Why I’m Writing This

Hi! If you’re a new reader or subscriber to my blog. Welcome! You may be wondering why I’m writing this story of my background, with all of these images, and here’s why:

First, because I want you to know who I really am, as a female founder, a businesswoman and as an entrepreneur in her 22nd year of business for herself [ in 2024 ].

Also, because I hope by putting this all into one long blog post it will encourage young entrepreneurs who might read this one day to realize there are many times in a long career where they will need to make a shift, change directions, innovate, take a risk, take a bit of time off to process a major life event.

And while it can be scary to know if the right decision has been made whenever you feel led to shift, I want young entrepreneurs to know that if they follow their gut instinct, they will almost always be okay in the end.

Lastly, because I’d like to be remembered, when I pass on, for being a female founder who was also a digital innovator - an explorer and educator into the virtual realms, a leader who wasn’t afraid to take big career risks in order to help others understand how to utilize technology to propel their businesses powerfully forward.

Are You Ready To Read?

This is a very long blog post because I’ve had a long career. I don’t expect you to read it all in one go so if you get tired of reading, you can scroll the images to get a pretty good idea of what I’ve done, where I’ve been and what I’m up to now.

And although the images tell some of the story, it’s the words in between that tell the whole story and contain the golden nuggets , so I do encourage you to read this entire post, as you have time, even if you have to come back to it a few times.

In The Beginning: 1976 - 1986: My Early Years With Scan Design While In College And My Shift To Working For Dun and Bradstreet and then First Winthrop Corporation,

I have been involved in the furniture and interior design business full time now for almost 37 years, but I didn’t anticipate, early on, that I would end up with a career related to interior design.

While in college for a degree in management, I got a job working for a furniture store, Scan Design, which was located at that time in Winter Park, FL.

I have always loved beautiful design - a passion nurtured early in my teens by my Mom who took me to many design showhouses in and around Longwood, Altamonte Springs, Winter Park and Orlando, FL where I grew up.

After 4 years at Scan Design, and a few more years after college working at [ now defunct ] Denhome Furniture as the manager of their new store on FM 1960, I got married in Houston, we moved to Mill Valley, California and I found my footing in the corporate world I had gone to school for: I was hired by Fortune 500 company Dun and Bradstreet where I worked for 2 years for their Duns Marketing Services division in San Francisco.

Then, while still living in California, I went into the world of investment banking with First Winthrop Corporation and got my Series 7 stockbrokers license. I sold multi million dollar real estate limited partnerships to very wealthy individuals who needed serious tax write offs.

It was an exhilarating time in my life as I was the first full time female First Winthrop had ever hired. I did extremely well until the company decided on doing a deal [ not related to real estate ] that I didn’t believe in, so I left. As it turned out, I was right and the company went belly up on that deal.

After I left Dun and Bradstreet, I went to work for Consolidated Capital in Emeryville, CA where I became their Vice President of Marketing/Due Diligence - Product Development [ now called Investor Relations ] for the 4 largest real estate investment trusts [ REITS ] in the country then trading on the American Stock Exchange, as you can see below.

When the real estate market crashed and the tax laws changed in the mid-80’s, I left that position while simultaneously going through a divorce which necessitated a move back to Houston, TX.

Shift #1: 1986 -2002: Into Furniture Sales and Interior Design

In Houston, I thought I would go back into investor relations, but I could not get a job in that field at the time of the market crash - no one was hiring and I had no connections. So I thought, “I will get a job back in the interiors and furniture world, until the job market for investor relations professionals opens back up.”

So, in 1986, I decided to seek a position within the world of furniture and design [which has allowed remained a passion though not my profession ] and used my previous experience at Scan Design as the entree to apply for and then be accepted for a position with the Houston franchise of the French luxury furniture retailer, Roche Bobois.

I loved it so much that I never went back to investor relations work, and ended up staying for 10 years and becoming their senior interior designer. I had wonderful clients at Roche Bobois, like Dr. and Mrs. Leiser. He was one of the original founders of Kelsey Seybold in Houston. They were so delightful to work with and their home ended up being my first published project in the Houston Chronicle, as you can see below.

The image you see below was written by the owner of Roche Bobois in 1991 - at my request - for someone who was seeking a bit of background info on me when I requested a loan.

