Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi. I am here with Suchi Reddy. Suchi, thanks so much for joining us today. How are you?

Suchi Reddy: I am great. Thank you, Stacy. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you.

SSR: Great. Can’t wait. Okay, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

SR: I grew up in a city that is now called Chennai in South India. It used to be called Madras after the very famous textile that’s named after that title, but that’s where I grew up until I was 18.

SSR: Ah, and what were you like as a kid? Were you creative?

SR: That’s an interesting question. I don’t get asked that a lot. I was actually, I’m the youngest of four, and much younger than my siblings. And for the longest time my mother had this running joke, because I loved going to the fish market with her, that she picked me up from the fish market. And I really thought that was true. Because I was so different than my siblings. I literally used to sit with my nose in a book. I think I read every book that I could put my hands on, so you would constantly find me with my nose buried in a book. That was really my childhood. Or the fact that I grew up in a house that was surrounded by gardens, which was really beautiful. I’d be out of the garden making things, like sticking flowers onto leaves and weird patterns and playing with nature. But that was the kind of child I was, a little unusual.

SSR: I love that. Were either of your parents in the creative field or?

SR: No, no. My father was the first to be educated in his family, became a lawyer and he was a philosopher too. And I grew up learning all of that from him. My mother ran away when they tried to take her to school, but she ended up speaking six languages and being a very great creative force in the design of our home. And I think I get all of my design chops from her. She was probably also a very difficult client, I must acknowledge.

Suchi Reddy’s AI-powered “me+you” installation at Michigan Central in Detroit; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: Your first difficult client. I’m just kidding.

SR: Yeah. No, but I grew up surrounded by her thoughts on, she made up this terrazzo floor in our house. And I don’t even know where she had seen it, because it didn’t really exist, but giant pieces of marble that she was thinking of sustainability, I think. She would pick up things and use them. And I grew up in a house that had a scenic wallpaper of a forest. And this is like, I’m very old, so this was decades ago. And really she was ahead of her time. I don’t don’t know how and where she picked up these things. And I was lucky enough to be raised in this house that was actually designed by an architect. And he was quite influenced by Japanese design. He was the only architect in all of Chennai who had a bonsai garden. And so, I think I just absorbed all of this endemically. And I really thought this must, as a child you think everyone looks like you. And when I was about 10, I literally had my first epiphany that my house was actually making me the person I would be.

Because I could see that my friends were different and their houses were different as people. Not better or worse, just different. Our sensitivity to things is different and shaped by our environments. And that was my early kind of love of architecture comes from that house.

SSR: I love that. Did you end up going to school for architecture?

SR: I did. I’m a registered architect in I think six states in the U.S. Working all over the world with projects that span now from Sydney to Chennai to Paris to all over this country.

SSR: That’s crazy. Yeah. You started your own firm Reddymade in 2002?

SR: I did.

SSR: Was that right after school? Did you have things before you did that?

SR: Oh, no, no, no. This is when I say I’m really old. No, I had been working for a while when I started my own firm in 2002, and it really was an accident. The firm that I was working for, I was doing a lot of retail, and they had to downsize very suddenly. And somebody called me the same day and said, “Would you design a house?” That I didn’t know. And I said yes, and that’s how I started my practice. It wasn’t even sort of a plan. I didn’t quite think I needed to have my own practice. But life leads you around. Really, life, I think leads you down some amazing adventures and beautiful paths, so here I am.

SSR: Here you are. And where were you at the time, because you went to … Now actually I remember, you went to school in Detroit for architecture?

SR: I did. I started in India and then I finished my schooling in Detroit, which I have a huge fondness for. Detroit’s an amazing place. I learned so much. It was my introduction to driving to jazz, to so many things that were the lifeblood of America. I really learned about America and in an incredibly interesting city that I think is one of the most historic in this country. And so, it was really beautiful to be there and get an education there. And then I traveled around the country. I worked for architects, I worked for large firms doing big projects. Everything spanning from large office buildings to museums to cultural buildings. And then I started working in retail design, and in a firm that specializes in retail design. And then I started my own firm. And now decades later it’s become a practice that does a bit of everything.

SSR: So, it all wrapped up?

SR: It does. It does. Things have a way of coming together. That’s the beauty I think.

SSR: What drew you to Detroit from India?

SR: Oh, personal. I was married. Life leads you down certain path, right? My husband at the time actually was, he was a doctor. He was doing his residency there. And so I went to Detroit and then I decided I was going to go to school in Detroit. And I just wouldn’t trade it for the world. I actually got a great education.

SSR: Awesome. Okay. I know you said Reddymade, your firm, was an accident, but now-

SR: When you phrase it like that it sounds-

SSR: I mean, it wasn’t a master plan, let’s just say. You decided to do it. I mean, taking that leap of faith, sometimes you have to be pushed to do it. And 23 years later you’re doing well, so it was a good thing. But it’s a good accident. But once you started, what did you want? And you now said that you guys do a bunch of different types of work. But what did you want it to be? Or because you … Or did you even know when you started what you were hoping to create?

SR: Well, when I started, because it wasn’t the master plan, it really just began kind of organically. With my first project, in fact, that it was an office project that I got built. And that was right on Park Avenue and it was in Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House, which was an incredible building. And there was me doing two floors in the middle and there were giant firms like Gensler and SOM on either side of me. And there was me. This was my first built project. Which was an incredible, it remains one of my favorite projects, because my client was so appreciative and understanding of new ideas and new thoughts. And we delivered something really beautiful, including that very thin at that time, really radical, five eighths inch thick walls of bonded onyx and glass, through which you could see and get light into the space. And it was just so beautiful. And for me just such a wonderful experience in materiality building doing something in a historic building like that even.

I started with projects like that. And it evolved into my fascination around what the lasting aspects of the space are. The fact that people want to linger somewhere, that they want to be there, that they feel good in it, this was really what was driving me in every project I did. Whether it’s residential, whether it’s retail, whether it’s commercial, whether it’s an office space, I want to create spaces that people feel great in and keeps them coming back. And so, then I really kept thinking about this idea and I was like, this is when I came up with the idea that my mantra really is form follows feeling. Because we actually, we look at function, and function is something we have to do. We have to make spaces safe for people. And we have to make sure that everything works on a budget and a timeline. But really the thing we should be doing is designing for how people feel in space.

And that’s where I wanted to go with my practice. That actually has now even expanded the technologies that we work in, like art installations and teaching and all these kinds of things that have to do with really learning about this whole thing that we call human experience.

SSR: I love that. And also, neuroaesthetics are very important to you as well. Can you talk a little bit about that, and how you prioritize them?

SR: Sure. As I said, I came out of school, and I have to confess, I was a little disenchanted. Because I looked around everywhere and all I could see were like, what’s the next trend or what’s the next style or what’s the style of your age? I graduated in the ’90s. And I was not convinced that this was really the way to think about things. And so I really was interested in this idea of feeling. And my focus on neuroaesthetics actually came about, because I used to think about the body as being this kind of democratic space that belongs to all of us. We all understand this space, aside from socioeconomic differences and cultural differences, we all know what something feels like, and it feels the same to pretty much everybody.

And so I was really interested in trying to understand how design affects us. Going back to that first epiphany I had when I was 10 years old and really feeling that viscerally. And one day I was in a cab and I think it was passing Madison Square Park, I remember this so exactly. And I heard about this intersection of neuroscience and architecture and I couldn’t wait to get home and learn about it. And I got really interested in this field, which was then a very new field called neuroaesthetics that looks at how our brains and bodies are actually processing what we call experience in space, right? Aesthetics, experience, basically anything. And I really wanted to learn more about that in order to be able to use that in the work. Because I felt like maybe that would give me the basis for really understanding how to design beautifully, to do great work that people feel really comfortable included and happy in.

But not to do it in a way that comes from, here’s a style that it has to aspire to or a look that it needs to have. Because those things I think are derivative more of how the space feels than the other way around. And I always felt like the cart was driving the horse and I wanted to put the in front of the cart, so that was my interest in neuroaesthetics.

Suchi Reddy’s AI-powered “me+you” installation at Michigan Central in Detroit; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: And how does that affect your approach? Because I know you layer in a lot of different elements, like technology, neuroaesthetics, form and feeling, all the things that we just talked about. How does that inform your approach or affect it, I guess? Or what is your design process look like?

SR: I’m sort of by nature a knowledge-hungry creature. I’m always looking at, what are the influences that have really changed design? In the last 50 years the biggest advances in science have been in the field of neuroscience. And I’m like, “Well, why aren’t we looking at that?” Design and architecture have always looked to innovate, based on the newest technologies, now we’re all afraid of AI or running after it, one of the two. But these are things that as designers, I really think we are uniquely suited to look at all of this information, synthesize it in the way that it makes it a very digestible and beautiful thing that everybody gets to enjoy. Because space is a place where all of that comes together. Science, art, experience, knowledge, psychology, all of this comes together in space, nothing happens outside the space.

To really think about the quality of that space and how it’s being affected by all of these things was something that I really wanted to come to from a design perspective and understand that. And like I said, I’m just a creature that loves knowledge and loves beauty. Two things, knowledge and beauty. If I can give all of those things into space, I know I can solve a problem.

SSR: I like that. Is that what you love the most is solving that problem?

SR: I do. I love solving a problem with knowledge and beauty, I have to say. And I also love seeing people’s reactions to things we make. Like my residential clients will say, “We have a party and nobody wants to leave.” Or my commercial clients will say, “Oh, I have to give up this lease or I have to move somewhere. And we really loved this space.” It also helped us grow in all these ways. Because it accommodated us in certain ways. It made people feel comfortable in certain ways, I hear that. Over the pandemic I got so many letters from my clients that were like, “I didn’t get any work.” I got a lot of letters saying, “We’re so happy, we’re spending so much more time in the spaces you made for us, and we’re really enjoying this.” Which was the biggest satisfaction, honestly, I love that. And with the art installations it’s also incredible to watch people’s reactions. Because one of the things I think is super, I would say essential in space and in life, is the sense of wonder and discovery.

And I think retail, hospitality, these are places where you can really offer that. And for me, the beautiful thing about that is it’s like a leveler. It levels people’s expectations depending on their age. Kids and old people can feel the same kind of wonder and discovery in a place. Beauty does that to people. Being heard does that to people. There’s so many beautiful things. And that’s why I think hospitality is such an interesting genre for me. That’s why I’m so excited by what you guys do and what you write about, because I really love that this idea of hospitality. But first of all, I come from a very hospitable culture being Indian. That’s all guests and God are very close and truly that’s how we’re raised. And we have to treat our guests like God. And being raised with that mantra, but also really thinking about how do you really make people feel great? You want to give them this kind of wonderful and discoverable space.

You want them to feel a sense of awe. You want to feel a sense of comfort. And having this wide range of experience in residential, in retail, in art, in commercial work really allows me to blend all of that when I think about hospitality, that gets me super excited.

SSR: Is there one project that you’ve recently done or one that’s on the boards that you’re really excited about?

SR: That is always the toughest question to answer. It’s like asking, what’s your favorite child?

SSR: I can do that.

SR: You can do that.

SSR: Well, today I can.

SR: Today you can. I don’t know that I could say. I’m extremely excited about really all the projects. But today, as we speak, I’m working on an installation of an artwork at a university in upstate New York. And it’s a textile that was woven at the digital loom, I’m super excited by it. And I’m setting that up, so that’s today’s excitement. It’s looking really beautiful, and it’s about ideas and bias and belonging in places where people feel both of those feelings. And they’re usually place-based feelings. It’s really also really interesting to think about how spaces make people not feel bias and have them feel like they belong somewhere, which is also really, really important. I’ve been thinking about that. We are working on a range of showrooms around the world for one of our clients, Humanscale. And the sustainability aspect of that has been incredible to work with their incredibly sustainable company. They were thinking about it before than anyone else was really.

And we’re also on the boards have a cultural project, which is some residences and a gallery and artist spaces that are all being designed around commissioned artworks so that the whole thing feels like a sculpture park. And I’m very excited about that.

SSR: That’s very cool. And you’re an artist as well. I mean, you do a lot of your own pieces and a lot of this installation is a lot of you, right?

SR: Yes. It comes out, I mean, it came out as a natural outgrowth of the architectural work and started with a product I did in Prospect Park in Brooklyn where I was working on creating something for some people that wanted to create an event to commemorate this … To create a commemorative event for the park turning 150. And they wanted to know how people around the park felt. And it was a very diverse population around the edges of the park. And I usually go to all my childhood fascinations. And I made till two acres with 7,000 pinwheels. And then watching people smile as they came up on that was a huge learning for me. To see the kind of joy that this could really offer and to know that that’s possible.

We really know that that’s possible and to see what people did with it. And from that I’ve gone on to do work in various museums and Times Square and Smithsonian. And I bring aspects of that work to our commercial work with clients like Google or in the healthcare space where we’ve looked at designing things for hospitals. That same idea comes into everything. Because it’s really this, how do we make people feel great? Lots of secret sauce to that. That’s usually a lot of ingredients.

SSR: Yeah, many layers. But I think that’s interesting that you, looking at that, especially for hospitals. Because patient care is so informed or patient well-being is so informed by the spaces that they’re around, especially for those needing longer care. Is that some of the stuff that you’re looking at?

SR: It is. It’s also we’ve done projects where we look at reducing the stress of healthcare workers. During COVID we were looking at that, which was huge, right? For Johns Hopkins, we look at a hospital in Baltimore that looked mostly to take care of kids who had neurological, they’re called disorders of consciousness, but they’re really … Sorry, they’re called disorders of consciousness and they’re usually in comas and things. But it was amazing to think about the stress of the caregiver. Because a lot of times in hospitals and particularly in … It’s so interesting that the word hospital and hospitality are related. Because this idea of taking care, I think is at the center of that, both of those things. And separating the stress of the caregiver and the stress of the patient, which actually affect each other. And there’s data that shows that they affect each other and they should be mitigated both.

And really looking at that has been something that we’re looking at very carefully. But you’re looking at some wellness spaces for a couple of clinics, et cetera. That not just take care of the patients, but people who are either looking for preventative care, or for the families that are at the hospital taking care of people that are in critical condition.

A gravity-defying metal line twists its way through Google’s first retail store in New York from Reddymade; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: Yeah, I mean, it’s a whole holistic ethos, so they all feed off of each other. You mentioned it briefly, but AI, how are you all embracing it? Are you using it? Are you afraid of it? Are you jumping into it?

SR: In the studio, I always say to everybody, if it can do something better than you, then it’s a good marker to check yourself against. We don’t really use it in the studio. We actually just did a competition with an international group, where for the first time we actually generated some images using AI. But that was because the organizers said they would accept that. And we thought, “Oh, everyone in the world is going to be sending you some automatically generated image.” But the idea of AI doesn’t scare me. I’ve never been someone who’s afraid of technology. I think it’s all in our attitude towards technology. It’s about human self-awareness, really. My first sculpture that I did at the Smithsonian that was about humans and technology, I was asking people to give me one word to their future and then interpreting the emotion in their voices using AI and ML. And this was in an RD like five years ago, I think four years ago, two years. I don’t know, I lose track of time.

SSR: It’s a couple of years ago.

SR: Yeah, it’s a few years ago. And AI’s grown a lot since then. But really the moment of that, the important part of that artwork was the second that people stop to think when you ask them to give you one word for their future, and they stop to think. I’m like, that’s exactly what we need with technology. You need that stop to think. You don’t just go, “This makes it easy and convenient. I’m just going to give it everything I can to let it do whatever it wants with it.” No, you got to think for a second. And that’s all it takes. If you really understand to keep rewriting the compass, most of what I do is really kind of seeing that the compass is just pointing the wrong direction, just keeps needing recalibrating, like shift the magnetic poles. Make it go to the right direction. How are people feeling? Okay, let’s do it for that. Let’s do it to make people feel great.

SSR: I think that’s a really interesting question too. Just one word, right?

SR: Yeah. For me, I think that it’s also, because space is about agency. You have to give people agency within the space. And I think a lot of times we tend to think of people who use our spaces in our buildings as somebody who needs to be hit over the head with a message. But people actually enjoy things a lot more when there’s just enough to intrigue them. And then they’re asked to actually modify, to have agency around them. To understand either how they discover it. If you were doing a hotel, you’d be like, there’s a path that’s winding, and it gives them a choice. It makes them engage better. And there are scientific markers for how all of this retains engagement. We look at all of those kinds of things, because I’m interested in that kind of stuff. I’m not just making a windy path, I’m making a windy path because using X amount of dollars more to do that is going to get you this. And then this kind of result.

But no one’s going to know. They’re going to walk in there and they’re going to feel like they’re vested in this space for a lot of reasons of how they engage with it. And I think that’s the key, really thinking about the quality of engagement very carefully, because in the end, that doesn’t lead to more sustainable, less expensive design over time, if you look at it longitudinally.

SSR: Yeah. What’s that thoughtful care, that thoughtful creation, really taking a step back?

SR: And not at all to downplay the skill and the talent that we have to have as designers and architects. I mean, we have to bring all of that to the table on top of all of these other things. Being thoughtful, being caring, understanding what actually is going to be the right, and it takes years of experience and honing, hence my old age is helpful.

SSR: Tell us a little bit about your firm. How does it work, and how would you describe yourself as a leader to get this thoughtfulness and thought process going with your team?

SR: My team is, I owe everything to my team. They are amazing people who are creative, who are smart, who are passionate, and who are dedicated. And no good work can be done if you don’t have a good team, to be really honest. And that team includes the client, it includes people on the client side, everyone’s on the team. And one thing I’ll say about our team and our studio is that we’re very good collaborators. To do work all around the world, like we do, we collaborate with everybody. And we’re a small team. We’re a boutique team, and I like to keep it that way. Because I like to think about things and pay attention to the detail in the way in which it needs to be paid attention to. From the overall kind of synthesis of everything that needs to be layered in order to come up with a concept that’s actually bringing all of that together. But then down to the micro details.

And to do that, you have to be a generalist, but you also have to be able to scale in and scale out of thinking. And that by definition requires collaborators who are great. Our consultant teams are really amazing. And we really rely on people’s expertise in different areas. But I am very focused on synthesizing all of that information together with a very tight creative team. We’re very nimble.

Everyone at any time is working on at least three things and different scales and different types of projects. And I like it that way, because I think it also keeps everyone very creative and active. We’re never stamping out things in the studio, even when we do an office space, which you might think is the typology that everyone’s just stamping out, we don’t do that.

SSR: Oh, good. How is office changing? How have you been rethinking that?

SR: Well, I think COVID actually, I think we’re still feeling the after effects of COVID. And I think it has had a very lasting effect on the American workforce. I will say I’m not seeing that internationally. It’s quite different in different countries. How people are reacting to it in India is very different. In Europe it’s also very different. In our studio we’ve landed on technically a four-day work week. Where we do 40 hours in four days, and then we get three days in the studio and one day at home. And we ideally have three days off. Of course, I never get that. And the rest of the world doesn’t operate on a four-day work week yet. We have to stay active on Fridays, and we have to keep our eyes out for things that clients might need or consultants might need that we need to get out. But aside from that, that’s really the lasting effect of it, that I see in my practice. Is that that’s kind of changed the balance of time that we spend with each other and without. And we’re so efficient because we are together, we’re like boom, boom, boom. Going from this to that, learning the lessons from one thing into the next thing, all of that creative stuff that can happen in the same space. When we are all together as a team, which is amazing, so we treasure that to work together.

I do think it’s changed people’s attitudes in general, but I wouldn’t say necessarily all in a bad way. People should think about what suits them and how they want to live their lives the best way possible. The difficulty there is when the burden is on the employer to generate the kind of system that supports that balance. When it’s all based the employer and it’s not coming from the state in any way to allow everyone to have this kind of thing. And it also does create this, I think, serious imbalance between blue collar and white collar work, which isn’t great. And that’s reflected in bigger political divisions. You know what I mean? It’s like, okay, all of a sudden everyone should be home in their pajamas, in their athletic wear to work. But there have been people who have never had that opportunity.

People who deliver, people who work in jobs that don’t allow that flexibility. I think it just requires respecting what everyone does in a team and really being … And that team being the larger team, not just what we do, but what happens in our neighborhood? And who’s supplying the things we want when we want them. And how do we bring that all together with fairness for everyone? Yeah.

SSR: That’s a very good point. And what do you think is the biggest challenge of running your own firm and or the biggest opportunity?

SR: The biggest challenge I would say is just maintaining a steady flow of projects both in terms of schedule and timing and budgets and things like that. That’s the biggest challenge, because things tend to, we all know that we have anticipated timelines. But they all save a shift for various reasons outside of our control. That I think is the biggest challenge of doing that. The biggest opportunity, wow, that’s like an endless horizon. So many things could happen. And particularly from my practice, it’s being able to bring all of the ideas of the things that we’re interested in together to make amazing spaces. And that can happen physically, that can happen digitally, that can happen in so many ways. Maybe even a hybrid of those two, which we tend to do a bit, both in the artworks and in physical spaces. I don’t know, I just think opportunity is just a … Yeah, it’s a horizon.

SSR: Yeah. Is there a dream project, or not even dream, but a project you haven’t done or haven’t touched that you’d love to get your hands on?

SR: I actually would love to do a boutique hotel.

SSR: There you go.

SR: I really would love to do a boutique hotel. And I spoke actually for design hotels last year about aesthetics. And it’s been so interesting to see how individual hotel owners who have this kind of ethos towards their patrons think about all the things that I think about. Awe and wonder and discovery and delight and comfort and joy and pleasure and those kinds of things that we want to create in space, yeah.

SSR: Got it. Well, it’s out there. No, hopefully. How do you stay inspired and how do you keep your team inspired?

SR: I think my team inspires me. I’m inspired mostly by things outside of the realms that I’m trained in essentially. I’m inspired by ideas that are out there in the world. I’m inspired by nature a lot. I still think, I keep flowers around me all the time. Because I really think, I look at a flower and I’m like, “Oh, nature’s still kicking my ass. I haven’t done anything that good yet.” It’s that, I get impressed by that in a serious way.

Designed in collaboration with Reddymade and artist Ai Weiwei, this Salt Point, New York home was conceived as a hexagonal extrusion; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: Has there been one project, and again, I know it’s hard to pick your favorite, but sometimes we have to. One project that’s been your most challenging or that you learned the most from? I know you learned something from every project that you do, but maybe it was your first installation or your first whatever, but has there been something that really sticks with you?

SR: I think my very, very first build project, which was this office space for a company, for a venture capital firm on Park Avenue. And I learned a lot from that. I learned to honor my instinct and not to be afraid to show that to my clients. And to know that this kind of instinct for design and for what actually works in space for people is a very special skill and talent and ability that I’m lucky and humbled to have. And that it can actually make a difference in people’s lives. After 9/11, actually, I really took a break. I was like, “It’s the best thing I could do, be an architect and a designer. It’s the best thing I could do with my life in the world.” Watching the towers come down it really was the thought that I had. And I came around to thinking that I actually have a skill and an ability that can make a difference. And this is why I want to continue doing it. And that’s when I started my practice. It all happened. One thought following the other.

SSR: Yeah. Well, that seemed to work, so. I hate to stop the conversation, but we always end the podcast with the title that is the podcast. So, what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

SR: There’s a quote that I’ve written on the walls of my studio as you come up to it. And it’s a quote from Dieter Rams, he’s a designer I love. And he says, “Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design.” And I truly think that’s what I’ve learned. You have to pay attention to people and what they need.

SSR: Yep, I love that. I always say, after COVID you started looking at people individually instead of as a team, just because you got glimpses into their lives. And it’s a good reminder that every person has a different story.

SR: Yes. And we’re such a beautiful concatenation of incredible stories. That’s what everyone is. And we have to find ways to celebrate that. And I think designer architecture are great places to do.

SSR: Well, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your extraordinary thoughts, and can’t wait to see all those upcoming projects that you couldn’t pick one, so all three of them I’m very excited for.

SR: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.

The post Suchi Reddy appeared first on Hospitality Design.

John Grossman was immersed in the world of real estate and hospitality from an early age. Born in Santa Monica and raised in Sun Valley, Idaho, he easily navigated different social circles and environments.

His parents, seasoned entrepreneurs, jumped at an opportunity to get into hospitality, acquiring the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix out of foreclosure during the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and transforming it in the early 1990s. As a result, the two formed Classic Hotels & Resorts, where his father led real estate ventures and his mother took an active role in design, allowing Grossman to witness firsthand the creative and business synergy that shapes iconic destinations.

That early exposure, coupled with a master’s degree in real estate development from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, laid the groundwork for Grossman’s own career. He now leads the company he officially joined in 2010—recently rebranded as Marc & Rose Hospitality—bringing a modern vision to historic properties.

Here, Grossman shares his journey, the power of empathy, and coming full circle with his latest project.

What are your early memories of the hotel business?
John Grossman: Every family meal was a business meeting. Once in a while my mom would say, ‘Can we stop talking about business?’ And then we would have nothing to talk about. This is what we had in common and were excited about. We’d go out of our way to research hotels or restaurants or designers of note. We were consumers, from a design and experiential perspective. I learned so much of what I now practice through those years of observation and apprenticeship, as it were.

Recently reimagined by Post Company, the lobby at La Playa Hotel in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California is centered around a fireplace

What else did you learn from your parents?
JG: I learned to focus on the power of empathy. They would often point out that it’s not about us. We have opinions and those are important, but we aren’t necessarily the consumer of these given experiences. We really think about who’s coming, what does it want to feel like, how does it want to come to life? [We had to] stay humble in terms of what’s being created, and let it be about what the consumer would want. You have to mix that with a real perspective and a point of view so you’re not copying what other people are doing.

Did you consider a different career path?
JG: Not initially. My dad was a first-generation immigrant and entrepreneur. He had a lot of different careers until he was in his late 30s. His whole story about how he got started in real estate in Phoenix is one for the ages. He had a big personality. He loomed large and was a wonderful person, but he demanded excellence and was incredibly driven with a tremendous amount of energy—just relentless. That’s not what scared me; I didn’t necessarily want it for myself. My first job was in San Francisco for an affordable housing developer, and then I spent five years in Australia working for an aged care developer and operator. In both cases it was important for me to do that on my own terms. It was a point of pride for me at the time not to use my family connections.

What changed your mind?
JG: The global financial crisis. I was about to turn 30, my dad was turning 80. I was having a great time [in Sydney], but I made a pivotal decision to move back at the beginning of 2010 and start working for my dad, bringing my own skills and perspective. We had seven or eight years of working together, then the last seven or so we transitioned. I joined as a development project manager and worked my way up within his company and took over. He passed away in September [2024] at the age of 94.

