Ep 57: Tech-Forward Trade Partnerships with Howard Elliott
Tech-Forward Trade Partnerships with Howard Elliott
How one home décor manufacturer went from 30 mirror SKUs in 2001 to over 5,000 products today — and why their new AI-powered website features are exactly what designers have been asking for from trade partners.
- Reverse image search on a trade website is a game-changer. Upload a photo of a product you like and instantly see similar Howard Elliott pieces — a feature that is still rare among furniture and accessories vendors.
- Clean silo photography is a gift to designers. Howard Elliott made a deliberate decision to lead with white-background product images and treat lifestyle shots as secondary — making it dramatically easier to use images in design boards and renders.
- Wishlists and catalog builders let you organize by project. Build a wish list for a specific client or project, export a spec sheet instantly, and share it with your client — with or without pricing.
- Howard Elliott does more custom work than most designers realize. Custom mirror sizes, frames, colors, and finishes. Custom textiles including upholstery, pillows, and outdoor cushions. They say yes to a lot — all you have to do is ask.
- The partnership is real, not just a tagline. No minimums. Designer-focused pricing. Friday Friends spotlights. An annual design contest with prizes. These are a manufacturer that put their money behind the "committed partnership" claim.
Bree Cassidy is part of the team at Howard Elliott Collection, a home décor manufacturer that has been a trusted trade resource since 2001. She works closely with designers on sourcing, customization, and community partnerships, and has been instrumental in the brand's tech-forward website overhaul. Bree is the face behind Howard Elliott's designer community initiatives, including the Friday Friends spotlight series and the annual design contest.
From 30 Mirror SKUs to 5,000 Products — Who Howard Elliott Actually Is
Brian Burke started The Howard Elliott Collection in 2001 with around 30 mirror SKUs and a pen-and-paper order system at his first market. Over the next two decades, that grew into a full home décor manufacturer offering over 5,000 SKUs across mirrors, accent furniture, wall art, textiles, accessories, and outdoor pieces.
Most designers know Howard Elliott as a mirror company — and mirrors remain a core category — but the range goes considerably further than that. All wall art is hand-painted by Jody, the in-house designer, and goes through a finishing process that gives each piece a handcrafted quality even in production runs. The Chicago cut-and-sew facility handles all textiles: upholstery fabric, pillows, outdoor cushions, and a surprisingly flexible custom program that has produced everything from dog beds to bow ties to entire private-label pillow collections.
"We don't like to tell people no. We want to hear what your ideas are. If we can do it for you, we'll do it."
— Bree Cassidy, Howard ElliottThe custom mirror program alone is worth knowing about: around 15 color options across approximately 30 different frames, including high-gloss painted finishes in shades like navy that work well in contemporary interiors. A designer came to market needing a mirror that hung from the ceiling, functioned as a double vanity, and fit a very specific project requirement. They built it. That is the level of flexibility that most designers do not know is available.
The New Website Features That Actually Matter for Designers
Howard Elliott recently went through a major website overhaul powered by Wizcommerce, and the result is a trade site that has been designed with designer workflow in mind rather than just general e-commerce. The features Bree walked through are the kind of things designers have been quietly wishing every vendor would implement.
Quick terminology note: a sillo (or silo) is the white-background product image you see on most e-commerce sites — the product isolated against a clean background in multiple angles, with dimensional drawings. Lifestyle shots show the product in a styled room setting. Howard Elliott leads with sillos so designers can use the images directly in boards and renders without having to crop out context.
The Partnership Programs Worth Knowing About
Howard Elliott's "committed partnership" language is not just marketing copy. There are actual programs behind it — and they are worth understanding if you work with the brand or are considering it.
How AI Is Powering the Product Photography Pipeline
One of the more interesting behind-the-scenes details from this episode is the AI integration happening in Howard Elliott's product photography workflow. The team is currently testing a commerce platform that automates several steps that previously required significant manual effort.
The platform takes raw product sillos and uses AI to: clean and edit the white backgrounds to a consistent standard, generate dimensional line drawings automatically so every product page includes accurate measurements, and create lifestyle imagery that places the product in a styled room setting. Bree noted that the lifestyle generation quality has been genuinely impressive — producing output that looks realistic and contextual rather than the uncanny AI imagery that plagued earlier tools.
The practical benefit for designers: better photography on the vendor side means better source images on the designer side. When a sillo is consistently clean and well-lit, it drops into a design board cleanly. When a lifestyle image shows the product at realistic scale in a well-designed room, it communicates use case in a way that a white background cannot. Howard Elliott is investing in this because they understand that photography quality is part of the designer experience, not just a marketing asset.
Disclaimer: This blog was written using AI as a recap from the recording then edited by the author for accuracy and details.
