westchester, New York, Shane painted at an early age, and was surrounded by her mother and aunts who continuously worked with an interior designer. “At Thanksgiving, when the turkey went away the swatches came out,” she recalls. During her college years at Stanford University, she further trained her artistic eye by amassing credits in painting, photography, and art history while pursuing an honors degree in American Studies. Always drawn to the opportunities technology brings to design, in her free time she taught herself Adobe Photoshop so she could pursue projects like illustrating a textbook for the Human Biology Department and teaming up with a Stanford Business School student to design one of the first online communities for women.
But it was her first job out of college as the ninth employee at an Internet company that gave her her critical exposure to an enterprise geared to a new generation’s way of doing things. “I saw that you can turn your perception of value into a business,” she says. “And I experienced the culture of a start-up–it was seven days a week of work and that’s pretty much how it’s been for me ever since.” Within five years of working in various capacities, she had resolved to start her own business somehow in the field of interior design and decided to earn an MBA. While absorbing valuable lessons in marketing and finance, Shane devoured books and magazines about interior design, set up her own design business, and explored the possibilities for interior design in the media. “It was around the time that HGTV was getting going,” Shane recalls. “I became interested in the intersection of design and media and began brainstorming business ideas.” After graduation, she returned to San Francisco and began taking on interior design jobs that came her way via Stanford friends who had prospered during the dotcom boom.
She moved to Manhattan in the fall of 2003 and soon established a bi-coastal interior design practice along with a Blackberry-driven lifestyle. If necessity is the mother of invention, the demands of her mobile existence and those of her clients, many of whom had homes in both Silicon Valley and New York and wanted their projects to be completed within short time frames, gave her the eyes to see the thwarting inefficiencies of offline-only showrooms. “They couldn’t deal with someone like me who had no defined borders,” Shane says. “Many showrooms in New York wouldn’t call me back because I had a 415 number, even though my NY office was four blocks from the D&D building. My 866 digital fax number became an absurd stumbling block on both coasts. I found that the showrooms operated according to defined territories but that didn’t make sense with how I lived and worked.”
So exasperated was one showroom manager with her bi-coastal customer that she blurted out “Where are you sleeping tonight?!” Shane chuckled, declined to comment, and vowed to start an Internet business.
“There were lots of problems to solve in the industry but we decided to focus on the most critical one- providing information with product search,” she says.
“I turned to my Internet world advisers and investors to help me shape a business model that could create new value for a convoluted industry plagued by a lack of innovation, a lot of finger-pointing and a staunch belief that things, though problematic, could never be changed.”
By bridging the information and time gaps affecting the field, Shane proved the skeptics wrong. The framework she put in place protects the earnings system that drives the field-designers still get a different price from consumers and are remunerated for the insight and expertise they provide. Showrooms stay connected with their designer customers by receiving digital quote requests and are relieved of the burden of maintaining updated product information on their own web sites.
“We provide value by working within the present system. We’re not causing wholesale change but we are bringing desperately needed efficiency to the scene.”
The digitization of the industry is fundamentally shifting how designers work. “Designers are professional buyers and yet, prior to Decorati, information about products was so scarce it was hard to be profitable,” says Shane. And so, Decorati holds the promise of increased sales through more expedient access to information – not only with the ability to cross reference products by price and lead time, but also via Decorati Access magazine/blog. At the helm of Decorati Access , Shane has shaped a
“gathering place” to which all the players in the design arena- designers, manufacturers and showroom personnel-can come and engage with one another and consumers anywhere, anytime. A new service, Decorati Design Advisors, matches consumers with professional designers. Design Advisors is a valuable service to consumers who are unsure about how to go about hiring a designer, and to designers, who are interested in meeting new clients in a friendly, online interaction.
The consistent themes running through all of Shane’s efforts: information, speed, and efficiency. “Decorati’s goal is to play an increasingly bigger part in the lives of designers and design enthusiasts,” she says. “We’re just getting started.”