Original artwork is a hallmark of La Playa’s guestrooms

What were the early days like?
JG: My mom was the design director on the first project I did with them, a renovation of what was the Inn at Laguna Beach [in California]. We recently renovated and reopened it as the Casa Loma Beach Hotel. That was bittersweet. I had a lot of memories, reflecting on where I had come from and the times we had together. My mom has advanced dementia, so she doesn’t even know. But the experience was fantastic. It’s a real honor to take care and position these assets that are incredibly well-located in special markets. We’re not buy and sell people. We buy and hold and then continue to reinvent and celebrate.

With a portfolio of 10 hotels and seven F&B outlets, what do you look for in new opportunities?
JG: [Over time we’ve developed] disciplined geographic constraint. A new growth strategy in place requires that properties must be a direct flight from Phoenix, preferably two hours or less. We own and operate everything, so we also view our employees as our most important asset; if they can’t get out to the properties and back, ideally within a day, they’re going to be less likely to stick around for a long time. They have their lives, and we want to honor that. It happens to also be good business because then you can touch the properties. But our core business is the group side with the Arizona Grand and the Scott Resort & Spa in Scottsdale. We’re looking to do more of that. We also have El Chorro Lodge now, a restaurant that eventually will become our first true luxury product in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Tell us more about El Chorro.
JG: It is one of the most historic assets in effectively the most desirable and valuable location in the Desert Southwest. It’s an approximately 300-seat restaurant and event venue. We do close to 400 events a year. It’s on 13 and a half acres, with roughly eight buildable acres. It’s an iconic opportunity, and if we do it right, it will be something very notable. The first phase is underway, and we are working with AvroKO to do a design overlay with the existing restaurant. The second will be the fully entitled hotel phase [also with AvroKO], which is going to be a little further into the future.

Describe your approach to design.
JG: It’s counterproductive if you select a designer that wants to do something different than the building allows. For example, we just did La Playa Hotel with Post Company. The firm has a strong skillset with historic assets and buildings. At Casa Loma, spearheaded by Electric Bowery, Land, and ORCA, I was impressed with the way they took the Southern California 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s buildings—which aren’t that beautiful to some people—and celebrated aspects that might prove difficult for some [designers].

I’m friendly with a group of four or five designers. I’m waiting to find the right building to suit their skills. I’m very hands-on; I want to be involved in ways that aren’t necessarily welcomed by [all designers]. I like to know them beforehand. There’s a lot of value when we can meander together and don’t have to have a design presentation and approval processes.

The bar at the Canal Club at the Scott Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, designed by AvroKO, channels Havana

How did the rebrand to Marc & Rose come about?
JG: My wife’s an incredible writer, and we work together on a lot of the branding and concept creation. She was integral in the La Playa and Casa Loma design brief and the concept. She and I did Mark & Rose together, and she brought the story to life. The first and most important reason for the rebrand was internal—to attract and retain good talent. [That we] are in control of our destiny as an owner/operator is a unique business proposition. We wanted to tell the story about who we are, why we’re different, why working for us can yield different workplace experiences. [It’s also] messaging about what we stand for and believe in, and it’s connected to [my parents]—Marc and Rose are abbreviations of their middle names. We wanted a brand that didn’t idolize them but is inspired by them.

Many of your properties are old lodges or motor inns that you’ve revitalized. Do you consider that your sweet spot?
JG: The quickest way to a cash-flowing asset is to take something existing and resurrect it. We’re excited by projects with a component we can purchase, stabilize, and not be dragged under with the up front cost burden of development and landholding. Ideally, like in the case of the El Chorro Lodge, it would be a major renovation followed by a major construction project, but in the meantime, it’s a solvent and
a sustainable business.

What else do you have in the works?
JG: We have three pillars. The group business is the core, and we’re actively looking to do more. The second is the more bespoke, supply-constrained leisure market opportunities like Hotel Carmel and Laguna Beach House. The third is the High Country Motor Lodge brand, which we developed in 2017. We made our first purchase in 2019 in Flagstaff, then the pandemic hit and drive-to market brands became fashionable. We saw that as a feeding frenzy and decided not to do any more. It’s still a great brand, and I believe because of our patience and prudence, there’s going to be an opportunity to expand again.

What do you love about the process?
JG: I love how much goes into it. It’s beautiful that you see an opportunity, start with an idea, and the idea turns into a brief, which turns into underwriting. There’s a long line of things, and the road is bumpy. Sometimes you find surprises you have to overcome. If you don’t like that, you probably shouldn’t be in development.

Brass chandeliers hang above the front desk at the Scott, the former Firesky Resort & Spa

This article originally appeared in HD’s February/March 2025 issue.

The post John Grossman Reinvents His Legacy appeared first on Hospitality Design.

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi. I am here with Jacu Strauss. Thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Jacu Strauss: I’m very good. Thank you very much for having me.

SSR: Yeah, I’m excited, And we’re doing this in person, so this is even more fun.

JS: Finally.

SSR: I know. Finally. All right, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

JS: So I grew up in South Africa in the Kalahari Desert and I had a wonderful childhood, but that’s where I grew up and when I turned 18 I moved to London and I guess the rest is history.

SSR: Ah, interesting. All right, so let’s go back to childhood. Why was it so wonderful and how did that influence or how do you think that influenced you today?

JS: Well, on paper it almost seems a bit sad. We were very rural, there was nothing really around. But for me, I had to create my own world and I had to create my own entertainment and I think that’s what really kickstarted my love of just being creative and kind of finding solutions for problems. So if I wanted something I had to make it.

SSR: Yeah. Was there anything that you remember making that was your favorite or most interesting?

JS: With whatever I could find, I always had a real interest in architecture and urban design, actually. I used to make streetscapes in the dirt and then I would take whatever I can to make buildings and I even made my sister’s Barbie dollhouses for her out of old wine boxes or cases.

SSR: Oh really? That’s amazing.

JS: That was it. So, little things like that, but for me it was an amazing creative outlet and I was really encouraged to do so as well, which was also very nice.

The bar at Café Riggs, a European-inspired brasserie at the Riggs Hotel Washington DC; photo courtesy of Lore Group

SSR: But you’re in the desert, so how did you get these ideas of these streetscapes? Did you guys travel or did you go in the cities?

JS: We traveled a little bit, but I mean again, it was before internet, before TV really. But I think it was perhaps in my early teens or maybe a bit earlier that it was sort of American TV for example, that kind of just showed me the world. So I saw the world through film and TV and magazines and books, but that was as much as I had to work with. So I had to really work with that. We had a library, I think they’re sort of now going out sadly, but I was a regular at my library. Can you believe it? It had very limited books but it had encyclopedias and I think that was something that I found creativity in everything. So even learning about the animal nature, there was something there that inspired me.

SSR: Of course. And what were your parents like? Were they creative? Did they infuse any of that into you?

JS: My mom thinks she’s very, very creative and she says that I got my creativity from her. They’ve always been very enthusiastic. I don’t think we necessarily always have the same interests at heart, but my parents both worked very hard and like I said before, they really encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do, which was kind of unusual a little bit for a young boy to be pursuing creative directions rather than the typical ones like doing sport, which I’m terrible at. So yeah, it was just that encouragement that I think was really very valuable from them and that gave me some good criticism as well. So I think I needed that. Sometimes something could have been done better and they told me so in a very nice way.

SSR: Very politely.

JS: Very politely.

SSR: Okay. So then you moved to London when you were 18. Why London, and what did you move there for?

JS: So when you finish high school you travel or you go to university or you start a job, or do nothing if you have that luxury, I don’t. And I wanted to see the world and I always wanted to be in a big city and the UK is like the mothership, so it was always like a reverse gap year. So I went to London for a year. I was only supposed to be there for one year. Ended up staying for two years and then I moved to New Zealand and then moved back to London. So I never went back. My mom was mortified but she loves it now.

SSR: Okay, because she can come visit.

JS: Absolutely. And she was with me recently and she loves being in England.

SSR: Oh good. So how did you get into the design world officially? What was your first gig? Did you do that during the gap year or did you eventually kind of fall into it?

JS: Well my gap year, you won’t believe this, I actually worked at a bank for two years. So I was a banker.

SSR: How was that?

JS: It was very different and I actually hated it in the beginning, but it was an amazing job for someone who’s just turned 18, didn’t really have any qualifications or any work experience. And somehow I got it right and after three months I said, Look, I’m going to do something else. I want to do something a bit more creative. I’m in London for god’s sake. And I said, we’ll give you some more money if you stay for another three months. So I stayed for a little bit longer, but I had to make it work because the money was amazing and I was able to travel and see things and experience things that I wouldn’t otherwise have had the access to.

So, two years at the bank, I learned to find creativity in that as well, by the way. So again, it taught me a lot of life lessons that was really, it’s really still valuable to this day. But then when I moved to New Zealand, I had to sort of make a decision, I need to start studying, I need to go to university and I started studying architecture. I did my first degree in New Zealand, I loved it there. I lived there for five and a half years. Amazing design scene. And then moved back to London to do the subsequent two degrees in architecture.

SSR: Did all the degrees just cement your love for it or did it…?

JS: Yes it did. I mean it was very intense. Studying architecture is no joke. It takes about seven years and I think I still have a few nightmares occasionally waking up thinking that I’ve forgotten to hand in something or I failed a crit. It’s really quite scary, but it really teaches you how to deal with criticism. So I think that’s the biggest thing you learn from architecture school. But I’ve always loved architecture so it was just the one thing I wanted to do. And I think it really, for me, architecture touched loads of other disciplines as well. My real love is interior design. So for me, all of these things are connected and an architectural qualification kind of gives you that bigger, bigger parachute.

The lobby at the Hotel Park Avenue in New York; photo courtesy of Lore Group

SSR: Right. And now too, it also helps you create the building and the interior so you can marry the two function and form.

JS: Yeah, for me that’s very important. That’s something I’ve learned sort of a little bit later on. It might be controversial and I don’t mind really saying it, but I think sometimes architects can’t really do interiors and vice versa. And I think I like to think that I, with my training and education and work experience that I’ve found that middle ground of really appreciating how both are equally as important to one another and they need to be connected.

SSR: Yeah, it’s almost like your right and left brain.

JS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Sometimes one works more than the other, but yeah.

SSR: So after university was your first job with Tom Dixon or was there somebody before that?

JS: So I finished my second degree, which is kind of the most important one in architecture. And then you have to work for about two years before you can do your final part, which is your licensing part. The part where they tell you’re going to get sued and die poor and traumatized. But the second part is the-

SSR: It sound like a great career.

JS: It’s wonderful, I recommend it to anyone. But the second part is the most important one because that kind of really sets you up for your direction and your interest in architecture and design as a whole. I qualified from that one in 2008, which was a really odd time to… I say odd, that’s the wrong word to use, but I’m sugarcoating it. It was a pretty awful time to graduate from university and then needing to find work because the crash happened and there was not really much there, but I used that as an opportunity to branch out a little bit further and work with someone I really admired who was not necessarily an architect, and that was Tom Dixon. And I met with him a couple of times and they didn’t quite have a role for me. And then one came up and I started working there and the projects we were working on just got bigger and bigger until we landed a hotel project in London.

So that all really changed my life and that was not working for an architect. I was working for someone who had this incredibly creative approach to life as a whole but also some great sensibilities as well. So I learned so much from Tom. Almost as much as I learned at architecture school to be honest with you, if not more.

SSR: That’s amazing. Is there one thing that sticks with you from all the lessons?

JS: Yeah, it’s a bit of a swear word now. Everyone uses it now, but back then, whatever we did, everything had to have meaning and everything had to have a story. So storytelling kind of came into it and he was absolutely right because everything that we tackled, we had a story in place and that really fascinated people. And I think that’s also what led us to win loads of pitches all over the world because we went with a story that really inspired people and made them really excited about this project. And that story was also the foundation to carry it all the way through to the end of each project. So that was a very valuable lesson. It seems really small but it’s actually a massive thing.

SSR: And was hospitality even on your radar, was that something you had any interest in doing or just because of Tom and the hotel, that we’ll get to, landed on your desk? Is that how you ended up in this lovely realm that we all live in?

JS: Well I’m very lucky where I’m now, but no. I mean I always loved hotels and my grandfather had a small hotel when we grew up and I always remember kind of redecorating and styling a few things, not quite to the same degree as what I do now, but not really any immediate aspirations to work in hospitality. But always loved hotels, loved the world of hospitality. And I could also start sensing that it was changing as well and getting a bit more exciting. So we just pitched for this project now called Sea Containers and we went in with a really confident pitch but it was a really beautiful pitch as well. And again there was a lot of storytelling involved and we put our hearts and soul into it and I think that’s what really worked for us and that’s how we got that pitch. So that’s how we got into hospitality. Tom always wanted to do hotels as well. I think everyone wants to do a hotel, really.

SSR: Secretly, everyone does.

JS: Secretly, I think everyone does. But so yeah, that was our first stepping stone into it and I honestly never anticipated that I would be where I am now from that one moment of winning that pitch.

SSR: Yeah. So going back quickly before we go forward, getting a job at Tom Dixon isn’t easy, right? Especially in 2008 and 2009. So what do you think? Was it your persistence? Was it just the right opportunity opened up or just…?

JS: Gosh, I would love to ask him that one day. Maybe I won’t like the honest answer. I think he attracts so many beautiful people and really interesting people. He’s very nurturing and so I felt completely out of place because I knew there were so many other amazing people who would want the same job. But I think it was all about how I connected with everyone and how they connected with me. And I think we just really got on from the start. And I think that was the thing that probably sparked a little bit of that career and that job. But I don’t know, I was also a very hard worker. I was really determined to make things work. I mean talking about working at the bank, I wanted to make it work. Whatever I do, I want to make success of it. And I think I always had that ambition and that enthusiasm for things. And I think that’s quite contagious. I don’t necessarily do it on purpose, but I think it’s something that I…

SSR: Just in your DNA.

JS: It’s there and I think it should be in everyone’s DNA. I think it is. Just has to come out.

SSR: Right, you got to find it. Okay, so let’s go back to Sea Containers. So that was a pretty ambitious project for London and the building. Can you talk a little bit about it and what you took away from it?

JS: Honestly, looking back, I have no idea how we did it. That building is massive. It’s sort of unofficially, officially the biggest building on the tames, it’s the massive T shape. And it was an existing building designed by Warren Platner, very famous American architect. And it was originally designed to be a hotel. And halfway through construction, the beginning of the ’80s, that company went bankrupt. So then halfway through construction they decided to turn into offices. So when we returned it to being a hotel, technology and needs and requirements have changed so much. So that building had loads of challenges because it’s so big, but there were loads of surprises as well.

So it was really baptism by fire for us going into this massive project, 356 rooms, it’s massive. And for someone who’d never done a hotel before, it was a real challenge. It was like a city, that whole building. So looking back at it now, sometimes, I don’t know how we did it, but I think again it was sheer perseverance and enthusiasm and just wanting to see something through right to the end. I think the thing that makes designers so valuable is that we really care about what we do. So we want to make sure that it’s fantastic all the way through to the end and beyond. And I think that was our goal with that hotel, was to make a success of it. The owners responded to that because they were also just so enthusiastic and they gave us all this freedom to do some really bizarre design things that really paid off.

The Art Deco suite at the Sea Containers in London; photo courtesy of Lore Group

SSR: Like what?

JS: So I think it was all about taking a few risks and in that case it really paid off. And that’s what makes design really exciting is when you have to take a few risks.

SSR: Was there one risk that…?

JS: Yes. One? I mean one million, perhaps. Working with an existing building. We had a few limitations and one thing that was really restrictive was the connection between the lobby and the main restaurant. It was connected by a very narrow corridor. So what did we do? We decided why don’t we propose a massive… Because the theme of the hotel is sort of going on a transatlantic voyage. It’s all about ships and it’s about how can we connect these two spaces quite smoothly. So we thought let’s do a massive copper ship’s hull made from 80,000 copper nails. It’s huge And it even sweeps to the outside as well and that kind of connects those spaces really well. But that was a later suggestion that obviously had to be paid for as well on top of everything else. But it was something that’s still so beautiful 11 years later. And it’s timeless and so it was definitely worth doing that. But that was pushing it because that was a lot of money for something that, “Is it going to work? How are we going to make it? We don’t know. We’ll have to work it out.”

SSR: Yeah and maybe even before Instagram moments and all that.

JS: Absolutely. That’s a big features now. But before that it was not really the intention, it was just to create a solution and we also built the reception desk into it. So again it had some practical things. But yeah, we had to, a lot of people said, “We don’t know how to make this,” and we kind of love that because then we’ll find a way and we’ll find someone who can do it. And we did and we loved working for them and with them as well. So yeah, it all paid off.

SSR: I love it. Okay, so how long were you at Tom and then how did you end up at Lore Group where you are now?

JS: So I was with Tom for about four and a half years. Four and a half amazing years. And then I was approached to design a hotel in Amsterdam called the Pulitzer. And I was really not looking at moving on, but I went to Amsterdam to have a look at the property and I realized this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to do this particular hotel. It’s 25 grand Dutch canal houses from the golden ages all interconnected. I mean a real, it’s a wonderland in itself. And so I had to make this tough decision, it was really difficult for me, to move on and do that hotel under my own name, but I am not looking back and it was the right move for me to have made.

SSR: Do you consider that your big break, that moment?

JS: I think so, yeah. And I knew that from the moment I saw that property that this only happens once.

SSR: Right. And who approached you? Was it the ownership group of the…?

JS: It was the ownership group who had also worked on with Sea Containers, so they already knew me. And I think they saw my hands-on approach to design was probably going to be very beneficial to this project. Because the Pulitzer in Amsterdam, when we bought it, it was 230 rooms, it’s now 225 because we created a few suites but give or take five rooms. But none of them are exactly the same. And because of the nature of the buildings, 25 of them, it’s a real labyrinth of corridors going in. And I could see the potential in making this fun rather than a problem. But it really needed a hands-on approach. I needed to know exactly what each room looked like. And there was a time where I could remember every single room, he gave me a room number and I can tell you exactly what that room looked like. I’ve forgotten some of it now, so don’t test me.

SSR: I’m like, room 10.

JS: And I’m a bad liar. I wouldn’t even be able to make up a bad lie for you.

SSR: So I mean if you thought Sea Containers was a big project, or challenging project I should say, I mean how did you approach this and what did you want to create?

JS: Well they’re very different properties with very different challenges, different eras. But it was a real, again, it’s testament to how design is half art, half science, there is a structure to design. So again, the same thing. With the Pulitzer, what’s the story here? What’s the story we want to tell and what’s the story we want to live on forever and how are we going to capture that and manifest it in the building itself and through the other things, service as well. All of those things need to come together.

So it was the same approach, very different building, but it’s about deciding at the beginning what we want to do and why are we doing this? Because we kept referring back to that same charter that we said at the beginning of that project, make this fun, celebrate the eccentricities and the quirks and the fact that nothing’s perfect, make that something to celebrate. So we set that in our charter. I call it a charter, it’s like a thing at the beginning, but that really helps you with decision making all throughout a project. And that one would’ve been impossible to do without that. Because you could get stuck around every corner like, What do we do here? What do we do there?

It was like, but maybe this is something that’s quite beautiful, it’s not really a problem. And that’s how we managed to do that project. But it was three years of hard work. I moved to Amsterdam to do that hotel. Of course there’s no complaints there. I love Amsterdam so much. Again, it all worked for me. But it was hard work, I was there all the time, but luckily I think my job was my hobby. So I don’t mind it when it comes to beautiful buildings like that. And it’s just something so amazing seeing it all come together. It’s something, it’s a feeling that’s hard to describe and impossible to beat.

SSR: And probably the best one.

JS: It’s the best one.

SSR: Yeah. And you used a lot of color and layers, I mean, was that where you kind of really found your style too. Not that you didn’t have it before, but I feel like sometimes when you work at a different firm you kind of allow yourself to be immersed in that firm and that firm’s vision but coming out on your own, was this a time to figure out your point of view?

JS: That’s a very good question. You’re absolutely right. I mean I think, again, Tom is amazing. He’s very flexible. I mean he likes to experiment. I always say that I’m a collector, Tom is an adventurer. He loves to try out different things but he has a certain very unique side that he’s famous for the use of real metal shapes and forms. And for me, I had to sort of wean myself off that a little bit when I did the Pulitzer. So I really had to start from scratch and decide what’s the right thing to do here. And I also didn’t bring my own taste or styles in there and I never do really, I wanted to see what would give this building its personality and character back and that’s how I started.

And that’s kind of a metaphorical layering of then just putting things next to one another and seeing how it all comes together. My personal approach to everything that I really love to do is I like to experiment. So I’m a little bit of a scientist. I like to mix rough and smooth and big and small. It’s all of these things and see how they kind of come together. And the Pulitzer was the perfect example of that because I was able to combine modern and old and really give it life because I didn’t want to recreate a museum. That was the big risk with working with 400 year old UNESCO buildings is I don’t want to recreate a museum otherwise it becomes… I don’t think a hotel operates very well in that respect because the guest becomes removed from the experience because you’re just viewing it rather than being part of it.

So I had to be very careful to make sure that that hotel still felt very welcoming even though we celebrate all these historic parts of it.

SSR: Yeah, well, a fun challenge.

JS: Yeah, a fun challenge and one that I loved and actually I learned a lot from that but I don’t think we’ll find a hotel like that again.

SSR: No, like you said, it was a once in a lifetime project and you knew that. Okay, so the hotel opens, what’s next?

JS: So the Pulitzer was a really interesting thing because I was also for the first time part of the bigger picture of the start of a hotel group. So I really learned so much more even about operations and service, food and beverage, all of those things. And I can really now, or even then, I appreciated how equal they are to design. I fight my corner but there are more things that need to work on an equal level for something to be successful, especially a hotel. And so learning from that, and that was also the first hotel where we went independent.

So we were designing it, operating it, running it, all of that ourselves. Again, another risk factor. But that was a massive success and that gave us ambition to then maybe look for more hotels and potentially create a hotel group. At the beginning of the Pulitzer, there wasn’t really that much of a desire to just really start doing a lot more hotels. But the Pulitzer was the one that really catapulted us into that direction. And that’s when we started to look for more hotels or sometimes I say hotels found us.

So after that, the next hotel was in Washington DC So that was our first American hotel and it was called Riggs. And again a very different property, a very different city, different continent, different country. And was this very grand, golden age bank building. And we were not the first hotel group to convert a hotel, grand bank building into a hotel. But this one was particularly unique to us and we just fell in love with it and that’s what we had to do. So after that, we did more hotels and then we also created Lore Group that just started to tie some of our hotels together into a small group. We have seven now. So not a very big group, but it’s a very special one.

The Flower collection suites at the Pulitzer in Amsterdam; photo courtesy of Lore Group

SSR: Is there a meaning behind Lore?

JS: It’s from folklore. So again, it’s storytelling. So that’s something that we want to have in all of our properties. Doesn’t matter what it looks like or what the story of that is, each one has a story. What’s really nice about storytelling rather than dictating the design, ethos or description is that people remember stories so much better and people embellish it a little bit or they make it their own. And I think that’s great for me from a guest perspective as well as a staff perspective, that it shouldn’t be scary, design, it shouldn’t be too precious. It like there’s something that it’s malleable and you can sort of make it your own and you can really be part of it. So the hotel group lore, folklore, and that’s kind of the essence of what we do and the meaning behind the name.

SSR: Yeah. Well, it makes a lot of sense when you say it. So you did the Riggs and then also Lyle was next in DC, so you actually did a couple in DC kind of back to back, right?

JS: Yeah, pretty much. It’s like Amsterdam, I moved to DC for three years and I loved it to do the two hotels. I mean originally it was only going to be the one, but then we found Lyle and fell in love with that hotel and it was also around the corner from where I lived in DC in a very residential part. So Riggs is in Penn quarter, so it’s near all the museums. Great location. Lyle is completely different, completely different building again and in a very different neighborhood. So again, we started from scratch with what we wanted to do there. So we had these two very, very unique and different hotels in the same city. So again, I love doing that. Otherwise, I’d get too bored if I had to just do a cookie cutter, which wouldn’t work anyway. So yeah, Lyle was the second hotel in DC and I’m very proud of that one as well.

SSR: Yeah. If you had to sum them up in like a sentence, what would the Riggs be versus the Lyle

JS: Riggs is much grander. It’s all about showing off. It’s all about beautiful Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. It’s about the location. You walk in there and you just see all these beautiful columns and 22 foot-high ceilings. I did a flower display case in there that’s two stories high with these giant flowers. So again, it was this whole play on scale. So there’s a bit of wow factor. Lyle reflects the neighborhood and it’s in an extra apartment building, an art deco apartment building. So it’s a lot more intimate, a lot smaller. So there’s a lot more emphasis on comfort and feeling a little bit more residential. It’s never a home away from home. I don’t believe hotel should ever be a home away from home. Hotel should be more special than that. So Lyle has these touches. So I always say it’s like staying in a very stylish aunt’s house.

And even the restaurant feels really intimate and I put these white banquets in there, which you never really would do in a restaurant, but I engineered with the right fabric and the fact that the cupboards could be removed. But immediately, you walk into the restaurant, it actually just doesn’t feel like your bulk standard hotel restaurant. So it’s all of these little touch points that we had to engineer and invent in some places.

SSR: Yeah. And F&B is really important to your hotels. Obviously it’s very important across the board for the industry. But talk about your approach to F&B and how, especially for the Riggs and the Lyle, you wanted to kind of set that tone.

JS: Well everything has to feel, authentic is a word that again, is been used too much, but something needs to feel like it’s the right thing in the right place. So food is very important, right? And drink. It’s part of the census. I think that’s the things you probably enjoy most about a hotel. Or I think a very comfortable bed. But having some room service, I mean to me it’s a real treat.

SSR: It’s my favorite part of traveling, is room service.

JS: It’s amazing. But it’s the ritual of it all. I mean, and again, it’s such a beautiful touch point and again that’s why I say hotel station should never be a home away from home. It should be that elevated treat and it should delight you. So again, these are the things that affect your senses. Food, very important to our senses and I think that really is part of a space. I’ve been to places where it’s designed so beautifully but the food is completely mismatched, then it completely feels false and you can’t underestimate that people, whether they can describe it or not, but people will sense it and that’s when something fails.