After 10 years with Roche Bobois, I was recruited by Cantoni Furniture, and became the senior designer in their Houston location, when their larger store opened in 1996.

I loved working with clients like Jenny Wu, whose home was designed completely around feng shui principles. This was my second published project and one I loved working on with she and her husband. It was published both in the Houston Chronicle and in Cantoni’s in house magazine, as you can see below.

If you’d like to read the Houston Chronicle article about this project, view it here.

After 6 years with Cantoni, however, I became enthralled with the nascent internet and what it could mean for the furniture and interior design business. And then 9/11 happened in Sept of 2001. I decided it was now or never to strike out on my own and start my own internet related business and so I left the business of interior design for good and went out on my own in 2002.

Shift #2: 2002 - Starting My Own Business, The Kaleidoscope Partnership

I wanted to start right out working on some aspect of the internet, as I said, but our industry was just not quite ready for it yet. Noone believed that the internet would be a force in furniture sales or interior design.

So, I pivoted into sales training, wrote a 62 page workbook, shown below, and trained the retail sales people and the interior designers at major and boutique furniture retailers how to use design language and room planning to sell whole rooms full of furniture, art and accessories, instead of just individual items.

I drew upon my experience doing whole home design at Roche Bobois and Cantoni to write my workbook and because I had successfully worked on commission, doing what I was now asking the retail sales associates and interior designers to do at my client’s retail furniture stores, my program became wildly successful in increasing their sales.

I ended up training for 34 retailers around the country, including some of our country’s finest design oriented retailers like Circle Furniture in Boston, Lawrance Furniture in San Diego, Theodore’s in Washington, DC and many, many others.

My first lucky break came was when I secured as my first client the Warren Buffet/Berkshire Hathaway owned store, Star Furniture, in Houston. My second client was all locations of FL based Scan Design, where I had started my furniture career.

You can see the nice letter that Ellen Robinson, Director of Education for Star Furniture, wrote to me below.

What made my program so successful was the fact I was doing all of the initial training onsite at these retailer’s stores around the USA, but going back once every 3 months to each store for a period of 9 months, and meeting one on one for coaching with each RSA or interior designer I trained.

I developed my real love of educating others during this time and was so thrilled to start receiving letters from the individuals I was coaching, sharing with me what they learned and how I had impacted their professional lives.

See two of these letters I received below. I have dozens more and they are one of my most treasured possessions from this time in my business career.

A Work Intermission - My Father’s Death In 2005.

After 4.5 years of training and traveling to various retailers in different cities around the country non-stop…. I got tired of all the travel, and at the same time, I lost my Dad to cancer very suddenly. I wrote his obituary for the Orlando Sentinel which you can read here if you’d like to. Then ensued two years of me living in a space of not knowing exactly what I was going to do, along with me making some relationship and work missteps.

I spent a lot of time during those two years contemplating how I could develop an internet focused business that didn’t require so much travel. And just about at that time, social media was born.

Shift #3: 2008: Starting The USA’s First Digital Marketing Agency For The Furniture And Interior Design Industry

If you remember, in 2008 the housing industry was in a crisis and so was the furniture industry. Every marketing person at every manufacturer was being laid off and many interior designers went out of business.

But, I had a vision that Twitter, a new social media site I had become enamored with on a personal level, could be HUGE for the furniture and design industry because it was a form of online media where our industries could speak both to ourselves [ B2B ] and to the consumer [ B2C ] simultaneously FOR FREE. I first wrote about Twitter for Furniture Today in 2009, here.

I thought that if I could get the furniture and design industries onboard with using Twitter, that we could, together, help influence where the consumer would spend their disposable income and help them realize how important having a beautiful home was to their peace of mind and sense of security and comfort.

So, I worked very, very hard to pioneer the field of social media marketing and influencer marketing within the furniture and interior design industry and get our industry onboard with, first, Twitter, and then all forms of social media as a way of communicating with consumers - for free.

At the time I implemented this shift in my business, noone else in the furniture and design industry had a social media agency. Traditional PR agencies had not yet embraced social media channels as a form or PR.

My first major social media client was a division of the largest privately held company in the country, Cargill’s BiOH Polyols division - a very, very lucky break.

