Season 8 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Loloi.This episode is brought to you in partnership with Materio. Today’s guest is someone who needs very little introduction: Ashley Montgomery is the founder and principal of Ashley Montgomery Design, one of Canada’s most publicly recognized interior design studios. Her work is instantly identifiable. Layered, warm, deeply collected, and anchored in vintage pieces that feel storied and intentional rather than trendy. But what I’m especially excited to unpack today is not just the aesthetic. It’s the operational side of building a firm around vintage. Because sourcing one of a kind pieces at scale is not for the faint of heart. It requires systems, relationships, risk management, pricing strategy, and a deep understanding of margin. And doing that from Canada adds an entirely different layer of logistics that many U.S. designers may not fully understand. Ashley has built a studio that doesn’t just use vintage occasionally. It is embedded into her brand identity. And in today’s conversation, we’re pulling back the curtain on how she sources, how she prices, how she protects profitability, and how she has scaled a taste-driven aesthetic across a growing team. We’ll talk about cross-border importing, markup strategy on antiques, client education, and whether vintage actually increases project profitability or simply increases complexity.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related