So you have to make sure that all of those things are aligned. Again, Lyle, the menu reflects a much more residential environment and they have curly fries on the menu, which I really fought for because to me it’s just so nostalgic and it sometimes feels, it was questioned about this is not smart enough. And that’s exactly the point. And it’s a massive hit. Everyone has a weakness for curly fries.

SSR: Right here.

JS: There we go.

SSR: Curly fries and tater tots.

JS: “Oh, don’t give me any curly fries.” Okay then. Its one of those things where I’ll just have a little bit and then go have the whole thing.

SSR: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you said you had several hotels. So you had the Pulitzer, the Riggs, the Lyle, where did you guys go from there?

JS: So we own another branded hotel in Amsterdam and I needed a half refurbishment on that. It’s called the Kimpton De Witt, also a very, very special hotel.

SSR: That was beautiful.

JS: And then we have one in East London called One Hundred Shoreditch. And that was at the [former] Ace Hotel.

SSR: Oh, that’s right. What was that like converting…? Because that hotel helped redefine what Shoreditch was. And so that was kind of iconic for the industry at some point.

JS: Massively. And that also became… We were really sensitive about how we were going to rebrand this hotel and refurbish it because what Ace did to that building and that location, they became a real cornerstone for the whole Shoreditch community. So it was a massive thing. And again that was magic that we’d never wanted to lose. We were very careful about that. I mean the fact that it was really used by people to work during the day. And again, this is pre-Covid, where now, it’s much more common to see people work remotely. But that was the kind of people went there to sit in the lobby and work and that gave the lobby an amazing energy and a buzz and that really captured that shortage energy and brought it into the hotel.

When we did the refurbishment, we wanted to make sure that we could hold onto it. And I tell you, after the refurbishment when we opened the doors, people were lining up with their laptops ready to come back in and it immediately has brought the lobby to life. So some of these important things, especially with that hotel, you couldn’t put on a spreadsheet. It’s like, what is this energy and how do you nurture it and contain it and cherish it? So that was the challenge with One Hundred Shoreditch, we had to make it a little bit more adult as well. So we wanted to make the rooms a little bit more comfortable. So it was a natural evolution for that building. But we’ve managed to keep that essence of that Shoreditch spirit in the hotel and that’s still there to this day.

SSR: Yeah, and it’s a great location right on the street.

JS: Absolutely. It’s a fantastic loc- it’s a big hotel as well. We humanize the facade a little bit, so it almost looks like four different buildings now. So it’s not so big and imposing. And again, it humanizes the whole experience a little bit. But that project was done through the pandemic and that’s definitely something I don’t want to do again. That was…

SSR: I love how you say humanize. And is that a lot of what you try to do? I know authentic is a buzzword that we all need to figure something out, figure out something else to say besides that word. But I really think spaces that are  thoughtful really help create that feeling that you’re going after.

JS: Well I think humanize should be the new buzzword really, because design ultimately is not about things, it’s about people. And so an atmosphere, everything, it comes down to how people interact with it and how they enjoy it. The greatest feeling for me when a project’s finished is not getting praise or getting all of that stuff. And that’s all very welcome by the way. But seeing someone just walk into the space and their face light up is the most wonderful feeling and that’s all I need to know. It’s just, if I’ve done something to delight someone, honestly, it’s made my day, my year, whatever.

That is what design is about. And we need to humanize it because it’s not about things. It really is about putting something out there that someone can respond to and enjoy. And I do think the world is kind of splitting design wise into two directions where one really embraces that. And with that also comes diversity. People try different things because there are different ways of delighting different people. And I think the other half is kind moving down the mundane route where probably that kind of, they’re trying to dehumanize the whole experience and then things just look like really mausoleum-like office lobbies. That is happening. I don’t think that’s definitely something that we should be encouraging. But I do see examples of that popping up still to this day. And I just don’t know how long that’s going to last because no one can really connect with it or respond to it. It’s a shame. It’s always a missed opportunity.

SSR: Yep, totally agree. And now you’re also putting your touch on a hotel in New York, right?

JS: Yep. So it’s our seventh hotel and it’s on Park Avenue South, so we’re calling it Hotel Park Ave. And it’s an existing hotel, so we just upgrading a lot of interior and the way that we can operate the hotel. And it’s done in stages so it won’t have one formal opening, but it’s open right now. And we’ve launched 50% of the upgraded rooms and the new lobby. And I’ve designed this rather special reception desk, which we kind of trying out a different way of checking in. It’s sort of a little bit more personal but also a little… Well, it’s almost like a self check in or checkout kind of system. But it’s still manned, you have someone there, but it’s a lot more personal. So we’re trying out something different. Why not?

The Art Deco suite at the Sea Containers in London; photo courtesy of Lore Group

SSR: Yeah. I love it.

JS: And we were able to design this beautiful sculpture that’s sort of two stories high in this lobby as well, made from wood that we work with, a guy called Jan Hensel in London and he does these amazing woodwork sculptures and pieces of furniture, absolutely amazing. And it even smells nice when you walk in there. So we were able to bring in a little bit of that to this hotel. But it’s ongoing. So now we’re working on the other 50% of the rooms. And then at some stage, there will be food and beverage as well. That will probably be someone else doing that because the building’s quite big. But yeah, it’s a work in progress. So that’s my work cut out for me for the next few months.

SSR: Love that. Does that mean you’re moving to New York?

JS: Oh, yes, please. If you’d have me. I mean I’m so lucky that I come to New York so often that I get my New York fix. I obviously love London as well. I love living in London and the English countryside I absolutely adore. So no, I get my New York fix once a month pretty much coming here. So it’s good. I just don’t want that to stop. So yeah, if that stops then I’ll have to move here probably.

SSR: Is this your first big New York project, then? Or have you done others?

JS: I’ve been part of loads of other projects in York. This is our first hotel project here. But the company I work for also did, they have a brand called Anagram and one of they residential buildings and one is on Columbus Circle, which is one that opened about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. And I helped out on that. I even did the paintings in the lobby, some huge paintings, which I love doing. But when I was with Tom, my first really big overseas project was doing the headquarters from McCann Erickson in Midtown.

And not very far from where the hotel is that I’m doing right now. And I loved that project. That was amazing. But that was going back to 2010, 2011. So I’ve done a few things in New York. We have our own headquarters on Broadway, it’s called the Nomad Tower. And I also worked on the refurbishment of that. So we have a lot of commercial real estate as well. So beside the hotel things, it’s my bread and butter, I’m also involved with the commercial real estate side of the business.

Which I find really exciting, by the way, because it’s amazing to bring some hospitality spirit into where people work. And I don’t see why not. I think this definitely needs to change. I know it is, but how we work and how we live that needs to be reevaluated and that’s what we’re doing with our buildings. We want to create something that’s really wonderful to work in, not just to go to work in. You know what I mean.

SSR: No. And especially today when so many people are used to working from home, how do we encourage people to come back into the office space and what are we offering for that?

JS: I think many people would sort of use the pandemic as an example, but I think it started even before that. Just the way we work now. I mean, going back to where I worked at the bank, when I turned up, my work was on my desk and when I left the office it was gone.

SSR: It was on your desk. I do miss those days.

JS: I think we have to rebalance that a little bit because we have to find that balance again. I think we’ve kind of swung too far the other way. But my phones are over there. I’ve got two phones, they my desks now and they’re with me all the time. So it’s about how do we go back? Because I think it’s very important socially to be back in a work environment. I think normally people talk about the social element of being with people and I think we can sort of see that being completely isolated and remote is not really good for the human spirit. It’s not natural for us. We pack animals.

So just all of those things. But how do we bring people back to an office where you’re not just sitting in a soulless box? What can you do to make work part of your living? So design is obviously one way of doing it. It’s not the only thing. But I find that really fascinating.

I find it fascinating, like I said earlier, how hospitality can actually touch other things. If you bring the essence and the principles of hospitality and what makes that work into something else, even residential, what is it that we love about hotels and what can we borrow from that and bring it into other sectors to bring that up to date?

SSR: Well yeah, we always say the hospitality effect here, right? How does hospitality influence other industries, which we’ve seen for last five, eight, almost 10 years. But it’s exciting because retail now, brick and mortar looks at what hospitality does and they’re adding cafes or look at all the coworking and members clubs that have popped up and they all have an element of hospitality. So it’s really exciting to see the importance of how hospitality affects others and also how they even look at hospitals that are really looking at hospitality to have an influence on patient care. Because it actually shows that people feel better in more beautiful spaces, right?

JS: Let’s put hospitality back in hospitals, right? I completely agree. But I think we have to. But it’s amazing that all of these different disciplines are communicating with one another now, in some way or another. There was a time where things were very, very much separate. And I don’t really want to see us go back to that. I think we live in a time where we have so much more freedom to kind of experiment a little bit and we should run with it.

SSR: Okay. So what is your favorite part of the process?

JS: It’s the beginning. It’s my favorite, but it’s also the hardest because I think often people underestimate how much time and effort you have to spend on that first step. You need to make sure that you’ve experimented and you’ve explored all the different options. And this is what you’ve decided is the brief that you want to do. That’s the nice thing about hotel design, by the way. We make our own rules, right? So we set our own brief, but it’s not easy. But it’s so important to have that set in stone so that every decision you have to make all the way through to the end, all the way to Z, you refer back to the beginning.

So it makes your life easier. I’ve seen other projects where they failed because they just skipped that first step. It doesn’t always seem like it’s very necessary. We can sort it, we can figure out it later. It’s not at all the case. So really put emphasis on that. And then it’s also, so the feeling is amazing when you’ve done the brief and you’ve done your concepts and everyone’s agreed to it. That’s the best feeling of the project in my opinion. Because that’s a massive high. You’ve done all of this and now you’re ready to go. And then the rollercoaster ride happens and then you have the ups and downs and before you know it, you’re burnt out towards the end. But it’s the end of that first part where you’ve set out the ambitions and the dreams and now it has become a reality. There’s that little moment there that’s a spark.

SSR: Yeah. Do you ever go and watch people use your spaces?

JS: I actually love people watching anyway, but not in a creepy way, but maybe, I don’t know. Because again, design’s about people, like I said earlier, so I get inspiration from people, not from things. So I love watching people, but seeing people enjoy my space, it’s great. It’s very entertaining because people have different responses and some people, I don’t know, their reactions are quite comical sometimes. And I find it very entertaining. So it’s like watching a little show.

But it doesn’t even have to be your own hotel. I mean, hotels are very, it’s an interesting melting pot of people. So you always see people from different backgrounds coming together in the same space. So yeah, it’s good for people, watching hotels. But hotels, traditionally that’s what it’s all about. It’s about to be seen and to see. It’s about this kind of how humanity comes together, like I said, people from different backgrounds and from different countries, from different whatever. And it’s that melting pot in a hotel. There’s some sort of unspoken law about being in a hotel. It’s very democratic.

SSR: What is one thing people might not know about you?

JS: I’m a pretty open book. I’m just worried that it’s not much there, much left that no one knows. I think the one thing that people don’t know about me is that I love painting. It’s a real passion of mine and I’ve been incorporating it into a lot of our properties and our hotels. It ticks a lot of boxes, but I absolutely love doing it. And I had to teach myself. Part of my upbringing I had no training in that, so I had to teach myself. And it’s something that I absolutely love doing. So I like to work out new techniques and things like that. So it’s very therapeutic. It’s my equivalent of cooking. It’s my therapy and I recommend it to absolutely everyone. Everyone can do it.

SSR: Amazing. I love it. Is there one medium you use more than others?

JS: Well, I would love to paint with oil, but normally it takes too long to dry. So I paint with acrylic. But I like heavy-bodied paint, so I really like to build on a texture. So I do multiple layers. So yeah. But I get it all over myself. I mean, I’m sitting here in front of you. I’ve got paint all over my jeans.

SSR: I can’t even see the paint.

JS: Oh, look at that.

SSR: Oh. It’s like one little spot just for everyone listening. Very dapper. It looks great. I guess that’s an interesting question. What is your personal style? What’s your home like? And do you infuse some of what you do in your hotels into your own life?

JS: Yeah, it’s impossible not to. I mean, I’m always, like I said earlier, I’m a collector. So-

SSR: Do you collect one thing or multiple things?

JS: Oh. Everything. I’m very lucky-

SSR: So, is that a hoarder or is that a collector?

JS: Yeah, no, it’s just another nice way of saying hoarder. But I think you’re absolutely right there. I mean, my storage unit will definitely confirm what you just said, but I don’t really, I avoid having a personal style. And I know that sometimes it’s not really recommended because I think people want to remember before a certain thing. But I just can’t work like that. I’ll get bored too quickly. I really think style is about personality and character and charm. That’s what it’s about.

But what I love doing is, I guess I’m a little bit more eclectic in the sense that, well, for one, I collect various things. I find something, I’m like a magpie, I see something that’s unusual and I have to have it. But I love mixing things and playing. It creates a bit of drama. It’s a bit of theater, right? If you have the contrasting things coming together, because opposites attract sometimes, it’s like a relationship. So I love that kind of experimentation of seeing what concoction you can sort of come up with by pouring a little bit of this and a bit of that in there. But I love, my favorite thing is repurposing things. I love that element of sustainability to try and reuse something somewhere. Again, that’s my storage unit full of stuff that I’ll use one day.

But I love combining old and new. And I think that’s kind of an approach rather than a style. But I really love the combining things. I don’t really like anything that’s too purist. It becomes, again, it dehumanizes the feeling. Something can have personality. You can have something that you bought from a thrift shop. And I love thrift shopping. In a really modern interior, having something that’s antique, it’s just such a beautiful thing. It compliments both sides.

One thing… I could mention this if it’s not too late, is you asked me about my home. My home in London is exactly that. It’s a real combination of old and new. But I also recently bought an old 1850, it was built in 1850, a Victorian school. It looks like a church and I converted that into a home. It was really partly converted, but I refurbished it and redid it all. And again, that’s really a testament to my style because it has a bit of old and a bit of new, and it has a few bits and pieces from almost every hotel that I’ve collected as well, as kind of a thing that… So it’s a real representation of all of my work so far. But it done in a very curated way. It’s not too cluttered. It’s actually quite organized for once, which is really nice.

SSR: I love that.

JS: But that’s been a project for the last year. And so I think, I have to ask other people if they can see me in my work sometimes when it’s my own work. And so far so good. So I think I did something right.

SSR: Is that in London proper? Is that…?

JS: So I live in London. That’s home for me. But the place in the countryside is in Worcestershire. In this beautiful town, Georgian town called Bewdley. It’s on the river. And I have a very good friend who lives there, and I’ve known about this town for a long time. I’ve been visiting it for the last 20 years regularly. So this just kind of happened in the last year and a half. And I’m very happy. And that’s where my mom stayed when she came over. And she’s very happy about that. I got it done the day before she arrived. It took me a year. So it was just out in time.

SSR: There’s a good deadline.

JS: There’s a deadline for you. There’s always a deadline.

SSR: Is there a dream project or a project you would love to do that you haven’t done yet? Like a type of project?

JS: Oh, yes. Gosh, I’ve got a few that come to mind. But I would love to do a resort. I would love to do something with a pool, because you can see that I tend to move wherever I do a hotel. So maybe I could just have a little beach hotel for a while. You know what, I would love to do something to do with a ship. It’ll be something completely different because I think mentally and your approach is completely different from designing a building. So that could be a different kind of challenge. I don’t know if I’ll be very good at it, but why not?

SSR: It’s worth a shot.

JS: A ship. Why not?

SSR: I feel like you can do that. What would be a piece of advice you would give, either your younger self or somebody starting out in this career?

JS: That’s a very good question. I have thought about this before. It’s embrace making mistakes.

SSR: Yeah. You learn the most from them.

JS: It’s really, well, it’s kind of twofold. I think really be brave and just make mistakes. Absolutely become fearless. We really should stop becoming so afraid of things. Absolutely make mistakes. But there’s this other side to that coin is, I always say it’s really a mistake if you make it twice. So it’s okay to make mistake. But don’t make the same mistake too many times. So again, it’s finding that balance. But yeah, just go for it. I mean, it’s so much fun to take risks with the world of design. Go for it.

SSR: Yeah. Okay. And then we always end the podcast, the question that is the title of the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

JS: The lessons I’ve learned, well, two things come to mind, but it’s ones I’ve kind of learned, no one told me them. I just sort of… But it’s, everything has a place. And I always say that’s going to be in my tombstone as well one day. And I’ll be literally probably there. But everything has a place. It’s important to keep an open mind that something may not make sense in this context, but maybe that’s relevant… That eliminates the pressure of having personal tastes and styles and preferences. Don’t do that. It’s a little bit more scientific than that. And the other thing that I’ve learned is that style is not about taste. Style is about personality. And it’s okay to bring personality into the world of design. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. So it’s those two things. Personality is great and everything has a place.

SSR: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, especially in person in New York. It’s so great to finally meet you in real life.

JS: Finally. It won’t be the last time.

SSR: Yes. No, it will not be. For sure.

The post Jacu Strauss appeared first on Hospitality Design.

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Morris Adjmi. Morris, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Morris Adjmi: I’m great. Thanks for the invitation. Really happy to be here.

SSR: Well, we’re happy to have you. So we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

MA: I grew up in New Orleans.

SSR: I don’t know if I knew that. Maybe I did. What was that like?

MA: It was great. I love New Orleans. I still have a house there in the Garden District. I spend a fair amount of time down there. And I sort of credit New Orleans with making me who I am.

SSR: Yeah. What were you like as a kid? 

MA: I was pretty creative, rambunctious. The earliest memory I have, I was probably about 5 or 6 of being an architect or a builder, was I constructed a pyramid in the center of the living room out of coffee tables and side tables trying to reach the ceiling. And just as I was about to reach the ceiling, the front door opens, my mother came in and the whole thing collapsed. So I cut myself and I had to get stitches and all that. But yeah, I was always getting into things.

The lobby at the Forth Atlanta;  photo by Matthew Williams

SSR: Yeah. Was your mom or dad in the creative field at all, or anyone around you?

MA: Not really. I sort of came out of nowhere, I guess. But really inspired by the city. I mean, New Orleans is obviously known for food and music and architecture. And just having all that around, I think influenced the way I looked at the world and what really stimulates me.

SSR: Yeah. Did you end up going to college for architecture or design?

MA: I did. I did. I graduated from Tulane. I got a master’s from Tulane. About three years in, I was studying architecture from the beginning, I decided that it was time for me to leave New Orleans, so I did an independent study program at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and that’s where I met Aldo Rossi. And that really, I think, was a pivotal moment for me, just changing my perspective, but also opening a lot of new opportunities.

SSR: Yeah. And what was it like working with Aldo?

MA: I think it was the one most dramatic event or change in my life was that experience. And in addition to really watching a genius at work and seeing the design process and seeing how things came together, just also having the experience of watching how he dealt with clients or decisions about his career or the profession informed how I do the same, if that makes sense.

SSR: Yeah, no, totally. And did you live in Italy then, working with him?

MA: I did. And I studied for a year in New York, and then I was traveling the following summer through Europe and stopped in Milan. And he had asked if I could help with a competition for a housing block in Berlin. And then the office won the competition and then asked me to come back and stay. And then I worked on an opera house competition in Genoa, which they also won. So yeah, that was amazing. I mean, the experience in Italy, as I said earlier, my experience growing up in New Orleans was sort of pivotal in my appreciation for architecture, but I think working with Aldo and then also seeing how things were built or how cities were made post-war Milan rebuilt in a way that I think is how we look at architecture.

SSR: Yeah. And what made you decide to go out on your own? And that was in, what, 1997?

MA: Yeah. Well, Aldo had called me in, say, ’85, ’86, and said he wanted to open office in New York. Because I’d been back for a few years and we opened the office. And then he died in a car accident in ’97. So I, at that time, finished the projects. We had four projects, a project in Japan, a project in California, one in Florida, and the Scholastic building in New York. And so I had committed to finishing those projects with all of our clients. And so took all those through and then at that time started to open my own office as an offshoot of the work that we were doing.

SSR: Yeah. Got it. I mean, let’s talk about some of those projects. What do you think was the most challenging or memorable, however you want to take it, project that you worked on for Aldo?

MA: Well, I think there were a couple of projects that were key. And since we are interested in hospitality, we’ll go there. So I would say that the most important project. There were two, I’d say two projects working with him. One was a hotel Il Palazzo in Fukuoka, Japan. First really, I think, as recognized as the first boutique hotel in Japan. Working with a number of very talented interior designers. Shigeru Uchida invited Aldo to do that project. And then Koremata did one of the bars, Sotsus did one of the bars, Itano Peche did one of the bars, and we did one of the bars, and Uchida did all of the interiors for the hotel. But that project really was important, I think, for the office, also for the city. It really transformed Fukuoka into a city that really focused on design and invited a whole host of other very well-known architects to do work there. So it was really about city building, but also placemaking.

SSR: Was that your first hotel or you worked on others before?

MA: That was the first hotel. And that was finished in ’89. And then the other project that was, I think, key to sort of setting the stage for how we look at context and history, and the combination, was a Scholastic building in Soho, which was at that time the first new building in that cast iron historic district. And just really understanding context. It was Broadway. It was a thru-block with one face on Broadway and another one on Mercer. And it recalled the way cast iron buildings were put together, but it was a modern building. It was very, I think, appropriate in terms of the way it looked at the street scape, looked at the history of cast iron, and also as a building for the children’s book publisher, Scholastic.

We had had a pretty generic facade on Mercer, which was the back facade. And the Friday before we presented the project to the Landmarks Commission, Aldo was in town and he’s like, “I really don’t feel good about this facade.” And so he started sketching and sketching, and I still have the drawings. And he’s like, “What do you think?” And I’m like, “Aldo, I think it’s fantastic, but we have to present this in two days.” He goes, “Well, I think we shouldn’t present the other one, I think we should present this.”

And so I called Bill Higgins from Higgins and Quasebarth, they were the landmarks consultants, on a Friday, literally at 5 o’clock, at the end of the day, and I was like, “Bill.” And he was in the office, which I was happy, I said, “I think you should come down to my office. You got to look at what Aldo’s working on.” And so he came. I said, “Well, what do you think?” And he goes, “I think we should do it.” And so we worked over the weekend, we changed the whole presentation, and that’s the design that you see. And that’s like one of those things that I said I learned from Aldo, it was like, if something’s not right, you have to do the right thing. And that’s what we did. It was just drawings before that. And once it’s a building, it’s too late. Luckily, he had the foresight and the will to make the best building.

The Pinch Charleston, a concept from Method Co.; photo by Matthew Williams

SSR: I love it. What did he change it to? Now I’m curious.

MA: It was sort of, when I say it was generic, it kind of was like the front is very almost like mannerist. It has these big columns and beams and it recalls what you’d see on a cast iron building on steroids, I’d say. The back facade was just like this generic, almost like a curtain wall or something. And so then he put in these big, sort of industrial arches, organized it like a three-part type construction stacked up, and it really made a difference.

SSR: Yeah, I love it. Okay, so he passed away, unfortunately. You took on the last couple of projects. Did you have a big team or did you have to rebuild, and what was it like changing from an Aldo Rossi to Morris Adjmi?

MA: I mean, it was an evolution more than a revolution, because sort of this idea of looking at context, looking at history and building on that, that was sort of Aldo’s way, looking at the big picture. Also, if you look at the Italian design, whether it’s furniture or architecture, there’s an element of tradition and an element of innovation. And that’s how there’s this continuity, but it’s always progressing. And I think that’s what I saw in the city of Milan, where buildings were called the historic buildings. There was a lot of infill after the war, the buildings that had been bombed, but it still felt like it was the same city as opposed to all of these big statements that kind of are competing. And so that transition is sort of the way I built the firm.

I would say the biggest difference was that Aldo was an architect and that was kind of his position, and I’ve built the firm to be more multidisciplinary. So really bringing in interior designers. Trying to use the same narrative-based, contextual-based, historical-based approach, but to overlay a real interior focus point of view as opposed to an architect trying to do interiors. And I think there’s a very big difference, and it’s important to have both if you want to do successful projects.

And then that’s also grown that we do placemaking and planning. And we started an art program in the office about 11, 12 years ago, that we inaugurated with a collection of the drawings that I had from Aldo, and that’s grown over the years. And that’s turned into a service that we are providing our clients with, where we’re selecting the art so we can do everything from the big picture down to selecting the art that goes into the projects, which we did at Fourth. And so that’s kind of this holistic design, is I think a little bit of a different point of view. I mean, Aldo was doing desktop, whether for Alessi or furniture for Moltani, but it was sort of separate, and this is kind of more of a holistic approach.

SSR: Right. So one informs the other and you feed off of each other.

MA: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s good to shift scales, go from city to a living room.

SSR: Yeah. And you mentioned it briefly, but talk about your process for projects. You talked about the context and the history and really weaving in where it is, but what does that look like to you and how do you start each project?

MA: Yeah. I think that has come out of, again, that whole story of the Scholastic experience, really trying to create a storyline, a narrative of what’s driving the project. And that enables us to make decisions about what feels right, what’s appropriate, and specific materials we might choose or design moves that we might make. It feels like you can create this story. Then if it’s true to that story, then it works. And I think we do that on the interiors too, really understanding what’s the message and what’s this. So it’s a conversation, we say conversation-based design, and it’s a conversation might be with history or might be with the context, or might be with what the messaging is for the particular client or user.

SSR: What’s the biggest challenge running your own firm and what is the biggest opportunity you think today?

MA: Wow. Challenge, everything. I think getting good people, I mean, that’s always a challenge, and I think that that’s what makes an office successful is having a good team. And so I think we’re very focused on having a really great working environment. I think coming off of Covid, where we were a hundred percent remote, coming back, and I’ve been originally trying to balance between virtual and in-person, and trying to lean into the in-person analog experience being a better experience. We were having these hybrid meetings where you have half the team or three-quarters of the team in the room, and then a couple of people on the screen, and it’s just we ended up trying to explain to them what we were doing. It’s been a challenge a little bit, because obviously everybody likes to have flexibility and freedom. But you can do more in five minutes in person than it takes to do an hour on a call.

And in some ways I’m really happy because I’m not flying all over the place and doing some Zoom meetings, but really, I flew out literally for 12 hours to LA last week, and that meeting was so much more productive than if we had done it on a call. So yeah, so that is a little bit of a challenge, but I think we’re leaning more and more… We’re back four days a week now, and I see five days coming soon. That’s not going to be everybody’s happy place though.

SSR: How big is your team now?

MA: We’re about 75 people. About 25 on the interior side and a few people on the sort of planning side, a few people on art services, and the rest architects.

SSR: Got it. And how are you trying to build back this culture too, to get people into the office?

