hi everyone and here we are again at soul skate living willing to talk about beauty in the home function and the twenty first century and of course connect you to our local resources i thank you again for sticking with us and joining the soul scape living show today we have a very special guest someone i've known for many many years lisa jones is sales manager for the fiber seal of the north east which includes tell me what it includes lisa includes new york city new york city eastern pennsylvania philadelphia the surprise of a new and new jersey and new jersey so you're on the road a lot lisa yes hard to you actually being on the road interior designer can you tell me a little bit about your background sure i i was an interior designer as a second career and did it for a few years and then the industry was a little we were in a little bit of a recession but when i was  went in the up and down this so i found this fiber still job and i was a sales rep initially and just recently became the field manager so i still do a little bit of interior design but this job is really my primary this is your primary job right now so who is fiber seal tell me so fiber seal is a company that was started in one thousand nine hundred ninety one and it is we are a fabric upholstery and corporate protection system and we say system because it is a product and a service and we are really serious about the service and of what we do so we are product is usually recommended from by interior designers ok who recommend us to their clientele and then we take care of their clients interiors and their furnishing right so it has an interior designer i'm told you know my fabric is scotchgard it what does that mean when it comes to fiber seal isn't it already protected to guard it is their protection product that is which produces the absorbency i don't know much about the guys who are particularly but the thing about fiber steel that's different from anybody else in the market is that everything we do automatically comes with a service commitment and our clients can call us for eighteen months after we treat their soft surfaces ok to help them maintain a definitive say in or a spot so if i buy upholstery and i've been told at the retail store or wherever i purchase it that it's got a treatment already on it it's not sufficient is that correct we need to still add another layer of protection well it's when you get something at the furniture store that's protected and we see this all the time it doesn't necessarily mean protection doesn't mean it's never going to get dirty it's never going to get steam yeah any soft surface is still going you know could get dirty our product reduces the of the surface so it makes it easier to remove those stains doesn't mean the client has the right product to do that and knows what to do so protecting it again with fiber seal is definitely advisable because it comes with the service writer so it is our big big thing so tell me about the service and how does that work i'm a consumer you come in and you put the protection tell me where do you put the protection is it just on upholstery is it so our answer is we can fiber seal anything and we don't care what it is any soft surface can be protected with a product and what our product does is reduce the absorbency of the surface so it makes it easier to remove the  limitations come when we go service things so in other words if we come out to someone's home to spot clean something we have to take a different approach with a silk versus a polyester of course is that that's the difference that's where your in exactly because you know how to handle the product and so you also put this on rugs when you talk about silk it's not just silk fabric we spend a lot of money on our beautiful custom rugs or asian rugs so you want to make sure that we protect them as well right any soft surface so anything in the home from draperies to upholstery to carpeting can be protected and maintain maintained and our client gets a clean kit oh they do they get a little you know the hit and custom instructions the sales rep goes to the home and goes over the cleaning kit with the homeowner so they have products and tools they can use with a booklet that tells them how to use them depending on the thing depending on the stain yeah and you know what comes to mind for me right now the trend we always have designed trends that are happening and the trend right now is upholstered headboards and are you getting a lot of coals to seal headboards because again that's where your you know your hair and the oils from your hair are going to get on the we feel we fiber seal have boards all the time all the time and most of the time this service calls that we get are related to the fact that somebody showered and put gel in their hair and then leaned back on the headboard and now there's a dark spot in most of our service calls on her boards are that or th gets spilled on the on the rug or on chair how easy is it to get rid of red wine and we have clients who are their biggest fear is red wine and a lot of them don't want to serve it in their home because they're afraid of it yes  can be successful you can be successful with getting it out so how long of a contract to someone sign up for is it life time is it you know how does that work so the fiber seal protection comes with a service commitment that lasts for eighteen months ok our clients can call us for eighteen months as often as they need us ok and once the eighteen month service commitment is expired we offer a renewal from around all after that so we say to them do you want to renew the product renew the product and the service right and the renewal is advisable because the fiber still does not last forever i think that was your question right it doesn't last forever it wears off like anything with use an abrasion it just it just wears off with use an abrasion and so reapplying it you know ensures that it's strong and that we have that much greater of a chance of removing dirt and stains going forward do you recommend that it's reapply then every every eighteen months we do we do ok so the contract ends in eighteen months you come in and you reapply the surface is the fee the same to reapply as it is initially is that the fee is the same because we of we re up the eighteen months of unlimited service ok so it's really about the service was a completely of all about i mean it's all of us a service we're very very serious about the service center of our business our technicians are fully trained in all of the soft surface is that they deal with  we are always careful we know what we're doing you know if i don't know we call and find out what we're working with sometimes it's very hard to tell is this a linen or is this polyester