Interior design firms
Architectural hardware
Millwork & cabinet manufacturers"Designers specify us by collection name now. Their SEO in Toronto and the finish libraries did it, and cabinet hardware searches surface us beside far bigger catalogues."
Victoria AshtonDecorative hardware brand, Toronto, ON
Marketing agency for home & decorative hardware brands · Canada
Marketing that gets designers specifying your collections and dealers asking for more.
Marketing for home and decorative hardware brands squeezed by private label and direct imports: designers specifying you by collection and finish, demand pulled through showrooms and dealers rather than pushed into them, and a direct relationship with the end customer that never blows up a dealer relationship. Websites, SEO and GEO, Pinterest and Instagram, campaigns, CRM and video.
We speak finish, collection, backset, centre-to-centre, escutcheon, handleset, MAP pricing, dealer program and planogram. The designer is the buyer. We market to her.
Our services for home & decorative hardware brands and the results they lead to
Your situation
You think like a consumer brand and operate like a wholesaler.
Private label and direct imports set the price ceiling. The dealer owns the customer and you own nothing. A homeowner has no reason to prefer your knob over any of fifty others, because it's a visual decision made by a designer you've never marketed to.
We're competing with private label and direct imports on price, and we cannot win that fight.
The dealer owns the customer. We own nothing. If they drop us, we lose the whole relationship.
A homeowner has no reason to prefer our knob over any other knob. It's a visual decision and we're one of fifty.
Marketing goes to dealers. Dealers market to nobody. The chain ends there.
Our Instagram is product on white. No room, no context, no designer anywhere in sight.
We got delisted by one retail partner and lost a fifth of the year overnight.
Want to know how many designers in Canada searched or pinned your category last month, and whose collections they found? Start with the free audit.
Audit my designer visibility →The timing argument
The renovation upturn goes to the brands designers already specify by name.
Renovation is projected to overtake new housing as the primary residential driver around 2027 to 2028, and every one of those kitchens, baths and front doors gets hardware chosen by a designer or a homeowner working from a designer's board. Brands built into those boards now, by collection and finish, ride the upturn. Brands still pushing into dealers compete on price for the rest.
The designer is the buyer, and she's reachable. Pinterest, Instagram, search, designer newsletters and sample programs are where collections get chosen. A brand present in all five, by collection and finish, gets specified; the dealer just fills the order, brand intact.
Pull-through protects the dealer relationship. Demand created with designers and homeowners arrives at the showroom asking for you. That is the opposite of channel conflict, and it is the only argument that survives a category review on price.
First ninety days, in the quiet
- Collections rebuilt by look, room, finish and centre-to-centre
- Designer program launched: samples, spec sheets, MAP-safe trade logic
- Pinterest, Instagram and search running as one system, dealers reported to
The boards for next year's kitchens are being pinned now. Be on them.
Get on the board →What you've probably tried
Why the dealer push and the product-on-white feed went nowhere.
- Marketing goes to dealers, dealers market to nobody. The chain ends there.
- An Instagram feed of product on white, no room, no context, no designer in sight.
- MAP removed discounting and nothing replaced it as a message.
- Designers never marketed to directly, despite being the actual decision-maker.
- No showroom or display strategy, so the product competes on a wall of fifty by visual chance.
What we do differently
Designer first. Collection and finish. Pulled through, never pushed.
- Collection and finish positioning built for how designers actually search: by look, by room, by finish, by centre-to-centre.
- Pinterest, Instagram and search as one system, hardware in real rooms with real designers, aimed at boards, not likes.
- A designer program: samples, trade pricing logic that respects MAP, spec sheets and a CRM that knows which designer specified what.
- Dealer and showroom pull-through kits: displays, planogram support and co-marketing that sends demand to the counter asking for you.
- A direct relationship with the end customer that captures the homeowner and routes the order to the dealer, brand intact.
Every dealer relationship you have gets stronger when the demand arrives asking for you.
Bring your collections and your dealer list. We'll show you where the designers are.
Get the free audit →Our services
Our services for home & decorative hardware brands.
Ten services, one team, one vocabulary. Open any box to see what it does for a decorative hardware brand and the tools we run it on.