MA: I had a conference room table. I have my own conference room. We have a lot of conference room. My own conference room. And I literally took the furniture out of my conference room, put it in the middle of the office, and we do all the meetings, all the work design sessions outside, so everybody can feel like they’re part of that process. We pin up a lot now, trying to get away from digital. So we’re sketching and drawing, we can pull things up, but trying to make it really analog. Taking tracing paper out, sketching, and really being hands-on.

A rendering of the forthcoming Four Seasons Hotel Charleston in South Carolina; rendering courtesy of MA

SSR: Yep. Oh, I love that. So what do you think or how do you think this multidisciplinary approach really helps your team? I know you touched on it, but do people get to kind of bounce around? Do you bring everyone to the table for these conversations? I mean, in an ideal setting.

MA: I think there’s always been a tension between architects and interior designers, and that’s one of the reasons why I felt it was important to bring it together. We worked on a project where they brought in another interior designer, and it was like you came through the front door and you’re like, I could be anywhere. There was no connection between the architecture and the interiors. That doesn’t mean that one should be subservient to the other, but they should row in the same direction and they should play nice. And we’ve tried to blur the lines and bring the teams together.

We usually have an interior designer at even the earliest meetings on the architecture, and vice versa, so we’re not starting from scratch when we start to look at the interiors. And we look from the outside in and from the inside out. And so I think that there’s a big benefit to doing that. And the way that that happens is not necessarily the same in every project, but there is a connection, and I think that’s the important part. But it doesn’t matter if it’s the materials are coming from outside in or the thinking about an arch or motifs in the details, but there is something that does connect the two. And I think that’s how you make great buildings, when you connect all of those pieces.

SSR: Yeah. And speaking of great buildings, you just finished the Forth in Atlanta. Tell us a bit about that project and what you wanted to create for the client and for the city.

MA: Yeah. That, I think, hopefully we created a great place for people to gather, both from the city and outside of the city, and the best hotel and club experience that’s there. And I think it’s gotten a fair amount of attention and it looks great in the skyline. I think the building works as an icon for this neighborhood, Old Forth Ward. And it offers a tremendous amount of public space inside the building for people to come together. And we’ve made some great connections just being there for the opening and different events that have happened there. So I think it’s already starting to do that. We actually hired two filmmakers, two brothers to do a little video for that project, which they’re finishing up now. And it was just a great meeting point, and I think it’s going to continue to foster a lot of great connections.

SSR: Yeah. I know you’re all about materiality, especially in buildings and creating a statement with them. So talk a bit about the Forth. It was one existing building, right? Like a brick building, and then you built this cool tower set almost on top of it?

MA: This was, it was Georgia Power’s parking lot and training center, so it was just a big open field. Jim Irwin from New City hired a number of architects to come together. There was a rough plan that they had in place, and we helped to finesse and massage that plan together. Olson Kundig did the office building, which is about a million square feet of office. Three-quarters of that is built now, there’s another piece that they’ll build soon. We did a residential building with a little over 400 apartments, and then we were hired to do the hotel.

Jim had originally intended to have different architects do every building, but he really liked what we did on the residential project, so he hired us to do the hotel. And so we envisioned the hotel as like a brick building, as you described, on the lower portion. And then this tower, which had a concrete exoskeleton diagrid, diagonal sort of members supporting the hotel from outside on four sides, which is unique because that’s the first time I think it’s been done. And that grid really resonates as something unique and people identify with it. And what we really like about it is that it’s great from the outside and it creates this visual graphic element in the skyline, but also from inside the rooms you see that grid and it creates a different dynamic from different rooms and the view out.

And then on the material side, we really tried to keep the materials really warm and lush. And one thing that we did when we started working with Method, and Method Hospitality has been, I’d say a partner, but we’ve been working with them since they started their brand, ROOST, and now they’ve grown to creating separate individual, sort of bespoke brands for different projects or different hotels. We also did the Pinch with them in Charleston. But this project and all of those other projects, the goal has really been to kind of create an eclectic mix of furniture and materials so that it doesn’t feel cookie cutter and it doesn’t feel like we just went and just bought all the furniture at one place, or did one design that then gets populated throughout the hotel. So all the spaces are sort of crafted and have their own look and feel.

SSR: Yeah. I mean, you did that at The Pinch, too. I mean, the Pinch in Charleston, it feels like a really cool residence almost.

MA: Yeah. And that was like when we started working with Randy and he said ROOST was this extended stay or corporate housing, and he’s like, “I don’t want this to feel like you’re at a hotel or some cookie-cutter property. I want it to feel like you’re staying at a really cool friend’s apartment.” And so it kind of wants to have those layers and that richness of… Some of the furniture is off the shelf, we buy pieces, and then some of it is custom made, but the idea is that it all feels like it’s been collected over time as opposed to one set of furniture that just fills the space.

SSR: Yeah, for sure. So talk a little bit about ROOST, because you’ve done a lot of them. And I feel like they, when you mentioned Randy, Randall Cook of Method, I think they were ahead of their time almost, because Extended Stay continues to grow, right? So can you talk a little bit about that brand and how you interpreted it?

MA: Yeah, so there’s a lot there. And I think that part of it is the overlap where we’re seeing hospitality informing residential projects and the other way around, where residential projects are informing hospitality. So this blend, it’s really, I think, an interesting place to be. And I think where Randy started, where there are apartments, but they’re rented on an extended stay basis or even on a shorter term basis. Randy contacted me, we did the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn. So he had stayed at the Wythe, he was looking for someone to work with. He had a 27-room project, which was a proof of concept for ROOST. It was the first one, where it was just 27 rooms. And ROOST has sort of grown to have more of a… and as with the rest of the Method brand, to have an f and b component and to have that be in different configurations in different places and inventing different food and beverage locations for each place or in each location, sorry.

We literally were at the beginning stages with him designing the building, but also selecting the product he was going to put in the rooms, the name, the logo, everything. He came into the office and we would have these hours long work sessions. He’d come up from Philly to New York, and we would just look at everything, like, “What do you think about this?” And I think we ended up selecting Davines products. And we liked the bottle, we liked the scents, we liked the fact that they were sustainable products, et cetera, et cetera. And so all those decisions were made together, and we’ve really grown together in the way that we built the projects with him.

SSR: Yeah. And you mentioned the Wythe. I mean, that opened in, what, 2012? I just moved to Brooklyn. Yeah, I just moved to Williamsburg. And it really, it helped change Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I mean, I think it really started the change that that neighborhood has seen over the past, call it 10, 15 years. Talk a little bit about that. Do you think that was one of your big breaks in hospitality? Do you think that maybe put you guys more on the map?

MA: Yeah, I think it’s been a slow growth… Not a slow growth, a steady growth since then, but absolutely. Without that project, we probably wouldn’t be doing the projects we’re doing now. And I think what resonated with that project, first of all, people always take for granted that it is sort of in the middle of everything that’s happening in Williamsburg, but it really was on the edge at one time. I think that we moved the epicenter from 7th and Bedford, to 11th and Wythe. And I think people embraced it because it was authentic. We took an existing building, we shaved a little bit off the side, and we put a new piece on top, but we really leaned into the existing building. We peeled back layers of just, sort of abuse or just junk that had built up on the walls or the floors, but it still felt like it was a real warehouse building.

Amazing materials inside, like the heavy timber construction, the cast iron. We leaned into that. We put a new concrete floor so that we could get the fire rating, but we kept the ceilings all exposed. The timber that we took out we used to make the bed frames. And so a lot of that was sort of before people were talking about sustainable design and reusing materials, so we were kind of at the right place at the right time. And all the decisions that the owners and all the designers that worked on the project, were the right decisions. And I think it continues, like all good places, when they’re successful and they continue to be relevant, then you kind of know that you did the right thing.

SSR: Yeah, a hundred percent. It was on our cover for a redesign. It means a lot to me too, because we had just done a redesign of the magazine in September of 2012, and it was on our cover.

MA: Yeah, that was a great moment for us as well.

SSR: Yeah. Besides hospitality, you do a ton of residential and multifamily. And I totally agree with you, I think residential feeds hospitality and vice versa. How do you handle those two disciplines in your office? And do you let those teams bleed into each other to riff ideas off each other?

MA: Yeah. I think that where we’re seeing the most overlap is on the residential side in the amenities, because they’re trying to make those amenities more spa-like or hospitality-like. And so you’re seeing things like saunas or steam rooms or treatment rooms, but also maker spaces and lounges that would feel more hospitality-like. And so we’re seeing that. And the bleeding of all those spaces together.

And in terms of the teams, our teams kind of go back and forth across the different typologies, and so that’s where it’s coming in. But Becca Roderick, who heads up our interiors group, comes from a hospitality background. And so she’s kind of abusing that, just because it’s in our DNA, into all the projects.

The Wythe hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York; photo courtesy of MA

SSR: Yeah. No, that’s great. And I think it’s awesome because they can take lessons learned from one to the other, and really inform each other. Is there one project that you have on the boards that you’re really excited about?

MA: Oh, that’s so unfair.

SSR: Pick your favorite child. You can do it.

MA: My favorite project is the one I’m working on. But that being the case, we are doing a project now. We just started, and it’s super exciting for a number of reasons. It’s additional rooms at the Swan Hotel in Disney.

SSR: That’s cool.

MA: Super cool, because it was intimidating or scary because the Swan and the Dolphin by Michael Graves, super iconic buildings. And I was just down there with the team, and it still works. I think there’s a sense of fantasy and all the things you would associate with Disney, but they really work. And over the last however many, I think it’s like 30 years or something, they’ve been upgraded and changed, but they’re still pretty powerful and bold buildings. So in that sense, it’s a little intimidating to actually add another structure in there and just the whole postmodern thing. But I think we have a really, really great scheme, and we’re going to be presenting it to our client, Tishman, and then to Disney. So I’m super excited because I think it will be an iconic building. It plays really nicely with the existing buildings, but it feels like it still works for today. So it’s kind of like, I don’t know, it’s the right context for… We’re doing the right thing for the context.

SSR: Yeah. I’m excited to see what that turns out to be, because I feel like there’s a little stretch for you guys, but a good stretch, right?

MA: Yeah. I mean, kind of going back to the Rossi influence and that whole thing, was like, “Okay, do I really want to do this?” And again, we’ve got some sketches pinned up on the wall and everybody’s like, “Oh, that’s really great.” So I think it’s going to be another one of those iconic projects, like the Wythe or the Samsung building that we did, or Fourth. So we’re super excited about it.

SSR: Are you a Disney guy? Have you been?

MA: Yeah. I mean, my kids are older, but I have been a couple of times and it was great. But I just sit down there and just walking around, it’s like having flashbacks to driving around on a Segway.

SSR: Are either of your kids following you in your footsteps as an architect?

MA: Actually, one of them is, which was kind of surprising. He was working… Well, he got the job. I mean, I had introduced him to an artist and he was working with an artist for a while after school and during the summers. And I thought he was kind of on that track, like wanted to be an artist. And he went to the pre-college program at RISD two summers ago, and he was going to do drawing or something. And I was like, “Great.” And then a week before, and he goes, “I’m changing my major.” And I’m like, “Okay. Can you do that?” He said, “Yes. I’m going to do architecture.” It’s like, “Whoa. Okay.” So yes, he’s at Tulane, he’s a freshman, and he’s studying architecture. I mean, he’s always a really good draftsman person, but it looks like he’s making things out of hemp concrete and stuff like that. So let’s see what happens.

SSR: See where it goes. See where it goes. You mentioned sustainability. I know that’s important to your ethos and your practice. Tell me how do you constantly kind of push that envelope when you’re building these buildings with clients, especially the ones that have greater impact, right?

MA: Yeah. I think it’s always a challenge. And I was interested in sustainable design when I started in college, and there was a book called Design with Climate, which I felt was a really important moment for me to kind of look at that. And also, I did my thesis on New Orleans housing types, and just looking at how buildings were built historically, before air conditioning. Buildings had taller ceilings or they had spaces designed to let airflow below them, or they were raised because they were in a floodplain. And all of those things are things that are still relevant today, even though they were a long time ago. And so those are the kinds of things that I think are important.

I don’t feel like sustainability should be the design statement. I don’t think we should be building buildings that scream like I’m sustainable. I think buildings need to be sustainable, and we need to use sustainable practices and materials using recycled or reclaimed materials. We did a building over 10 years ago, a platinum LEED certified building at NYU, and we used brick that was made from recycled industrial waste, but you would never know that by looking at the brick. So I think it’s important, but it shouldn’t be like the driving visual cue about why a project. That’s just my personal opinion. There are others that feel like that’s, let’s put a big solar panel in front of the building. I think that those should be incorporated in a way that doesn’t dictate a form.

The two-towered Huron luxury condo building in New York; photo by David Mitchell

SSR: Right. No. Just be sustainable, right? Don’t have to shout it. Makes sense. Makes sense. All right. So you travel a ton. What has been a very memorable hospitality experience that might have changed or affected you in a positive way?

MA: I would say staying in a ryokan in Japan. For first, it’s a whole host of reasons, but first of all, most amazing stay in Kyoto, and just seeing that historic architecture. And then also the flexibility of a room. You could stay in a room to sleep or you could stay in there to have a tea, you can invite people in. And just this idea that the space was not specific to a function, but was specific to coming together or being alone. And so I think that that was, for me, was a change. And then, yeah, it was just celebration of travel and the celebration of understanding a culture and being in a place that had been around for hundreds of years, but was still relevant to how we travel and how we experience new things in the world.

SSR: How do you constantly stay inspired?

MA: I would say the single most important thing for me is just being on the street and just walking around, but really going to art shows. And I see every weekend I’m either at galleries or museums, or listening to music, going to shows. But I think just being stimulated by what we see. And New York is an amazing place to do that, but I think wherever I go, I’m trying to sponge and extract inspiration.

SSR: Yeah. And do you encourage your team, too, to put the phone down and look up?

MA: Absolutely. Absolutely. We have a program here, which we… Well, we have an art program, so we invite artists in. We did a collaboration with Proxico, which is a New York-based gallery that really features Latin artists. And so we had an artist takeover, so they took over our space and turned it into a demolition company. So it was like all of the walls and all the exhibition was geared towards that. But trying to have those internal art shows to keep the office fresh and to keep people thinking about inspiration. And then we have openings, which brings people together. And then a lot of times we’ll do a seminar or a talk around the art. So it starts here. We also have something called Beautiful Spaces, where we go out into the world, we look at other projects, we go to showrooms. And so that really stimulates people to experience influences together.

SSR: What is your favorite part of the process?

MA: My favorite part is the eureka moment. There’s always a lot of friction, let’s call it. Trying to absorb the information about what we’re doing in the project, doing research about either similar projects or the neighborhood, or who’s going to be going there, or what we’re going to do, or researching the program. All of that is kind of, I don’t want to say it’s a regular part of the project, but it’s one that’s relatively, let’s call it straightforward. But going from that to the moment where the idea clicks and you say, I got it.

And so that moment, and I don’t know how or when or how it happens, but usually I’m always, for me, I’m tortured. Whether I wake up in the middle of the night, going like, “What? What are we going to do?” “Oh, we’re never going to find a solution for this,” or, “We can’t do that again.”

SSR: I mean, that must be the hardest thing, right? Is like, you’re like, I can’t just do it on that building again.

MA: Right. And so just that moment where it’s just all the clarity. And it’s not like you’re just exercising, exercising, exercising, and then you get to a point, because you never know when that’s going to happen. But it’s like there’s like a parting and an opening up and a clear moment when you say, now it’s right.

SSR: Right. Yeah. Is there still a project on your bucket list?

MA: Yeah, I would say. I’ve done some small galleries and exhibition designs, but I think a museum would be an amazing project. And I think the museum world is going through a lot of change. I mean, the whole world is going through a lot of change, but just in terms of-

SSR: That’s a whole other podcast.

MA: Yeah. We won’t go there. But what museums are and how they function and how we can create a place that is a repository but is also a catalyst for bigger discussions or interactions or meetings or encounters, I think would be a great thing to do.

SSR: Yeah. All right. Well, I hate to end the conversation, but for the sake of time, we always end with the question that is the title of the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson learned or lessons learned along the way?

MA: I’ve always been a proponent of treating people with respect and in the right way. This sounds hokey coming from an architect, but there’s been so many instances where somebody that I work with, that was a junior person or an intern and now is running the department of a company. And for me to have always been a good person and been treating people with respect and has come back many times in a way that has benefited the firm. But it’s not like I’m not doing it because of that, but I think it’s the right thing to do and it has the additional benefit of paying back in some way.

SSR: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much. It’s always so good to catch up with you. 

MA: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Really exciting. Thank you.

The post Morris Adjmi appeared first on Hospitality Design.

Growing up in the French countryside, Ronan Bouroullec often found himself alone.

His brother, Erwan, was five years younger than him, and at 10 years old that gap felt significant. As a result, Bouroullec took to drawing. “For me, it was an escape,” he says. But more than that, it sparked his interest in objects and design.

At 15, he was encouraged to study art, experimenting in many different mediums before leaving Brittany for Paris at 17. In this pre-internet age, Bouroullec would go to the library to immerse himself in design, but the books didn’t have photos. “I found them boring, cerebral, and badly written,” he recalls. “I understood then that objects are always around us, and I didn’t need a book. I could study what was around me.”

The Céramique collection for Flos are handcrafted, drawing inspiration from Castiglioni and Scarpa fixtures from the 1970s and ’80s

At that time, Philippe Starck was making waves with his avant-garde pieces, gaining celebrity status in the design world. Seeing Starck’s rise inspired Bouroullec, who soon discovered the works of masters like Shiro Kuramata, Isamu Noguchi, and Donald Judd.

His big break came in 1997 when he caught the attention of Giulio Cappellini with Disintegrated Kitchen at the Salon du Meuble in Paris. That collaboration led to the creation of the futuristic Soliflore vase, which entered the collection of the Centre Pompidou, propelling Bouroullec onto the international design scene.

Then, just as quickly, Erwan joined Bouroullec in Paris. “I was 27, and I needed help. My brother came to Paris as a student, and he started to assist me.” The partnership grew, and soon the duo became a venerated pair in the design world—often referred to as the Charles and Ray Eames of their generation.

In 2024, after more than a quarter century of working together, the brothers ended their creative partnership, making it official by moving out of their shared studio in Paris.

A trio of colorful handcrafted lamps comprise Céramique for Flos

Despite the shift, Bouroullec continues to push deign boundaries, working with brands like Flos on one of his latest solo endeavors.

For the Italian lighting company, he launched Céramique, a trio of colorful handmade lamps that reflect his appreciation for craftsmanship, drawing inspiration from Castiglioni and Scarpa fixtures from the 1970s and ’80s. “During the day, [the lamp] has a beautiful, sensual presence, which is just as important as the light it produces,” he says.

Today, Bouroullec’s legacy is as much about invention as it is his commitment to elevating craftspeople. “I like to jump from one subject to another. I’m a specialist of nothing, but I like to work with specialists. It’s a very large map of possibility, and it’s my passion to embrace [it].”

This article originally appeared in HD’s February/March 2025 issue.

The post Ronan Bouroullec Carves Out His Next Chapter appeared first on Hospitality Design.

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi. I’m here with Cathy O’Brien of Naturopathica. How are you? Thanks so much for joining us today.

Cathy O’Brien: Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be with you. Appreciate it.

SSR: Okay, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

CO: I grew up in a small town, 20 miles north of Manhattan, called Larchmont, New York.

SSR: And what were you like as a kid?

CO: I was really active, really sporty, really social. I had a pile of good, really close friends, outside all the time. Just from a young age, I became really tight and deep with friends. Really, really deep, long friendships. Some of them, I’m still friends with.

SSR: Any inkling of early interests? I mean, you’ve had such a very career path that we’ll get into, but any kind of early inkling that you’d end up where you are today?

CO: It’s really funny, when I was thinking about it, because I had two distinct paths, really. The first one, my mom used to always call me the Ann Landers of Larchmont, because for whatever reason, I just used to be the go-to for people to talk to about problems. It was totally comfortable for me that people would just dish, and I’d help them solve problems. Then, I also would go sit in this park in Larchmont, called Manor Park, and would do what I now know to be meditating. I would sit on the rocks, just chill, and look at the water from a very young age, and I did it regularly, which is meditation, actually. I also ran and walked, and was always doing that kind of stuff, and I also loved flowers because of the smells. I would go to flower stores, and just walk in and smell flowers, and that is aromatherapy.

So when I look back, and I still incorporate all those things into my life now in a different kind of way, because they have names and they’re called things, but I was doing it just intuitively as a child. I carried it through, even through college. It’s just something that’s always been with me. Then, on the other path was the music, and I always, always, always, always had music, always. From the beginning of time with the turntable, which morphed into an iPod, which first was a walkman, and I was making mixtapes, and first stacking LPs that would drop and they’d play all night long, and I’d just drop one, drop another, like constant. Then, when I got to college and started being moody, I would use it as a drug. It was my drug. If I was upset about something, I’d put on certain kind of music, and it would run. So that, to me, was something that was just always in my life, but I never realized that it was actually a business. I had no idea. I didn’t know.

SSR: Lo and behold, here we are.

CO: I know, right? It is so funny.

SSR: Thinking back, I mean, this is just funny. How much time you spent making mixtapes and …

CO: They were the best. Oh my God. So, one time I was in the city, and I had a car, and in it, do you remember? I don’t know if you remember this, but you could pull out your player, because car thievery in Manhattan was bad, so I drove in, and somebody had broken into my car and taken my radio, which I did not care about, but it had my best mixtape in it. I was so upset, because my dad was like, “Cathy, seriously?” I was like, “No, no. The mixtape,” because really, I was very upset about it.

SSR: Yeah. It took a while, and it took a lot of thought.

CO: Exactly.

SSR: You were on a journey. All right. So, you’re in college. Where did you go to college, and what were you studying?

CO: I went to the University of Vermont in Burlington, and I was studying political science, because I thought I wanted to be a state Supreme Court judge.

SSR: Oh. It’s very specific.

CO: Don’t ask. I don’t know. I didn’t do that.

SSR: Was anyone in politics in your family?

CO: No, but they were all lawyers. Everyone was lawyers. They were all lawyers, so I applied to law school, and my uncle, who was a big lawyer was like, “Cathy, no. Definitely not for you.”

SSR: How did you end up in the music business?

CO: Actually, when I was in college, I worked every summer. I worked at Conde Nast at Vogue, specifically for one of the old, grand dom editors who’d been around forever, and every summer I became her assistant, because her assistant went away to Ireland. It’s very specific, but anyhow, so I thought that’s what I do. I studied in Paris for a year, my junior year, and she made me get a job. She was like, “You have to get a job.” She was really tough, so I did. I got a job, working for Karl Lagerfeld when he had his own studio, and I preferred to do that than go to school.

So, I did a lot of that, and I came back and I was like, “All right. I’m going to go work at Vogue for Conde Nast.” Then, there was one sitting where I had to throw stuff for these shoots that we did, and every editor who was responsible for a certain area threw whatever, and I was in charge of accessories and shoes, and I threw a belt. One of the editor, who was in charge, and her underling, they literally talked about a belt. They went on and on and talked about a belt, for how it was amazing, and they went on and on, and I thought, “You know what? That’s not for me. It’s not for me. It’s just not my thing,” so I was like, “Okay. Cross that off.”

I was like, “Now where do I go? What do I do?” So, anyhow, so I knew I had to be in sort of pop culture-y, zeitgeisty stuff, because that’s the thing that really resonated with me the most, and just figuring out what people liked and related to. And so, I met a woman who had gone to UVM, actually, and she was the VP of video for electoral records, and so I went and met her and sat in this really cool lobby that was, literally, black suede, and I had paid to park my car, which was super expensive, so I was all stressed out about it. I waited for hours. Then, they finally called me in, and I met with the guy who I ended up working for, who I’m still close to. He was the best. They were like, “Well, what do you want to do?” I was like, “I don’t care. I’ll clean the bathroom. I’ll get you coffee. I don’t care.” They were like, “Okay, come. You’re hired,” so that’s how I started. That’s what I started. It was the greatest thing. Literally, like I said, I had no idea it was actually a business. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I got to do it every day and be part of it. Yeah, it was amazing.

The Naturopathica Spa at the Mollie Aspen; photo courtesy of Naturopathica

SSR: How did you work your way up, your first job, and then what do you think was your secret to success, to continue to evolve in this very competitive industry?

CO: Yeah, yeah. It’s super competitive, and when I was there, totally 100% male dominated. I mean, it was tough. It was tough, and you had to be tough, and you just had to get it done. It was really about work ethic and attitude, honestly, but what isn’t? But there, because it’s such a rough crowd, you just have to work harder than anybody else, and I did because I loved it so much. I just worked like a dog and grew thick, thick, thick skin. Thick skin, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because people just can really be not nice. That’s a nice way of saying it. And not nice.

SSR: Very, very PC. Yes, but you worked with some incredible musicians. I mean, tell us a little bit about what you did and what it was like to work with these very creative and talented people.

CO: I know. They were. Gosh, it’s sort of like the music industry is sort of a big, dysfunctional family. It’s like you’re all connected. You’re all connected because of this deep love and connectedness to music and artistry, and that’s what sort of unites everybody in all these different companies. It’s sort of like, “Oh, yeah. We know why we’re here. We get it. We’re all here for this,” and the artists are passionate and driven, and artists are really different people. They’re different. I grew up with an artist’s mother and different person. I have an artist’s daughter, and they’re wired differently, and they speak a different language. They are infused in a way that we are not, not to say that none of us sitting here aren’t artistic-

Because we all are. We’re in creative businesses, and we bring things to life, and that’s creative and artistic in its own right, but these artists, painters, writers, musicians, are infused with a vision and a capability that gives me goosebumps just to talk about it, because I felt so lucky to be able to get it. I got them, and I could interpret what they were doing into business, and I could talk both languages. I could relate to them and explain things to them in a way that didn’t sound like something they didn’t want to be part of.

And I could hear them when they said no to something. It was a great trajectory for me. I started in the marketing and creative side of life, because that just is what came naturally in me in New York. Then, I was brought out with my boss, this guy, Hale Milgram. He became the head of Capital in LA, and he brought me with him, and then I was there for about four years and also did marketing, a lot of field marketing. So, I worked with our field team, and worked in selling, marketing, and understanding what accounts were like. I actually went, this was fun, there was this huge tower records on Sunset Boulevard in LA for years and years and years. It was awesome.

SSR: Cool, iconic building.

