Witford

I just had the exact same experience as a previous poster with the owner Kurt.
Kurt: you are incurring bad karma for turning away clients who aren’t arriving with their designers.
Here are the various unkind things which happened to me:
When I grabbed a catalogue, I was told to browse website instead.
I was denied post-it’s for marking sofas I liked in the catalogue because he wanted to save on post it’s and asked me to shift pages in the book instead.
He told me not to set my purse on the coffee table because it was for sale off the floor.
He asked me to wait so he could «concentrate on scanning.»
He then had the gall to work with a design client who came in after me and when I said I had been waiting for him patiently, he simply replied, «she gets priority.»
Finally, after I spent all the time to choose fabrics, he said he could not release pricing to me because my design firm who sent me had to register first. He continued emphasizing he was not retail (when I had clearly told him I was buying through my designer), and told me to go to Crate and Barrel instead. I don’t know what serious issues he may be battling, but I do not recommend spending your time and money here. Go to other showrooms selling the same lines. There are many others in the Bay Area.

I love Witford and their team of people. Kurt is an absolute pleasure to work with and their product lines are are of high quality and value. As a trade-​only showroom I have high regards for the fact they take great effort to protect the trade client — vendor relationships. It has saved myself & my clients many costly mistakes that would have arisen if Witford chose to work directly with my design clients without my direction and project vision. However, (on the rare occasion my client shops on their own), as for servicing my clients, as long as I call and arrange a mutual time for the client to visit the showroom, Kurt makes ample time to walk through all of the pieces with my client so that they feel comfortable and educated about their purchase. I do a majority of my designing with Witford & their lines and have had only positive experiences with them. They are collaborative, insightful, enjoyable people to work with. They make sure all my custom orders arrive on time and exactly as I specified, saving myself and my clients time, money, and worry. I highly recommend them to any designer working with trade-​only showrooms.

I went to Witford on 2 occasions. First, to sit in a chair we were considering for our home and again to see a desk finish in person. I came «unannounced» with these simple goals before I made decisions with my designer, Marsh and Clark. Kurt, the showroom rep, took great personal offense to this. In fact he had a total meltdown. When I asked to see the desk finish, he responded with the following remarks…“We don’t work with the public (hand wave across me) …Sweetie, this isn’t Restoration Hardware… Sweetie, perhaps you are just here because you can’t afford for your designer to shop for you? Sweetie, you just don’t get how It works, do you? … Let me call «your designer» (ahem, I bet you don’t have one) and talk to her about this. (Marsh and Clark said he left a terse voicemail saying «there is a woman here Claiming to be your client»… and were totally baffled by the attitude) When I left he gave me an amazing 80’s «BA-​BYE!!» Wow. I was not only disgusted, but embarrassed for him.
The reality is other showrooms couldn’t have been more accommodating; sending tear sheets to my design team and were friendly, **professional** and easy to do business with. I don’t think it’s unusual for clients to want to see or experience design first hand and I stand by that. So does my design team. We are going to pass on the Cortes desk we were considering and have M&C buy the Lee sofas elsewhere. I’d never want to be reminded of this awful guy. He needs some serious anger management therapy. And a new job– far away from clients with healthy budgets that are furnishing a new home.