When I was hired by their whip smart young VP of Marketing, Jessica Koster, [whom I met because I chaired WITHIT’s National Leadership Conference and she was a sponsor ] Jessica asked me who I recommended she work with on the traditional PR side, and I told her Leslie Newby of Work The Brand.

Leslie and I had first met through WITHIT, and had become good friends, and I felt she would be the right person.

The first major multi-brand influencer marketing campaign in the home furnishings industry that Jessica, Leslie and I worked on together was held in October of 2009.

It was called #BeInTheKnOH and was a collaboration between Cargill’s BiOH Polyols division, Room and Board’s retail store in Minneapolis, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Read more about it here from Mindful Momma, one of the bloggers I invited to attend - who is also shown below in this collage.

The purpose of this campaign was to educate both consumers and students how Cargill’s BiOH polyols ingredient, made from soy, was being used to replace a portion of the all oil based polyol used in flexible foam production and why this was a good thing. Room and Board was one of the first stores in the country to start asking its upholstery vendors to utilize BioH’s soy based polyol ingredient.

Leslie Newby was able to secure an excellent interview with Minnesota Public Radio about this event, which you can listen to here, if you’d like.

Sadly, today, as I write this in 2023, Cargill’s BiOH polyols division has been closed.

After the success of this event, Leslie and I worked on an even larger influencer marketing event for BiOH in 2010, called #ProjectUDesign. which some of you may remember.

This was a contest - with online and offline components - for one SCAD student to win the opportunity for Century Furniture to manufacture their chair design. It was a multi brand collaboration between Century Furniture, Ultrasuede Furniture, the Savannah College of Art and Design and Cargill’s BiOH Polyols division.

As you can see from the image below, many of the people I’m still friends with today showed up for the final event at Century Furniture’s showroom during 2010’s Fall #HPMKT.

What I’m most proud of re: this event, though, is that Century Furniture agreed to pay a royalty to the SCAD student who won the contest.

In the image below, you can see Alex Shuford III shaking the winning student, Ryland Quillen’s, hand. Ryland’s winning chair design went on to become a successful seller for Century Furniture and it was fun for me to see it in the Houston store of Mecox Gardens.

Shift #4: 2013: Working With Interior Designers, Too, On Their Digital Marketing And Other Business Initiatives.

After working only with major and emerging brands for the first 4 years of my digital marketing business, I added in digital marketing services, writing, strategic consulting and PR services for individual interior designers, starting with [now sadly deceased ] interior designer Leslie Hendrix Wood, the owner of the blog, Hadley Court, so I could help designers connect with the brands and publishers that I had been working with — and that work continues to this day.

Leslie was a wonderful client for 4 years, and during the time we worked together, I wrote 187 posts for her blog, Hadley Court.

I was so honored to be mentioned in this interview Leslie gave to her local paper, The Midland Register, in 2014, after her blog won Best New Design Blog at the 2013 Design Bloggers Conference. Learn more about this remarkable woman, mother, wife, daughter and philanthropist by reading her obituary here.

I also hope Leslie will always be remembered for being the one that donated the funds for the Hadley Court Center For Design Collaboration at the Bienenstock Furniture Library, where so many workshops, meetings and seminars have been conducted for the furniture and design industry over these ensuing years. Furniture World Magazine wrote about its debut, here.

Leslie had an amazing zest for life and lived a big life. She loved her children so much and I will personally always remember her for being one of the most remarkable mothers I’ve ever known.

Rest in peace, Leslie, and thank you for always being there for me in ways I will never forget.

Shift #5 - 2017: Changing My Company’s Name To Savour Partnership And Starting My Private Facebook Community For Interior Designers, Design Wealth.

After 18 years in business for myself as The Kaleidoscope Partnership, I saw a great presentation by Laurel Bern at the 2017 Design Bloggers Conference re: how much money she was making through paid downloads and affiliate marketing links on her blog.

This talk was the impetus for the fourth shift in my business as I knew interior designers and brands would enjoy learning about new ways to generate revenue for their businesses through passive income strategies like this.

So, in July 2017, I decided to collaborate with the uber talented graphic designer and design writer, Sam Henderson, to produce email opt in mini-magazines for designers, branded online magazines for brands, and downloadable ebooks, all of which could [ but didn’t have to ] include affiliate marketing links.