CO: Do you remember? Yeah. It was amazing, and I just went and said, “Can I just be an intern here for you at night and work in there?” There was this huge customer service desk in the middle, just to hear what people were saying, so I did that for a while, just for fun. It was fun while I was working, just to get into it. You know what I mean? And so, I did that for a while, and then I was asked by somebody at Capital to come back to New York and do international marketing, which I’d never done before, which was fun, because I got to take everything from America. I had my own little roster. I was a director of international, had a roster, and got to work with, take the US stuff outside of America. Then, from there, I went and ran the department at Arista for international, so I ran the international division at Arista, which was a wild ride.

SSR: Yeah. I was going to say wild.

CO: Wild ride. Oh my God. That was a wild ride, yeah. Yeah., So that was my sort of timeline of the different things I got to do.

SSR: Did you get to travel, then, all over as well?

CO: I traveled all over the place. Yeah, all over. When I did domestic stuff, I was all over the country, and then when I did international, I was gone all the time. All the time. Traveled all the time. You know what I did, and I didn’t realize that I did this until I got headhunted for Estee Lauder, is I used to spend all my excess money and duty-free on makeup, just so I would play with it on the planes, because it’s fun, and I never wore it-

SSR: Yeah. Gives you something to do.

CO: Yeah. Gives you something to do, and then it smells good. So I was figuring out formulas, textures, and things that I liked, and I had them all in different shoe boxes in my apartment, and city apartments are tiny. It was shoved in all over the place. I didn’t know I really would just shove it and then keep going, but no, so I traveled all the time, and I’ll tell you something. That was hard, because I was in charge of the most important and relevant repertoire at the time because of Arista.

Clive Davis was my boss, and I reported to him, which he was amazing, by the way. Amazing. I would be in charge of this repertoire that was literally groundbreaking and global. The world was, outside of America, there were no women, none, and they were not very supportive of me. Let’s put it that way. I mean, I could tell you stories about things that went down. Nothing, it wasn’t like there was none of the sexual abuse shenanigans stuff. It was none of that stuff. No, but there was other shenanigans that were just like, “Oh my God. Really? Really, guys. Really? Are we going to do that?” Anyhow. Yeah.

SSR: Who is this roster that you had? Who are the people that included?

CO: Oh, for Arista? Arista was cool. Well, that was the time when the contemporary hip hop and urban stuff was really exploding. So, aside from the contemporary artists that we just had on Arista, like a Sarah McLaughlin, and we had Whitney Houston, and I was her little international product manager. I kid you not. I traveled with her all over the place, and I remember I was going to therapy, actually, one day, and I put out in the middle of the day, because I needed it. I was walking, and then Clive called me on my phone, and he’s like, “Cathy, we need to talk about Whitney, and we need to talk about the trip to Germany that you’re doing.”

I had this outer body experience. I was like, “Can I just pause for a minute and say I am on the phone with Clive Davis talking about Whitney Houston,” and it just blew my mind, and then I went to therapy. I was like, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” It was really funny. Anyhow, so there was that, but there were two joint ventures that had just happened. One of them was called LaFace, which was La Reid and Babyface, which was amazing, and they were in Atlanta, and they were bringing this whole Atlanta sound to music. It was not only the likes of Pink, but it was OutKast, TLC. Gosh, who am I missing? Jermaine Dupree, Escape, The Brat. Anyhow, all those cool things.

It was super fun, and then on the other side of it, it was Bad Boy. So, it was Puffy. It was Puffy’s label, and at the time, we didn’t know what was going on with him at all. There was no knowledge of any of that stuff. He had this real bubbling repertoire of Notorious BIG , Mace, and oh my gosh, Faith Evans, and the music was really happening. Aside from those, that crew, like Kenny G was a big deal. Kenny G was huge. No, huge, and Tony Braxton was huge. Gosh, who am I missing? I’m sure I’m missing big people. We had people like Carly Simon and Grateful Dead, but that was cataloging stuff, so I didn’t work with them.

Oh, Patti Smith. We had Patti Smith. That was awesome. Oh my God, yes. I brought her to London, and we had, who else did we? Wait, God. When did I do Pink Floyd? I’m trying to remember what label I was at where we did Pink Floyd. Anyhow, brought Patti Smith to London, because she was having a resurgence, and Soho House was one place in Soho, and this guy, Nick, started it. So, somebody was like, “Soho House is really cool. You should go check it out for this Patty thing.” I was like, “All right,” so I went into Soho house. I met Nick, who was the owner and founder, and I was like, “Hey, can I do a thing here with Patty Smith?” He was like, “Yeah,” so I did.

SSR: Fair enough.

CO: And I was with her at the Soho House, and we had people from all over Europe come and meet her, and we did all these little gatherings, and it was just cool. It was great. Yeah, that was great. She was awesome, as you can imagine. She was great. Oh, and Shawn Colvin. Wait, but Shawn was when I was at Sony. Yeah, she was good to work with too.

SSR: Yeah. What did you learn from Clive? What was that like?

CO: There is no “no.” The word no does not exist. Anything, anything is possible. Anything is possible. I was in a label lunch once, and it was Whitney moment, and these label lunches were lnotorious, and they were like five hours long, and they were freezing cold to keep everyone awake. Literally, we’d go record by record by record, artist by artist by artist. I had a binder because I was responsible for the work, and I could not remember everything. I had to know sales and charts and singles and radio stations, and blah, blah for everybody, for every country, so it was a lot. So, I had tabs by artist, and I just had those clear things you stuck stuff in, and I just would flip through. I’m like, “Charts, sales,” so I just knew where to go, because I was constantly having anxiety attacks. He goes, “Cathy.”

SSR: I’m having one for you, and I wasn’t even there.

CO: I know. No. Did I mention I was in therapy? Oh my God. I got acupuncture to try and help me. I did. I went to acupuncture. I was like, “Something has to help me here.” Anyhow, and it did. It was good. Acupuncture was good. See, wellness?

SSR: Yes, wellness. You were doing acupuncture before It was cool to do acupuncture.

CO: See? Exactly. I was like, “I don’t want to take Prilosec. I’m afraid that.” Anyhow, so he goes, “I want to bring Whitney to Europe next week, and I want to do one in London and one in France, and we’ll have her perform, and we’ll bring everybody.” I was like, “Yeah. We can do that,” and I was like, “Okay. Let’s shut my book.” I was like, “Okay, so I’m going to go now. I’m going to go now.”

The Naturopathica spa waiting room; photo courtesy of Naturopathica

SSR: I’ll figure this out. Thank you so much.”

CO: “I’m going to get right on that.” He was like, “Yeah. We’ll leave on such and such date. We’ll start here and end there.” I was like, “Okay,” and we did. We did it, but I was like, “Okay, everybody. Let’s go.”

SSR: Well, this is like landline phones.

CO: It was tough. It was tricky. Yeah, it was tricky. But we did have, I know you said a funny thing about landline phones. We did have a portable phone, and it was big. It worked internationally

SSR: Feel like this could be an entire podcast, just about your time in the music business. All right, so what made you decide to leave the music business? And you mentioned Estee Lauder, and kind of pivot to the beauty then wellness life that you leave now.

CO: It was, like I said, it was a really tough crowd, and there was no place for me to go. I was at this level at a really young age, and I also wanted to have kids, and I wanted to stay married. I have kids. I did not stay married, but that’s okay, but I have great kids, and there was no one I could look at as a mentor, and everyone needs mentors, and there just weren’t any. The women, bless them, and they’ve worked hard, but I didn’t aspire to be single or have a drug addiction. It wasn’t something that looked good to me. I wanted a full round life around women. So, randomly, I got head-hunted. I got called by a headhunter, as I was thinking these things in my brain, and it was from Estee Lauder, saying that they wanted to do things differently. They’re looking for people to do things differently. They thought this would be a natural industry for them to connect with. I was like, “Okay. You don’t know what you’re talking about over here in this joint, but okay, let’s do it.”

SSR: Let’s give it a whirl. Yeah.

CO: Yeah. Let’s give it a whirl. Yeah.

SSR: And so, what did you do for them?

CO: Well, they brought me in to interview for an Origins job, which I did not take. Then, I interviewed for a clinic international job, which I did not want, because I didn’t want to do international anymore, although they were lovely. They were all lovely, and simultaneously, right in the middle of that, I got head-hunted for head of International for Miramax films. Can you imagine? It was the Harvey Weinstein group.

SSR Oh, no.

CO: Yeah, and he had a bad rap, and I was like, “Yeah, no. I’m not interested in that one, coming from the fire I just came from,” so I kept up with Estee Lauder, and I interviewed for a Mac job and I did not take that one either. Then, I reached out and gave it some time, and then I reached back out to the Estee Lauder folks, and I was like, “All right. I’m ready now.” And they’re like, “Okay. This is it. This is the last one. This is the last time.”

I ended up meeting a woman named Pamela Baxter who ran, she was running the prestige brands, like the little baby brands at the time. No, that’s not true. What was she running? Fragrances? Because I ended up going and working for Tommy Hilfiger for her, for Tommy Hilfiger. I loved her, and I felt like, “I can relate to this woman. She can be a great mentor to me,” and she was smart and she was just awesome. We got along really well, and so she hired me, and I went and worked for Tommy. I did global communications, which I didn’t even know what that was. I was like, “Okay,” and then I realized what it was, and I was like, “Oh, okay,” and then they just kept giving me more brands.

So, then I had prescriptives, and they gave me Kate Spade. They gave me the La Mer, and then they gave Jo Malone. I had this mini little agency within Lauder. Then, they sent me to Harvard Business School to do a mini executive MBA thing where you go live there for three or four months and stay, and you do case studies. Literally, six out of seven days a week. It was amazing. Then, I came back and they gave me Jo Malone to just take care, just do with Pamela. Pamela was my boss, and she was running all of them. She had La Mer, and she had all of them. I was handling the Jo business and driving that. And Jo and I, that business was probably, I don’t know, $15 million business when we bought it. $20 million I don’t remember, but when I left, it was like $125 million business.

SSR: Wow.

CO: And positioned to go global. We had just started contemplating rolling out globally. Jo and I traveled all over the country together with our babies, and she only has one kid. I have two, but I had my first child when she was having Josh, and we took our babies and traveled, and we built it. It was good.

SSR: What do you think about the success of getting it from 15-ish to more than 100 million when you left?

CO: Consistency of story, staying focused and committed to the brand, and absolute laser focus on brand, and not getting diverted into going off on different tangents of whatever it may be. The beautiful thing about Estee Lauder is they gave us time. They gave us time to grow it. They knew better than anybody about how much time it takes to have something take hold when you’ve got the right leadership, so did the whole operations’ thing with her because we brought it in, and we had to scale it, and we had to repackage it, and we had to find different manufacturers, because the one she had couldn’t scale.

We had to reformulate everything. And simultaneously, we had to grow and build the brand. So, key message, over and over and over again, did not deviate. Then, as that took hold, the distribution is what helped grow it, so we partnered with Neimans and Saks, and we did a very small manageable distribution assortment, product assortment, but also number of doors. We just traveled and hammered away at different markets, one after another, because there was no social media. There’s nothing. We had to do it all manually, but it works. It just works. I don’t think that old school stuff ever goes away, because we talk about that it’s important, the sort of just meeting, talking. That’s just the best way to make things work.

SSR: Yeah. When you all bought it, was it just colognes, or did it have the candles and everything, or did you diversify the products too?

CO: No. We took what she had, and she was skincare. She started as a facialist. Did you know that?

SSR: Yes, I do remember that.

CO: She was an aesthetician, so that was my entree into the world of skincare, really, and spa. I opened her first spa in America in the flat iron building. And honed the assortment and worked on what was the best way to sample it, what’s the best way to grow it and, really, eventually looked at the business and where the business was going to be, which was fragrance. Sometimes something starts one way and evolves naturally into something else. It’s funny.

SSR: Yeah, no. It’s crazy how intertwined things become when you start to look back, when you reminisce about where you’ve been. What did you learn from Jo and from your boss, as women leaders and as mentors?

CO: I have worked for and with some really amazing women. Gizem is one of them, by the way. Powerhouse. No, it’s amazing to work with driven, focused, non-ego women, who just want nothing but to drive a business, bring you along with it, and help you grow. Pamela was the epitome of that. Pamela Baxter. She and I ended up going into business together, actually, but no. Also, so that’s one facet of it. From Jo, what I learned as a founder is she was 100% clear, directed, and focused on her vision for her business. Marcia Kilgore’s that way too. I helped her when I ran AAM. We helped her launch and then build FitFlop, and I loved working with her because she was just hand’s on. I don’t know how she did it, because she had Soap and Glory happening at the same time, and then she was starting Beauty Pie. I mean, she’s something special.

SSR: Yeah. You mentioned AAM, and I think we skipped over it. Tell us a little bit about AAM, what you created, and why.

CO: AAM, I loved it. I loved AAM, and AAM, when I was at Lauder, actually, so I had my daughter Jess, and then, shortly thereafter, I had my son, Doug, and I was running a business, I was working full time, and I had these babies, and all of a sudden my world was like, “Holy, mother of God. Oh my God,” and pretty much everything was falling in all facets of my life. I felt very underserved, and I needed things. I needed a lot, and I felt like I just wasn’t getting it, and I didn’t have a lot of time in the day, and I wanted to just feel better. I want it to feel good, and so I’d always wanted to found and run my own. I didn’t know what it was going to be, and then it just came to me and I thought the girls need some help here, and there are many of us. AAM stands for All About Mom, actually, and so I called it AAM Brand Management, and I loved it too. It was to provide goods and services to help women feel better, basically.

It was that simple. I ended up, and originally the plan was to offer talk services, information, blah, blah, blah, but the agency took hold, and I had amazing clients. Also, it fed my family. I was a breadwinner, and that took priority, and you know when you have kids. I mean, you have three of them. They are not inexpensive, so there were houses in school and everything that goes along with it. It just took on a life of its own. I really loved it, and it really served me, and I was thrilled to be of service. I hired only women. Am I allowed to say that now, or am I going to get canceled? I don’t know. I hired only women, and my vision and goal always was to train and support young women, give them a good salary, give them good 401k, so that way they could sock money away, and really, hopefully just get them going. They were all just such great, great young women. I was really lucky, and we had a great thing for many, many years, like many years. We all worked together.

SSR: Who were some of your clients?

CO: A bunch of the LVMH brands. Hermes, we worked with for years on their fragrances. Avon, years and years and years, worked for Avon in a bunch of different capacities. Fitflop with Marcia. We helped literally launch it, and then built it. That was a lot of fun. We worked with Juice Press. We worked with Hint Water, and these were as they’re early bubblers, so it was really kind of the stuff I was used to doing at Jo Malone and Lumiere, which is building. I’m just trying to think of other things that might be cool and interesting.

Oh. Sam Edelman, we did. I worked with this group called Cal-Wood, and they were fashion, so through them, Rebecca Taylor Parker, I made some great girlfriends there too, the woman who ran Parker, the woman who ran Rebecca Taylor, who are now running other fashion businesses. They’re like my gals, and I’m in a book club now with one of them. It’s great. They were great. Really great, wonderful women, who we learn from each other. That’s all you can hope for, I think, as you go along, to find women that you can learn from, work with, and just get ideas, support, and help from along the way, because it’s a slog.

SSR: Yeah, and I think your point too about not having an ego, right? Finding women that just-

CO: Oh, yeah. Because I had some that did that were bad. Horrible. One of them tried to get me fired once. It’s all little life snippets. We’ve all had them. You know what I mean? We all have these things.

SSR: And so, did you fold that company? Tell us now how you got to where you are today.

CO: So, what I did with AAM is, so Pamela Baxter was running LVMH Beauty and Dior fashion, and had her whole empire there, and I was running AAM. I’d been running AAM for 10 years, I think, and she was at LVMH for a long time. She was ready to go. I was tired of doing it myself. I ran my own business for a long time, and so we talked about creating something called Bonafide Beauty Lab, which was going to be an incubator that we would get funding for.

Then, we’d invest in small beauty startups that were founded by women, that were doing between $5 and $10 million a year. That was our premise, and we had a handful of brands that we were talking to and working with. Then, we ended up meeting Lisa Sugar, who was the founder of Pop Sugar, and she asked us to create a color brand for her, so we did, so it was called Beauty by Pop Sugar. That was, we own the license for that. And we created, in partnership with Ulta, we created an ADSKU color brand for pop sugar called Beauty by Pop Sugar, and it was beautiful.

SSR: That’s amazing.

CO: It was beautiful. It was alive for literally two minutes, because we ended up expanding distribution. We were in Macy’s, we were in Kohl’s, we were in Ulta. I mean, we were all over the place. Pamela and I were like, “Let’s go to retail,” And we were in stores, setting up our kiosks, hosting events, doing makeup. She started as a makeup artist, so she was happy as a clam, but then we had COVID, and the COVID closed the retail, and we were a baby, and it just wasn’t going to happen. It was too not going to happen. It was just over before it started, so we closed it, and-

SSR: Was that sad?

CO: Yes and no. I learned a lot. When you start a company, especially one like that, which was so multifaceted in retail, and 80 skews is a lot to start a business with, by the way. I would not do that again. Good to know, but it was a really great experience, but I was like, “Okay. We’re moving on. Moving on.” It was COVID too, so we were all sort of, I didn’t have time to mourn the loss of that. I was more sort of like, “Holy God. What’s going on here?” Like, all of us.

SSR: Yeah. It was almost like a forced reset, right?

CO: Yeah. Exactly.

SSR: And so, how then did Naturopathica come about? And tell us a little bit about that company and what you’re doing with it.

CO: All along the way, for me, the through line was I’d always been, or for many, many years I’ve been working with women’s organizations around domestic violence. It had just been something that women, again, women need help, women get themselves into situations that sort of can spin out of control pretty quickly without realizing it, and the word domestic violence is pretty heavy and harsh to say, and there are a lot of underlying things that are easier to say, like toxic relationship, like controlling relationship. Things like that, like gaslighting, stuff that are more relatable, but it rolls up into this thing. A number of us have had situations like that in our lives, because it’s common, and the stats are one in four women, and there are those stats only because those numbers are reported through police and social services. A lot of people don’t report things, just because it’s easier not to.

So anyhow, it’s a pretty crushing stat, and so I’ve over the years worked with organizations, there’s a group called One Love Foundation, which is phenomenal. I worked on the domestic violence hotline for quite a while as an advocate. I worked for something called SAVI at Mount Sinai, which stands for Sexual Assault and Victims Intervention, where you go as an advocate, and when somebody comes into the ER for domestic violence or sexual assault, you’re the buffer between that person and the rest of the world, just to keep them calm and help them just take a breath. I worked for Safe Horizon, which is an amazing, one of the two founded original domestic violence groups in Manhattan. I worked in their, it was teaching women financial work sophistication work, oh my God, I can’t pronounce it. Teaching people tools so that they can get a job that is not just an hourly job.

And then, now I serve on the board of a group called Project Sage, which is in the Northwest corner of Connecticut where I have my home, and it’s the domestic violence group, basically, in that area of Connecticut, so that’s just been, and so then, during that time, I got educated on it, because I had gotten divorced, and I had a lot of time on my hands. I was home with my kids, and so I did an online course for domestic violence prevention, which is funny to say that, through the University of Massachusetts. It was me and policemen. They were introducing themselves, and I was like, “I run a beauty brand. I make lipstick,” and it was just funny. That was great. Then, from there, I had a great professor, and she was like, “You should get some more education,” because I was telling her what I wanted to do, my vision for what I wanted to do. So, I actually went to Columbia and got a master’s in social work.

That started towards the end of COVID and then ended after COVID. So, I got a master’s in social work, and my plan was I bought this house in Connecticut that has a second, little outhouse, and that was going to be my place called the Well Space for Women. There, I was going to be able to do some, I don’t want to say therapy work, but just be like an advisor/counselor for women who are going through, under the umbrella, toxic relationship, controlling relationship, stuff where they just feel not good, and just all they just need is somebody to tell them they’re not crazy, and help give them some tools to get a little stronger, because all you need is to get stronger. When I worked on the domestic violence hotline, I would say to these women, you get them to a calmer state, and I would say things like, “Is there any way for you to do anything for yourself right now?”

When you’re in that state of mind, that’s the last thing on your mind. I was like, “Can you step outside and breathe some air right now? Bring the phone? I’ll go with you. Can you take a shower and get some water on you right now, to get some steam in there? Can you sit down, close your eyes, and do a box breathing exercise?” and all of those things are wellness techniques, and they take two seconds, but what they do is they disconnect you from an agitation state. It just disconnects you from where you are, and you’re like, “Okay,” and that’s sometimes all people really need, is that, to change their mindset or help them think clearly or get out of the house if they need to get out. You know what I mean? Little things like that. The way Naturopathica came to be, going back to it, so I’d given up my family apartment in the city.

I’m on my way to Connecticut to start the well space. I’m studying to take my license tests so I can become a licensed MSW, as opposed to just an MSW, so I can start training. An old friend called Gary Furman calls me, and Gary, I knew him from Estee Lauder, because he is a finance person, a private equity guy, among other things, and he was involved in many of the Estee Lauder acquisitions, Jo Malone being one of them. So, we met when he was involved in the Jo Malone purchase, and we just stayed connected over the years. He called me, so his private equity firm had bought Naturopathica, I think, in 2019 maybe, so just before COVID, and it wasn’t at the place he wanted it to be. This was like, what? 2022, right? He said it wasn’t there. He said, “Could you just take a look at it?”

I was like, “Well, so I’m graduating from school, and I’m going to go build the well space for women, and I’m going to work with women.” He was like, “Why don’t you do it here, because it’s like a wellness company?” I looked at it, and I’d always known about Naturopathica, and I believed in what it does, very much so, and I was like, “All right,” so I did. I had to quickly find an apartment, because I’d given mine up, literally. I gave up my apartment. I was like, “Okay. Go buy furniture, find an apartment fast, and start,” so that’s how it all started. That’s what got me into it. I was like, “All right. Let’s see what can happen here on a platform that’s already built.”

The Naturopathica spa locker room; photo courtesy of Naturopathica

SSR: Yeah. That’s cool. So, did you merge the two? You wanted to do one thing, so how have you kind of taken it from there?

CO: The way I stayed involved in the domestic stuff, that is very important to me, is I got involved with this board, which I love and appreciate, and so that sort of keeps me there. With Naturopathica world though, it’s literally been all consuming. So, when I first got to Naturopathica, and realizing the spas, spending time in the spas, and knowing what the spas do in terms of the healing power of touch, I had all of our therapists, massage therapists, and estheticians trained and certified in oncology treatment services so that they could touch people who are going through chemo and radiation, because your skin changes and your whole body is just an entirely different thing, and it becomes a different thing. Cancer, as I’m sure you know, is on the rise, and it is just proliferating on all ends of the sort of median age spectrum of when people get it. Younger people now with colon cancer is happening a lot. Breast cancer in women is crazy. These are all happening young now and breast cancer is just everywhere. So, I started that in the beginning of 2023, and at the same time, we forged partnerships with Mount Sinai Hospital and with U Penn Abramson’s Cancer Center in Philadelphia. And we have our therapists actually going into chemo rooms and giving massage therapy while people are going through chemo.

SSR: That’s amazing.

CO: So, what happened was, the random thing is that, at the end of 2023 in November, I got diagnosed with breast cancer, and out of nowhere, I had no family history, no genetics at all, they panel test you for everything. I’d never had a call back on my mammogram. I do mammograms religiously every year. I’m healthy, my blood work is perfect, but I had the breast cancer. They do this thing called an Onco score now at stage one, and I had stage one, thank God. They test the aggressiveness of it. They didn’t use to test stage one, but they do now. If you’re 1 to 24, you get radiation or nothing. If you’re above 24, you get chemo, and I was a 31, so I got chemo. I was like, “All right. Let’s try it all. Let’s do it all.”

SSR: So, you were the patient for your own?

CO: Yeah, I was. I got to tell you. It made me feel so good that we were doing this and offering this stuff, because it matters. When you’re going through that, you are in an alternative world, your body dramatically changes, your energy is just gone. You’re totally scared and freaked out and vulnerable in every way. You know what I mean? You don’t know what I mean, and please don’t know what I mean. But it’s to have that experience of the physical touch and feel your body respond, and lucky me, I could go get a massage after chemo every time I went to chemo, and not everybody can. I had the skincare that made my skin stay, because it wrecks you. It wrecks you. Chemo wrecks your skin, wrecks it, and radiation burnt from here, below my boob. Burnt. It’s bright red, so they gave me a cream, which was like, I’m not getting use this cream. What is this cream? I talked to them about it. I’m like, “What is this?” And we kind of laughed about it, and I brought them our stuff and said, “What do you think about this? Is this safe to use?” They were like, “Oh my god. Yeah, definitely.” They would remark to me when I came back for check-ins. They were like, “Oh my God. You’re healing so fast. You look great,” and it was all the skincare and the massage, honestly, among just eating well and blah, blah, blah. That stuff.

SSR: Are you okay now?

CO: I had a six-month an MRI in January, I want to say. February. Recently, and it was fine, but once you have it, to be honest with you, Stacy, you’re always sort of like, “Okay.” “Let’s see what’s going on here,” but all you can do is live your life, honestly. My doctor said, “You’re going to get hit by a bus before you’re going to die from this.” I was like, “Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. But who knows anything? None of us know anything. None of us know anything, so all you can do is just live. That’s what I do.

SSR: So, moving forward, where do you see the company headed, what are you guys focused on, and what are you excited about?

CO: I’m super excited about continuing to grow the thinking around wellbeing, just living a well life and offering our people, people who know about us, people who plug in and people who are aware of it, ways to be healthy, ways to be well, ways to feel good, so that’s what our vision is. And certainly, right now, the mechanisms by which we’re doing that is through the healing power of touch. In our spaces and other people’s spaces, through skincare that we know is clinically proven and totally non-toxic, that’s great, but also things that you learn when you’re in one of our spaces, which are different massage rituals you can do for yourself, different breathing techniques you can do for yourself while you’re at work.

I regularly will take a minute to just breathe during work. I really will. I’ll do a box breathe thing or just close my eyes for just a minute, and it means everything. It’s really just the stuff that I would talk to the women who would call in to the hotline about, just what are ways where you can incorporate the concept of being well during your day? That’s what our thinking is around being a company. That is about living a good life. A healthy life.

SSR: Yeah, and you’re partnering with hotels too, right? To bring your services to them?

