Author: John Cotey

In 1994, Debbie Garner hired Decorating Den’s Debbie Demboski to decorate her new home in Tampa Palms. She had seen Debbie around, at church and at Tampa Palms Elementary, where Garner was a teacher, and she had definitely seen Demboski’s Decorating Den van.

She asked a few of her neighbors who had used Debbie, and they gave glowing reviews. It wasn’t long after that that Garner joined the club of satisfied Decorating Den customers.

“The thing about Debbie is that she comes to you,’’ Garner says. “She comes to your house and brings things to show you. If I needed some pictures, or a rug or a lamp, I didn’t have to go out and look for (them). She’d say, ‘Let me look around.’ I just don’t have that creativity and can’t see things like she can.”

Garner said she was able to choose items for her home from a wealth of catalogs and fabric and color swatches in the van, with helpful and reasonably-priced suggestions from Debbie, who re-did every room in Garner’s home.

Debbie manages a successful blend of convenience, styles and pricing, leaving many satisfied customers, and those customers, like Garner, drive future business via “repeat and referral.”

Debbie says working with Decorating Den has a number of “NIFTY” benefits:

N: National umbrella, as Decorating Den has the buying power of a national company.

I: In-home decorating, since design decisions are made in your home, in your existing lighting, working with what you already own.

F: Free consultation, because not only does Debbie come to you, there is no cost for the consultation nor will you pay hourly fees for her time.

T: Training. “This is a very fashion-forward, trendy business,” Debbie says, “so we attend conferences, have private showroom tours, and the decorators from all the regional franchises work with each other to share ideas and collaborate.”

Y: Your lifestyle, which includes likes, dislikes and budget, things Debbie makes her highest priority so that your home reflects your personal taste, not hers.

NIFTY definitely equaled SUCCESS in 2016, says Debbie, who is in her 27th year with Decorating Den, 25 of them here in New Tampa. “Last year was our best year ever,’’ she says.

Demboski doesn’t have a large, glittering showroom, but she has more than enough to meet the needs of clients on the shelves inside a van that operates as an effective  portable studio.

“They call me because we’re a home-based business,’’ Debbie says. “So when people call and say, ‘Where is your store?’, I can tell them, ‘right in your driveway.’ I have a great selection. We could do a whole house with what’s in my van there.”

And she has.

With customers scattered all over New Tampa and Pasco, Hillsborough, Hernando and Polk counties — and even some as far away as Melbourne Beach (see below) — Debbie is always busy.

But, she has help these days — Debbie’s  daughter Sara McKenzie joined her team about three years ago.

“It’s now a mother-daughter-daughter business,’’ says Debbie, whose mother Phyllis Wilcher works as the Decorating Den regional secretary. “That makes it kind of neat.”

A Freedom High and University of South Florida graduate, McKenzie grew up in the family business and says she always had a good sense for fashion. She also says that she held back from joining her mom because she wasn’t sure she could meet Debbie’s expectations.

“She is so good at it,’’ Sara says. “She can walk in somewhere and start spitting out ideas. It’s very intimidating (to try to follow that).”

After seven years working as a regional manager for a small retail chain, Sara decided to get certified as a decorator and joined her mother on a full-time basis.

She says she shares the same creative spark as her mother, and already has worked on a number of big projects. Like her mother, she says she likes to get the customer involved early in the process.

Garner said it is Debbie’s penchant for letting the customer lead the way initially that makes her a joy to work with, and why she keeps coming back.

When Garner moved to Cory Lake Isles in 2000, she called Debbie again to design her new home. And, 14 years later, after Garner moved back to Florida from New York in 2014, so she called Debbie to do her current home in Tierra Verde.

“She is really good at listening to her clients and understanding exactly what they want before she starts making suggestions,” Garner says.

Debbie’s first consultation is always free, and there are no hourly charges for the work she does.

Working With Windows

Debbie says that 70 percent of her calls are for window treatments, which also happen to be her favorite thing to provide for her customers. While there are plenty of carpet and furniture stores around, it’s harder for people to find window treatments they really love.

Sometimes, Debbie says, an entire room that a client thought needed to be remodeled can be given a completely fresh look merely with newly decorated windows.

“I can even help them with total renovation,” she says. “We have contractors that can remodel a kitchen, if we wanted. But, for the most part, people are looking for area rugs, furniture and bedding. We can do as little or as much as they’re interested in doing.”

Decorating Den is North America’s largest interior design and home furnishings franchise company, with more than 400 franchises across the U.S. and Canada.

Debbie not only owns her own Decorating Den franchise, she also is the regional director for Central Florida and manages 10 other franchises. And, while her own personal franchise is in the running for the company’s top franchise this year, so is her region, where she has helped train the franchise owners; she holds monthly meetings with them.

Four years ago, she was named Regional Director of the Year at Decorating Den’s company-wide international annual conference.

Debbie has a degree in design and business from West Virginia University in Morgantown. Prior to beginning her decorating career, she worked at a number of different retail positions. She says she got into the interior decorating business when she was living and working in Atlanta and a friend, Terri Erwin, became a Decorating Den franchise owner.

Debbie went to work as a decorator for Terri’s business and, soon after, started her own franchise before later buying the Central Florida region and developing it.

She says she continues to evolve as a decorator, as new styles emerge. She works hard to stay on the cutting edge, even after being in the business for nearly three decades. But, one thing that hasn’t changed, she says, is building relationships with her clients and fulfilling their needs.

She understands that sometimes people want a re-design, but letting go of Grandma’s old dining room table or Aunt Jane’s recliner can require a gentle touch.

“I try to work around people’s existing things,’’ Debbie says. “I’m more like, ‘Well, gosh, if you have this, then maybe we add some pillows or maybe we re-cover it or maybe we move it back here.’”

That doesn’t mean selling isn’t a big part of her business as well, but Debbie and Sara keep the pressure off. The bigger payoff for them is their happy clients.

Last year, one of Debbie’s clients was visited by her sister, and loved what Debbie had done so much she hired her to decorate her home…in Melbourne Beach.

Even though it was a three-and-a-half hour drive, Debbie decided to take on the task, and it was such a success, the sister recommended Debbie to her parents right around the corner.

“I probably drove six times, back and forth, at least,’’ Debbie says. “But it was worth it.”

Debbie says that the area most people like to decorate is not actually a room at all — it’s the space people see when they first walk into a home.

She has a vast network of places to choose her products from, including companies like Pendragon, Lexington and Century, to name a few.

“No other design company out there has 400 stores,’’ says Debbie. “And we have a good, better and best product mix. A lot of it comes down to people’s budgets and what they are looking for. Whatever that is, we can find it for them.”

Decorating Den comes to you at your home or office in New Tampa. For more information, call Debbie at 817-2264, or visit her on Facebook by searching “DecoratingDenbyDebbieD.”