As many of us have heard and some of us have experienced firsthand, while the covid pandemic caused much chaos, loss, and struggle for all of us, it also helped some discover a hidden passion, find a creative idea and even led some to start their own businesses. Before & After is such an example.
Image Credits: Before & After
Before & After is a professional organising business and it provides various services ranging from home and office organising to staging in preparation for sale. We spoke to founder, Siyana Petrova about her journey so far, what inspired her and how her business is all about her customers.
Siyana got inspired to set up Before & After and become an ‘official organizer’ in December 2020, during the pandemic. Once she got the idea, she realized very quickly that this was the spark she had been waiting for. Despite her job as a project manager in banking, she wasted no time in getting started and by April this year she had launched Before & After.
As a person she herself likes uncluttered, organized spaces and she told us how organizing a space can have an impact far greater than just the physical. She feels it can be therapeutic, can help one’s overall mental state and can help a person focus on other things that are important. Through Before & After she wants to help others find this peace via organization.
“The home organizing process can take anywhere from 2 – 10 hours depending on what the client needs.”
“Before & After aims to build a trusted relationship with customers and provide them with support before, during and after the decluttering and/or organizing process,” says Supriya Petrova. All the services are customized to the client’s specific needs and each project is therefore unique. “The home organizing process can take anywhere from 2 – 10 hours depending on what the client needs.”
She also explained that she follows a very detailed and involved process and her initial session with a customer is almost like a counselling session, through which she tries to understand the core challenges faced by the client, what their expectations are and what they hope to achieve. “I’m also sharing tips and tricks with my clients through the process, so they are able to stay organized, focus and decluttered even after the project is over.”
While a large focus of the business is currently on organizing homes and living spaces, Siyana also wants to focus more on the real estate sector and specifically on ‘Staging’ as a service for clients. She believes this is an untapped opportunity in Luxembourg.
Because of how the property market here is – a very high demand for property and often limited supply –, the founder feels a property agent often does not need to try as hard to make sure there are buyers for a home and this means just a little extra could get sellers a much better value. “When I compare this to other markets like the US, I notice that they put a lot of effort to decorate and stage a home for selling so that a buyer can see it in its best avatar, which allows buyers to truly choose the best home for their needs and a seller to get more value out of the process too.”
Petrova’s own experience of the real estate market here in Luxembourg also tells her there is room for a buyer to feel much more appreciated and respected throughout the whole process right from visiting to buying/renting a home.
“Currently it is a very transactional space and I want to make it a much warmer, more human interaction and focus on the softer emotional side, which both sides would ultimately appreciate and get more from.”, she explains. For her this aspect is missing in Luxembourg and this could be a great space for Before & After since they are already so focused on customer value, customer journey and emotions.
After already doing more than 15 projects in home organization, she is determined to better understand and exceed her customer’s expectations in this real estate space too and we have no doubt she will.
This article was first published in Silicon Luxembourg magazine. Get your copy.