CO: Right now we’re in 300. We have 300, we call them professional spa partners, and that is luxury spas, like a Miraval, as well as day spas, like Hay Day or Sana. They’re great partners of ours. Kohler Water Spas is a great partner of ours. So places like that all over the country. And then we now have six of our own spas. When I started, we were New York. It was just little, one in Manhattan and one in East Hampton, and so it was really important, I felt, to get our footprint out of just the Northeast/New York, and spread our sort of word and message to partner, be able to partner with other hospitals.

So, actually, I was diagnosed when I was at Kohler in 2023 on my way to open our spa in Palm Beach, so Colony. We’re opened at The Colony in November of last year, 2024? 2024, yeah. God, crazy. And we just opened in Hotel Mollie in Aspen, and we just opened in the Renaissance in downtown Phoenix, and we opened a spa in Tribeca in Manhattan, which is great. It’s going phenomenally well, and we opened another one in Midtown Manhattan in a hotel called The Chatwal, which is a beautiful, iconic luxury hotel. Also, it’s going great. Yeah, that’s what we have.

SSR: Amazing. And more to come, I’m sure.

CO: Yeah. Absolutely, more to come. Yeah, all of us are really excited. Everyone on the team is really excited. We have a great team. We have an energized team, and everyone’s super passionate about the healing aspect of it, and that’s what makes us excited. It’s like we’re not just working for a beauty company. We don’t call ourselves that. It’s really special. Yeah, it’s really special.

SSR: Amazing. Well, we always end the podcast, not that I want to, but we have to for time, with the question that is the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson learned along the way, or lessons? It could be two.

CO: My greatest lessons learned along the way, honestly, is this too shall pass.

SSR: Oh, I love that.

CO: This too shall pass. Don’t let it rile you. It is a moment in time, and it will pass.

SSR: Well, we’ll leave it at that, because I think that’s a perfect way to end. Thank you so much for sharing your incredible story and taking the time to be with us today.

CO: Thank you so much, Stacy. Really good to see you.

The post Cathy O’Brien appeared first on Hospitality Design.

As CEO of Marriott International, Anthony Capuano is leading the hospitality giant through a period of record growth, with 2024 marking a banner year for new openings and development deals. His strategic focus on leveraging Marriott’s industry-leading scale and diverse brand portfolio has attracted a new wave of owners and franchisees, particularly in the midscale segment.

Looking ahead to 2025, Capuano remains committed to enhancing guest experiences via branded residences, outdoor hospitality accommodations, and Marriott’s evolving loyalty program.

Here, Capuano talks about how Marriott is responding to the changing demands of modern travelers.

What do you attribute Marriott’s record growth in 2024 to?
Anthony Capuano: Our owners and franchisees, as well as prospective ones, look at the strength of the brand measured by metrics like RevPAR, the power of the revenue engines that are driving top-line revenue into the hotels, the expertise and economies of scale that impact margins, and the strength and reach of the loyalty platform.

When you look at us, we have industry-leading scale, and we have the industry’s largest loyalty platform. We leverage that scale to drive top-line and bottom-line performance for our owners. We continue to try to evolve the loyalty platform to go beyond transactional [purposes] and instead use it as a portal that exposes guests to the breadth of our hotel portfolio and our family of brands as well as the wealth of experiences that membership gives you access to.

The St. Regis Residences Casares, Costa del Sol in Spain, designed by Marcio Kogan, Lázaro Rosa-Violán, and Isabel Duprat

How has this year marked Marriott’s entry into the midscale segment?
AC: If you’re a developer that has often aspired to be a Marriott partner, you’re probably not doing your first deal as a St. Regis. But in terms of the bite-sized nature of the investment, in terms of the relative complexity to construct and operate, entering into the midscale segment in a global way has opened the aperture to bring in new owners and franchises.

What are you excited about in 2025?
AC: If you have hundreds of new hotel openings, that means there are thousands of new career opportunities for our associates around the world [and] hundreds of new destinations our loyal guests and members can explore. If you’re launching new growth platforms, there are myriad ways for our owners and franchisees to continue to grow within the Marriott family.

What keeps you up at night?
AC: I sent a letter earlier this year to all 9,100 of our GMs around the world, and the tone of the letter was that there a lot of smart people sitting in Bethesda, Maryland developing these amazing strategies but none of it matters if you are not inspiring your teams to provide the warm, genuine care to every guest that walks through the door. That has defined this company for nearly a century.

Among the things I worry about going into 2025 is that if a single leader perceives that we’re singularly focused on growth for the sake of growth, and as a result, it dilutes their commitment to taking care of our guests and our associates, then that’s a bad place for us to be.

A one-bedroom villa, crafted by Wimberly Interiors, at Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Ummahat Islands, Saudi Arabia

How you responding to what travelers want today?
AC: Today’s travelers want authenticity, they want local, they want interesting. They do not want a vanilla box. There was a period in history where people took great comfort in that. I’m sure there are still travelers that feel that way, but the majority of the travelers don’t want to have to look at the plate on the phone to remember what city they’re in. They want art, design, and F&B—all those things that give them a sense of place.

Where do you see growth potential in your family of brands?
AC: We have the benefit of having the industry’s largest luxury portfolio and pipeline. We have seven extraordinary luxury brands, and we see it in the consumer spending data that we get from our partners at American Express and Chase.

Our luxury consumer, that high-income household consumer, continues to prioritize travel and experience. They’re spending disposable income, and we’re well-positioned to take advantage of that.

Similarly, lower-income households continue to prioritize travel and experiences but with a more budget-conscious lens. The fact that we’ve gone so heavily into midscale around the world has opened the opportunity to attract a broader customer base.

Why did you want to get into the outdoor sector with the acquisition of Postcard Cabins and by bringing Trailborn into the Marriott system?
AC: If you look at the portfolio deals we’ve done over the last few years, they tend to fill a gap for us. This falls in that space. If our customers want local, unique, and experiential, then outdoor falls in that sweet spot. We could have launched organically, but even though these are small platforms, they’re well established. They punch way above their weight in terms of consumer awareness. They’re a great launchpad for us to grow, whether it be regionally or globally.

RELATED: Marriott Heads Outdoors with Postcard Cabins and Trailborn

Trailborn Surf & Sound, designed by Post Company, in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina; photo by Leslie Ryann McKellar

What is the modern traveler looking for today?
AC: Travelers are becoming more and more sophisticated and they recognize even for an individual traveler, they might take 10 trips. One type of hotel does not best fit their needs for every trip. Recognizing that there are different types of accommodations that best meet the needs of certain trip purposes has fueled a lot of our strategy.

We didn’t launch Marriott homes and villas to go head-to-head with Airbnb. We did it because what we heard from our loyal members was for certain types of trips, think multigenerational vacations, a multi-bedroom home with a kitchen and a living room and a backyard, and all those things better fit their needs. If they can’t find that within the Marriott ecosystem, we deliver them into the warm welcoming arms of my friend Brian Chesky. I don’t want to do that—I want to keep them in the Marriott ecosystem.

How is the booming branded residence segment helping set hotels apart in a crowded luxury market?
AC: This is the analogy I like to use. You wake up tomorrow morning and say, ‘I love Miami. I’m going to buy a condo on the beach.’ You get in your car and you drive up and down Collins Boulevard, but there are 100 towers lining the beach and most of them have luxury in the name.

It’s challenging to figure out which one to even look at. Then you happen to see one that has the St. Regis or the Ritz-Carlton logos and that helps you narrow it down. You know what the finish levels are going to be, you have a sense of what the design and service is going to look like. That’s why our branded residential business and those developers command such a price-per-foot premium because people are wrapping themselves in that comfort of knowing what to expect. That’s why people gravitate toward the branded product.

Almare, A Luxury Collection Resort, Isla Mujeres in Mexico, a collaboration with AB Living and Design Positif

What was the reasoning behind the recent company-wide restructuring?
AC: When [former CEO, the late] Arne Sorenson set up the continental structure a little more than a decade ago, we were less than half the size of what we are today. We went from 70-some countries to 144, from 4,100 hotels to 9,100, so it was time to take a look and ask: ‘Are we optimally organized?’

Our continent teams have grown up. They are experts on the markets where we do business. We set out to take advantage of that set of dynamics. Part of the way we did that was to empower the continents teams in a meaningful way to allow real-time localized decision-making and streamline the speed and nimble nature of how we interact with the constituents we serve, our associates, our guests, and our owners and franchisees.

The creation of Diana Plazas-Trowbridge’s role [as chief product lodging officer, U.S. and Canada], which is replicated in each of the continents, allows us to shrink the number of decisions that have to make their way back to Bethesda.

A version of this article originally appeared in HD’s February/March 2025 issue.

The post Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano Looks Ahead appeared first on Hospitality Design.

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Jason Brown and Brad Guidi, from Blue Flag Development. How are you guys today?

Jason Brown: Doing really well. Thanks, Stacy. Thanks for having us.

SSR: Thanks for being here.

Brad Guidi: Yeah, doing great. Thank you.

SSR: We’re excited. Okay, so since there’s two of you, we’re going to divvy it up and we’ll start with you, Jason. Where did you grow up?

JB: I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston.

SSR: Awesome. And was there any early inkling that hospitality would be something you pursued later in life? Any early moments of hospitality or travel?

JB: Yeah, I won’t bore you with a very long story of it, but my mom’s family are developers in New York, and amongst many other things, they built a hotel called the Soho Grand, back in 1996. And I was lucky enough to convince them to let me intern there and live in the hotel for two summers. That combined with seeing them build what will become the TriBeCa Grand now is the Roxy Hotel in New York, was like this light bulb that went off that I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world, spending your time, figuring out where the bar should go and the guest journey and all that. Prior to that I had no idea that there was even anything like a hotel school, and someone introduced me to the fact that there was a place called Cornell that had one and was lucky enough to go there. So, that is the very short version of what happened.

The Beachside Hotel on Nantucket, designed by Parts and Labor Design; photo by Matt Kisiday

SSR: What were some of your memories or stories from those two summers and living and working there?

JB: Yeah, a lot. That was the place when it opened for really, celebrities and going into what will become more the entertainment business going to New York. Soho, previously, had been a pretty bad area, which a lot of people don’t remember, and the hotel was kind of on the forefront of that before 60 Thompson opened down the street, and then Mercer and a couple of the other big boutique ones. So I got to see lots of crazy stuff. We had a lot of artists that were living in residence. The York was there, Britney Spears was living there and recording, Sex in the City was shooting its first couple seasons.

But my craziest night, it was night number three of doing the overnight shift of engineering, and you just get whatever weird call comes in, and there was some party happening in the penthouse. I went up there and swear to God, we went in, it was like me and this 20-year-old guy, and I was 14 at the time. And there was a cheetah in a cage, straight out of a movie thing, and we just shut the door and we’re like, “We got to call the police. I don’t know what to do about this.” I was just like, “Does this happen every night?” And he’s like, “No. That was a pretty rare… I haven’t seen that one before.”

SSR: How did you get the cheetah out? 

JB: I don’t know. Way above my pay grade on how to deal with the cheetah in the penthouse.

SSR: Have you seen a cheetah since? Just curious.

JB: No.

SSR: No. Okay, good. That is amazing. And you said your parents developed the hotel?

JB: My mom’s brother is a developer, a guy named Leonard Stern. He developed through a company that he owns called Hartz Mountain with his son Emmanuel. He was my cousin.

SSR: Did you learn a lot from him?

JB: It was unbelievable. I mean, I think that was my first introduction to hospitality as theater. All my hotels stays, growing up, were not extravagant like that by any means, and this was a real window into, one, bringing furniture and FF&E and scent and lighting that they all used in their estates and their amazing penthouses in Manhattan to the broader audience of folks like us that could experience it. But also, how they actually went through and set up that guest journey from the second you arrive to the second you leave and treating mainly the public spaces as different set designs as theater. The people that worked there, they were very specific about who those people were and why they were working there. And that I think, in a lot of ways kicked off my interest in the boutique side of the industry and it’s why it’s always where I’ve come back to time and time again.

SSR: Yeah, for sure. Were your parents at all involved in anything hospitality or?

JB: My dad is a pediatrician named Charlie Brown. To this day, other than him getting to go to our restaurants in our hotels, I don’t think he could tell you what we do at all. My mom is many things, but definitely not in our world either, so I think they just appreciate the fact that Brad and I get to build places where they can go and get treated like VIPs.

SSR: Love it. Okay, so you went to Cornell. Did that help cement your love for all things hospitality and hotels?

JB: Yeah, I think a lot of people say this, but I wasn’t really sure what to expect going to the hotel school. Certainly, you had no real kind of experience other than those two summers with it. It was amazing. They forced you to take both tracks. So you do things like I went to cooking class for eight hours every Wednesday. My partner in the class is this guy Kevin Booth who played football at Cornell and would go on to wings when Super Bowl rings with the Giants, and chose the hotel school because he thought it was easy. So we were in there together being the worst chefs in the room. And you did stuff like that on one side to learn all the true operations. You had to run a restaurant as a class and the grade was who made the most money plus got the best guest scores and all this stuff.

And then on the other it was just strict, like you were in business school case study after case study after case study for four years, learning how all of these companies from huge mega public companies to smaller entrepreneurial ventures got built and what they experienced along the way and combining the finance development track with the actual hands-on experience. At least for me was an amazing foundation to go into what we do today. And the best part about all of it was really just the people that were there. A lot of the folks that we were there with and just the Cornell community outside of the hotel school is really tight and helps us in many different ways all the time for everything I think that we do.

SSR: And then you went on to Ernst & Young, right?

JB: Yes. This was 2005, so a good time to be alive and coming out of school. There still weren’t investment banking jobs like banks and big private equity funds, and institutions still looked at hotels as daily leases. So they didn’t really think about it as a good place to invest their capital when you could go invest into an office building or a apartment building with long-term leases in there. We all know EY, they had and still have a small hospitality consulting group in their real estate arm that just…

Basically, they just hires from these hotel schools. And there’s three people in those classes every time, and I was lucky enough to get hired into that and it was a great place to learn. Same kind of dynamic where we worked on everything from individual development deals in Manhattan, advising those developers on what brand to choose and how to capitalize the deal and underwriting and all that jazz. To one of the early projects was for us looking for the Prince of Saudi Arabia, Prince Al Waleed, at the time and Cascade, which is Bill Gates’ private family office, to buy and combine the OpCos and the PropCos of Raffles and Fairmont. So ran around the world. I was 22 and got to jump around to all the Fairmonts and Raffles and decide what a spreadsheet told me they were worth. So, it was pretty good.

SSR: Pretty interesting. Does that top the cheetah, just out of curiosity?

JB: It definitely does not top the cheetah. I’m still waiting for Brad and I to walk into one of our suites and see a cage, and then we can retire.

SSR: Yeah, then you’re done.

JB: We did full circle.

SSR: From EY, you went on to Kimpton and then Yotel, very interesting juxtaposition, I’m sure, between the two. Can you tell a little bit about what you took away from both experiences and is there one, I hate to say deal or asset, but hotel project that really sticks out to you or accomplishment along the way?

JB: Sure. Kimpton, I was really lucky to get that opportunity. It was right at the time where, as I call it, the new guard was coming on board. Guy named Mike Depatie was the CEO at the time. My direct boss was a guy named Ben Rowe who would go on to be CFO and then now is a founder and one of the managing partners of KHB Capital, which is the spin out of the private equity fund business that we had at that time. But Kimpton was going from a bunch of family owned hotels to thinking about should they put their name onto it, should it be a hard brand, should it be a soft brand? We had these Palomars, these Monacos and these one-offs and then to actually raising true private equity funds with discretionary capital to go off and actually build the portfolio, even though they were still managing for other folks and building the Kimpton brand both ways.

That was really fantastic for me for many different reasons, but one, just because of how unique that was, where you could wear your private equity owner hat one day, your brand building hat the other day, and then an overarching corporate strategy of both those things kind of all intertwined. What do you do and how do you do it? Those folks taught me most of the stuff that I know today. They’re still some of the smartest people that I’ve ever met. One of my favorite deals when we were there, and again this went from 2007 to basically the end of 2011, so right into the great financial crisis and then coming out of it. We were really bullish on Brad’s hometown, Philly, and we bought a building right off of Rittenhouse Square that would later become the Palomar.

That was my first entry into, really going into a location sort of like Soho Grand, that was amazing at one time, kind of fell off over the years and being able to acquire at a really attractive basis and turn it into something that I think was one of many pieces of the puzzle of bringing that area into its next phase. And it was this old amazing architects building that was historic. We got historic tax credits which people didn’t really do before. We used this thing called EB-5 financing, which at the time was totally novel and really difficult to figure out how to do. And ultimately, Brad can tell you his answer whether he liked it or not. I think we delivered something pretty cool for the constraints we had at the time budget-wise. But that deal really stuck out at Kimpton.

SSR: And then Yotel, such a different-

JB: Wild, wild. I had gotten asked to move from San Francisco to New York, where I’d obviously lived before, to run acquisitions development for that part of the world for Kimpton on our funds. I got introduced to this guy named Simon Woodroof and another guy named Gerard Green. And Simon has this aura over in the UK as a mini Richard Branson. He had many ventures that didn’t work, many that did. He had this thing called YO! Sushi that he sold for a lot of money, bought a house book on the Thames, lived kind of the dream. He really came up with this idea of, “Hey, look, if the first class seats that I’m sitting on in a BA plane can move, can I create a smaller room that has a bed that kind of moves in the same mechanism? And there should be this affordable luxury segment of the industry.”

So when I met Gerard, who was really the CEO at the time, running things day to day, he had brought in a backer from the Middle East and they had purchased from Related, a big condo portion of a project called MiMA in 42nd and 10th. It was back in 2011. And me being the dumbass that I am, was like, “That’s the worst part of New York. You’re buying in Hell’s Kitchen.” And they were building a property-

BG: What don’t know is I was living four blocks away during that time in the worst part of New York.

SSR: At the Lincoln Tunnel?

JB: Guidi is always at the forefront. You just have to follow where he is and that’s where you want to buy real estate. Well, I was wrong, obviously. And this thing was in north, it fits 700 rooms into about 200… Normal-sized rooms would’ve been like 250 rooms. So I saw this thing and also was what I deem, and I say this lovingly to all my friends at Yotel, I know I say this, like a giant purple spaceship in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen. I just didn’t think that it could translate into the American kind of ethos that you could have this 170 square foot room, sparse, no amenities, you can’t get room service, you can’t do anything else. And kind of this very Japanese inspired, European, then overlay with the under lighting and the LEDs and all this stuff.

That’s what I kind of said to them. I was like, “Look, I got a great job, amazing people that believe in me. I’m still really young, I’m going to just keep doing what I’m doing.” But ultimately, they kept in touch and they kept showing me how much money they were making and they were running 90 plus percent occupancy out of the gate, 45% margins, just stuff I had never seen before. And thankfully, this goes back to the Kimpton experience where we’re just working with the most amazing people. At that time in my career, the CEO that I was talking about, Mike Depatie, I called him and I said, “Listen, they got this opportunity to go jump into the founding team of this thing.” And he had created a couple similar brands earlier in his career and sold them to Marriott’s and other places, and he’s like, “Look, just go try it, if you believe in it. If it doesn’t work, come back here.”

I think that gave me the confidence to go jump over to Yotel. And as soon as I landed at Yotel I knew it was way out of my depth. I’d gone to Canada once. I’m the oldest of six kids, so traveling anywhere was prohibitively expensive for us. And they were like, “You’re going to be global chief development officer.” And I was like, “I haven’t been anywhere ever.” And they’re like, “You’ll figure it out.”

The Beachside Hotel on Nantucket; photo by Matt Kisiday

SSR: Like, here we go.

JB: My most proud deal, because there’s a bunch of them over there, if I were to really think about it, we built an 800 key hotel, the one development a year at Alice a long time ago, on Orchard Road in Singapore. That was one where we just had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t know anybody in Singapore. We literally just showed up and cold called a bunch of people. And for that to come to fruition and be the hotel that is today in an area that just literally is on the other side of the world, that was a pretty proud moment to see that all kind of come together.

SSR: Amazing. Awesome. All right, let’s switch over to Brad. So Brad, where did you grow up?

BG: Yeah, so I grew up outside of Philadelphia in Montgomery County. And from there, lived in D.C., lived in New York, went back to Philly and ultimately landed here in Boston about nine years ago.

SSR: Got it. Okay. So what were you like as a kid? Did you have a love of design or any kind of inclination that-

BG: Yeah, as a kid, I was always into art. My grandfather, who I kind of look at it as my mentor, he came from Italy. He was an artist, a self-taught musician, just an absolute Renaissance man. I kind of put him on a pedestal throughout my whole childhood. So anything he liked, I immediately liked, from art to music. So I wasn’t as much into sports as most young boys are. I was spending my days brawling and making movies and I thought I wanted to be a filmmaker at one point, and my parents sent me to the New York Film Academy for a summer. So I always had interests more in the world of design and art.

SSR: Yeah. Did you end up going to school for that?

BG: No, I went to Georgetown and I was a major in finance.

SSR: Perfect. Well, at least you have both sides now.

BG: Yeah, I mean, my brain works like that. It actually works well for development, being able to balance the design side and the financial metrics on both sides of the brain.

SSR: Yeah, you have both brains. So what did you do after college? Did you stay in finance for a bit or did you-

BG: Yeah, no, so I took that finance degree and I went into advertising. Moved to New York and worked at Saatchi & Saatchi. Made no money for a few years, but absolutely loved it. Thought it was super interesting. Worked with Procter & Gamble, was flying out to Cincinnati. I was on the Olay skincare account, which as a 21-year-old living in New York, it was a really great time.

SSR: Did you know a lot about that at the time?

BG: Yeah, so interestingly, I always kind of had this entrepreneurship drive and there was an opportunity to buy, essentially, a chain of music stores. It was kind of a weird convoluted way, I got there and we got to the finish line on this buying this chain of music stores and I left New York and I moved back to Philadelphia and the whole deal fell apart. So at that point, I grew up… One thing I didn’t tell you about my grandfather, he was also a builder and my family are third generation builders and developers outside of Philadelphia. So I also grew up on a construction site, learning how things were built from day one. My dad kind of looked at me and said, “You left the city, you’re here. Why don’t you come work for us for a few months until you get back on your feet?” And those few months turned into 12 years.

SSR: As they do.

BG: Yeah, I learned everything from my dad, being on the site. I never thought of myself as a designer. I was never confident enough to say that because at that point I was a builder in taking orders from designers and homeowners. And what I soon realized was, I think I know more than these people. I’m just not confident enough to say it. I think learning that and gaining that confidence was kind of big part of me growing in my career.

SSR: Yeah. So was your grandfather still at the business at the same time too?

BG: No. My grandfather retired several years before and I worked with my dad and my two uncles.

SSR: What was it like working in a family business?

BG: It is difficult. It was great and difficult, and working with your dad has moments of absolute glory and just absolute pains. Ultimately, I kind of just had an itch that needed to be scratched and it was hard. Leaving your family’s company, especially a place where you’re there for 12 years and you’re so intricately intertwined, was the toughest decision I ever made. But we left and my wife and my six-month old at the time, kind of left our whole life in Philly and moved to Boston where we started Blue Flag Development. We started with four houses on Nantucket, as residential developers.

SSR: So that’s how you guys started. Okay. Real quick… Well, maybe we can get into it later, but that itch that you had, was it ever to go more into commercial or hospitality or was it just to do something different?

BG: No, absolutely. I always loved hospitality. I always loved, this is a weird one, I always loved casinos. I don’t know if it was that-

SSR: Because you lived outside of Atlantic City?

BG: I remember telling my parents I wanted to be a set designer, just weird stuff that kids don’t say, but it’s always been a fascination of mine. In fact, when I was living in Philadelphia, Starwood was opening a new hotel and I was working for my father and I heard that the creative director of W Hotels was going to be at this launch party for this hotel they were opening. And I was like, “I need to go, I need to meet this person. I need to get a job, somehow.” I went and I totally clammed up and I was terrified and I hid in the corner and I left that party totally defeated and I’m like, “you know what? It will never come true. This is what I do. I’m a home builder.” So it was always an absolute passion of mine. I just didn’t know how to get from point A to point B.

SSR: Got it. Okay. Do you bring a lot of that residential sensibility, do you think, into what you do now?

BG: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the way we kind of approach all our hotels, a lot of hotels use architectural lighting, they have a much more architect’s view on the design. We kind of look at it more of building a house, and I think that’s what people feel at home in our spaces. If you walk through a lot of our properties, you’ll notice most of our lighting is done with decorative fixtures, not recessed lights and LEDs. So, we approach everything from this residential eye and I think that’s what makes our properties feel different.

SSR: And you can feel it too, just even in the photographs. Okay, hold on one quick second. My TV, if I yell too loud, turns itself on by itself. I don’t know why. So, how did you two meet?

JB: Yeah, so we got introduced through a mutual connection. A woman who was in the hospitality industry. As Brad was saying, Blue Flag Development was building houses in residential and getting interested in some commercial. They had a hospitality type project they were looking at. And this was right for me as I was coming to the end of Yotel, we had this transaction upcoming, which would’ve been Starwood Capital coming in and buying a big chunk of it. We did what we wanted to do over the six years. I, for personal reasons, my family’s from here, my wife’s from here. We had kids, wanted to stay in Boston and took a pause and was like, “What am I going to do next?” And I think as I got introduced to Brad, it was pretty clear that I had some ideas on the hospitality side that he also thought were interesting and that we should kind of collab.

It just kind of, I think, serendipitously came together that way. We then looked at a bunch of stuff, which got us to looking at a couple different thesis. One is why we built this AutoCamp project, which we can talk more about. And two, what will become now Faraway Nantucket, is Robert’s Collection. We purchased both, basically, same time before the pandemic. Clearly, we think that the thesis on these Faraway and other hotels on these islands are really interesting. Fast-forward almost seven years or so, here we are running Blue Fag Capital together.

Faraway Martha’s Vineyard, designed by Workshop/APD; photo by Matt Kisiday

SSR: So wait, okay, let’s backtrack too. So you met, and I know people always talk and this is what I love talking to entrepreneurs about. When was it, “Okay, we’re going to take the leap”? Or what was that kind of reason that you’re like, I like Brad enough to leave my job and start this or I like Jason enough, I think this is going to work? I feel like a lot of people have ideas, they have them, they want to do something, but actually stepping out and doing it is a whole different conversation.

