August 1, 2012. A fresh new family. A fresh new career. Back to some old roots in Wichita Falls.
After a career in Dallas as a licensed professional counselor and dabbling in home renovation both personally and professionally, our children’s schooling, our family life, and our desire to slow our pace down were all on the horizon. We saw an opportunity in Wichita Falls and made the decision to make a move.
We originally came to Wichita Falls with plans of Will developing his real estate career and being a full time realtor. We bought a cottage on Dartmouth and began renovating it to meet our family’s needs. The Dartmouth renovation created interest and opportunities to complete renovation projects for clients. While real estate continued, clients would often seek Will’s advice on how to “fix” the houses they were buying or cast a vision for optimal changes to their future homes. Real Estate clients led to renovation clients and a niche turned into a business. With a passion for design and a genuine love of watching the process of change occur, Will started Clark Design and Renovation. Officing out of Domain Real Estate offices, Will, an assistant, and a business partner worked to serve the community through real estate and renovation.
Real estate leads continued to feed renovation leads. In the process of construction and renovation, we saw a strong need from clients to go a step further into design help. Leads continued, clients kept calling, and the design side of our business began. Requests for tile, flooring, and lighting consistently increased, in addition to the occasional sofa, rug, and window treatment. As interior design questions and demand developed, we saw a desire from clients and a need in our community for the ability to service all requests at one place….plan a renovation project, design the home with floor plans, tile, paint, lighting, flooring selections, and then dress the newly renovated space with window treatments and furnishings. Additionally, clients sought one place to go without having to go to Dallas for every selection or shop many local businesses to make each decision.
In 2016, needing room to expand, Clark Design and Renovation purchased our own building in Brook Village. Slowly, over the course of two years, we dreamed and planned and eventually renovated that building in between client jobs to outfit it to serve our clients’ current and future needs. In 2018 we moved into our Brook St. location, a place where both construction/renovation and interior design needs would be met. With this new location and new concept, a new name was needed. Clark Design and Renovation transpired into Clark Design Studio, a full scale design studio and construction/renovation business. Our brick and mortar storefront plus the addition of local flooring expert, Michelle Baker, to our staff, gave us the opportunity to extensively serve clients and receive wholesale pricing from vendors. As a result, we offered competitive or better pricing to clients than what can be found in retail stores. Inside our store, we housed samples of tile, flooring, lighting and hardware options for clients, contractors, and designers to pick out and order. While we looked like a furnishing and lighting store from the street, the main concept was to provide design to construction and interior design projects whether we were the designated contractor on the job or not.
After designing the space and moving in, we quickly realized that 2000 square feet was not enough space to accommodate all of the lines we needed to adequately help our customers. When The Last Straw store on Kemp decided to close their business in 2019, we immediately saw a huge opportunity to expand our flooring and furnishing offerings in a larger and more noticeable location. It felt like a giant step for a newly minted concept, but we knew that it was necessary to be able to offer the services we knew we were capable of offering. After months of a large renovation, we set up all of the flooring displays, hung the light fixtures and began staging the larger showroom with furnishings and accessories. Once you come inside and venture past the first sections of retail, fabrics and design space, you will find a flooring and tile showroom nearly larger than the entire building on Brook.
With this new location on a busy commercial street, more opportunities walked in the door and the business grew. We’ve been so fortunate to grow our offerings and our staff over the years. We have met new, amazing employees and business partners. As the client list and awesome new projects grew and our youngest child began attending school daily, it became clear that it was time for Lauren to join the company in person instead of influencing from behind the scenes, as before. She took over the interior design and retail portions of the business and immediately made an impact across the entire organization with her leadership and organization skills, as well as the creation of “the Happy Department,” that celebrates employee birthdays and monthly staff get togethers.
As we look back on this past decade it is amazing to see how this company has changed. It has been both trying and amazing, fun and difficult; yet, we are so proud of what we have built and what we are now able to offer our community. In hindsight, there would certainly have been things we might have done differently but we can also say that the learning and growth that has come from any mistakes or wrong turns has been well worth the journey. We look forward to all of the places Clark Design Studio will take us and the people we will serve in the next 10 years. Thank you: clients, contractors, builders, designers, peers, family, team members and community for coming on this journey with us! Without your continued support, this dream wouldn’t be our reality.
Cheers to another decade of design!
