Bling for your walls

Bling for your walls

The wallpaper-installation business is

hurting from the construction bust, but one company has found a way to thrive by

providing one-of-a-kind touches.

Christopher O'Guin runs his hand over the latest wall covering made from recycled windshield glass. Named Decor Ice, the sparkling material is dubbed "bling for your walls."

It's just one of the special coverings that has transformed the O'Guin family's company from a traditional wallpaper-installation company to an artisan custom-decorating firm. Besides recycled windshields, Naples-based O'Guin Decorative Arts uses a variety of unique materials including fossilized plankton, Venetian plaster and lime paints. Its artisans can make steel look like wood and wood look like marble.

For sizeable projects, O'Guin's employees will travel for work. "We recently completed a banquet room on Nantucket and took a crew of five up there for a week," says O'Guin, the company's vice president of sales and product development.

Unique materials and the ability to follow customers to other parts of the country have helped the firm manage the construction downturn. "Our business has been expanding despite the economy right now," O'Guin says. The average O'Guin project brings in $20,000 in revenues.

Of course, the company's growth isn't as rapid as it was during the boom. "It started slowing down last year," O'Guin says. One multi-million-dollar project in Palm Beach recently was canceled. But instead of working on new model homes as it had in the past, the firm is focusing on remodeling existing homes, for example.

Retiring baby boomers are still buying homes on the Gulf Coast, but they're spending less. Instead of buying a $4 million home, they might buy a $2 million home and spend more money on renovations, O'Guin says.

O'Guin also targets developers of commercial buildings such as banks, hotels and health clinics. Many of its materials are made from natural compounds and O'Guin touts that fact to health care facilities. The "green" imprimatur is an added bonus. "Politics are changing and people are thinking more about that," he says.

The "green" trend is so prevalent that some of O'Guin's customers have weighed whether to use domestic products instead of foreign ones because they worry that shipping materials from overseas contributes to global pollution. "Architects and designers are thinking that way," O'Guin says. About half of O'Guin's materials are imports.

Although its materials can cost as much as three times more than ordinary wallpaper, O'Guin has persuaded customers to buy them by touting durability and longevity of certain materials. For example, a wall coating called Duroplex is more expensive than paint but it has a 10-year life. The material, which is made from sand and acrylic, can't be scratched and stains wash off easily. O'Guin says the firm has had success selling that material to hotels and country clubs.

However, about 80% of O'Guin's business is still residential and it gets most of its business by referral from interior decorators and architects. It's building a showroom in Naples where customers can see and touch the latest materials. The showroom will also be used to host parties and receptions, attracting prospective customers.

O'Guin isn't tied down to the Gulf Coast, which is a good thing now. "I did a project in Big Sky, Montana," O'Guin says. The company sends a core group of artisans to a project and hires painters and laborers as needed on site. "We go anywhere," he says.

-Jean Gruss