Karen Chanan, Leslie Lee, and Jennifer Cross, Founders of Fourth Avenue Design Group
Names: Karen Chanan, Leslie Lee, & Jennifer Cross
Founder: Fourth Avenue Design Group
What's your elevator pitch? (Ie. In one sentence, what do you do?)
We believe that your house should paint a picture, tell a story, and show the world who you are. We specialize in interior remodeling, custom cabinetry, and new construction projects. Through design, conceptual renderings, and material selections, we guide our clients from concept to completion.
What's your story?
Our story starts with three big-firm design colleagues who, over time, became the best of friends. Our friendship evolved into an amazing partnership in 2023, we call it “Fourth Avenue Design Group”. We share a common design philosophy and creative vision, born from a combined fifty years of professional experience making others’ dream interiors become a reality. Our ultimate reward comes from knowing that the design process—relying equally on dedication, precision, and a collaborative relationship—yields results that make the happiest of clients.
What does BEING a FoundHer mean to you?
Construction is typically a male-dominated industry. As a female owners, we challenge these stereotypes and prove that women can lead and succeed in this space just as well as men. We hope to inspire others to pursue their own entrepreneurial dreams, especially in male-dominated industries.
How do you support other female founders and women in business?
Our primary business partner is a female entrepreneur. She was instrumental in helping us leave behind a male-dominated firm and start our own. For many of our business service needs, like legal, accounting, and bookkeeping, we rely on women-owned businesses. Some of our most valued vendor relationships are with females.
What are three podcasts you listen to that have helped you with your business?
Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff
How I Built This
Mel Robbins
What is ONE BOOK that you would recommend every female business owner read?
The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup by Noam Wasserman
Who is a female entrepreneur you look up to and why?
Sara Blakely from Spanx. She saw a need for women to feel confident and comfortable, and turned it into a global brand.
What are the first five things that you did when you were starting your business?
We met weekly for a year prior to leaving our existing employer and launching our business. We discussed goals, ideas, strategies and identified people who could be instrumental in helping us launch our firm. As our industry is very visual, we focused on our website and other social and professional platforms.
Who is someone who has helped change or shape your business for the better and what did they do to help you?
We were introduced to a female designer who has been in the industry for over 20 years. She allowed us to share her studio space and mentored us and she continues to do so today.
At what point did you make your company a full time gig? How did you know the time was right?
The climate at our former place of employment was changing drastically, and our values began to diverge from the culture. After many attempts to find new solutions with little progress and support, we realized in 2022 that the time was right to make the change.
What lesson or skill did you take with you from a prior job to help you succeed in your role today?
The skills we have today are a result of the time spent at our previous firm. We learned the ins and outs of construction, which gives us the knowledge and confidence many designers lack.
Let’s talk social media—who handles it for your company (you, an internal team member, an outsourced solution?) and what is the secret to making it successful? What is the biggest challenge?
We rotate social media posting weekly among the 3 of us. We focus on making our posts/stories consistent in style. Our biggest challenge is finding both the time and fresh content.
How did you land your first client?
Many of our former clients either followed us, sought us out, or referred us to others. The relationships we made with our clients over the years has been extremely beneficial in our early years.
What is something you do differently from the industry standard?
We have knowledge of the construction side of interior design, which is an advantage in a firm such as ours. We also have a unique financial relationship with our business partner that allows us to grow.
What would you do differently if you were starting your business today?
We honestly would not change anything. In a perfect world having more initial investment would have allowed us to have outside support earlier.
What are three strategies you use to market your business, grow brand awareness and generate bottom line growth?
Social media
Direct mail
Networking groups.
What was an obstacle you overcame to get your business where it is today? Please share the story behind it.
The structure of our previous employer was such that is was 100% commission based, so extracting ourselves was very complicated and required extensive planning and timing.
What are three actionable tips you would give with other women who want to start a business or are just getting started?
Do your research-educate yourself on everything available to your industry.
Don't underestimate the need to deal with conflict resolution.
Find professionals that can support and help you and can take tasks off your plate so you can focus on why you started your business.
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