· 3 min read
Your sources are your margin: what a client portal should and shouldn't show
When a client can see where every piece came from and what it cost you, your curation becomes a shopping list. Here is how to share a design without handing over your sourcing.
A designer's work product is a set of decisions: this sofa and not the forty others, this rug at this size, this lamp because it holds up in a rental. Finding those pieces takes years of knowing which vendors deliver, which finishes photograph well, and which trade accounts are worth keeping.
Then the proposal goes out, and it includes a link to the retailer.
How a proposal turns into a shopping list
Most tools for sharing products with a client were built around the product page. They show the retailer, the retail price, and often a button that takes the client straight to the source. That is convenient for a homeowner browsing for themselves. For a professional it means the client can see three things you never meant to send:
- Where you buy. The vendor name and URL are the part of your sourcing that took the longest to build.
- What it costs you. If the portal shows the retailer's price next to yours, every line becomes a negotiation.
- How to skip you. A client who can click through to the product can order it themselves, and some will.
None of this requires a difficult client. It only requires a tool that treats your sourcing as public information.
What the client actually needs to decide
A client approving a design needs to know what the piece is, what it looks like, what it will cost them, and when it could arrive. They do not need the vendor, the SKU, or your cost to say yes or no.
Separating those two sets of information is the whole idea. Your library holds everything you know about a product. The client sees the part that helps them decide.
How Qurate handles it
Qurate keeps the two views apart from the start.
Two prices, kept side by side. Every product in your library carries the vendor's price and your own price separately. The price a client sees is the one you set when you present the item, not the one on the retailer's page.
The vendor is never shown to clients. Where a product was sourced is tracked for you, for purchase orders and reordering. It does not appear in the client portal or on the invoice.
Visibility is your call, client by client. You can hide prices or source links by default for your whole studio, override that for an individual client, and choose to reveal source details on a single item when it makes sense, for example when a client is buying one piece directly with your blessing.
Photos are curated too. A product page often has a dozen images, some with the retailer's branding in them. You pick which images the client sees; the rest stay in your library.
Your brand on the portal. The client reviews and approves items in a portal that can carry your studio's logo. They approve or decline each piece, and you see the answer on the project.
A quick check for your current setup
Open whatever you send clients today and look at it as they would:
- Can you tell which retailer each piece comes from?
- Can you see a price that is not the one you intend to charge?
- Is there a link that leaves your proposal and lands on a product page?
If the answer to any of those is yes, the proposal is doing some of your client's shopping for them.
Protecting your sourcing is not about hiding things from clients. They get a clear picture of the design and a clear price. What stays with you is the work of finding it, which is what they hired you for.
Start a Qurate account and set your portal's visibility before you send the first item.