User:VoodooEconomics/Laurel & Wolf

Laurel & Wolf is a Los Angeles based interior design firm which offers online access to interior designers for design advice and plans.

Leura Fine
Leura Fine was born in Alabama and lived there until attending school at McGill University where she majored in English literature and political theory. She later returned to school at UCLA where she studied Interior Archetecture. Prior to starting Laurel & Wolf, she worked for nearly 4 years at Martyn Lawrence Bullard Design where she eventually becoming a senior designer. In 2013, she left Martyn Lawrence Bullard Design to open her own interior design firm Leura Fine Interiors.

Leura identified at least three key ideas that gave her the idea for Laurel & Wolf.

• She knew talented designers who didn't have enough work and were struggling to make ends meet.

• Most of her clients were in the top 1% economic class

• Increased popularity of platforms like Pinterest generated a lot of interest in design but people still struggled to turn ideas into workable solutions

Brandon Kleinman
Brandon Kleinman graduated from Indiana University Bloomington. He later worked for Disney where he helped increase utilization of social media at Disney Resorts. Before working as the CMO at Laurel & Wolf, he founded the companies BrainMuffin Agency and whatsGood.

Early Development
The original Laurel & Wolf website was only 8 pages and was primarily informational. Website visitors could take a self-assessment but the information wasn't stored and served little purpose except to help gauge interest. Eventually, the self-assessment was used to help designers understand the style preferences of potential clients, and much of the system became automated; however, in the early stages of development, most of the work of matching clients with designers was done manually.