{"id":12683,"date":"2023-10-27T17:46:46","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T21:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/?p=12683"},"modified":"2023-12-19T13:46:08","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T17:46:08","slug":"yudi-kaufman-making-interior-design-firms-better-business-development-licensing-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/2023\/10\/27\/yudi-kaufman-making-interior-design-firms-better-business-development-licensing-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"Yudi Kaufman: Making Interior Design Firms Better: Business Development, Licensing, Sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

A decade after graduating in Interior Design as a Presidential Scholar, Yudi Kaufman (BFA \u201913, MS \u201815) runs his own business, YKD Associates<\/a>, servicing both interior designers and creatives. In just a few years, he rose from intern to vice president at a boutique interior design firm in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

\"YUDI
Yudi Kaufman speaking to designers about business development at High Point Market<\/a>. Photo: Katie Hickenbottom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now one of his most ambitious projects is his own home, an unusual Japanese-modern, open-plan, mid-century house on eight acres of hillside property. Kaufman and his husband bought the property in Carmel in Putnam County, NY, early in 2022.<\/p>\n

The way he designed the interior spaces for such an ambitious home has a lot to do with his architectural insights and training in both design and sustainable environments.<\/p>\n

Incessantly curious about design from a young age, Kaufman\u2019s career path was unusual. Because he was unable to study art or design growing up, applying to FIT required a work-around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was raised in New York City outer boroughs. As soon as I was allowed to take public transportation, I was on the city buses, trains and ferries into Manhattan for no other reason than to look at architecture. I was always looking up at the designs and the styles and heights,\u201d said Kaufman.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Japanese-modern, open-plan, mid-century house on eight acres of hillside property<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To create a portfolio, an application requirement for FIT’s Interior Design program, Kaufman took a slew of design classes offered through the college’s Center for Continuing and Professional Studies:<\/a><\/p>\n

“I took as many design courses as I could that\u00a0didn\u2019t have admission requirements,” says Kaufman. “I tried to align them with what could be applied to my degree in the future.”<\/p>\n

Kaufman, who minored in History of Arts, won the Ronald and Anne Lubman Interior Design Award<\/a>. He then earned his master\u2019s at FIT in Sustainable Interior Environments.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"YUDI
Yudi Kaufman speaking to designers about business development at High Point Market<\/a>. Photo: Katie Hickenbottom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an intern at Robin Baron Design he employed a focused strategy: \u201cI helped with everything I possibly could beyond design-related items. At a small firm you have the ability to get involved with marketing and growing the business into new arenas such as product design, licensing, and e-commerce,” says Kaufman.<\/p>\n

It’s proof once again that design skills taught at FIT can be applicable in so many ways:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe designer I worked for, Robin Baron, was always looking for ways to grow her business. When she needed help with creating an ad, for instance, I helped her design it using basic graphic design skills I learned at FIT. She loved it!<\/p>\n

\u201cI said yes to whatever was needed.\u201d Kaufman has a background in business management and accounting. “I also brought that to the table,” he says.<\/p>\n

His firm, YKD Associates, is primarily a business development consulting firm, where he assists interior designers in growing their businesses — everything from marketing, to sustainability.\u00a0 Kaufman also occasionally takes on small design projects to feed \u201cmy creative soul,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yudi KAUFMAN\u2019S DINING ROOM contains AN ECLECTIC MIX of FOUND, INHERITED FURNISHINGS, and PIECES HE HELPED DESIGN<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDesigners hire me to refresh their brand and come up with a new brand concept because they\u2019re not getting the right type of clients because of how they are presenting themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaufman has helped clients completely reshape their look: \u201cI work with them on their websites, their logo, their brand marketing and messaging. I also help designers with licensing, acting as their licensing agent to help secure collaboration.<\/p>\n

Kaufman is also writing a monthly column on business development for Design News Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was recently added as a sustainability expert to the\u00a0Saatva<\/a> advisory panel. The company is redefining luxury mattresses, he says, and making them at price points that are accessible to more consumers. “They make every mattress to order, and use sustainable materials whenever possible. When they deliver their product and pick up the old mattress, they dissect its parts for what they can reuse.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The soaring windows in Kaufman\u2019s home allow for ample natural light. His study includes items like menorahs and shoe miniatures.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kaufman and his husband’s home was affordable, in part because of the unusual style and because of the hillside site, where the front door is on the second floor with kitchen and common rooms and the bedrooms are below. Commuter rail from nearby Brewster to Grand Central Station takes about an hour.<\/p>\n

While the home was designed and built to express the architect\u2019s vision, creating a complimentary interior was Kaufman\u2019s domain.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s a whole interior design part about how I got to decorate it!” says Kaufman.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially with your first home, you sink your entire life savings into the down payment, so there’s little left for decorating. I had amassed a collection of furniture and art from past clients that are high-end and barely touched.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SOME
Some of Kaufman’s upscale hand-me-downs from clients are now in his home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kaufman had also been to countless auctions and design events where vendors donate or sell products inexpensively. “I bought beautiful furnishings [over time], which I added to my collection. I designed with what I had. It looks like it was intentionally designed that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaufman and his husband, a hair stylist (“He makes people beautiful; I make spaces beautiful” says Kaufman), are now improving the house\u2019s sustainability. \u201cI just<\/em>\u00a0finished upgrading my heating system,\u00a0changing over from oil heating to clean energy heat pump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
THE EXTENDED EAVES PROTECT KAUFMAN\u2019S HOUSE FROM TOO MUCH DIRECT SUNLIGHT<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are features that architecturally are innately sustainable:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe home has soaring windows floor to ceiling, but the wide eaves of the roof overhang everything. So while the windows bring in a lot of natural light, it is not direct light. That\u2019s something that attracted me to the home: It\u2019s innately protecting itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was raised orthodox Jewish so the schools I went to were yeshivas. Any extra-curricular activities was Judaic. At FIT I loved being in classrooms with people from all over the world, and from all different backgrounds. It helped my approach to design and to life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To learn more about Yudi Kaufman’s work, go to his website: YKD Associates<\/a>, and follow him on IG: @yudikaufman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To learn more about the BFA Interior Design program, go to Interior Design at FIT<\/a><\/p>\n

All photos used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A decade after graduating in Interior Design as a Presidential Scholar, Yudi Kaufman (BFA \u201913, MS \u201815) runs his own business, YKD Associates, servicing both interior designers and creatives. In just a few years, he rose from intern to vice president at a boutique interior design firm in Manhattan. Now one of his most ambitious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":285,"featured_media":12754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32004],"tags":[70694,70700,70709,70698,8757,70706,70703,70695,70708,70707,70699,70705,70702,70701,70696,70542,70697,70692,70704],"class_list":["post-12683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school-of-art-and-design","tag-business-development","tag-center-for-continuing-and-professional-studies","tag-design-news-now","tag-high-point-market","tag-interior-design","tag-japanese-modern","tag-judaic","tag-licensing","tag-mid-century","tag-open-plan","tag-portfolio","tag-presidential-scholar","tag-robin-baron-design","tag-ronald-and-anne-lubman-interior-design-award","tag-saatva","tag-sustainability","tag-ykd-associates","tag-yud","tag-yudi-kaufman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/files\/2023\/10\/kaufman-ffeature.jpg?fit=1180%2C1536&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p13xjz-3iz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/285"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}