From the Farm to Retail Design Icon, Denny Gerdeman's Story

Meet Denny Gerdeman, co-founder of Chute Gerdeman and design industry hall of famer. Over his career, Denny has led and worked on some of the biggest retail projects across the globe. 

When it comes to the retail design industry, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’s accomplished more than Denny. He and his teams have quite literally changed retail, pioneering the modern era of experience design as we know it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Alright, guys, welcome back to Brands and Banter, the podcast where we interview cool people from cool brands. But today I'm sitting with an icon, a mentor of mine, somebody who is legendary in the design industry. And trust me, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody more legendary than Denny Gerterman himself, the co-founder of Shoot Gerterman. So listen, I I'm just gonna jump straight into this thing. I got a lot that I want to ask you and talk to you about. But before I do all that, first off, do you ever miss working with us at all, or are you just happy to be retired?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Oh, I miss it. I miss the people, I miss the projects, I miss the commodity in the studio, uh the brainstorming. Uh the thing I don't miss, quite honestly, is I guess running the business part. Um, you know, that's that's an essential part of it, obvious, obviously, but it just uh the business um just took a lot of attention and time. And there were like anything, there's ups and downs. But uh the part I missed though is just simply the people and watching them grow. It was just an it was a joy to watch the young designers grow into their own. And just watch them over the years get find a partner, raise a family, send their kids to college, you know, those kinds of things. That was what uh really made Ellie and I happy.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

You know, I I think one of the things, not to go off, you know, too far away from the script here, but it's gotta feel pretty good to know that you, being a co-founder of a business, have played a real strong hand in helping these folks get their feet under them and establish their roots professionally and build families and you know what I mean, get to those points in their lives. I mean, that's gotta feel good.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Oh, absolutely. That was that was the probably the most heartwarming part of it. Was it fun to work on projects and see these magnificent concepts get built? Absolutely. But, you know, those are just stores or locations, and but seeing people make lives out of it and have families and that it's their profession, their occupation, and he took care of their kids and their their spouse and had a roof over their head, that was much more meaningful to us, to Ellie and I. That was what it was about at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Well, listen, we're gonna talk a ton about the business. We've got plenty of time to do that, but first I want to talk a little bit about you. So I want to go back to your early story and you know, long before you were even in design, right? So talk a little bit about your beginnings, you know, where you grew up and kind of what life was like for you, you know, in the beginning stages of just kind of figuring out who you are.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

I guess starting out, I I grew up out in the middle of the country, out nowhere in farm country. And uh my dad had a reasonably good-sized farm, several hundred acres, uh, lots of livestock. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of heads of hogs and thousands of chickens and all of that. And I was a real farm boy. Uh, the fact that I turned that somehow got into all of this is still amazing to me. Uh, but I I mean my dad told me earlier on, he said, if you have any brains, Danny, go to college, learn how to do something else. This is just too much work every day. Because he we never took vacations. He was on 365 days a year all day long. That's what it was. And uh fortunately, I remember that moment when he told me, go do something else, because I was the only son on a large farm. And I thought that was just my heritage. I was going to be a farmer. And I was accepting that fact. And all of a sudden I had that freedom. And I thought, okay, now college, now what do I do? And when I first started school, I went to Ohio State and I started off in, I didn't know anything about any other subjects or any other career opportunities. And I thought, well, I was good with numbers, so I thought I'll try accounting. I did that for a year, and that just bored me to tears. And I had a friend who was in architecture at Kent State, and I saw him over the summer, and he was telling me about that. And I thought, well, I could I could always see things in my head, how things went together. I could always do that. So I'm gonna try that. So I remember coming driving down to Columbus and changed, changed my major uh over the summertime, and then that fall I started in architecture, not knowing a thing. It was like a whole new beginning. And it was a struggle for the first two years, to be honest. You know, I was I was an average student, but I knew how to put things together uh because that we'd on the farm we'd built a lot of buildings. So I understood that basic carpentry skill set. So I understood details. That got me through. And I got hired by an architectural firm here in Columbus, and uh we did we're doing a lot of work down on in Florida on Sanibel Captive Islands, and I did that for a few years. And then we won the project of designing the distribution centers and main office for the limited. And I was working on that project, and I got to