Top 5 Building, Design, and Decor Stories of the Week

It was another interesting week in the building, architecture, and landscape industry. The end of June and heading into the 4th of July weekend, the industry often sees a bit of slow down as people take their Summer vacations but we are sending out thinstone and building veneer by the truckload (and LTL) on a daily basis. This week our team read some interesting articles that we wanted to share. Starting with the valuation of Houzz and mixing in several others we thought were interesting.

Top 5 Industry Articles of the Week

Houzz Valuation: In case you missed it, Houzz raised another round of funding, this time a cool $400 million. That brings their valuation to approximately $4 Billion. We always encourage our customers to use Houzz to show off their projects and help their customers generate more business. That's what we try to do on our own Houzz page but it's no longer a place to just post pictures. It inspires, is a marketplace, and has great mobile features for designing. Check out the Techcrunch article here.

Create Your Outdoor Living Space: The CadDetails Blog has a great article for anyone looking to create their dream outdoor living space. The trend in outdoor living spaces continues to grow regardless of size. It could be a small garden oasis, patio with firepit, a cascading waterfall, or a combination of all three. No matter how much space you have or what your budget is you can create an outdoor space you'll be happy with.

High Performing Teams: This one was selected by our Director of Operations and is an excellent read. It's not directly related to the building supply industry but the majority of us work in a team environment and this McKinsey Insight article gets right to it. Shared within our team it received a great response and we thought was worthy of sharing. Weather your team is small or large, teamwork can make or break your business.

Celebrating Natural Stone Walls: We could share an article a week from usenaturalstone.com but that wouldn't be fair (would it?). We often receive questions regarding Natural Stone Walls so we thought this article with beautiful pictures would be a good fit to share with everyone. Every time a stone wall comes down, another one is going up. Don't take our word for it, read the article.

Construction Drive (Design): We cheated on this one... Construction Drive provides great articles for our industry on a variety of topics. In this case we couldn't reach an agreement on one article that should round out our top 5 so we decided to suggest their "Design + Architecture" Section. Great stories and insight that cover the entire globe.

We wish everyone here a great 4th of July week and weekend. Remember to be safe while celebrating the United States of America!