ConnectMachine scans the paper business cards interior designers collect at markets, showrooms, and job sites. The AI reads each card and pulls the name, company, title, email, and phone into a clean contact, and keeps the original image. Scanning is unlimited on the Individual plan, so a market stack becomes a searchable source list instead of a drawer of paper.
Interior design runs on the people who make and supply the things you spec. You meet them everywhere: the fabric house, the stone yard, the lighting showroom, the booth at market, the contractor on a walkthrough. Every one of them hands you a card, and by the end of a market week you are holding a stack an inch thick.
That stack is where good sources go to disappear. It sits in a drawer or a tote bag pocket, and six months later, when a client wants the exact veined marble you saw in Vegas, you cannot remember the yard, let alone find the rep's card. Business card scanning fixes that at the moment the card reaches your hand.
Why a market stack never becomes contacts
A stack of paper cards feels like a productive week, but it is really a pile of contacts you do not have yet. The cards from a single market come from showrooms, sales reps, workrooms, and other designers, and they all look alike once the rubber band comes off. The one rep you need is somewhere in the middle, and finding a card is not the same as finding a person.
The old fix was to sit down one night and type them all into your phone, field by field. Almost no one does it. So the cards go in a drawer, a few get bent or lost, and the sources you were excited about at the booth quietly stop existing the day you get home.
- Cards bent, coffee-stained, or lost between the booth and the studio.
- Hours of retyping names, companies, and numbers you will never do.
- No way to tell the tile rep from the drapery workroom two months on.
- A source you loved at market that you can never find again.
Scan a card the second it lands in your hand
Business card scanning turns that whole ritual into one photo. Point your phone at the card, and the AI scanner reads it and builds a clean contact for you: name, company, title, email, and phone, each in the right field. On the Individual plan the scanning is unlimited, so you can clear a whole market stack in one sitting, or better, scan each card at the booth so it is a contact before you walk to the next aisle.
- Open ConnectMachine and point your phone at the paper card.
- The AI scanner reads it and fills in the name, company, title, email, and phone.
- Check the fields once, then save it as a clean contact.
- The original card image is kept with the contact, so the logo and any handwriting stay too.
- Move to the next card, with no typing in between.
It reads cards in five or more languages, which matters when you source from an importer's rep or a workroom whose card is not in English. And because the original image is saved on the contact, you keep the little details a scan might miss, like a handwritten cell number or the booth number scribbled on the back.
Keep the card and the story behind it
A card tells you who someone is, not why you kept it. The reps you meet at market blur together fast, so the moment you scan a card, add a quick note or a voice memo about what they do and why they matter to your work. It takes ten seconds and saves the memory while it is fresh.
'Vegas Market, stone yard, gorgeous honed limestone and warm travertine, trade pricing, has the calacatta I want for the Harper kitchen.' That note turns a name into a source you can actually use, and it makes the follow-up sound like you never stopped thinking about the project.
- What they make or supply, and the pieces that caught your eye.
- Whether they offer trade pricing and how the lead time felt.
- The market, showroom, or job site where you met them.
- The client or project their work would be perfect for.
From a market stack to a searchable source list
By the time you unpack your bag, the whole stack is already a clean list of contacts instead of paper to deal with later. Every scanned card sits in one place with its note and its original image, and from there it flows into the tools you already run.
- Review the market's scanned cards while the booths are still fresh in your mind.
- Export the list to a CSV on any plan, or sync it to your CRM on a paid plan.
- Your notes and the original card images travel with each contact, so nothing is retyped.
- Set your follow-ups with the reps whose samples or trade pricing you still need.
Find the right rep months after market
This is where a scanned stack beats a paper one for good. Months after market, a client falls in love with a look, and you need the exact rep who can supply it. You do not have to dig through a drawer or try to remember a company name you saw once at a booth.
Ask the AI Concierge in plain language, 'who was the stone yard from Vegas Market?' or 'which rep had the warm brass lighting?', and it pulls the contact from your own scanned cards in seconds, with the note and card image attached. The sources you met at a booth in January are still working for you when the project lands in June.
Every place designers collect cards
Market is the obvious flood of cards, but designers collect them all year, a few at a time, everywhere the work happens. The same scanner covers all of it.
- At markets and design shows, where you leave with a stack from every hall.
- In tile, stone, lighting, and fabric showrooms, from the rep who helped you.
- On job sites, from the contractor, the GC, the electrician, and the painter.
- From workrooms and makers: upholsterers, drapery workrooms, and custom fabricators.
- At client meetings and events, when another pro or a referral partner hands you a card.
Every one of those cards scans into the same list, with the same notes, the same original images, and the same plain-language search. Your whole book of sources lives in one place instead of a drawer, a tote bag, and three different jacket pockets.