met the man in charge of store design and construction. And he said, Danny, can you do some layouts and the architectural drawings for these? And I said, Yeah, I'll try that. I've never not done that, but I'll try it. I did that for a couple months for them, and every Friday afternoon I would take out the store that I did for that week, and we revised any any red line revisions that took care of all that. And about three months in, he said, Would you like a job here? I'm gonna offer you a job. Yeah, I'd like you to come in-house at the limited. And I thought, oh, I love the energy of the limited, that was just fun to me. And I it was a thing I had never done before. So the next thing I knew, I was working at the limited, and I was there a little over three years, and I did over 300 stores in three and a half years. And I boy, I learned systems. Um and that was before computers. Everything was done by hand. And the thing I remember is I learned a process, and I developed a heck of a memory because it was there's things were so fast-paced, didn't really have time to write a lot of things down. So I remembered phone numbers and construction managers and all around the country. We had and all the area codes and phone numbers. Somehow I just remembered all those things because I had to. And uh, but that was the best training I ever got in my entire life was working there. I had got my master's in getting stuff done. Yeah, it was uh because boy, when I can count, I was, I would say there's only 10 Saturdays a year I didn't go into the office just to clean up loose ends. So I had to start on Monday, I was ready to go again because there was just so much going on. We've all heard the term drinking from a fire hose. That's what it was like. But there's so much energy in that building. The uh the all the buyers and marketing managers and everything. I got to know all these people, and we'd, you know, the Limited had their own jet. We would fly all around the country going to projects, and I just thought that's how people did things, got on a private jet and went. I didn't know anybody. I was so naive. I admit, I was naive as could be, I was green as a pickle. But you just I learned so much by doing that. And once I got out, I got recruited by uh the duty company, which turned into RPA. I got recruited to go there and design specialty stores because that's what I had been doing. And at the limited, I had done so many stores, and I was the only division at that point. Uh I just I was always going to be Charlie Henson's boy, just because he was he wasn't gonna go anywhere for quite a while, and I was ready for the next step. And that's why I took the job then doing private consulting in retail design. And I left the limited, and two weeks later I was in South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa. And I'd never gone overseas before in my life, and boy, that was a a jolt, just to figure out international travel. But with that job at the duty company, and uh I did that for three years, and a lot of international work and a lot of different kinds of projects and different cultures you had to understand. That was a buzz. And I'd like that was my first two big jobs. There's the limited in the duty company, and then worked uh with Nexus for a bit, and then Richardson Smith, which turned into Fitch. And the the best learnings I got, I remember from Richardson Smith was the care they had for their staff. That was one of the biggest takeaways I have in my my whole early career was the care they had for their designers. They were they their their team was priority one, and how they respected the designers and how they didn't try to elevate people by the more you the more successful you were with the designer, then you became a manager. So I learned that's not how designers' brains think to begin with. That's right brain versus left brain. And then uh through all this process, I met Ellie and we got married, and uh after after uh we left uh Fitch, we started our own company. It was just time to go out on our own. And Ellie and I had worked together for a while prior to that, and we just learned she was very right brain, and I was kind of middle brain, and we just learned that's a good process because I couldn't do what she did, and she had no interest in doing what I did, and we just were a really good team that way. And we'd and decided, well, that's how we're gonna put together all of our project teams in our company once we got it rolling, and once we started to shoot Gerdaman, um it grew pretty quickly. Once people, once clients found out we were out on our own, um, work started showing up.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

I want to ask you a little bit about, you know, you on your way throughout your career, you know, even from school to your first opportunity to your next, you know, to to Richardson Smith to, you know, ultimately landing at CG, who were some of your influences along the way that really helped you and left an imprint on you?