Affiliate marketing links pay small commissions when someone purchases a product from them, without costing the consumer more money to buy that product.

Our first client for our email opt in mini-magazine was my good friend, Carla Aston, and after it was up on her site, she wrote this review:

https://carlaaston.com/designed/my-fab-new-digital-design-giveaway-and-the-fab-people-that-made-it-happen

Update as of August 2023: Carla has since changed her email opt in on her site, as they do need to be updated from time to time, but I will always appreciate her early support of what we created for her. Carla, if you see this post: thank you so much.

We had many clients for these email opt in mini-magazines after Carla was the first, and another one of them was Lafayette, CA based interior designer, Leslie Hagar Price.

Leslie’s email opt in mini magazine’s cover looked like this and she gave us a wonderful video testimonial, which you can see below, when we were one of the sponsors of the Design Influencers Conference in 2018.

You can still see her mini-magazine on her site, here.

Sam and I initially thought we’d be formal partners in business when he lived in Dallas, but after Sam decided to move to Paris full time, we decided on another structure.

Although I continued my influencer marketing and digital marketing work for brands and designers, when I added this new component to my business’ offerings, it became very successful, quickly.

In addition, because Sam’s company’s name was Savour Imagery and mine was The Kaleidoscope Partnership at the time we decided to collaborate, I decided to formally change my company’s name to Savour Partnership [as people had always had a hard time spelling kaleidoscope ] and Sam formally became Savour Partnership’s Creative Director.

In 2018, after presenting the initial idea to owner Gary Pettitt, I secured the contract from indoor/outdoor furniture manufacturer, Seasonal Living, to produce their branded digital lifestyle magazine, Seasonal Living Magazine, which Business of Home announced here.

The magazine started out at 8 pages, but ended up at 32 pages and became very popular with consumers, designers and the showrooms that sell Seasonal Living’s products. I stopped my work with Seasonal Living in 2022 of my own volition [ and I made sure Sam was secure before I made that decision ] after Seasonal Living won its 6th Arts Award, which I had the joy of accepting on behalf of Gary, who wasn’t able to attend the ceremony.

Now, my very good friend and past client, whom I introduced to Gary, Laura Muller, principal of Four Point Design Build, is working with Gary on designing more collections for him and is featured on the cover of their new 2024 catalog and Sam is still working with Seasonal Living on various aspects of their graphic design needs.

As the former co-editor and co-writer of Seasonal Living Magazine, I am sometimes asked which was my favorite issue to work on. That is a hard one to answer but I think it was this one, Spring 2020, so full of color and where we featured Linda Holt’s beautiful home.

https://issuu.com/seasonallivingmagazine/docs/sl_mag_spring_2020_web_version

As of March of 2022, after 4 years of offering these services and with Sam traveling more and more from his new home base in France, Savour Partnership no longer offers email opt in mini-magazines nor branded online magazine production.

If you’d like, see all issues of Seasonal Living Magazine here.

As mentioned above, this was also when I first started my private Facebook Group community for interior designers which was originally named How To Drive Massive Traffic but which I later changed to Design Wealth.

You can’t be successful with online courses, magazines or affiliate marketing links unless you can get the traffic to your website and my community was a wonderful free resource for tons of tips about how to do that. These tips can all be accessed, for free, even today, using the tags: #toptraffictip #toptraffictips #toptips, within the Group.

This group is only open to professional full time interior designers, but if you are one, and you are seeing this and you’re not yet a member, I invite you to request to join it here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/designwealth.

[ NOTE: Please answer the 4 membership questions you will be asked, or else I cannot review your Request To Join. I personally vet each member of my Group. It’s one of the smaller groups at 1600 members or so, but - on purpose - it’s a community of top talent from the USA and Canada and a highly active and positive community. ]

Since starting this community in 2017, I have deepened my relationships with so many of the members, and it has become such a wonderful place where my members have networked and connected with each other, too, both offline and online, resulting in great opportunities for some of them.

I am grateful for the many friendships I’ve formed and the clients I’ve been privileged to work with as a result of first meeting them there.

