Principal, NOBELINKS
Stephen Nobel is the founder and principal of NOBELINKS, a consulting business specializing in the markets of home furnishings and interior design. Steve provides successful strategies for client entrance or expansion within the segments of decorative fabrics, furniture and interior design. Utilizing exceptional planning and facilitation skills, he directs his clients with visionary expertise as they analyze the marketplace. Steve brings out the best in executive teams, guiding them with innovative strategy to bring products and services to market from “art to part.” His strategies provide greater advantages for success over a long period and connect the dots among origins of concept, design, sourcing or production, and innovative promotion at point of sale (through both trade and retail channels).
Steve thinks laterally from the point of view of the CEO and knows every facet of the relationship between products and services in the business of design. His wide-ranging networks of professionals are built on trust, value and shared vision. It is that vision that enables Steve to see trends in design and describe them in useful ways to designers, marketers and others in the loop. After all, he believes that it is not just what you know; it is when you know it. He speaks often to large audiences of interior designers in showrooms and design centers throughout North America.
Steve is a member of the Luxury Marketing Council in New York, composed of many of the brightest minds in strategic marketing of luxury brands. In 2005, Greg Furman, the founder of the Council will join Steve in developing the Luxury Home Alliance for home furnishings marketers. His consulting expertise also prepares clients to deliver on the promise of their brands by presenting in stores and showrooms entertaining “illuminations” about design and provenance to enrich the value of products at the point of sale. Steve also facilitates learning about “Relationship Selling” and “Selling to the Affluent.”
A leader in the home furnishings market for over 20 years, he has held executive positions in marketing, planning strategic growth, manufacturing and licensing. He was an owner and the president of The John Widdicomb Company – a maker and marketer of fine furniture worldwide. Significant licensed collections included Mario Buatta and Jacques Grange. He also was Managing Director of Baker, Knapp and Tubbs, Ltd. in London, England.