- Collections by look, room, finish and centre-to-centre, shot in real rooms
- Designer program pages: samples, spec sheets, trade terms, in one place
- Dealer and showroom locator with lead routing, MAP-safe pricing logic
- Direct order path where it suits the channel, routed to dealers where it doesn't
- Fast, mobile-first, every collection and finish indexable
- Rank for collection, finish, category and style searches designers and homeowners type
- GEO: named when designers ask ChatGPT or Gemini for hardware options
- Product and collection schema so search reads your catalogue
- Google Business Profile for showrooms and head office
- Pinterest and Meta campaigns to designers and high-budget renovators by room and style
- Google Ads on collection, finish and category searches
- Dealer co-marketing campaigns that report back to the dealer
- Landing pages that qualify designer vs homeowner and route accordingly
- Hardware in real rooms with real designers, credited
- Pinterest as the search engine for kitchen and bath intent
- Designer takeovers and project features
- Content calendars run for you, approvals in one place
- Finish and care guides, mixing-metals content, sizing and centre-to-centre guides
- Room and project stories with the designer credited
- Designer spec sheets and lookbooks, downloadable
- Photography and styling direction, in rooms
- Designer newsletters: new collections, finishes, projects, samples
- Dealer and showroom programs with displays and co-marketing
- 7,000+ industry-wide contacts for designer, builder and dealer outreach
- Open, click and reply reporting in plain English
- Your CRM included free, no licences, no per-seat fees
- Sample request → designer qualification → follow-up → specification tracked
- Homeowner enquiries routed to the nearest dealer, brand intact
- Dealer lead handoff and reorder prompts
- Designer program renewals and reactivation, automatically
- Collection films in real rooms
- Finish and detail films for Pinterest, Instagram and product pages
- Designer testimonials and project stories on camera
- Cut-downs for paid and social
Shot & cut in4K crewsDroneDJIPremiere ProAfter EffectsDaVinci ResolveFinal Cut ProCapCutRunwayElevenLabsYouTubeVimeo& more
- Identity and collection naming that carry across finishes
- Lookbook, spec sheet and packaging systems
- Showroom displays, planogram and POP that win the wall
- Dealer co-marketing creative
- Collection launches in design and shelter press
- Designer project features crediting your hardware
- Trade and kitchen & bath press
- Award submissions and design programs
Placed inHouse & HomeCanadian InteriorsDesignlinesKitchen & Bath BusinessHardlines+ Ontario & national media
Not sure which of the ten you need? The audit tells you, free.
Get the free audit →What changes
Three numbers that decide the category review.
We don't report impressions. Every month you see the figures that decide your year, and we tell you honestly which are leading indicators and which are the payout.
01Designer specifications
Designers who requested samples and specified a collection, tracked from first pin or search to the dealer order.
Reported monthly · by designer02Pull-through orders
Dealer and showroom orders that arrived asking for you by name, the argument that ends a price-only review.
Reported monthly · by dealer03Branded demand
Searches, pins and enquiries for your collections by name, the equity that private label cannot copy.
Reported monthly · by collectionStraight answer on speed: pins, searches and designer sample requests move in months one to three. Specifications and pull-through orders pay out over two to four quarters. We report both, and we never dress one up as the other.
Want these three numbers for your business?
Get the free audit →Objections we hear from hardware brands
Every objection, answered straight.
Dealers see competition when a brand undercuts them. Pull-through is the opposite: demand created with designers and homeowners that arrives at the dealer asking for you by name, with the order routed to them. Every campaign is designed to make your dealers more valuable to you, and you more valuable to them.
MAP limits discounting, which was never a brand message anyway. Everything here is built on what MAP leaves untouched: collection, finish, design credibility, designer relationships and being findable at the moment the board is made. Brands with pricing power are the ones designers specify by name; that is what MAP-safe marketing builds.
You don't need to become one. You need designers to know your collections by look and finish, and homeowners to ask for them. That is design credibility, not lifestyle theatre: hardware in real rooms, credited designers, spec sheets that make specifying easy, and a dealer network that fills the order.
We only work in construction, design and hardware. Finish, collection, backset, centre-to-centre, escutcheon, handleset, MAP, dealer programs and planograms are our working vocabulary, and every plan is weighed against channel conflict before it is proposed.
It starts free: a full audit of your marketing and three competitors you name, then a plan and one clear quote in plain English. Working to a set budget instead? Tell us the number and we'll show you exactly what it buys, and what to do first. No lock-ins; engagements run month to month after the initial build.
A different objection? Bring it to a 30-minute call. No deck, no pitch.
See how we work →Why home & decorative hardware brands pick us
One industry. Your accounts. No lock-ins.
We market construction, design and hardware companies, nothing else, ever. You own every asset we build: the website, the CRM, the content, the photography. Engagements run month to month after the initial build, and the first three steps, including the audit of your marketing and three competitors, cost you nothing.
Reviews
What hardware brands say
A sample of the feedback we hear from the sectors we serve across Canada.
"Dealer pull-through was the pitch and they built the machine: locator, dealer kits, co-op ads in Vancouver and Toronto. Showrooms report walk-ins asking for us by name."
Sanjay KapoorDoor & cabinet hardware, Vancouver, BC
"The designer newsletter gets replies, which never happened with our blasts. Montreal studios request samples weekly and the tracker shows which collections are winning."
Lucia FernandezHardware brand, Montreal, QC
"Restoration architects across Ontario find our period-accurate pages from Hamilton and cite exact product codes. Small brand, national specifier reach. The promise held."
Grant WilsonHeritage hardware line, Hamilton, ON
"Matte black trends spike and we catch them now, landing pages live inside a week from the Calgary team. Their trend briefings beat our own sales data."
Ayesha RahmanHardware eCommerce, Calgary, AB
"GTA showroom partners finally send customers to a website worthy of the product. Designer registrations grew every month since the Mississauga launch."
Paul DeschampsBath hardware collection, Mississauga, ON
1 to 3 of 6
The Brief · our newsletter
Marketing intel for the people who build Canada.Know what's moving before your competitors do.Every issue: what changed, and what to do about it.Written for the trades. Read in four minutes.
One short email a fortnight: what moved in construction marketing, and what to do about it.