True merchants, the old-school kind with last names like Macy and Gimble, have an inherent instinct for retail, an uncannily accurate sense of what their customers want and will buy. Michael Carey, president CEO of Stock & Trade Design Company is one of them.
There’s not enough room in a newsletter to dwell on how Stock & Trade came to be, or his unusual background which includes a career in law enforcement and home renovations, but the most important thing to know is that the retailer is fast becoming known among those in the know as the hottest and fastest growing design-focused home furnishings chain in the Southeast. And this Fall, when the spotlight shines on the opening of its new 75,000-square-foot showroom and corporate offices in Santa Rosa Beach, FL, expect the company to explode past its already established reputation among the design savvy to draw customers from across the nation. A true destination on what the executive calls “some of the most beautiful coast in the country,” the luxury lifestyle complex known as The District currently in the works will feature fine dining, retail (think flooring and cabinetry in addition to home furnishings) and residences, both fully furnished corporate apartments for onboarding and corporate events, and lofts.
No doubt, Sarreid products will be part of the mix. Long an admirer of Sarreid, Carey and his team began buying the line for the first time two years ago. “They got our attention a few years before with their Jupe table, which is the only one in the industry that to my knowledge is made as well as it is,” he relates. “While we aspired to be able to sell product of that kind of quality, and we were always impressed with Sarreid’s finishes and take on trends when we visited the showroom every Market, we knew our client base just wasn’t ready yet. Although I will say we had designers who absolutely wanted to do the look much sooner than we had the customers for it.”
Of course, as previously stated, Carey knows his customers, and so as Stock & Trade continued to evolve, he knew when the time was finally right to add the line. “Our look is clean and polished, and Sarreid’s very curated and refined, subtle, high-quality, multi-layer finishes just fit. Really, their finishes are like no other, so much so that once you are familiar with Sarreid, you can easily distinguish the product from any other. There are times when something won’t get properly tagged in our stores, and one of the salespeople will send out a picture of the product on our chat to other stores to identify it. There’s not a single time that anything has ever been confused with Sarreid. As soon as you see Sarreid, you know it.”
Still, there’s more here than pleases the eye. “We don’t have quality or customer service or packaging issues which is extremely important, but our relationship with Sarreid is deeper than that,” the executive shares. “Brad and I have always been able to communicate very openly with each other and that’s refreshing. There’s a loyalty there on both sides and we understand and respect each other. We know we can grow together.”
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