Send us your feedback, thoughts or comments!

The bank told Nicholas Karlovasitis they could not give him a business loan. No trading history. So he called back and told them he needed $30,000 for a pool party. An epic one. Just the once. They offered him $50,000. That was 18 years ago. Today, Design By Them — the studio Nicholas built with his co-founder Sarah Kay from a Newtown apartment — has a team of 35 and dealers across Dubai, the UK, the Netherlands, and the US. When their accountants recently asked about their exit strategy, Nicholas and Sarah walked out of the meeting laughing. They do not have one. They just really love what they do.

This conversation goes somewhere most design podcasts do not. We talk about what it means to be given the gift of choice — and what it costs to build a business that tries to pass that on to other people. Nicholas is the son of migrants who watched his mother count hours at a paper factory and his father work 16-hour days to pay off a home loan in four years. Everything he has built is quietly shaped by that. Including the royalty model that puts real money in the hands of Australian designers who have been treating their work as a side project for too long.

In this episode, we explore:

• Growing up as a child of migrants and what that instilled — the optimism, the relativity, and the lifelong obsession with a better future
• A conversation with his father in Year 7 that removed the burden of expectation and gave Nicholas the gift of choice
• Deciding on industrial design at 13, and why passing up a Qantas avionics engineering programme was the best decision he almost did not make
• Working school holidays at a paper factory with his mother — and the moment he understood what an hour of someone's labour was worth
• The pool party loan: how Design By Them was founded on $30,000 a bank was happy to hand over for an epic one-time event
• Building a furniture brand in a market that barely existed — and why 'if there's no industry for us, we'll create one' became the founding philosophy
• The white t-shirt principle: the early business advice that shaped how they thought about products, cashflow, and creative ambition
• The copied letterbox incident that sharpened their supply chain strategy and changed how they thought about protecting designers' work
• The real economics of manufacturing locally versus overseas — and why the debate almost always misses the most important argument
• Building a supply chain in China over five years, and what quality control actually looks like when you are doing it seriously
• Running a business by designers for designers — and why they put prices on their website when no one else did
• Exhibiting at 3 Days of Design Copenhagen and the patient, deliberate path to global reach
• Why Nicholas and Sarah walked out of a meeting with their accountants laughing: no exit strategy, no Porsche, just the work

Why this conversation matters

In a world where scaling fast is celebrated and soul is usually the first casualty, Nicholas Karlovasitis offers a different model. Design By Them has grown from two people to 35 without losing what it set out to be: a brand that pays designers properly, builds for the long term, and believes that clarity of purpose is not a luxury — it is the strategy. His story is also a reminder that the most meaningful businesses are often built not to be sold, but to outlast the people who started them.

About Nicholas

Nicholas Karlovasitis is the co-founder and creative director of Design By Them, the Sydney-based furniture design studio he built alongside Sarah Kay from a Newtown apartment in 2007. He studied industrial design at UTS, where he also taught for a period, and has spent nearly two decades championing Australian designers while pursuing global reach. Design By Them manufactures across China, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, the US, and Italy, operates a royalty model for the designers it represents, and is currently expanding into the UK, Netherlands, and US markets. Nicholas describes the business simply: it was built by designers, for designers. He still does not have an exit strategy.

Watch / Listen

▶️  Watch the full episode on YouTube

🎧  Available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts

If this episode resonated, please like, subscribe and share — it helps Build Beautiful continue to tell deeper stories from the world of design, architecture and creative life.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Design By Them: designbythem.com

Instagram: @designbythem

3 Days of Design Copenhagen: 3daysofdesign.dk

To get in touch with Build Beautiful or to follow us head to our socials: 

 on Instagram

on Facebook

on LinkedIn

If you'd like to be on the podcast, or want to collaborate with Build Beautiful feel free to contact us on buildbeautifulpodcast@gmail.com.