JB: Yeah, I’ll answer first from my perspective. I think Brad can answer from his. I think that’s part of the beauty of doing stuff together. Look, there’s been lots of iterations of what we’ve done. That’s part of being entrepreneurial, right? It’s hard. So you have to be able to pivot and kind of believe in yourself. I think as he was saying, we both have that entrepreneurial itch for better or for worse, sometimes for worse, sometimes hopefully for better. But I think ultimately, it’s very rare for me when I meet other people who just kind of want to put light back into the world and do really, really cool stuff. If you really want to build very authentic, very cool projects and you’re kind of like, “I can make more money elsewhere, it’s much easier. I don’t have personal guarantees up to go get this done. And if it all goes away, explain to my wife and kids why I wasted all of our time and our money, we lost our house.” You just don’t find people like that a lot.

Certainly, in my experience, you didn’t find it back then in Boston. In New York, maybe. In Chicago, in LA, in London. I think there’s more of those types of people, in the hospitality industry, that are looking to do that. So when I first met Brad, it was really this connection over just, “Hey, we really want to build really cool stuff and we really want live at the bleeding edge and just see if we can make it work.” And I think that for me, was something that happened over a couple of months of us just kind of getting to know each other. I was crashing in Brad’s office space on Newbury Street in Boston and we were testing a couple of these things out.

And then over the years we’ve restructured the company in a bunch of different ways to now end up where we are today with a real staff and all the capital we have under management, all the projects we have going on. But along the way, it’s all of that trusting that you’re going to be there with somebody who is going to live and die there together. Certainly, neither of us want to do this alone, and you really only learn that, like a relationship, over a long period of time going through really hard things. So from my perspective, that was… I’m grateful to the universe for aligning that and making that happen for us.

SSR: What was the name Blue Flag? Was that just something that you already had or does it mean something?

BG: Yeah, no Blue Flag, actually, well, it has several meanings. The first meaning is that the blue flag iris is a flower that’s indigenous in Nantucket. And the first project that we built, which had these four homes on it, had a blue flag iris growing out of it. There is a nautical flag called the Blue Peter, which is essentially a blue square with a white square in the middle, and that is the flag that the ship raises when it’s about to launch. So it just seemed like kind of a natural name to give a new company starting out, and it stuck.

SSR: I love that. Okay. All right. So what was the first hospitality project, was that AutoCamp?

JB: So we had two at the same time. The way that we approach the world, which is, I think again, nice that we have institutional backgrounds on this, is really thematically. We’re not just kind of picking projects and seeing what happens. And at the time, we were super interested in this idea for many different reasons, that being entrepreneurial in hotel space because, and this goes back to what I was saying before when I was looking for a job, now hotels have been institutionalized. There was a ton of real, both REIT money, private equity money and real banking money going into the hospitality ecosystem, as you know Stacy.

That was really looking at, of all of those classes, boutique hotels as a really interesting way to not just deliver a product that the guests wanted, and that was kind of pushing a segment forward in the industry. But also, had really good financial returns because traditionally you’re just going into bad areas, “even though they’re not bad”, but up and coming or reverberated areas of these cities that already are amazing cities, right? New York, Philly, all these places, and then you’re helping to kind push these neighborhoods back.

That had kind of been done, in our opinion. And if you looked at winning interesting deals, it was now just cost capital. The REITs will always win, at least back at that time, 2018-ish when we were looking at this. We really had to go outside and say, “Okay, where could we go to deliver great product but also great returns and be entrepreneurial?” I had always been trained, never go into a seasonal market, never do a small deal under $150 million, just as hard. You just don’t get paid as much. And we wanted to challenge that. So this was, again, pre-pandemic, early 2018 and we said, “Look, we have an opportunity to buy a hotel on Nantucket,” which obviously was Brad’s backyard, and we also had an opportunity to build this auto camp out in Cape Cod. Let’s do that in different ways and see which one works.

For a bunch of different reasons, we were more interested in the hotel on these kind of buried entry markets that really were constrained as an overall thesis than the glamping side, which we thought there were a bunch of interesting brands doing this already. We didn’t really see how we were going to add more to that. So ultimately, that led us down the path of not just acquiring Robert’s Collection, which will become the Faraway, but also starting to pretty quickly acquire other assets around that. And then surviving the pandemic, which was a fascinating time for us to be alive. We were pretty sure the whole company would just shut down.

BG: Not only surviving, we were opening Faraway during the pandemic. It got to the point where we couldn’t hire people to move the furniture, so we were literally carrying in furniture up three flights of stairs in these old historic buildings, just to get this thing open in time. It was a wild, wild time.

SSR: So how do you think you survived the pandemic? I know everyone has a different story, but I mean, you’re brand new, you’re starting out, you’re opening these two properties. What do you think made you come out on the other side?

BG: There was definitely a call where we all kind of looked at each other, we were like, “Are we going to be in business or not?” And we doubled down on it.

JB: Yeah. I mean, I think Stacy, look, there’s probably books we can write one day about all this, because there’s a lot of different factors that go into it. But I think ultimately, we had put ourselves in a place where we didn’t have real employees, it was just us. So our carry costs were as low as we could make them at a time that was really uncertain. We had projects in development that were still kind of creeping forward even though there were all these orders to stop stuff. And kudos to Brad and his development side of the business, of being able to figure out how to skirt around some of those gubernatorial orders and issues of who could be building and who couldn’t be building. So we looked at that combined with just, as Brad was saying, our real… We had a lot of conviction that this was just going to work. And why don’t we just kind of do it until someone tells us we literally can’t do it anymore.

BG: Ironically, we kind of hit the timing perfectly. What no one predicted was the pandemic was going to spawn all of these people wanting to go to these drive-to markets. We didn’t know that at the time, but when we opened, it was kind of the perfect timing for opening a hotel in Nantucket.

JB: And I think, Stacy, to Brad’s point of us building and opening into that environment, I think this is good for other people to know because it’s a story that we certainly didn’t know it was going to turn out well. When we opened that Faraway Hotel, we were all geared up to open the summer and literally the governor, at the time, of Massachusetts came in and shut down the ferries, shut down all travel and shut down all hotels. So we’re sitting on this hotel that we have spent tens of millions of dollars on, with private investors, all of whom know where we live and are way richer and more powerful than we ever will be, and they’re going to come find us for that money. And saying ourselves, “It’s over. It’s done. We have a loan from a bank on this thing, we’re not going to make it.” Right?

We were able, finally, towards the end of that summer to open for about six weeks. Basically, right into the second week of August through September we made positive net operating income, NOI, on that asset for just those six weeks being open than the entire year. And that was a light bulb moment because we were like, “Wow.” One, in addition, Urban Core Hotel, you can’t flex staffing and all the stuff we were doing there to that point. And two, this really is our thesis on fire now.

What I think also really gave us a lot of confidence is we have incredible investors, and we called a lot of them and their advice was, “Listen, you guys just don’t have the information to see the trends that are going to come in, the inflationary environment that’s going to come out of this. Double down on what you’re doing. Go raise private equity funds. Go faster, and don’t look at shiny pennies. There’ll be tons of shiny pennies that come in that aren’t in your thesis, but you could probably push them as close as you could and justify it. Just go do what you guys are focused on and we’ll be here with you. Even if it takes a couple of years to just buy these things and then they cash flow, that’s what we would like you guys to do.”

I think having that support system and having those folks that are giving us real time feedback and information, that helped us through that period of time that was really, really choppy, and has allowed us to be in a position that we are, I think, today. Because that was managing that risk profile with investors and partners that are going to just be there together through it. And that’s super, super important. I think us really focusing on that side of the business post pandemic, and that’s 100% of what we do today, is that private equity hospitality side. That has allowed us, I think, to make really good decisions and never get ourselves too over our skis in ways that may truly threaten our ability not to run Blue Flag Capital as a business or the individual properties as assets.

Faraway Martha’s Vineyard; photo by Matt Kisiday

SSR: Also, AutoCamp must have had great returns too. I mean, as an outdoor hospitality venue, that probably did really well as well. No?

JB: Yeah, it did. I mean, they’ve got a great partner in this firm called Whitman-Peterson that I think they’ve grown with since then. I think the product that was delivered on Cape Cod was unlike anything. Absolutely. I mean, all these drive-to markets, I think, really experienced a big boom after the pandemic. And I think to an extent, depending on where you are in those drive-to locations, you’re still seeing the rewards of that going forward.

SSR: Yeah, it was crazy to watch. I mean, just the pent-up demand, everyone thought hospitality was dead and then it was like, “Oh no, just kidding. Here we go.” So talk to me about Faraway Hotels. So you got the first one open, more coming. What do you want to create for the brand and what’s your outlook for it?

JB: Sure. I can give you a little background on how he came to it and then Brad can take it away as that brand’s creative director on where we’re going with and what we’re thinking about. But I think like all great brands, it didn’t start as a brand. We acquired a bunch of old captain houses in what we thought of as the center of Nantucket. We wanted to figure out how to bring those all together in a really cohesive way. Everything we do, and this isn’t new, but all the brands that we really like and the folks that are our heroes in this world do this, has to be based on storytelling.

So we sat down and started to come up with a real story that Brad can tell you more about, even before we picked the name or what it was. That basically translated into an opportunity for us to buy something that… As a kid, I grew up going to Martha’s Vineyard in addition to Nantucket, and had been staring at this old Kelly House complex. Very similar to a bunch of old captain buildings, a lot of stuff in need of desperate repair and no cohesive, really, story to what it was, even though it was kind of a big chunk of the town of Edgartown. And we had the opportunity, because of COVID, to acquire that asset.

When we bought it, we sat down and said, “Listen, we think we can translate this story we’ve created for Faraway.” It’s a very similar type of feel, this urban core, if you will, in an island. And it just seemed like the right thing to do. We weren’t thinking about, “Should we go build this and scale,” is because our thesis is not built around that. Our thesis is around building, just like a Kimpton, lots of different types of hotels in these markets that we really like and delivering great two-star product, great three-star product, great four-star product. And it’s evolved, I think, into something that is exciting for us. So that’s kind of the groundwork of where that came from.

Brad, I think, can tell you more about the origin story of Faraway and what we’re thinking about going forward. Again, not just for Faraway, but we’ve got a lot of branded hotels that we’re pretty excited about, and we really like leaning into the building brands of one as well.

BG: Look, Faraway is all about drama, and that’s probably not surprising based on what we’ve been talking about as hospitality, as theater. We go as far as to tell our staff, especially in these seasonal markets, you have 60 days, we’re putting on a Broadway show for 60 days, and every single day, every single night we need to nail it. After that, you can take off the rest of the year and take a break, but for those 60 days, this Broadway show has to be perfect. So before we open a Faraway, we actually write what we call the script. And it’s a real story. And I think storytelling is kind of an overused term in hospitality. I kind of hate saying it, to be honest, I want to come up with a new word for it. But we write a real story, like Faraway Nantucket.

The story was we imagine up this girl who grew up in Nantucket in the 1700s into the 1800s, and when she turned 17 or 18, her and eight of her closest friends stole a ship and they went out and it was supposed to be like a month-long voyage and instead it lasted 15 years. 15 years later, they returned and they had came back from traveling the world with art and recipes and spices and all these things that Nantucket’s never seen before. And Faraway became kind of this center for all that. In Martha’s Vineyard we did another story. And as we developed Faraway into this idea of there’s always going to be a heroine, and then we developed the story around the heroine, which that informs the design, which informs the F&B, which informs the guest experience, which informs the scent in the lobby. So it’s real storytelling. It’s not just a term we throw around. There actually is a real story grounded in each one of these properties. And I think that’s what makes Faraway kind of different.

The properties themselves lean into maximalism. There’s definitely a lot of pattern on pattern, a lot of use of colors. It is about escapism, for sure. I think that one of the big things that we did in Nantucket that was really cool with the design, is we had this courtyard. So the old Robert’s property was surrounded by a courtyard, four buildings and it was full of hydrangeas and some picnic tables and some benches. We looked at this courtyard and we’re like, “Man, this is so underused, the public doesn’t even know this is here.” We turned that into Sister Ship. And that’s our restaurant that sits at kind of the heartbeat of our Faraway Nantucket property.

Part of what we did there, is we built these ivy walls, these walls of ivy, and we created outdoor hallways with these ivy walls. So you can check-in in the lobby in one building and go through kind of hallways outside and not have to interact with guests eating at Sister Ship. So, having these kind of moments of privacy when you want them and moments of being involved in the activity when you want them. So we’ve taken that and have applied that to all our properties now.

SSR: Well, and going back, too, what you said about the residential approach, it feels dramatic and like you said, maximalism and texture and pattern and photographs and everything layered, but it also feels welcoming in a home. So you guys found that-

BG: It’s kind of like going to your most stylish friend’s house and you’re like, “Wow, this is what I want my house to be” It’s amazing, we get calls and emails all the time of people asking for fabrics and paint colors and sort of replicate it at home.

SSR: Sure, they do. The second one was Martha’s Vineyard, right?

BG: Yep. The second property was Faraway Martha’s Vineyard, and it was the same sort of property. It was one main building with several captain’s houses around it. Now, that property was bigger and we were able to remaster plan that property. When we purchased it, the pool was in a different spot. We actually did this little pop-up restaurant. We didn’t know what to do with this outdoor bar and we’re like, “Why don’t we do a pop-up?” So we sat around and came up with a name and called it The Pelican Club, which is really silly because there hasn’t been a Pelican in Martha’s Vineyard for like 35 years. We hired a sushi chef and brought in $20,000 of palm trees and opened up Pelican Club, and it was like a huge smash hit for Martha’s Vineyard. People loved it.

So when we went to master plan, the real kind of iteration of the Faraway there, we purposely built Pelican Club. And now we have this beautiful outdoor restaurant that was built and designed for Pelican Club. We moved the pool kind of into the center of the property and created this absolutely gorgeous pool and gym area that all the buildings are anchored around. Again, we used storytelling there. There we came up with this heroine who grew up in Martha’s Vineyard, and the whole idea there is leaning into the botanicals of Martha’s Vineyard. She grew up with these gardens and she was making elixirs and having these big outlandish parties with her friends. Now, those buildings were built… They didn’t have the historical context of Nantucket and we didn’t want to apply kind of fake history to them. So we leaned more into the mid-century approach, and we brought in this idea of James Taylor and Carly Simon and weave that in with the record players in all the rooms. So again, it’s through the same storytelling lens, but it’s a much different story than what is happening in Nantucket.

JB: And I think just to add to that, Stacy, because this is where the fun pieces come in for us. We’re super interested in experiences like I think a lot of people are, and that’s also an overused term. We’re telling people about why we’re doing the things we’re doing. One of the coolest moments when we really reopened, was Carly Simon came through with her daughter, and the album that we had put in with James Taylor into all the rooms, because as Brad was saying, all of them have record players. Her daughter’s literally like, tell her she’s pregnant with this girl. They both came in and signed a record for us and left it at the front desk, and were so grateful that we were reintroducing people to her music.

And we were telling a story about a time that was really happy, I think, in that, not just for her, but for the island. Of what it was and what it is. There are lots of pieces in Vineyard, unlike Nantucket, because it’s just bigger in size, has a lot of places of that island you’ll never get to if you’re only there for a couple of days, and you just choose either up-island or Chilmark or Aquinnah, or you’re in Edgartown, you’re in OB. So we’re trying to bring elements, as Brad’s saying, through that design and that storytelling piece. Those are the layers that we want people to unpeel like an onion.

A real surprise is like, we think, in places where it’s really unbelievably hard to build this stuff. You can’t just go and build a purpose-built hotel in Edgartown, and it’s going to be whatever you feel like. You’ve got to take a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, put that together, hope that works financially, and deliver something that the people you’re including in the story actually don’t come and hate you for. But they’re like, “This is actually really cool. Thank you.” It doesn’t always happen, but that’s the goal.

I think even for the other brands of one, as we were talking a little bit about, Beachside is a good example in Nantucket that’s coming, Brad and I, we also kind of build for ourselves and the people on our team, and I think just like Andre Blas, one of our heroes did for himself, that’s been a real key to our success because we are the consumer. So trying to tell those stories and walk through those guest experiences and walk through what the layering and the texture should be, really, we’re looking at that truly through a residential lens as well. Because we always want these places to, as Brad was saying, kind of be these estates that you get welcomed to, and as home away from home.

BG: More specific about Beachside, Jason and I both have young kids, and what we found is these family resorts in these seasonal markets, they do a great job, but they’re not always necessarily a place that you want to hang out or your kids want to hang out. They-

Sister Ship restaurant on Nantucket, designed by Jenny Bukovec studio; photo by Matt Kisiday

SSR: One or the other.

BG: Yeah, they’re one or the other. So what we set out to do with Beachside was create a place where your kids would have an absolute blast and you could also have an absolute blast. There we were really inspired by this common notion of growing up, the summertime is your first taste of independence. It’s the first time your parents let you ride out on the bike and go out into the neighborhood by yourself. And we’re like, “Man, what if there was a place where the kids could be totally independent and they could roam the property and be safe, and you knew they would be safe and you could sit by the pool or at the bar and totally enjoy your vacation as well.”

Totally unprompted, and this is the honest to God truth, we all were there this past fall and my nine-year-old daughter came up to me afterwards and she’s like, “Dad, that place is so fun. We can just roam around and do whatever we want.” And we’re like, “Man, it worked. That’s so great.” So it’s a really cool property. But again, to Jason’s point, we kind of built that for our own psyche.

SSR: Yeah, well you have to, right? I do think there is something, I mean, it’s a whole long other story, but about re-looking at family travel and re-looking at what people need today, right? Because it’s very different than what it was 5 years ago than 10 years ago. And I think it constantly evolves as people have less or more time, and time is now luxury more than anything. So, what else are you working on? What’s next for Blue Flag? What other cool concepts can we look out for?

JB: Oh, man, so we, like all good arbitrators, can’t help ourselves with piling it on.

SSR: One thing you got to do.

JB: We’re definitely piling it on. So we’ve got a lot of stuff going on right now. So on Nantucket, we own a handful of other hotels. We own a hotel called Brass Lantern, which is an amazing little B&B downtown that we’re just kind of reopening for the season right now, actually. Up the street from Faraway, we purchased an old inn that we turned into a hotel called Blue Iris that is an amazing little 12 room hotel, super luxury. Really, really fantastic design. And those hotels are up and running. We own a hotel called Life House Nantucket that we built back at the same time as Robert’s that’s still open and operating for the summer. We have some other pieces of the puzzle that we’re always adding on. You can probably infer that with these old 1700s, 1800s buildings, there’s always something to do, always something to fix. You can literally spend all your time doing that. But there’s some pretty interesting stuff that we are working on looking at there.

On the Vineyard, same thing. There’s some entitlement pieces that we’re working on there that we’re pretty excited about as we work through them. And then we’ve expanded to other markets. So over the last year and a half, two years, we expanded to Long Island. We purchased a property called the Greenporter in Greenport, which we think is a really cool town, with a lot of stuff going for it. And we’re in the process right now of trying to re-entitle that into a brand of one that will, I think, really speak to what Greenport is.

We’re in Sag Harbor where we purchased last summer, something called Barron’s Cove, which is a fantastic hotel right in the water. So we’re in the middle of re-imagining that right now. And then we purchased adjacent properties in Montauk that we are also in the process of final entitlements and re-imagining those. It’s in North Montauk, sort of on the way to Gossman’s, which just got repurchased, and there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening there. Gurney’s Star Island proper is now running, very close to our little campus up there. So those are really exciting for us.

And then about a year ago, a little over, we purchased two assets in the Mountain West for the first time. So in Jackson Hole we purchased a hotel called the Snake River Lodge. And adjacent to that, an amazing old Bavarian lodge called the Alpenhof. Those basically sit adjacent to each other on the mountain next to the Four Seasons, just kind of ski in, ski out to the main gondola there in building Bridger. We are also in the process of a massive redevelopment of both of those. All consistent with our overarching ideas, which is there are these really scarce, super high-end markets that are just on kind of generational turns of some of these assets that need a lot of love, and we want to be the ones to steward them into that next phase and provide a product on the hotel side, the F&B side, the spa side, the retail side, you fill in the blank, on what we think, personally, is kind of missing from our experience in those markets.

We’re lucky enough to have dedicated capital to be able to move quickly on those and amazing creative design team that can help us think through those stories each time. So it’s a lot. But again, I think for us, these markets all kind of speak in a similar language to a similar type of clientele. And we’re learning every time we do it, and what’s a better job than us being able to go and have to fly to Jackson Hole and Sag Harbor and Nantucket Martha’s Vineyard? I think we’re okay.

SSR: It sounds terrible. Very well. All right, well, just two quick questions because I know we’re almost out of time. So collaborators, I know you work with various people, design collaborators, obviously, to make these a reality. What do you look for? How do you choose who to work with? Question?

BG: A lot of times I fashion ourselves as matchmakers, because not… Look, we have the best partners in the world. We work with amazing design teams, some of the best in the country, and not every one of them is right for every job. So we kind of let the property speak to us first, and then we kind of pull from our design teams that we’ve worked with in the past and we create that match. So far we’ve been pretty successful in matching the right partners with the right project.

SSR: Awesome. And then looking back, seven years now, is that what you said? Seven or so years? Is there something you wish you’d known then that now, or was it just diving in and figuring this out organically the best part?

JB: The level of personal guarantees Brad and I had to take on. I think if we would’ve slept a lot better, Stacy, if we just had the expectation, like, you’re going to have to do it, just what I wanted to know.

SSR: I love it. We always end the podcast with the question that is the podcast, and you can each answer individually. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way, not just with Blue Flag Capital, but with your entire career?

BG: I can start that one. I think my biggest lesson was, and I think it’s important for people to know that it’s kind of never too late to gain the confidence in really what you want to be. I didn’t start Blue Flag till age 37, 38, which is arguably in a lot of people’s minds, way too late to start a company, and it’s not at all. You just need the confidence to actually get out and do it.

SSR: Yeah. Jason?

JB: Yeah, I think there’s this phrase that I got taught really early in my career that I love, which is, “Kill your ego before it kills you.” I think a lot of my mistakes or things that I wish I hadn’t done were driven by whatever ego thing was happening for me at the time. If I had just listened to wanting to make the world a little bit better and build really amazing stuff and put some light in the world with incredible partners like Brad, I think this would’ve been a much easier journey. And I think that’s true today too. For me personally, and I know it flows through to Blue Flag in general. We’re really trying to do things in a way that is right for ourselves and the people around us and the partners and the collaborators we have, and the communities we’re in and the guests we’re serving, ultimately.

I’ve found a lot of times in our industry, it’s not really thought of that way. A lot of it now is what makes you the best return in the shortest amount of time. And that’s just something that doesn’t really align with Brad and our ethos. I wish I understood that that’s the balance of where the industry was before I got into it. But also glad for every single turn of the path or we wouldn’t be here.

SSR: Right. Got you to where you are today. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story today. It was really awesome to hear and can’t wait to see the next brands of one that you all create. So thank you, thank you.

BG: Thank you, Stacy. This was fun.

JB: Thanks, Stacy.

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Inspired by her ENT herbalist great-grandmother, Onyedikachi Achilike grew curious about ethnobotany, leading her to study biology. Achilike went on to work in the fashion and venture capital industries, and, after earning both a business degree and an aesthetics license, she gained hands-on skincare experience at Dermalogica SoHo and the Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, later launching a mobile facial bar.

Now, her entrepreneurial journey has expanded with Blue Nomad, a 175-square-foot skin health studio in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood.

Seeing a saturated skincare and wellness market, Achilike felt there was a need for something more personalized. Missing, she found, were venues that offered an accessible yet intimate relationship with a skincare practitioner.

“Wellness marketing, for instance, often caters to a narrow depiction of lifestyles, and there’s room to make it more inclusive,” she says. “The beauty industry talks about diversity from a skin-color standpoint, but it’s deeper than that—it’s different lifestyles and cultures.”

Achilike had no plans to leave her day job leading a tech sales team until she found the petite space in the historic Townsend Building while looking to escape working from home. The design vision hinged on her brand concept. The name Blue Nomad, she notes, is about “the idea of stillness and that we’re all in transit—physically, mentally, spiritually.”

Achilike enlisted Silvana Vergara Tobin, founder of Brooklyn-based Studio Tove, to bring the Flatiron space to life. A Colombian who moved to New York to study at Parsons School of Design, Tobin’s background resonated. “I wanted to put together a diverse team from a lived-experience perspective,” says Achilike, whose customer support team is in South Africa. “We’re building a global brand,” with sights on London, Paris, and beyond.

Tobin and Achilike eschewed wellness-coded materials such as marble for those with “a bit of an attitude,” she says. Cantera tiles and plaster light fixtures with an imperfect, earthy vibe are combined with chic chrome accents. Given the small footprint, most elements were custom built, creating distinct zones for treatment, product display, and an office area. A retro-feeling dividing wall made from reflective, multicolored bricks, meanwhile, evokes a sense of fluidity.

Achilike envisions Blue Nomad evolving with activations, products, and a global community. “Our next location may not be a skin health studio,” she says. “It might be a forest bath in Japan. There’s so much out there in the world.”

This article originally appeared in HD’s February/March 2025 issue.

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Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I am here with Darius Davie and Matt Sears of the Groom Guy. Hi. Thanks so much for joining me today. So Darius, let’s start with you. Where did you grow up?

Darius Davie: Sure. I grew up in New York City. I am a Brooklyn native and was born in Atlanta originally, but majority of my life in New York City and from between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

SSR: Which borough? I lived in Williamsburg forever. Always have to ask.

DD: Oh yes. So Sunset Park, Brooklyn. My family had a house there that I essentially grew up in my whole life, but the city raised me, so Manhattan was my backyard growing up.

SSR: Super fun. What were you like as a kid?

DD: I was active, I would say, a lot of energy. Being in such a place like that, that’s so metropolitan and full of life, I myself, I just attached to it. So I always wanted to find a way to get into something and just kind of move around a little bit. So that creative spirit was definitely harvested being in the big city.

Groom Guy salon in the Salamander hotel in Washington, DC

SSR: Were there any early memories of hospitality or anything that might give you a sense that at some point you would be in this industry?

DD: Absolutely. I mean, I’m growing up in a city that’s packed with skyscrapers and huge hotels. So I remember specifically looking at massive estates from the Chrysler building to seeing how large the Empire State Building was, to walking into the Waldorf Astoria and just seeing these places that look magical, these hotels, and then also to design, seeing toy stores as a kid. So all that kind of collided into one, which made me realize I want to do something creative and artistic. And obviously I have this huge architectural backdrop behind me in New York.

SSR: So did you end up going to school for anything related or tell us your early career?

