From a Decorating Class to Digital Interiors: Bourge Responsibly

HOW IT STARTED

Mika-Taché St. Fleur and Elizabeth Knick met at the University of Richmond, where both were working toward a Professional Certificate in Interior Decorating. Elizabeth came to the program as a maker. Mika-Taché came as a marketer with seven years as Senior Digital Strategist at Virginia ABC behind her, and the program changed how she read websites. She started reading them the way she was learning to read rooms.

When Elizabeth was ready to put structure behind her business, she brought Bourge Responsibly to Saint MGMT. The friendship came first, and it set the tone for the work: built in conversation, in her language, with her reading every draft.

WHO ELIZABETH IS

Elizabeth is Bourge Responsibly. She finds furniture worth saving and remakes it from salvaged, gifted and thrifted pieces. A worn cane-seat settee found curbside became Deep Blue Dreams, painted and dressed in crushed blue velvet. A rattan chair pulled from a trash heap became Lounge Leopard. A 1910 mahogany Victrola got painted florals, ravens and new turned legs. Her eye was formed in New Orleans, in rooms that hold beauty and darkness in the same breath.

In Richmond she is known well beyond furniture. She moves through the city’s burlesque, tattoo and alternative arts scene, and that community is where her buyers are. She has been a fixture at the Richmond Tattoo & Arts Convention over several years. Her sets were the backdrop for the meet-and-greet lounges of Ryan Ashley, the Ink Master Season 7 winner who is now the show’s judge and host: a collaboration in 2023, then Elizabeth’s own solo setup in 2024. Since then she has turned her focus to the pin-up contest, and this year she is its co-sponsor, the designer of its runway set and one of its judges.

THE SCRIPT CAME FIRST

Elizabeth started with The Brand Blueprint, modified for a brand that was already selling: a Brand Direction Brief and a Messaging Foundation, finished before any page was designed. Mika-Taché wrote about why that order matters in Brand Strategy vs. Creative Strategy: You Can’t Design What You Haven’t Decided, with this engagement as the example.

The Blueprint was built with her. She read every draft and marked anything that didn’t sound like her. When “gothic” appeared, she said it pulled toward a subculture she doesn’t claim, so it came out as a label and her own words went in: macabre, memento mori, Victorian, beautiful and a little haunted. Her brand promise was written three ways, and she chose the memento mori version, with the other two feeding it. Her name got a line in the way she says it: say it like bouge, rhymes with rouge.

LIVING WITH THE COPY

When the Blueprint was finished, Elizabeth wasn’t ready for a full website rebuild, and the approved copy waited. She lived with it through the summer and got used to hearing her brand in her own words. A founder who has lived with her language can hold it steady when a designer, a printer or a well-meaning friend suggests something else.

THE FAST PART

Then a deadline arrived. Her biggest weekend of the year was a month out, and her website still read like last year’s flyer: a phonetic spelling nobody could read, a line calling the name a joke, a promoted name that wasn’t hers, seventeen pieces with no story, size or price, and a Contact link that led back to the top of the page.

Because every word had already been decided, the refresh took three working weeks on the site she already had. Nothing was rewritten. The approved copy went in as written, and the time went into making the site work: five piece stories with dimensions and a price or Sold, a commission form that lands in her inbox, social links that point to her own accounts, a First Look list, and a QR code she could print for her table and share online. The template leftovers came down, and she could send people to her site with confidence.

DIGITAL INTERIORS

Interior decorating teaches you to read a room the way a guest moves through it: where they enter, what they see first, where the eye rests, and what tells them where to go next. Saint MGMT reads websites the same way and calls it digital interiors.

On Elizabeth’s site the header that teaches her name is the entry. One headline that says what she makes is the statement piece. The piece stories are the placards, carrying provenance and dimensions the way a gallery card does. The template clutter, and the badge that sat on her headline on a phone, came out like furniture cleared before guests arrive. One commission form that asks about the room first is the concierge, and the list is the guest book.

THE CALLS THAT MADE THE DIFFERENCE

A borrowed name stayed borrowed. The first roadmap planned a product line under The Dark Parlor, the name a collaborator gave the Ryan Ashley lounge. It wasn’t Elizabeth’s to build on, so it stayed out of the brand and came off every page of the site. Her own parlor idea waits for a name of her own.

Interiors got a lane before they got advertised. Elizabeth wants to grow into interiors and room resets. The guardrails frame that work as building a room around a piece she makes and hold full-room scope until it is priced and agreed, so she never promises a room she can’t yet deliver on her own.

The words went up before the new look. The full rebuild was more than the moment needed. The refresh kept her existing design and put the time into copy and working links, with the redesign and an online shop named as later phases.

IN HER WORDS

“One of the greatest gifts you can give someone in their career is making them feel like they belong in rooms where they are still learning to believe they belong themselves.”

A meme Elizabeth sent to Mika-Taché, with two words of her own: “That’s you.”

WHAT CHANGED

Elizabeth has a brand she can say out loud and a website that says it for her. The homepage opens on what she makes: one-of-a-kind furniture, rescued and reworked, beautiful and a little haunted. Her story is on About, in her voice. Her pieces carry their history, size and price. Inquiries reach her, and people who meet her in person have a way to stay in touch.

When she is ready for the redesign and the shop, both start from approved language, and the only thing left to decide is how it looks.

WHERE THE SAME EYE GOES NEXT

Boutique hotels: rooms and suites with a story a guest can repeat, carried from the furniture plan and the styled shoot to the booking page.

Short-term rentals: listings and sites that walk a guest through the space before they arrive, staged the way a decorator would stage the room.

Travel and hospitality brands: a website read as the first room a guest enters, with nothing in the entry that sends them back out.

Furniture makers and interior designers: a name people can say, a story on every piece, and an offer defined before it is advertised.

Saint MGMT works with boutique hotels, short-term rentals, travel and home brands, starting with a Brand Audit and building through The Brand Blueprint. Start the conversation at letschat@saintmgmt.com or www.saintmgmt.com.