Automated designer verification
for to-the-trade brands.
One verification engine evaluates every applicant against nine evidence checks. Submission to decision in seconds—your gating rules applied, audit trail attached.
Talk to usWhat is automated
designer verification?
Automated designer verification is the process of evaluating an interior designer's professional legitimacy without manual review—by validating tax registrations, business presence, public credentials, industry recognition, and trade-specific signals against authoritative sources. For furniture brands and to-the-trade vendors, it replaces hours of manual research per applicant with a structured decision in seconds, applied through each vendor's own gating rules.
What separates designer verification from generic business verification is the credential set. A designer's legitimacy isn't only established by EIN and a website—it's also established by professional memberships, state-issued licenses, showhouse participation, design-press coverage, verified trade references, and state-by-state resale-certificate compliance—signals that a generic KYC tool can't see.
Automated verification doesn't replace human judgment; it focuses it. The engine surfaces the evidence; the vendor's gating rules apply. Humans decide on the applicants who deserve their attention—not the obvious-yes and obvious-no cases that should never have reached them.
Nine evidence checks,
run in parallel.
EIN & business entity
Verified against IRS records with a business-name match. Catches typos, mismatches, and inactive entities before they become a compliance problem.
Sales tax ID
State-specific format validation and active-registration check across 28 states. Lapsed or invalid registrations flagged before approval, not after an audit.
Professional memberships
Live directory checks against ASID, AIA, NCIDQ, NKBA, and ICAA. Returns membership tier and verification timestamp—not a screenshot the designer uploaded.
Website & online presence
Active, credible web presence consistent with a working design practice. Surfaces inconsistencies—a portfolio that doesn't match the claimed specialty, a domain registered last week, no contact path.
Instagram & portfolio
Evidence of an active, client-facing design practice. Distinguishes a working designer's account from an aspirational one—without relying on follower counts.
License verification
Interior-design license verified in the 8 states with practice acts. Architecture licenses cross-referenced with NCARB records. Required state-by-state, where applicable.
Resale certificate
State-specific or multi-state form, signed by an authorized firm representative. Validates against state-by-state rules (MTC, SST, state-specific, state-issued). Renewals are tracked and re-verified.
Trade references
Trade references collected and checked for valid contacts and account numbers. Distinguishes a designer with active wholesale relationships from a first-time applicant claiming history they don't have.
Press & showhouse recognition
Verified coverage in AD, Veranda, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Southern Living, Luxe, Kips Bay, and other recognized industry venues. Real coverage tied to a real byline, not a self-reported claim.
Submission to decision
on your terms.
How Credenza compares
to adjacent tools.
Each of these tools solves a different part of the trade workflow. None of them verify the designer.
The trade-vetting workflow
stopped scaling in 2018.
Trade application volume is rising.
The interior design industry is growing and consumer-facing brands keep adding trade programs. Most vendors are still vetting applicants by hand—a workflow that breaks at twenty applications a week.
Wayfair changed the math.
Since the 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling, any state with sales tax can require out-of-state sellers to collect. An invalid resale certificate now exposes the vendor to liability in every state they ship to. Manual review without an audit trail is a compounding risk.
Designers expect instant onboarding.
Designers compare brands at the speed of e-commerce. A trade-account approval that takes three days loses the order. The brands winning the trade channel approve in minutes, not days.
Manual review doesn't surface what matters.
A staffer Googling an applicant catches obvious red flags. They don't catch the lapsed state registration, the expired membership, the trade reference that won't return the call—the quiet signals that distinguish a legitimate, active practice from a stale one.
Questions vendors ask.
A trade book
that vets itself.
Credenza brings designer verification into your flow without intercepting the relationship. Every applicant evaluated against the same nine checks. Every approval gated by the rules you set. Every decision written to your Shopify with the audit trail attached. The verification layer the trade channel didn't have.
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