DD: Funny enough, I was in the arts. Being in the city, I always say being in performing arts is like in Texas is to football, which is really competitive. The culture of it is enormous. It was there that I learned that it was okay to be unconventional and let your thoughts live. So from myself, from being into the arts, started to dabble into design. Funny enough, I also had an early career in hair in high school and throughout college. I was taking care of some of my buddies and doing their hair as well. So that gift was kind of there and that ability to want to design in some respect also was there too. It was just a matter of connecting it with where I was at that point in my life.

SSR: Yeah, amazing. Okay. All right. So pause there. Let’s go to Matt. Matt, tell us where you grew up.

MS: Hey. Yeah, so I’m from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Brooklyn native. Spent my whole life in New York City, moved away to college in Florida and I’m actually living in Miami right now, but the roots are always going to be Brooklyn. That’s home.

SSR: Yeah. What were you like as a kid? Any kind of inkling to what your future would hold?

MS: Oh man, as a kid I was always in mischief, but that led to my curiosity. I’ve always been like a break something and fix it kind of personality and that led me into my passions with my career now. So I’m… Start of my career, I’m more of in the computer engineering space, so outside of what I do at Groom Guy, I work at another big financial service company, won’t name drop here, but that’s where a lot of my personality comes from. I like solving problems, I like being strategic and I like being very analytical.

SSR: Yeah, love it. Which college did you go to in Florida?

MS: I went to FIU, Florida International University in Miami, and now it’s full circle to be back in Miami now. So it’s amazing seeing the difference of life being a college student and then now coming back as an adult with money. And I think I like the city way more now than I did in my early twenties.

SSR: Yeah, I’m sure. Even though Miami is not cheap anymore.

MS: Not at all. Not at all.

SSR: It’s seen a little bit of a renaissance, but that’s great. All right, so how did you two meet?

MS: Oh man, Darius was my first friend in life. We met in prep school at four years old, Brooklyn Preparatory School, Christian Life Center. They had a prep school in Brooklyn, 1400 Linden Boulevard. Me and Darius were friends in pre-K. There was a lot of boys in the class, but me and Darius, we just hit it up… I guess being energetic and like I said, I was always in the mischief, so Darius is always my right-hand man. So whenever I was-

SSR: Was he trying to be the good guy, like “Don’t do it?” Or was he like-

MS: No, he was “Come ride along with me.” I was like, “Come on Darius, let’s do this.” He’s like “Let’s do it. I like it.” So he always supported the crazy things and my schemes as a kid. We’d always get caught, but from that young age, we’ve been able to build this brotherhood and now we’re both 33. So you think about that time that’s passed, I’ve known Darius… Like we’ve known each other through so many different phases of our lives, and it’s just fitting that we’re now at this point where we build Groom Guy.

SSR: And how did the idea come about? What were you two doing individually that you decided to come together? Because we talk a lot on this podcast it’s easy to have an idea, but then to actually take the leap into really making it become a reality is the… It’s the rub, right?

DD: Sure. We were still cementing ourselves in our respective careers. So whether it was in, where Matt has alluded where he was and is and then I was still having a career as a hairstylist and still trying to venture out what I wanted to do in the beauty space, but we still kept in touch because we were still very much friends. So to his point that evolution and everything was still there, but Groom Guy, we always like to say was born out of necessity. I wanted to find and frame something that could build and assist where we would like to see particularly the men’s beauty space going. The conversations started to change a little bit more back in 2015. And prior to that I was also a writer, so writing for different men’s lifestyle publications and providing insight in the men’s beauty space. And so Groom Guy initially was a resource hub, a website built for that.

So different personalities, different journalists and editors would kind of reach out to look to us to see what was the next either trend or looking for a product review or some type of helpline. But it wasn’t up until that time, 2017 or so where I started to kind of sketch and put a blueprint together of saying, “Well, how do we take this off the camera, off screen and into an actual space? What can that physically look like?” And so just started to draw that out, that idea. Did a little history on the barbershop cultures dating back as the early 19 hundreds and before we knew it was in the middle actually of the pandemic where we were able to test this concept. And it all kind of came to life in the early part right then and there, with our first hotel in Washington D.C that gave us an opportunity.

SSR: So before we get to how you got into a brick and mortar space, how did you want to rethink the barbershop experience?

DD: I think I wanted to ask myself the hard questions of what’s working right now and then essentially what’s not? So when we started to look at creating more of the intimate spaces and settings, I started to ask how and why do the chairs do most people sit in, how do they feel good? Why do they feel good? What’s the fabric that they’re using? I started to see how I can ignite all these different senses that maybe in traditional spaces we didn’t think about.

Now we can start to carve out in these, what we like to call, self-care sanctuaries. So from how things smell to, as I said, some of the fabric that was used, all of the tools and settings, all those placements, I really wanted to be intentional as to why we built these spaces out. And then I also took little bits of history. I would try to go back into the books of what did old classic barber spaces look like? And then what are little things, nuances that I can take from that and then kind of move that into this space? So whether it was a scent that was used 40 years ago, is that a scent that we can still use today? From the mirrors that we chose and why. So it was a little bit of research there that allowed me to find an identity of who we are.

Groom Guy at the At PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

SSR: And I love the name. How’d you come up with a name?

DD: It’s like when you’re at home at night and you’ve got a good glass of wine and maybe your favorite show and you’ve got a dry erase board here. Sometimes it doesn’t hit you then, it hits you afterwards. It hits you… And for me, I thought about all the great brands. I thought about some of the legacy brands that we all know, and I wanted something that was easy, that was identifiable, that didn’t require too much to say, but it would stick. I thought about your Polos, your Nikes, all these amazing brands that are still here with us today. And Groom Guy just stuck, which is the identifiable marker that said, “There’s something elegant about this, there’s something modern about this.” And it was easy.

SSR: And alliteration always goes a long way.

MS: Always alliteration goes a very long way.

SSR: All right. So you have this idea, how did you then make it a reality? Were you reaching out to hotels? Did the Yours Truly come to you, or were you looking first for a standalone, or was it always the idea to bring this into a hotel?

DD: It was always the idea, I think to find ourselves integrated in the hotel space. I think that was one of the identifiable pieces that we wanted… That signature thing that made us stand out.

It allowed us to also leverage partnership very early from the very beginning to be a brand that could find others that we can essentially help be a problem solver too. And so yeah, at first it was cold trying to figure out the best hotel within the DMV area, and there wasn’t much to choose from. But thankfully I had a client… Because I was still a hairstylist. I had a client who was in real estate and he offered to set up an introduction with a hotel that he thought could be a good fit. And one thing led to another on the introduction and the presentation. And before we knew it, we were set with an agreement to be there for only four months. It was a contract for just four months to be inside Yours Truly DC. That was a new hotel at the time in 2020, brand new hotel.

SSR: And did you extend past four months or was it only four months?

DD: Well, that’s the thing, right Matt?

MS: I think we’re going on four or five years now.

SSR: There you go.

MS: So one four month partnership agreement or one temporary lease led to three locations in four years. Three locations in four years.

SSR: Great. That’s great. And why do you think it has resonated so much or allowed you to go from four months to four years?

MS: For me personally, I think there’s a shift happening. I think as the importance of the wellness market grows, hoteliers and hospitality groups, they’re starting to understand the importance of having wellness offerings within their amenities. But also it’s tough to get a wellness program off the ground and it takes significant investment, time, money. So I think now when people see the success of Groom Guy and how we’ve leveraged our [inaudible 00:13:40] men’s grooming, entertainment, experience, and now hotels are more keen to partnering with Darius and I and the team that we have because wellness is the new farm to table. So everybody… Whether hotels are cutting down on cocktails or putting them on mocktails, whether they’re having more trainers coming, whether they’re doing yoga, whether they’re having more vegan options or meditation, there’s always some kind of way to bring wellness to the communities. But specifically I know they want to target men and women. So something as simple as a haircut, if you redefine it like we’ve done, it becomes a no brainer. And hotels, they want that. And I think that’s when we come into the picture.

SSR: Well, and I think too, hotels are trying to figure out how to be authentic. And I think something for everyone doesn’t always fit, but a barbershop does have that mass appeal while being somewhat still intimate and thoughtful the way that you guys have presented it.

MS: And it fits the mold. One of the things that me and Darius talk about, especially when we figure out hotels we partner with, you can be in an establishment, a hotel like the Yours Truly, and be like a hotel lobby space where you have the life and electricity of a restaurant and a bar, and you could fit perfectly right in there as a place for the guys to come in before they go on their night out or just before they kind of jump into the vibe after the haircut. But then you could also position yourself in the space of the spa and you could become that landing zone to bring men in for these other services. So to your point, it’s still authentic and it just draws men in from all different backgrounds, but importantly it draws in the guests as well as the community.

SSR: And Darius, from your experience as being a hair stylist, what did you take from what you were doing and apply it here? And then also for both of you, did you grow up in barbershops in New York? Were those kind of your inspiration in how to change it, modernize it?

DD: Sure. I think for me it started with knowing the… From the intimate factor of what we were doing, there was something unique about being able to establish someone’s loyalty in 45 minutes of a service, very much like food. And when I started to find that people were returning back to me every couple of weeks, or maybe even if it’s once a month, I realized it was a key element there, that sense of loyalty that most people, other businesses, in this case, hotels, are probably looking to find, but in the most authentic way. So when I was able to reposition it and see and study the psychology too of the service, it made me really understand, okay, we have tremendous value to whether it be a hotel or anyone else on what we’re doing because we’re answering a couple of different questions. And then we’re also kind of like frontline reporters because we’re able to have direct feedback on what’s going on. So we’re checking the temperature of the guest and their experience in the chair.

There was something magical about that, and I grew up in the barbershop very much so. One that I can remember specifically as a young man, being in those spaces and hearing the banter and catching ideas and glimpses of what it seems like it is to “be a man” in these spaces. So it was definitely a community hub and to some degree still very much is.

SSR: A hundred percent. And wait, I wanted to go two different places. Sorry. Okay, so you have Yours Truly. And then you mentioned the other two. So you’re in the PGA Resort and Spa in Florida, and then also now you’re opening up at the Salamander also in DC. Why those two hotels? Did they come to you? Did you find them? Is it more kind of an organic growth or are you targeting certain places that make sense to you or a mixture?

MS: I think when we first started out, we were just trying to figure out where we could lay our stake in the ground and provide the most value. So the good success of D.C and the relationships with Brookfield got us into the PGA. So we had this opportunity… It was actually pitched to us, so we got this opportunity to go down there. We did a walk through, we saw the space and we was like, “This is amazing. This is really how we branch out.” Because most barbershops and most businesses, they would stay local to the city they’re familiar with, let alone going from D.C to Palm Beach [inaudible 00:18:14] the PGA National Resort. So me and Darius, we understood the challenge at hand. I think the challenge kind of drew us more too. We laughed in the face of danger. That’s our little slogan. So I think we saw the opportunity to go to PGA, and from there we leveraged PGA to get into Salamander. So now I think that we’re like three, four years in now, I think now we kind of understand the cities and we’re Groom Guy. If we do a self care sanctuary, what cities will be ideal for us? But the first three locations, it was all organic growth.

SSR: Got it. And what’s kind of your hope for the brand? How many do you see in a realistic world? You’ve done four in four years, call it. Do you want to double that? Do you want to quadruple that? Is there hope that you’re in every city in the market?

MS: Well, me and Darius, we love building Groom Guy, we love self-care sanctuaries, but we also understand that we do… There’s a certain level where you just don’t go past in regards of your footprint, the real estate footprint. So we have a few more cities where we think a Groom Guy could work, but we want to maybe cap that number… Darius might disagree, but maybe we want to cap that number around maybe six to seven locations. And I think after that, we should really move into our other value adds, so outside of locations, the training. So Groom Guy training because we really believe in the next generation of barbers, and we really want to really tie in this Groom Guy culture and bring it to stylists globally. Also, products. One of the things we do… These hotels, they’re trusting us as their advisors on the products, whether shaving, hair balms, pomades. And we think it’s a great opportunity for the Groom Guy products to fill the shelves in the space.

And lastly, we understand every hotel isn’t going to have the appetite to build out a self-care sanctuary, but how do we tie in these events? How do we go to members clubs and how do we have creative programming where we talk about men’s self-care, innovative new products, and kind of tie in everything wellness under the umbrella? Go ahead, Darius.

DD: No, I was just going to echo your point. I think it’s right. It’s being strategic about what the next placements will be. So with six or seven, I think that’s a great point to kind of look at and say, All right, this is… In these cities that make the most sense. This is the best place for us to now harvest and foster building up the talent, because as we all know, we need that in order to really sustain.” So creating that bridge for the working professionals, those that are in beauty and as well as in hospitality.

SSR: Looking ahead too, do you ever see yourself expanding more, adding components to the barbershop? I know you said product and training, but almost creating bigger wellness, or do you want to stay smaller, more intimate?

MS: I think the intimate spaces make sense for us because you know what happens with big barbershops? When the seats are empty, which they are going to be at times, people become intimidated. But when you have a two, three chair space where you got one stylist or maybe two stylists who have a decent book of business, people will see that, they want to get a part of that versus the six to eight chair location where there’s just two guys and you see the empty chair swinging, it’s not as appealing. So I think the intimate space for us is where we want to carve out our niche. We want to keep it intimate, we want to stay in luxury hotel spaces, boutique luxury, but luxury and ultra lux. We just want to keep growing in that trajectory and see where it goes. Yeah.

SSR: And do you still continue the media component, Darius, that you mentioned? Are you still being kind of a hub for content and resources for the industry?

DD: Absolutely. I mean, products go hand in hand with what we do. So what we found is that we have been, once again, a new form of a resource hub for product brands who will… Either sending us or we’ll have some type of agreement where we are highlighting them or we are testing our product, giving direct feedback from our styling team, our barber team. So that’s been really helpful for them. And for some, they’ve never been in the hospitality space, so this is the first opportunity for them to see what that looks like and get their feet wet to know if and when they want to continue that. So absolutely, very much so, product is tied into what we do.

SSR: Yeah, I love it. So how do you two work together? Who does what and what are each other’s strengths and weaknesses? Oh, he’s a fun one too.

MS: I think it’ll be really fun if we say each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think Darius has any weaknesses. So I will say Darius’s strengths, and he’ll say my strengths. Because I’d hope you don’t think I have any weaknesses, I’d hope so.

DD: No, no.

MS: So Darius, he’s a creative man. He’s visionary. Darius sees the big picture. He can walk into a space, he can see a… It could be a gray wall, it could be a dead space, but he knows how to bring life to it. He knows who we need to bring into place. He knows the vision. He’s a great ability of bringing other people with him. He’s lively, he can talk with the best of them, but he knows how to bring people with him. He has a good vision for leadership, and he’s creative. The creative vision, you need that. He’s a visionary. And I think that’s… Because think about it. Groom Guys started off as a sketch on a napkin. Now we’re in some of the largest million dollar renovations luxury spas on the East Coast.

So Salamander is the largest luxury spa [inaudible 00:24:12] nations capital. And we have our location there. But this would’ve never happened if Darius didn’t have the vision and to move forward with it. So the vision and the courage, and I’d say that. He’s never afraid to just go in there like, “Hey man, we’re going to knock this door down.” And I’ll be like, “Okay,” just like childhood days, whatever, let’s do it. Let’s go for it.

Groom Guy in Yours Truly hotel in Washington, DC

SSR: And there’s no weakness? Come on. There’s not one thing?

MS: I wouldn’t call it a weakness. I would say, Darius… You know the creative guys? The creative guys, when they go into the board rooms or when they want to grow, they want change the world, which is good. But then for me, somebody who’s a little more analytical, my thing is how’s it going to make money? I want want to change the world too, believe me, I do. I want to change the world, but I’m like, “All right, how are we going to make money off this?” So I wouldn’t call it a weakness, it’s just the creative heart. With the creatives, they have big minds and they also have big hearts.

SSR: Yeah. Got it. All right, you’re up, Darius.

DD: Oh, so good. How do I go from that? It’s interesting. Matthew has an ability to be such a driver. He can take something that’s literally from ideas that I’ve given out of clay and then say, “You know what? We’re going to shape it and this is the pieces that we need. And then also I’m going to let you…” He has a great ability at translating things too, for someone like myself, that I may not understand. So whether it’s dealing with some of the biggest deals, negotiations, I’ve seen him do that and go head-to-head with the best of them as well. But for him, he knows how to go all the way to the line to push something. And he’s tremendously dedicated and focused, probably the most focused person that I’ve known. And it’s taken us extremely far because I can have an idea and have a vision but Matt has an amazing job at setting the map and knowing what points and objectives we have to reach in order to even get to that vision. And that’s incredibly powerful and impactful for us and great contribution to our success. And to the point too about weakness, I mean, it’s hard to pick because he’s been able to deliver so much.

SSR: You guys are too nice.

DD: I have to seen things in multiple different colors, but sometimes I try to get Matt to see it with me and I’m like, “Hey, there’s a rainbow.” And he’s like, “No, it’s this [inaudible 00:27:04]. It’s one color. We need it to be one color.” And I’m like, “No, look, look at all the colors in the crayon box.”

MS: Yeah, I will say that I do not have an aesthetic eye at all. I’m not the aesthetic guy at all. And that’s why for me, it’s so cool even being recognized. I had no idea about this field or this profession. So when Darius just putting me in this, I’m like, “Wow, this is interesting.” Because who would’ve thought, Matthew, I’m one of the most analytical black screen guys ever. And then to be in these places where we’re talking about wall colors and drapes, and I’m like, “Okay, this is cool. All right.” But it’s opening me up and I’m like, “Okay, this is nice.” And I’m enjoying the ride.

DD: And same for me because I need it too. When we’re looking at P&Ls and and we’re looking at Excel sheets, I’m like, “Okay, wait a minute. There’s only one man I know that can break this down for me.”

SSR: Well, since there’s two of you, we’re going to do a quick little rapid round. Okay, you ready? So what has been a memorable hospitality experience that changed your perspective of travel or hospitality or something that’s just super memorable and why? Darius go first.

DD: Okay. Something that has changed. Let’s see. Okay. For me it was simple. Going to Florida and experiencing myself in PGA was pretty exciting. I never would in a million years would’ve thought that we would’ve gotten here at this point relatively quickly. And then to have the line of support that we did, which was incredible. It was V Star and Venus Williams herself. That was amazing.

SSR: All right, Matt, you’re up.

MS: For me, it was the HD Awards last year, being the HDAC winner, that’s when it really hit me about how real this is. Because for me sometimes I’m just so much in the weeds and we’re like, “Okay, next, next, next, next.” I don’t always take the time to reflect, but when we were sitting in the Four Seasons at the award and they called our names and growing up on the stage, that was the most memorable hospitality moment. I was like, “This is real.” I don’t know if you look back at that clip, I was just standing there listening to Darius. I think I was in awe. I was like, “This is really happening.” I gave you a hug. I’m looking at the crowd and I think my mouth was just moving because I was like, “Oh my God, I don’t know what’s going on.” Somebody told me after, I was like, “It looked like you wanted to talk, but you just couldn’t get the words.” And I was like, “I couldn’t because I just couldn’t believe it.” But that was the most memorable hospitality moment thus far.

SSR: Yep, love it. Okay. What’s one thing people might not know about you?

DD: That I used to sing classical music as a kid in the arts.

SSR: You did?

DD: Yeah. Growing up in New York, I was an arts kid. I was an actor, singer, dancer.

SSR: Do you still sing?

DD: In the shower. I can give you a good album at home, but not professionally, no.

MS: Darius could always act and sing. He was always the singer in class. I remember being a kid, Darius would definitely sing in class. I vividly remember Darius doing his Michael Jackson impressions and all the teachers was dancing, clap along. They loved it. They’re like “Go Darius.” He was the man.

Things that somebody know about me. So I’m an avid wine enthusiast. I have my WSET level one, so I’m always open to talk about wine, climate, soil, region. I just love the art and drinking wine. So if we’re not doing work at Groom Guy, building this out, you can always find me at a wine bar and I love just having a good conversation or a chat over a glass.

SSR: Love it. Okay. What has been the most challenging part of starting your own company?

MS: You can go first, Darius.

SSR: Rapid round. Just kidding.

DD: It was getting people to believe. The challenges part is trying to get people to see outside of the barbershop walls that we all know of. We hear the term ‘barbershop’ and we can think of… Some of us probably think of what we grew up in, but it’s really trying to get people’s imagination and foresight to say, “Hey, this is bigger than what you have known.” And that’s been a challenge for us, but one that’s fulfilling.

SSR: And probably more nos than yes. Right?

DD: Oh, a thousand percent.

MS: Nos come every day I think.

DD: We’re built differently. Yes.

MS: Yeah, man, my skin is hardened. This is a thick armor you have to wear at Groom Guy, very thick armor on the front lines. And I think the Darius’s point, yes, having people see a vision and then when me and Darius go into these boardrooms, we pitch. It’s only me and Darius. And we have to really articulate to these longstanding hotel companies, hoteliers, why we are luxury and kind of our definition of luxury, spaces, experiences that ignite all senses, and an abundance of warmth and authenticity. So I think once we get that across the board, I think it kind of de-arms the hoteliers and then now they’re open to play ball with us.

But that has been an uphill challenge. Because we look the part, we play the part, but when you really have to convey this and then you got to talk about your splits and how this is going to work and money and investments, that has always been uphill battle. But we don’t shy from a fight.

SSR: What is your favorite part of the process?

MS: I enjoy hiring. I enjoy hiring and having more people join the company.

SSR: I’ve never, by the way, heard anyone on this podcast ever say hiring. You might be the first one in 120 something episodes. I have to look back, I can fact myself, but I’m pretty sure-

MS: I enjoy hiring. You know what it is? Because it’s been one of the toughest things… One of our biggest challenges is hiring because you have to find the right personalities to be inside of these luxury spaces. But once we find a stylist and they fit the mold and they’re willing to be a little malleable and grow with us, it’s the bond. It’s just unbreakable. And I just love building with the staff. I’m excited. When they have issues, they come to me, they come to Darius, let’s get it resolved and let’s do it together because it’s been me and Darius most of the time. So now that we have more people behind us, it warms in my heart. I’m smiling right now because I’m thinking about the staff, thinking about the team and more people who will of course join us in the future. Hiring man, this is great. It shows growth, that’s why.

SSR: And hiring is one of the hardest things. Like you said, finding the right person, people and personalities, and then managing them too.

MS: Once we figure that out, we’re unstoppable. Once we figure the hiring part out, we’ll literally be unstoppable.

SSR: That’s why you need your own school, so then you just hire the people.

MS: Exactly. This is why we’ve got to get out there. More contracts to teach and like I said, bring in and foster the next generation of stylists.

SSR: Groom Guy Beauty School.

MS: Yeah, that’ll be amazing.

SSR: All right. Darius, your favorite part of the process? I’m guessing it’s the design part, but-

DD: It’s absolutely the design part and then taking something from that we look at as a canvas, and then collaborating with great designers too in that process. So yeah, that’s one of the most exciting parts. From the rendering to what’s on screen to actually bringing it out in real life. Yeah.

SSR: And are you collaborating with designers that are already working on the hotels or are you starting to be able to bring in your own designers or a mix?

DD: It a general mix, but typically what happens is we work with the design team that’s been working on the hotel all together.

SSR: Which has been some pretty amazing people, like you said, V Starr and-

DD: Those are all-star playmakers in the design world that… We didn’t have formal training, but I get to work with them is magical for sure.

SSR: Okay. Is there one thing you wish you knew before you started that you know now or is ignorance bliss?

DD: I wish I had a little bit more on just understanding the process of the operational side, how long things take. Sometimes you can kind of calendarize things but not… Understand that those… You can do that as much as possible, but there’s so many cooks sometimes on one given project, even in a two chair space, that you have to be flexible. And sometimes I came in the beginning kind of harsh knowing that, oh, it’s going to be set this way with hard dates only to realize there’s so many other setbacks and I wish somebody told me that in the beginning.

SSR: Got it. 

MS: It’s funny, it’s a little bit of an inverse because coming from a big corporation, I understand what it’s like to come and… These hotels are very siloed and corporate America is one big silo. We all have our jobs to do, our pots to hit, our carrots to chop. So for me, one of the things I wanted to… Which I wish I knew a little bit more… But I know this is now why Darius brought me into the company. I wish I knew a little bit more about the hair cutting process, about cutting and being a stylist. I do not have that background. And that’s one thing I wish. So I wish I kind of… Well, hopefully I can take the time to kind of learn that process a little more. But that’s one thing I wish I knew, I wish I had a little more.

SSR: Well, Darius should just cut your hair and talk you through it. Let me solve that problem for you real quickly.

MS: I remember when we got PGA and I know Darius is in D.C, and we were going in between hiring and staffing, it hit me, I was like, “Oh man, Matt, if I only knew how to cut hair, you could just be here and cut.” It could have been me… And I was like, “Okay, I’ll cut in Palm Beach. Darius would cut in D.C and then we’re good.” That’s one of the things, but maybe it’s a skill I’ll pick up in the future.

SSR: Yeah, you can dream, dream big. All right. Just kidding. So the last question is always the question that is the title of the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way? Besides that you have to learn how to cut hair. It’s not acceptable.

DD: You definitely want to continue to walk before you run and you can’t be on this journey alone. You have to find collaboration and partnership is key if you really want to get ahead with the right people and keeping that at your forefront because you are… And things naturally are on the path to growth, but keep your values close to you because that’ll just help you make those decisions as well as being in good company, which I’m grateful to have with Matt.

MS: Yeah, as Darius said, definitely collaboration. Bring others with you. As much as the success goes and come, don’t fail alone. So if we go down, we bring everybody with us. I’m just playing. But also, you know what it is? It’s taking pride and taking a sense of ownership. When we go into these hotels and we meet with these GMs or these spa directors or whoever’s in the management role, when we can take ownership of not only just bringing in another stream of revenue, but take ownership of the headaches, the problems, I think it brings more value and it really fortifies that relationship between the hotel and the brands. So even if it’s something that’s not necessarily in our wheelhouse or purview, if we can kind of take ownership of it because it might relate to Groom Guy or something that might affect us, I’ve learned that. Instead of just saying, “Hey, we’re a vendor, we’re a third-party,” if you can step in and take ownership for that, it goes a long way. And it shows that you speak the language with these managers and these brands.

SSR: Well, thank you both for taking the time to speak with me today. It was so great to catch up with you both and can’t wait to see the next Groom Guys come alive and hope to see you in real life soon.

MS: Yes, thank you for having us.

DD: Appreciate it.

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