sometimes you don't know but we are that all solutions are good on all fabrics exactly yeah and most people don't know that you know it we're all told sell so water and and a little on every saying no that's not there oh no i got a call yesterday  about that somebody google panicked and googled and came up with seltzer water and something else and we had to go out and figure out whether we can resolve that now this particular item had not been fiber sealed first had it been they would have had their cleaning kit and known like don't use anything else but what's in this kid what's in this because we know what's in the kid is safe and there's instructions there and what's in that kid is not going to eat away at the protection itself because sometimes you can use something and it actually makes it worse because about ruining the fabric then worrying about the five percent protection being ruined it's one about ruining the actual fabric or the carpet or right the actual piece of furniture that you're working on that you're working on you actually going to make it worse by using you could you could create a ring you project that i was working on and they had this beautiful beautiful rug and someone saw a stain and they went to clean it and what they actually did was take the die off the rug and now they had a bleach more they had and i don't remember what they used to clean it but it was just like it was actually better with the spot than it was after they tried to clean it i mean some of the over counter products have some bleach is in them so you know that's what you think what happened was there was some bleach in the product that she could have she could have scrubbed it too hard and it wasn't color what we call color fast color fast means the color if it's not color fast meaning you take you can take the dye out by rubbing too hard by rubbing two or it could have going we'll you know increase the longevity of your interior furnishings i mean our goal is to keep the client's interior maintained and protect that investment that they've made  n their furnishings so yes we do hope that it will increase the longevity of the of the of what i'd like to have what it's applied to but what happens if if i have a rug and i have a stain and i tried cleaning it and i never called i didn't call anybody beforehand so it was number five it was never a fiber seal you can still call us what is the scenario and then we have that scenario all the time you can still call us and we will send out a technician there's a service charge associated which can be applied to the fiber seal if they decide to go down that road so a lot of times we have that situation where a client will say i never knew about this and now i have the saying what do i do well you know we'll send a technician out hopefully he can remove the stain and if he's successful a lot of times the client will say you know what fiber seal it now because i want to make sure that if this happens again i have the protection and i have the service or the commitment right so yeah we don't say no we would come  because i will be honest i don't know of too many people who can say this is what i want done and yet our families you know or transients and they have a lot of kids running around a lot of families coming together and our homes do take and abuse but yet people don't think that they should you know do this process beforehand so it's good to know that they can you know second guess themselves and come in after the state is down and you guys can come in then and still take care of the situation is that most of your clients that you get after the thought or do you know hopefully not what we're trying to do is educate our consumers well our designers are the ones who are our first source of work right i mean we are always reaching out and working with our designers to make sure that they remember that we're out there we want them to not have to worry or not have the client call them when there's a problem so our earth our thinking is you know tell your clients about fiber seal and then we'll take care of the rust and you you do your installation make it out you to follow and let us keep it that way for you and they don't have your referrals and they don't to call the designer ever again be unless they're you know but we will handle it them keep it maintained in the designer can you know go on to the next project yeah you know it's funny i have a client story where my client bought six beautiful beautiful dining room chairs and she has two boys oh my god two boys a dining room table with fabric on the chairs and she said to me a favor and just buy you know ten more yards of this fabric and hold it for me so that when they damage my chair i have extra fabric and instead i said to her no just chairs because if something falls on them you can maintain it and you can continue to service the chairs and she doesn't need to buy new fabric right which seems like a lot of work to do and to re a poster chairs when you could just prevent it and maintain it is that correct right it's yes searing your yes you're taking lincoln approach to fiber seal it so that you reduce the absorbency and keep it maintained with us absolutely yeah you don't have to buy new fabric new fabrics yes it's always good to have the fabric and hand we do keep track of if to that point if we have it from our designers we do have notes in our database on you know mrs smith so if it is made of one hundred percent poly in her chairs or fifty cotton fifty linen because when our technicians go out to service it and if they the more information they have the better so we do try to work with the designers to at least get the spec on the fabric right and having the swatch sometimes sometimes our clients will pull out the swatch for us which helps as well so it's o e m and that's a good point and i say that a really good point because every time i work with my clients i always leave them a piece of all the fabrics and i say keep these with you in case you're shopping for accessories or you're shopping for artwork or whatever it is and so for them to be able to have a piece of the fabric or a sample of the rug is great for them to be able to know what kind of product they can put on that that finishing exam touch so so does it does it make the product durable though i mean does it make the fabric durable or easier to clean if it's got a protection on it oh absolutely that's the whole thing what happens is and it's amazing to see because i've seen you know we've seen it over and over again is it reduces the absorbency of the surface so it's like a sealant that goes on you don't feel it it never changes the texture it never changes color ever so it dry it dries within one to three hours and is it sprayed