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Um my first boss was uh Phil White, very good with ACOC and White. He was a very good designer. Um he was doing things I couldn't even, yeah, he was a great designer. He could do things design-wise that I couldn't even think of. But what I was but he were dependent upon me was to put the details together to build it. And we were a good team that way. So I learned a lot from him, and I got confidence in being able to bring an idea alive. And the next one was Charlie Henson at the Limited, he was my boss there. And Charlie was Mr. Teflon in a way that he wouldn't make a lot of decisions uh and leave it up to me. And I learned to like, okay, just make your best guess and do it because at the limited, we were in, you know, like Limited actually really invented specialty stores. They came up with ideas that was so far advanced from anything that was out there. The other stores were very pedestrian in their styling, very, very bland, if you will. And the with the limited, we started coming up with all the class mirrors and polished stainless steel, just really clean, sophisticated, slick looks. And so we were inventing all of that, and I got confidence doing that and making decisions. And if I made a mistake, I just begged forgiveness. So I just because you it was going so fast you didn't have time to ask a lot of questions. And the good news is we didn't have any real budget. That was the best part. I thought that's how the world worked until I got into private consulting, and and our clients all had severe real budget restrictions. So I learned how to, you know, peel that back a little bit. But uh that was and then, like I said, with Richardson Smith, you know, the Dave and Dean really respected their talent and what they could, they wanted their their designers to be best at design. Don't try to be a manager because that was alien that took their time away from being what they're best at, and they paid them well for being best at design. And they hired specific project managers to do the other things. And uh that's how we built our business at Shute Gerdamin then. And uh the reason I left uh Rich or Fitch at that point is um when Richardson Smith sold to Fitch, I was the guy who was going to be heir apparent to take over the retail sector of Richardson Smith. And then Fitch came in, they brought their own guy in from England, from London, and took the role that I thought I was going to get. And uh I was disappointed by that, and then Ellie and I kept, we had been talking about, you know, maybe someday we have our own business, and that just seemed to be the right time uh to do that. It was crazy that we did it then because we were had a two-year-old toddler, and I had a a new house under construction and a house to sell, and I quit my job to start shoot Gerdeman with Ellie. And looking back on that, like, what the heck was I thinking? I would never recommend that to anybody. But within the first month we were in the black, once people found out we were on our own, um, work started coming in because we both had good reputations from the outside prior. And uh one of our our main client was Sarah Lee Corporation. We I was doing a ton of work. I did work with every every division they had except coach leather bags. And uh seems like an odd thing that Sarah Lee had once had coach, but they did. And uh, but all the other divisions I was doing work with, and they I had a non-compete with uh Fitch, and fortunately Sarah Lee bought out the non-compete and got me going. And uh boy, first year I know I remember doing doing $300,000 of business with Sarah Lee, just myself and a draftsman. Uh we were we were busy as can be, but uh that's how we built our business. And Ellie had a project she was doing in in South Africa for a company called Woolworths, which is no relation to the U.S. Woolworths. They were kind of like a Marks and Spencer's out of the UK, that style of store. But we were busy as and we started hiring people right away, and we thought we'd just have this little cottage industry in our house. That lasted about six months, and I had to get an office because it was just we were running out of space. We moved into the new house and started our business all within this actually the same month.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

You know, I think it's so interesting hearing you talk about you had a role that you thought was yours that you were gonna roll just right into, and it was taken away. Yeah. And even somebody with as much success as you have and the history and the story you have, you faced adversity quite a few times throughout your career. You know, I want to, and you took a huge risk in the face of that adversity to do what you did. You know, can you kind of talk a little bit about that? How some adversity throughout your career has kind of shaped and turned into become a blessing or a major lesson for you?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Um I guess I've always had this crazy confidence that I could, no matter I always was able to do well thinking on my feet. And uh I figured I'll I'll figure it out, I'll make it happen. The only time that I really got thrown for a loop was when 9-11 happened. And uh we had four major clients, I mean four big projects that literally stopped overnight. And uh we had, I think, 65 or 70 people in the office at that point. And everything, everything, we had four big losses right then. Uh two of them just totally pulled the plug, two came back like six months later, and a lot of the other ones they just slowed way down. And I had that was the first time we ever laid anybody off. The only time we laid people off. That one broke my heart. Yeah. I remember um when we made the decision that what this is what we had to do to save the business. Ellie and I went out to dinner after that day, and I remember going to the restaurant and I started and I started crying. I just broke down. That one hurt so bad that I knew we were affecting people's lives by by doing by laying them off. And uh you have so much invested in them emotionally, um just growing up with them in the and seeing them then be devastated by not having a job and worrying about their families, and uh, but also had their other remaining staff that had to worry about, and quite honestly, Ellie and I had to worry about ourselves as well. And uh, but we built back from that. And uh learning from that as a tough decision and building back, and then when the dot-com bubble burst, and like or the housing industry burst, I guess, like in 2008. Um the lessons from when the 9-11 happened, we applied to that uh the housing bust. And we we didn't we didn't lay anyone off, we just trimmed salaries, and I think we trimmed for about six months, and then we're able to then the businesses all came back, and we kept everybody, and uh the staff was very appreciative. We had conversations with them about this the entire time, and uh that was nerve-wracking as well, but I knew they had a job, and we're they just everybody had to take a haircut, yeah. And uh they were appreciative, they had their jobs, and I even had some business leaders around the city later on say, We heard about what you did, and we called that the shoot Gerterman model, and we did that in our own companies. And so I I got feedback later on, which at the time I just thought it was the smartest thing we could do to survive, and turned out the others adopted the same fault or strategy.