To-The-Trade Episode Summary
Jaclyn Isaac of Nest Freight joined Laurie Laizure on To-The-Trade for Interior Design Community to talk about the freight and receiving problems that follow nearly every design project, and the company she built to solve them. Jaclyn is an interior designer at Donnie Douglas Designs, and Nest Freight is her new logistics platform built specifically for designers.
Jaclyn traces the idea back to a high-end penthouse install in Fort Lee, New Jersey. She was seven months pregnant and managing a photo shoot the same week furniture was arriving, and her receiver had left boxes unopened for weeks. She ended up unwrapping damaged pieces on the hallway floor in front of the building staff, and the client’s install was thrown off track. She brought receiving in-house shortly after.
A second moment sealed the decision. Jaclyn was sourcing hand-carved Italian marble tile for a backsplash, roughly $6,000 worth of product, and her initial freight quote came back around $900. When it was time to actually ship, the real number was $3,000, half the value of the tile itself. A friend with a logistics background, now her co-founder, got the same shipment delivered for $541.
That gap between quoted and actual freight cost is the problem Nest Freight is built to close. Jaclyn says her team sees average savings of $150 to $200 every time they requote a shipment, and the long-term goal is to use collective industry volume to negotiate better group rates directly with carriers, similar to a procurement club.
Nest Freight soft launched in March with almost no formal marketing. Jaclyn’s original goal was 100 signed-up firms, and the platform is at about 21 so far, entirely through word of mouth. She and Laurie talk through why adoption has been slower than the savings would suggest: most designers have never thought to requote their own freight, and getting a second quote feels like one more task on an already full plate.
The company has also expanded into receiving in New Jersey, Southern California and San Diego, and Florida, matching where most of Nest Freight’s current users are based. Jaclyn is direct about what makes receiving hard to get right. Designers routinely get surprise invoices weeks after delivery for charges they were never told about, and she wants Nest Freight to give real numbers upfront so designers can set client expectations before the truck arrives.
Inspection quality is the other differentiator she leans on. Jaclyn describes opening a chair from a high-end studio and spotting small tears in the leather that a standard warehouse employee likely would have missed. Her point is that a scratch on a $2,000 studio chair carries different stakes than a scratch on a $400 retail chair, both for insurance and for what the client will notice.
The conversation also covers insurance gaps most designers do not think about until something goes wrong. Freight carriers often cap liability well below an item’s actual value, and receivers typically are not insuring merchandise sitting in their warehouse on the designer’s behalf. Jaclyn and Laurie both recommend using AI tools to review vendor contracts and identify actual liabilities before signing anything.
Jaclyn and Laurie close on the emotional cost of this work, the stress designers carry when they have to go back to a client with an unexpected charge, and why Jaclyn wants the next phase of Nest Freight to be shaped directly by feedback from its founding members.
IDC listeners can try Nest Freight with a discount, one free month with code IDC2026. Follow Nest Freight on Instagram or visit nestfreight.com to learn more.
Timestamp Guide
00:00 – Meet Jaclyn Isaac and the launch of Nest Freight
01:31 – The Fort Lee, NJ penthouse install disaster
03:22 – A $900 freight quote that became $3,000
03:43 – Getting the same shipment down to $541
05:59 – Average savings of $150 to $200 per requoted shipment
07:04 – Building group buying power for the industry
12:25 – Signup update and why adoption has been slow
16:49 – Expanding into receiving: New Jersey, Southern California, Florida
21:08 – Price transparency and surprise invoices
22:15 – Catching damage a standard warehouse would miss
35:45 – Insurance gaps every designer should know about
44:03 – The IDC2026 promo code
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