Surveying her college dorm room for the first time as a freshman, Amanda Zuckerman of Potomac thought: This is gross.
Her mother, Karen, winced, too, as she gazed at bare walls and furniture without a hint of style in the Washington University in St. Louis dorm. Then the veteran designer got to work.
Karen rearranged the furniture, shoving a small dresser under the bed to create more space. She placed coordinating linens and pillows on the bed, and added other accessories that she and her daughter had purchased, creating a fresh, stylish look.
“I was shocked,” Amanda says of that transformation two summers ago.
All it had taken was an experienced eye.
Amanda and her mother knew before arriving on campus that it wasn’t easy to fashionably decorate a dorm room. They’d been dismayed by the bland comforters, lamps and picture frames at stores such as Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond.
“We were having a lot of problems finding something stylish to put in my room,” recalls Amanda, now 19 and a sophomore majoring in graphic design and marketing.
The transformation set the women to thinking: Why not employ their love of design to help other style-minded students decorate their rooms?
So the mother-daughter duo created Dormify, an online store offering bedding, posters and other dorm accessories. The company launched a wide range of products on its website, Dormify.com, in April. Dormify is run out of the Rockville offices of Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, a marketing communications and design agency that Karen originally started in her basement in 1987. Her husband, Jerry, handles the financial side of HZDG, which, based on revenues, was named the largest graphic design and interactive agency in the metropolitan D.C. area last year by the Washington Business Journal. Karen, 47, is HZDG’s president and owner and chief executive officer and owner of Dormify.
Dormify.com is “a one-stop shop for all things that are cool for dorm rooms,” says Stephanie Hayman, 25, a Potomac native who’s in charge of merchandising and purchasing for the business.
Visitors can buy bedding designed by Dormify, as well as other brands, including Alexandra Ferguson, DwellStudio, Knock Knock and Blissliving Home. Prices of Dormify products range from $2 for postcard-size posters of Dormify designs to about $100 for reversible duvet covers. Brand-name products range from $3.75 for Knock Knock sticky notes to $89 for Alexandra Ferguson pillows. The website also offers a gift registry.
Karen Zuckerman realizes that Dormify may not be for everyone. Her target audience? “A mother willing to spend money for designer jeans would spend money for this,” she says.
Full-size posters, at $24.99 each, feature creative interpretations of the English and Greek alphabets. The letter “K,” for example, is constructed of old-fashioned turnkeys. The site also offers 20 different wall decals, including silhouettes of a chandelier, and a bicycle that looks as if it’s leaning against a wall.
The website features blogs by 30 “style advisers,” including Amanda and her friends, offering advice on everything from moving-in day to making the best use of a tiny closet.
Karen and Amanda see the site as a place where others can tap into their expertise on dorm design. Viewers will note Karen’s idea to replace the uncomfortable desk chair in Amanda’s room with a $99 chair made of flexible rubber cords, and to bring in smoke-colored bins that are invisible when stored under a bed.
“We would tell my friends that we’re dormifying my room,” Amanda says. “It became kind of a verb.”
Jamie Burke, 18, of North Potomac, is already on board. A Zuckerman family friend and University of Maryland freshman, she’s a style adviser who blogs regularly about college life. She purchased posters spelling “TERPS” to decorate the common room of her dormitory suite.
“It changed the whole room,” she says. “It was a great way to give a cool atmosphere to the room.”
Burke is so into Dormify that she gave a speech about it to a journalism class last fall—realizing she could market the website to potential customers.
Karen Zuckerman is counting on word-of-mouth marketing. She envisions Dormify as a community of students and parents who regularly chat online about their college experiences as well as buy posters and comforters.
“This is going to be a very big social media account, all peer to peer,” she says. “People who love it are going to share it with other people who love it. It’s a very social thing.”
Though school is her priority, Amanda serves as the sounding board for new designs for Dormify. “We basically run everything by Amanda,” Hayman says. “We send her almost every line of design and tweaks so she can give us her input.”
Amanda inherited her love of design from her mother after spending her childhood hanging around the HZDG office. Karen often would consult Amanda on projects ranging from a summer camp website to items for gift bags to be given to clients.
“I had input on things when I was really young, which was cool,” says Amanda, who plans to work for Dormify after college.
Karen says their mutual love of design makes it easy to work with her daughter. “It’s a good, energetic relationship,” she says. “It’s a great opportunity to do something we love.”
And more members of the family may be getting into the act. Karen says her 17-year-old daughter, Alexa, a Winston Churchill High School junior, will start blogging soon about getting ready to go to college. And her 13-year-old son, Andrew, wants to be involved when he’s old enough, she says.
Karen says a growing interest in style—reflected in TV shows such as Project Runway and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition—makes the timing perfect for Dormify. She dreams of eventually branching out into products for babies and post-college graduates.
“We want to be one of the places that every high school senior in our demographic wants their graduation presents bought from,” she says. “Every 13-year-old will want to Dormify their room.”
Julie Rasicot lives in Silver Spring. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, among other publications.