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Well, you know what I think that says a lot about you though, that you uh found a way to uh have the company work together and be selfless in a sense to make sure that everybody feels provided for as much as possible. Because the world is unpredictable, especially in business. I mean, you've seen 9-11, 2008, you know, of course we can talk about 2020 because I experienced that, you know, and uh like you said, trying to find ways to keep the team intact and to make sure people are cared for and thought of. I think that really just speaks a lot to the character and the the culture that you've built over the years anyway. And that goes back to what you were saying in the beginning, really taking care of your team like Richardson Smith did, and that leaving a major imprint on you. Because I'll tell you, first time I met you, this is this is one something that I remember, and you know how it is in life. We remember the little things. I was coming from a different agency where you know I was kind of low man on the totem pole. And the first time I met you, you knew my name, you knew where I was at school, and you knew a little bit about my story before I'd even had a chance to to chat with you. And that left an impression on me like this guy really cares about his business and really cares about the people coming in and out of the door, you know, and those are the things, again, like you said, doing what you can to take care of everybody, keep the team intact and selfless acts. Again, just speak to that culture, which I hope we're still hanging on to that. You know, I'm trying to you know keep that alive and fulfill that. You know, I want to talk a little bit that's not easy. It's it's not.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

You have to have someone running point on that. And that's uh I think Ellie did a good job of doing that. She was the inside culture person. I was the outside guy shaking trees finding business. And we relied on each other to handle those parts of the of the things. And then the people, the people are so important because that is your business. That's your culture, is the people. And I guess we learned early on that that, and I think that's both our natures as well. Um, that was just valuable to us because we wanted to enjoy where we worked. We didn't want a sweatshop. I never wanted a sweatshop. Could we have made more money over the long term by being more rigorous with demands on how to do projects or whatever? It that wasn't the most important thing to me. It was the journey of doing great work. We wanted the best designers we could find to do great work and inspire them and empower them to make decisions and make mistakes. That was those kinds of things were important to us as a company.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Well, we'll talk about doing great work in a second, but I kind of want to go back to the beginning. So, first off, you know, obviously Ellie, co-founder of the business, a major part of getting it off the ground. Talk a little bit about how you two met and you know, even more information on the depth and the way you two work together.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Uh we met at the old duty company. Um she was my project designer and I was the project manager, and uh she would do great design, and I figured out how to you know get them built. And uh we just we enjoyed working with each other because we just had a nice commodity that way. And then uh she moved on to a company called Nexus, and I joined there because I I knew the guy that was r ran it, and uh did that for a couple of years, and Ellie and I worked together and uh started dating and got close. And I was working in South Africa and uh met a man who Was a diamond broker, and I ended up buying a loose stone from him, brought it home, and we just landed a project in Venice, Italy, or Mestria, Italy, which is right next to Venice. And I thought there's never going to be a better time. And she was my designer. So I got the loose stone, came back to Columbus and got it mounted in two weeks and went over to Italy and took her on a gondola ride in Venice, popped the question, and rest was history. And we just, and uh we uh then both ended up working at Richardson Smith and Fitch, and then Ellie quit for a while to raise our little girl. And uh then that's when we started Shoot Gerdman. She was doing a freelance project in for Woolworths in South Africa and had some income. That's when I had the guts enough to okay, I'm quitting Fitch starting and starting CG. That's that was the journey. It was uh um at the time it all seemed normal, but in retrospect, you look back on everything that's occurred, it's like a wild crazy ride because the industry was young then, what we all did.