Advice, Info, and the Power of Visualization: Q&A with a Marvin Expert

A: Marvin at 7 Tide is an ideal way to learn about Marvin products, explore your project’s possibilities, and then visualize designs to scale. It also removes the pressure of a sales environment. It’s not a sales showroom. You're just going to get advice and see your options.

I had a client in recently who's an architect — a commercial architect — and he said, “I've never done a residential project of my own and I don't know really anything about residential windows and doors. How can you help me?”

I was able to show him the products and the options for his house. He said, “This was so beneficial because it helps me understand what I should spec, what I should be looking for, and where I should spend my money when it does come time to order the doors and windows.”

A: We primarily work with homeowners and their project partners. Our most common day-to-day operations are project consultations for residential new construction and remodels. We go through their whole project, along with their professional partners — architects, interior designers, builders, and retail partners — whomever may be attached to the project.

We also have retail partners of our own who come in for tours and events with their customers to help them understand how Marvin at 7 Tide can help in their own business practices and with their clients.

A: First off, yes. We’re definitely seeing more interior designers. What they’re asking is really dependent on their role in the project. As you can imagine, most often architects have more experience with window and door specifications. But that being said, there are some interior designers who are helping drive that conversation.

And for some of the interior designers, they’re learning in parallel with their homeowner clients. They’re along to understand what the options are or why a collection or style was chosen by the architect. We can always meet them where they are in the process.

A: Imagine you’re a homeowner and walking into a living room seeing your project plans projected on a 14-foot wide by 10-foot tall wall. It's amazing for them. And that’s what the visualizer achieves. Printed plans and laptops are great, but having it to that size and scale, we hear a lot: “I'm so excited about this project.”

We use this analogy sometimes: it's a sonogram. It really is like the project is their baby and now they’re seeing it come to life. They've saved so much money for it, spent so many hours thinking about it, and then you see it on the wall, they get more and more excited about it when we get into the actual visualizer room.

Then, we encourage interaction with the wall. It becomes this really collaborative and inspirational space. We can move things around, see the actual size of the windows, and confirm details in the plans.

One example, we had a client who was an architect herself and when she specced everything on a previous project — not one she’d come to 7 Tide for — she didn’t realize that with the window size and her height in comparison, the check rail was going to be in her eyesight. She said, “had I just known this was here and I would’ve been able to see it to scale, I would have moved things around because it's blocking my view.”

It's situations like this where the visualizer really helps. So, if we just drop that 4 inches, it's no longer in the client’s sightline. It’s a great supplemental tool for configurations, but also to point out small changes that might need to be made