Designing a Piece as Bespoke as Your Life!

As we look towards the future and many exciting plans on the horizon, we can’t help but reminisce about how June St. George created the Design Your Own tool over six years ago – and how it transformed the custom rug industry! 

Six years ago, I had an idea – I wanted to give clients the flexibility to design beautiful, heirloom quality rugs in their own homes, at their own pace and on their own terms at an approachable affordability. The idea of custom rugs has been around for centuries, but we wanted a new, fresh, unique approach.  It took over a year to conceptualize and custom-build the Design Your Own tool – but in 2018, we launched our tool with real-time rendering and brought the experience of designing a rug with an interior designer into the homes of clients around the world.

 My background as a trained interior designer has instilled the importance of selecting quality home decor pieces that reflect the client’s personality and aesthetic rather than following trends and fast fashion. One of the largest and most important pieces in a room is the rug. It is an opportunity to tie the space together, to ground the entire room and to make a statement. If this critical piece is supposed to tie everything together, shouldn’t you be able to select your own design, colors, and personalization to celebrate your bespoke life?

Before June St. George, true custom rugs were usually reserved for clients working with interior designers and the sticker shock was….well, shocking. So clients were stuck between two choices – either buy something off the rack and design your home around someone else’s choices or work with an interior designer. Designers bring booklets of designs and poms to select the colors, but because of the care and volume needed to import true New Zealand wool, the complexity of dying the wool, and the cost of design set-up, custom rugs are usually limited to 8x10 or larger with a price tag starting at $10,000. 

 Our goal at June St. George was to bring the same high-quality product and the experience of designing a custom rug in your own home with the guidance of an interior designer to clients at a more approachable affordability. JuneStGeorge.com and our Design Your Own Tool was carefully and thoughtfully designed to give every client a bespoke experience – at their own pace!

For example, I wanted every client to experience opening a wool pom box on our swatches page. Although the colors that appear on our real-time rendering are the exact color formula of the wool color, colors can appear differently. So we photographed every single wool pom at the exact same time in controlled, natural lighting so clients could see the poms as if they were sitting in front of them, without shadow or influence of lighting! Wool captures, absorbs and reflects color unlike any other material. Paint samples, for example, are highly reflective and are a flat, even color. Wool has many facets that create shadowing, depth and complexity of color. By carefully considering how to present our poms on the Design Your Own tool and because our colors are highly controlled and our wool is sourced and dyed in-house, we ensure that every client knows the color they are selecting will be the color they dream of. Color poms and wool threads can also be borrowed from June St. George’s wool library after purchase to ensure every bespoke choice celebrates their bespoke life. 

But the Design Your Own Tool is only the first step in our bespoke experience! We designed every step to make you feel like you are purchasing a million-dollar rug – without the million-dollar price tag! Also, rest assured each and every piece designed through our Design Your Own Tool is still overseen by interior and rug designers to ensure your selections work together to create your dream piece! No piece ever goes into production until we have chatted through your selections and you have approved the “final” rendering!

We later added pillows to the Design Your Own tool and are excited to be adding more products soon! Keep your eyes on JSG for these new home decor items launching very soon!

June St. George is proud to have created the unique Design Your Own tool over six years ago and is so excited to continue to expand so that every piece you create for your home is as bespoke as your life.