Fluff Residential Staging and Design

After another home stager canceled on us, we were referred to Leslie and Fluff Staging by our real estate agent. She came highly recommended from another agent and our agent was hoping to add her into his rotation of stagers. We checked out her website, which looked fantastic, met with her to do an in home consultation and ensured she would be available for our timeline to get the house on the market.
We were out of town the weekend she was set to stage the house and were excited to arrive home and see what she had done. At our consultation we had discussed making our cute ranch style home look modern, clean and crisp.
We arrived home to anything but. The house looked very dated– it’s as if we were walking into the home of an older lady. There was animal print in nearly every room, antique looking floral prints on the walls, random asian nick knacks and nearly every piece of furniture is beat up and damaged. It was very clear that we had gotten the worst of her inventory.
I gave it a few days, knowing that I was living in a product and that the staging was never going to be my taste. However, as we had other friends over, including one who is a visual merchandising director for a prominent retailer and has an impeccable eye, we received nothing but terrible feedback.
With that in mind, I called Leslie the day before we went on the market. I wanted to be tactful and professional but understand her design sense for the house after we had discussed something different. I asked her exactly that and she was immediately defensive saying she has 20 years in the business and I just had to trust her. Then asking exactly what I had an issue with– I then explained that I felt the look was dated and she pushed for specifics. I gave her the details and she said that she specifically put the animal print in the house to make it look hip, young and fresh. I explained that I was disappointed because it didn’t look like the houses on her website. To which she responded by asking me what we were listing our house at. I replied $ 730K to which she said that’s what you get for that price point. She offered to come and change things around at an additional hourly rate but couldn’t get to it for three weeks– we were listing the following day. Hanging up, I was so upset. I am charged the exact same rate as her million+ clients (and she is not cheap starting at $ 4600!) and got her worst inventory because my house is only three quarters of a million dollars and clearly not as prestigious as her other clients!
Then over the weekend I was home on Saturday evening and heard a loud crash from my daughters room. I went in to find the red cheetah print chair had toppled over into my daughter’s glass closet doors. I flipped the chair over to find that the leg was completely broken off. We were having our first open house the following day and I was concerned it would be a liability if a family came through with small children or someone leaned on it and was hurt. So the morning of the open house I called her and asked her to come remove the chair. She showed up 30 mins before our open house and brought another chair. I largely stayed out of her way but before leaving, told her she could take the animal print pillows and rose/​leopard print rug that I had put in my daughter’s closet. As she was leaving a friend who was with her said I needed to put the animal print pillows back out and I said no, that they weren’t really the right fit. She immediately jumped at me saying I needed to trust Leslie. I explained that I felt the style was dated and that I had a friend come over to re-​arrange things to make it look cleaner. She responded that the target market for our house was not 30 year olds. I found that very interesting given that I was 30 when I bought the house and our entire neighborhood is young families.
Overall, the whole thing has just been terribly unprofessional. It is clear that Leslie has target clients in mind and that is who she displays on her website. If you are under a million I wouldn’t use her– you’re going to get bottom of the barrel inventory and your house will look very dated.