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Well, I want to I want to talk a little bit about the beginnings in that era of retail, right? The 90s, you know. I have a couple questions here, but first off, you're coming from a situation where there's no budget, you can basically design whatever you want, you're hopping on private jets. Talk, give, give some examples of starting out with the business where you kind of got brought down to earth a little bit and realized there's different ways and uh uh you know, standard operating procedures that these businesses need to run and design and and think for the future.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Well, that was actually that was really good training early on when the reality slapped me straight in the face and said, Okay, here's your budget. You know, clients who give you a budget. And I've I I learned to make relationships with fixture manufacturers early on because that's where the money was spent.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

And we wanted to make sure that fixtures were well-designed fixtures, and they were going to do the job that the fixture is supposed to do to support the particular kind of merchandise we were designing towards in the store. And so I got to know all the manufacturers around the country. It ended up being one hell of a network. That was one of the smartest things, maybe the luckiest thing I did early on is I learned what good resources were, how to utilize them, and um depend on them. And they they depended on us as design resources then as well, uh, to bring work to them. And we worked together on the numbers, and I learned how to do budgeting. I'd never had to do that prior. And I learned how to crunch the numbers, and I understood about uh lighting design. Uh that was kind of an interest of mine, was lighting, because fixtures and the lighting are the two most expensive things in the store. And I learned how to tackle those numbers pretty early on, fortunately. And clients were they expected you to manage the budget, and I learned it was a matter of self-defense after a while, because if the project got bid and it came in over budget, then it was on us to figure out how we're gonna reduce costs. And but I also learned that you got to shoot high on the design profile if you're gonna if you're gonna break through and do something really good. That was important to uh take it beyond what the client expected, and then you can peel back. It's easier to peel back than try to add more on. So I learned how to manage both both of those scenarios, and it worked out well for us, fortunately, because we were known as really a creative studio. That was one of the CG's hallmarks was we we uh we were a really good prototype design house. We came up with things people hadn't thought of. We were inventors, that's how design was for us. We looked at ourselves as being the Edison studio of retail design. We we thought through it. And part of the journey later on is we I learned about how important brand strategy was, and also learned how important good consumer insights were. And we married all of that and we started building our staff around the brand strategy supported by consumer insights. And that then empowered and informed design. Because we wouldn't design anything after a while. You just learned we couldn't design anything without knowing why. I found out why it was the biggest question, the biggest word to use in your vocabulary, doing what we did. It wasn't the how or the what, it was why are you doing this? And that's what uh I think was one of the biggest questions for our clients. Why are we doing this? Why are you doing that? And what's important to your customers in that regard? And we had to find those answers. And once we had those answers, the clients really appreciated what we came up with.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Next thing I want to talk about here, let's talk a little bit about retail in the 90s. What was it like in the 90s? You know, or are there things that kind of come back to you when you think about what mattered to the customer in the 90s and also kind of what mattered to clients in the 90s?

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Well, the 90s was uh an interesting period of time. That's when shopping centers were carpet bombing America. I mean, there were shopping centers just everywhere getting built. I mean, and they all looked alike. I remember that was that was the period of time I was doing a lot of work with uh the intimate apparel groups of Sarah Lee. And we did 565 shop concepts in virtually every department store in America. So I saw a lot of department stores. And I would have to, I would take a photograph of the uh shopping center name, and I have to write down where the heck it was because they all looked identical. The stores all looked identical. America at that time, or the 90s, was all the retailers were about scale because of all the shopping centers going in, they had to get them out there as fast as they possibly could. So production was high. And again, like I talked earlier about having relationships with the fixture suppliers, manufacturers. Um, I was using a lot of people to make fixtures for a lot of different kinds of projects. And I can't say that any of the projects we did uh were that memorable. It was just about uh productivity and capacity. And we grew our business because there was so much being done that we did all kinds of projects, a lot of shop concepts, just because the retail, like the apparel manufacturers were going to all these locations. And the shop concept was a big buzzword in the industry then, if you if you recall back to what that was like. And we did work shop concepts from Ralph Lauren to Champion Athletic Apparel to all the intimate apparel brands, and you name it, we were doing it uh uh health products, you know, new nutraceuticals they were