on oh how great on our technician goes with i mean literally he looks like an exterminator it's like a little you know a little pressure can and it just gets sprayed on with a wand and and if it goes somewhere else it's actually in plastic and tarps down but if it does so we always say if if if if you're not treating the rug which you should but if you're not and if it gets o get on the rug it's a bonus for you because that parchin of the rug will be less absorbent will be protected so what we do we do you know put tarps and plastic around when we treat and anything that gets over spray and gets wiped off and it doesn't go like in your and your wood furniture or we don't have to worry you know it don't worry about that we have done we do a lot of dining room chairs that are framed in wood and sometimes it will get on the wood and we just wipe it off and it's theirs and harm there's no harm to you know any of the other materials besides the fabrics besides the fabrics i mean there's no harm to the fabric but yes so you spray the fabric it takes about two hours one to well we say one to two to dry and it takes forty eight hours to fully cure we know it's completely effective and what it does is it reduces the absorb we use the furniture in those forty eight hours you can if it's not like you could say don't go in that room no not at all not that it's very easy some people are surprised how easy it is you know we go in we spray within two hours they can use it again they have their cleaning kit good and if i have a pet should i be concerned only while we're spraying we like the pets and the clients to not be in the room with the technician ok and once it's try it's like paint on your wall we say it's i highly recommend this product because i really do think that when you buy beautiful furniture it really is about protecting the furniture the area rugs and even the draperies because everything gets soiled so easily and i love hearing about the product anything else you want to share with us that we need to know what's nice about drape protecting draperies is not only sometimes do we have a dog that wants to lift its like on the draperies but it keeps kind of the dust in the dirt on the surface and it makes it easier you know where to vacuum and so it's a great treatment for draperies a couple of stories yes ok so i had a very wonderful client large client in princeton actually years ago and we had fiber sealed she worked with an interior designer and we fiber sealed her entire home top to bottom wow and when i got to the job to meet her for the first time they did or she had already been a client and she was redoing her services retreating everything and you know she was very happy and she was very happy and one of the reasons was that she had a huge family and on thanksgiving she was carrying her turkey from the kitchen through the dining room and dropped it and so she was amazed at how quickly she was able to lift it get her cleaning kit and blot it up and the next day there was there was really no issues so she was completely and on the back of the sofa and she watched it kind of just bubble up and she just she was able just wipe it off come right off yes no it doesn't always happen that way those are great stories but it's but if it doesn't if you are not able to clean it up the peace of mind is knowing you can call us right you know but the whole the whole idea with cleaning and protection too is to get to that as soon as it happens get to it as soon as it happens yeah because a lot of the problems is something like he you know if you left the pizza there and she didn't know it was behind there and she a party and not be concerned with anybody doing anything to my seats of mine i mean i started with the company i used to have a rug under my dining room table that i would roll up before before before i start enjoy more which is wonderful and i think that that's what it really is it's about prevention it's about care and it's about love loving our pieces are beautiful choices that we make in our home and then protecting them and then continuing to just meeting people i love meeting people and i love design because i just love the fact that you can take something like nothing and make it into something so beautiful that someone can just enjoy every day you know it was one of those people who was one of the questions i ask all my my clients and all of my guest here on soul scape living is besides you know family and pets because we all know we love our family and our pads what are your home makes you happy  porch so let me talk to you about the fireplace for a second do you know that in new jersey if you were to build a new home you are not allowed to put in a wood burning fireplace no i don't know because it's toxic to the environment however those of us and i to have it would burning fireplace have been grandfathered in did you know that no and so there has been many times because making a fire  is a lot of work you know you have to cut the wood if you forget the word delivered and then of course you've got to maintain it but there's nothing more beautiful than a real fireplace i have no idea where and yes and so i'll never build a home for many here just as there is only in new jersey i'm not sure about anywhere else i just know in new jersey it's code and so for many years my husband and i had talked about taking that fireplace and bringing in that gas line and making it a gas fireplace and every time i go to the shops and i'd look at all the different features like no it doesn't look real i want that real burning crackling fireplace was the smell and again and then someone i came into a contractor who told me about this and he said do you know that you're going to devalue your home by putting in the gas line because what you have no one else can get in new jersey but i thought people one at the gas now but wow i most people do want yes most people do want gas to let's make it look nicer now but it's not the it's not the same most people want gas because they don't want to work yeah you know you have to work at maintaining that fire but i have to tell you lisa you and i are on the same wavelength there is nothing better i know i love nothing better than a real wood you see it crackling you open those doors and it's just it's beautiful fall especially during the holidays there's nothing better my family always gathers around the fireplace we make sure in the wind the time that we have enough wood and as a matter of fact during sandy so if a song storms day we were out of we were out of power for two and a half weeks and it was that would burning fireplace that i could have us going yeah yes and kept us in the home and had it been a gas line we could've used it right because you still need