In 2022, before speaking at the Design Influencers Conference about Community Building, I interviewed several of the members about their areas of specialty, and summarized all of their sage advice and my takeaways from my interviews with them in this blog post:

https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog/the-story-behind-meet-the-members-in-the-design-wealth-community

[ If you read each blog linked to in this post, you will have a Masterclass for free. These designers shares SUCH VALUABLE INFORMATION. ]

2020: THE VIRTUAL SHOWHOUSE PROJECT

It was also while working with Seasonal Living that I was invited by Seasonal Living owner, Gary Pettitt, to be his co-principal in the world’s first virtual designer showhouse to include augmented reality - an influencer marketing event I organized with Gary that was a collaboration between 15 sponsoring brands and 11 interior designers and which debuted on Dec. 3rd, 2020.

Together, Gary and I onboarded all the sponsoring brands and I selected the 11 participating designers who all did a fabulous job working on a first of its kind project.

The architecture of the showhouse was created by rendering artist, Annilee Waterman, from a brief given to her by Gary, which is how I first met Annilee. The first video below shows you the architectural rendering of the shell of the Showhouse and is the video used to present the opportunity to partner with us to our sponsors.

All of the 3D modeling and rendering of the furniture and accessories was done by Sarah Durnez, with an assist by Annilee and Lauren Jenkins Brantley.

You can read all about the backstory of Seasonal Living Magazine’s Virtual Showhouse and meet the designers and sponsors on this blog post I wrote about it all for Seasonal Living:

https://www.seasonalliving.com/2020/10/meet-seasonal-living-magazines-showhouse-sponsors/

The Showhouse was widely written about by major consumer facing publications, including Forbes and Trendhunter, and if any of you reading this have any questions about it, please email me at leslie@savourpartnership.com.

When we debuted it, I recommended Gary hire Luann Nigara to host the online debut party, which he did. The fun online launch party [which included a specially mixed cocktail ] was watched by over 400 people. It was held on Dec. 3rd, 2020 and you can see that video below, too.

SHIFT #6: 2022 - Metaverse Spaces and Midjourney AI For Innovative Digital Marketing Content

After the virtual showhouse and while still working with designers and manufacturers on their digital strategies and digital marketing initiatives, I began to be extremely interested in metaverse spaces as a way for manufacturers, retailers, tradeshows and designers to connect in a more exciting, immersive way with digitally native consumers.

The incorporation of metaverse spaces and generative AI into marketing initiatives is the next wave of innovation in content for all stakeholders.

Metaverse spaces are different than virtual showhouse spaces like Seasonal Living Magazine’s Virtual Designer Showhouse. Why? Metaverse spaces allow for multiple people to be in a space at one time - as avatars. They are an excellent way to build community with digitally native consumers as brands as diverse as Gucci and Wal Mart have found out.

Virtual showhouse spaces, while containing more lifelike renderings, are an individual experience - only one person can be in the space at a time.

What most of you reading this might not know is that my interest in these virtual reality spaces has been with me for a very long time.

I conducted the first product development experiment in the virtual world [ now called a metaverse ] of Second Life back in 2008 with Rob Sligh, then the owner of #HPMKT exhibitor, Sligh Furniture.

I wrote about it in November of 2008 for Furniture Today’s readers.

I’ve recently written a much longer blog post summarizing all of my work in this area, which you can read here:

https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog//artificial-intelligence-and-metaverse-activations-a-summary

In September of 2022, I partnered with interior designer, building designer and rendering artist, Annilee Waterman, on delivering workshops to designers, retailers and manufacturers on metaverse spaces [ sometimes called activations. ].

Then, I began to get very interested in Midjourney’s artificial intelligence tool [ as a way to explore some new ideas for my own home ] and we added that component to our workshops, as well, so designers could learn how to use Midjourney text prompts as a catalyst for creativity and for product design.

Annilee and I offered these workshops once a month, via Zoom, throughout the end of 2023. Now, Annilee offers 1 on 1 training for designers interested in Midjourney and I have stepped back from this - as Annilee is really the one keeping up with all of the many changes to Midjourney.

To my mind, she is THE expert, and there is no need to pay a lot of money for expensive courses as so much free information is also available on YouTube for anyone interested.

Below is an image of some of our August 2023 workshop participants and the designs 2 of them created in Midjourney and shared with us immediately after taking our workshop.

In mid - 2023, I was given a very large and exciting opportunity to showcase how brands and designers could utilize metaverse spaces for digital marketing content by Dallas Market Center’s Lightovation tradeshow.