called, which is vitamins. Worked with this manufacturer out of Tuscan, California. I remember they were bringing getting all their supplies in China and bringing them in and making the the product, and we were developed the bottles, the packaging, the fixtures, all the copywriting and the graphics that went on. It was just it was really uh very comprehensive. But it was fun because it was like, how many things can you do differently? And and all shop concepts had to be different. And by the end of the 90s, the the manufacturers, and I think the retailers kind of hit the wall because the retailers of the department store groups realized they didn't own the store anymore. It was the manufacturers that were starting to have the identity in the stores and not the retailer themselves. So it did a 180. And at the end of that, end of that decade, it started turning back to uh you know the department stores owning it, and that's when the manufacturers started getting into the outlet centers. All these the cycles of the decades were just really kind of interesting, how they progressed.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Uh, you know, I I want to touch on the scale thing here in a second, because there might be a parallel with that in current day, right now. But I want to ask you about specifically any projects that come to mind that you feel that you worked on that were innovative and kind of ahead of their time in the 90s.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

I I think that one project um that we did for the nutraceuticals, we came up with a name and all that. That that I thought was innovative because the the best department stores wanted that as a as a brand, and we put it in a lot of locations. Um we did a lot of work with Champion Athletic Apparel, and that was fun. I remember I it wasn't so much innovative as it just was fun to I enjoyed sports. So I got to get into all these various sporting goods companies, and even one day we were doing, we did, we're doing the team store at the Boston Gardens. And I'm digressing here a bit, but the uh manager of the store says, Danny, let's go upstairs. There's some there's gonna be some kind of an announcement. So we went up to the third floor of the Boston Gardens, the old gardens. And I was sitting about 20 feet from Larry Byrd, and he was announcing his retirement. I have photographs. That was kind of cool seeing him and Rback sitting there with his cigar, and Larry said, I'm done. And that was just kind of one of those momentous things that just happened by total accident. But there's the like all the years we traveled and did things both in the U.S. and around the world, and there's all kinds of stories about unexpected moments that occur that just make kind of a rich history of this industry. This this was an absolute fun industry to be in. I enjoyed the heck out of my career. I had fun. That's why it lasted so long. So I just enjoyed it. The clients, the projects, and the people. I didn't want to quit.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Well, I can't blame you because the work that we do is insane, you know, and it touches a lot of people on the on the other side, and we get to work with amazing brands and see a lot of the world and and do some fascinating stuff. And you know, we're gonna I'm gonna transition us into the 2000s now, where there's some amazing work that CG did in that decade. I think kind of transformative to retail. But before we get in there, I want to talk a little bit about a little bit about the business growing from a service standpoint. So heading into the 2000s, you've been operating for over 10 years, you've got a team now, it's a little bit bigger of an operation than just working in the house. Uh, can you kind of talk a little bit about the services that you and your team started to offer? Did it grow a little bit, or did you really zero in your focus on what you wanted to offer retailers?

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Um well, we started, like I said, we started in our house. That lasted about six months, and we got a small office up in the Dublin area, and that lasted about nine months, and we outgrew because we were sharing an office with someone, and we started growing because there's the uh once we got out, and people knew we were out on our own, work started coming in, and it was a lot of early shop concepts, and I just required people to do that kind of work, the layouts and sourcing and uh project management, and we took a uh a space downtown in the flat iron building and uh right off Nationwide Boulevard. And we had that we stayed in that space uh a solid 10 years, and we grew that we doubled the size of that space for us, and uh it just kept you know growing and we got a good reputation for what we were doing. We won some you know a lot of design awards early on, which was in interesting for a young company, but we always paid attention to having really good designers, and we we put effort into understanding how to build the brand. That was I somehow or another early on I'd understand that building a brand and recognition and visibility was important. It just wasn't like some grand scheme, it just it became an awareness, and that's what I did. And I remember meeting up with the editors of the various magazines and getting to know them well, and I'd go to all the retail events. I'd spend all the events are always on weekends, so I spent a lot of weekends traveling and doing these things and building the brand. And I didn't I did it myself because I didn't want our design team that we had at that point to be away from home and their families. I just took it on. And uh it was a it turned out that was the right thing. Um, because I got to know the editors and they knew us and uh talk about our projects and we got things published, and uh recognition started happening once you got your things into magazines. The retailer saw it and clients saw it, and um word of mouth got around and things started coming in in the early 2000s. We were getting opportunities for a lot of really great brands. I remember the first real big one we got was MM stores in Times Square. And uh we did we did uh an MM store in Orlando first, and I remember that was an interesting pitch to win that one. But then we got the one in Times Square, and that's when I felt like my God, we have arrived as a company. We made Times Square, and I never thought in my wildest dreams we would ever do anything like that in New York City.