What Luxury Hospitality Taught Me About Designing Products for the Real World
How two decades of manufacturing for four- and five-diamond hotels shaped the design philosophy behind PooStation
For more than two decades, I have designed and manufactured products for four- and five-diamond hotels and resorts. That experience taught me early that there is a difference between designing something that looks beautiful and designing something that can survive real commercial use. In luxury hospitality, products are handled constantly. Guests spill on them, move them, overload them, and sometimes use them in ways nobody anticipated. At the same time, those products are expected to remain polished in an environment where every detail matters.
One of my earliest lessons came while developing products for the opening of Wynn Las Vegas. We were working on a luxury desk blotter based on the look of a Giorgio Armani holiday desk set. I delivered an early handmade sample with a tiny imperfection caused during gluing. Steve Wynn initially said it was perfect. Then he examined it more closely, noticed the flaw, and sent it right back across the room to me. After the meeting, Richard Moskell, Director of Purchasing for the opening of Wynn Las Vegas, gave me simple advice: do not let that happen again. I did not, and the experience shaped the way I approached quality from that point forward.
The same desk blotter taught us another lesson about durability. Guests eat breakfast at desks and spill coffee, juice, and food. A product built around cardboard might look beautiful when new, but moisture can cause warping. We moved to MDF construction because we were designing for what would actually happen, not what should happen.
Another product reinforced that thinking. We manufactured a luxury guest-room wastebasket customized to complement the room design. Depending on the property, we produced versions in synthetic leather, horsehide, acrylic, resin, mother of pearl, and other finishes. It had to belong in the room. Underneath was a removable metal liner designed to be leak resistant, washable, and safer if someone dropped a lit cigarette into it.
Years later, during an expansion at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, a buyer contacted us because he wanted our wastebaskets. He had tested nearly a dozen competing products by turning them upside down and standing on them. It sounded unusual until he explained the environment. Guests might spend the evening gambling and drinking and return to their rooms less careful than when they checked in. Some filled the wastebasket with ice and beer because the regular ice bucket was too small. Others turned it upside down, stood on it, and played guitar as if they were onstage. Most of the products he tested did not hold up. Ours did.
That experience captures one of the most important lessons in commercial design: you cannot predict every way a product will be used, but you can design it well enough to handle the unexpected. I carried that thinking into a very different category when I began studying commercial pet waste stations. What struck me was how little the basic product had changed in decades. Residential communities, architecture, landscaping, technology, and amenities had evolved, while the pet waste station often looked and functioned much as it had years earlier. That became the starting point for PooStation.
I approached PooStation the same way I had approached hospitality products. I looked at the person using it, the person servicing it, the environment around it, and how it would hold up over time. That thinking influenced galvanized steel construction, larger capacity, sanitary foot-pedal operation, an ADA-accessible hand lever, integrated LED lighting, and easier service access. A pet owner may already be holding a leash and a filled waste bag, so why require another hand interaction if the product can eliminate it?
Luxury hospitality also taught me that a product should belong in its environment. A desk blotter, wastebasket, or amenity tray in a high-end guest room should complement the architecture and furnishings rather than stick out from them. I believe the same standard should apply to modern residential communities and commercial properties, where significant investments are made in landscaping, architecture, and amenities.
My approach has always been to solve the quality problem first and work on price second. Not every customer is looking for that, and that is fine. But customers who care about design, durability, maintenance, and user experience understand that value is about more than initial cost. Commercial products live hard lives, and the best ones are designed with that reality in mind from the beginning.
Author Bio: Avi Kosch
Founder and CEO, NEXGEN DNA, Inc.
Creator of PooStation