Dallas Market Center contracted with my company, Savour Partnership, to produce the world’s first Metaverse Lighting Trendhouse activation for their January 2024 Lightovation tradeshow It was an enormous undertaking and so thrilling!

I, in turn, sub-contracted with Annilee and celebrity interior designer, Shay Geyer, to be my collaborators on this project to bring it to fruition. It debuted to much acclaim and I am in the process of writing of writing a blog post all about it.

Annilee designed, modeled, rendered and built the showhouse on two platforms - both as a 1 on 1 virtual experience and as a community based metaverse experience, and Shay worked with Annilee on selecting all the interior finishes and decor items, in addition to selecting the 21 highlighted lighting fixtures that represented the trends as outlined in Patti Carpenter’s 2024 TREND REPORT that she produced for Lightovation.

Dallas Market Center now has a special landing page on their site to it where anyone around the world can view both the 1 on 1 virtual trendhouse and the metaverse lighting trendhouse, 24/7, [ with or without virtual reality goggles ] - no email required.

Both experiences also contain QR codes with embedded AR functionality so anyone can see the highlighted lighting fixtures in their own homes.

Any exhibitor can share the link with their customers, reps, etc. and any designer can include the link in a blog post or newsletter like this one to give their clients a look at the latest in lighting trends.

Here’s the link to view it:

https://www.dallasmarketcenter.com/metaverse-lighting-trendhouse

2024: AN EXCITING DETOUR: AI PRODUCT DESIGN

As mentioned above, I am very excited about the possibilities generative AI holds for all stakeholders and have endeavored between 2022 and today to demonstrate how AI can be used for both content [and am adamant that all images made with AI are labeled as Made With AI or similar ] and now, for product design.

After speaking about using AI for content at the Vacation Rental Designers Summit in April of 2023, where luxury kitchen and bath manufacturer, Thompson’s Director of Sales, Andrew Holben, was in the audience listening, I received an email from Alejandra Thompson de Jordan in June of 2023 with the subject line, Crazy Idea?? .

Read the entire backstory and see the email in this blog post I wrote about it, here:

https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog/2023/6/29/leslie-carothers-partners-with-thompson-for-ai-designed-sink

I am so grateful to the Thompson family for giving me this opportunity to collaborate with them on this proof of concept project so that all designers can now see that it is possible to use AI for product design, and have a beautiful outcome that they can be proud to offer to their clients.

Thompson’s TAILOR MADE program IS tailor made for custom requests, but any manufacturer who offers custom should be able to accomodate AI renderings as well as they do sketches, to give designers the ability to offer their clients bespoke products.

AILA was introduced in real life at the February 2024 National Kitchen and Bath Show to great acclaim. Below is Alejandra Thompson de Jordan holding my Midjourney AI image, alongside the image of the real AILA, made my Thompson’s coppersmithing artisans using the same tools and techniques they’ve used since the 16th century.

I love that the tools of new tech like AI can support artisanal craftsmanship.

The AILA sink received quite a bit of press both before and after its debut, and we are so grateful to everyone who wrote about it, including our friends at KBB Magazine, the official magazine of the National Kitchen and Bath Association.

And this my friends, is the end of the post, for now, but not the end of my story.

I continue to offer my digital marketing strategy, community building, PR and digital execution services to designers, manufacturers and tradeshows, I continue to speak professionally across the country and can’t wait to have the opportunity to work on more innovative digital marketing and influencer marketing programs for manufacturers, retailers and tradeshows, utilizing metaverse space activations and generative AI to connect the dots between designers, manufacturers, and tradeshow exhibitors for revenue and brand awareness.

If any of you, after reading this, would like to work with me, I work both hourly and by retainer, depending on what my clients need, and I invite your inquires through my contact form or through DM’s to my social channels or via email.

For all of you who have been part of my career story in one way or another - whether as friends, professional colleagues or clients - none of what I’ve done so far would be possible without you. I am so very grateful for all the ways in which you’ve supported my work and all I have learned from YOU, over these past 22 years I’ve been in business.

Your kind and generous spirits and your thirst for knowledge are what have kept me exploring the leading edge.

With Deep Appreciation

Leslie Carothers
*Named One Of Home Furnishing Business Magazine’s Top 40 Most Inspiring Women In Home*

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