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the pitch process for that project because you've talked to me offline about it and you told me it was pretty crazy. But you know, I think I think it would be good for folks to hear how much attention to detail and how much effort went into working with MM's and Mars to really get that project off the ground.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Well, the we found out through the conversation we had early uh from when the RFP came in, and it wasn't really an RFP to be honest, it was just a phone call. They had seen our work, liked our ideas, and so we had an idea that they're really looking for creativity. And the first meeting was in Chicago in one of their chocolate factories. And I remember going in the front door of the of that in uh like West West Side of Chicago, and the chocolate aroma was like almost overwhelming. Man, this is chocolate heaven here. And uh, but it was just myself and George Nauman, who is our director of marketing at the time, and I went in to meet their two key people. And it was just me on on a little platform by myself and uh showing the presentation of our of our concepts. And I would I didn't have a lot of projects that I showed. I really went through the thinking of the design, why we came up with these design solutions, how it was meant to affect solving the business problem that the clients had, or how I was going to portray their business in a little bit different light to their consumer. And uh I showed those projects, and then that then the presentation really started, or the interrogation started, I should say, because I remember the uh the client's name, the the guy we were working with, his name was John Howe, and he was a smart guy. He asked me like 110 questions, and they're all very detailed. And I just remember feeling I just feel the sweat running down my back because there are hard questions, but I answered them. And there's a lot of detail about process and how would you do this, how would you do that, why would you do it that way, and you know, back and forth. And uh he grilled me for like an hour. And I remember when that was finished, I was I was worn out because like you're just so dialed in. And uh George and I left, and I remember getting in the car, and I could feel when I sat down, I could feel my back was wet. It's like but uh we got a call, like two days later, we had won the project and we got started. And it was so fun for the studio to to because there were no holes barred on what we could do creatively. And uh one of our key designers at that time, and he's still at CG, Steve Borman, he was a cartoonist as well. And just the the most creative, interesting things he came up with for the characters and the colors, you know, the colors of the candy and the and the personalities of each color and how to portray them in the store. It was just it was a joy to work on that project. And the client was fun to work with, and they were very appreciative. And uh I remember the store one store of the year. And uh our team was so proud, I was so proud of them of what they accomplished because it was not, it was so unique in the marketplace, it was so over the top. It was just a fun experience to walk in that store, and I would watch customers walk in and go, wow, you just see their eyes go everywhere. And then uh they just they found a site in New York City and Times Square, and it had been an old auto dealership, and it needed a lot of serious arch, you know, a lot of structural work. And from start to finish, from the day we found out about the project, they wanted to be opened by Thanksgiving. And I honestly don't remember the year, and it's like 2002 or something like that. And uh we we well, there's a bonus for us if we made it by Thanksgiving for that big holiday weekend in New York. But 11 months was impossible. I mean, that because all the uh the prepar preparation work that needed to be done structurally, we built floors and built mezzanines and everything that had to be done, and we missed it by I think eight days. And uh I broke my heart, we didn't get the bonus, but uh but uh we got it open for the for the holiday season, which they didn't think was gonna happen either, but we did it. And we pulled every string we could, and we ended up having to get escalators made in China because the domestic escalators couldn't get made that fast. They were like a year out. So we didn't have that time. So we found a manufacturer in China, got the escalator in, and then the union in New York didn't want to certify it because it was not made and domestically made. So they boycotted. They couldn't, so we had to get the mayor of New York involved with this union to go certify it. Got it done, got it opened, but then the escalator kept stopping. It was breaking down. And we couldn't figure out what the heck was going on because you have to, you know, stop it, open up the whole floor, you know, trip a bunch of switches and get it going. We flew the the uh manufacturer over. So, like, you've got to repair this thing because it's breaking. It would like stop twice a day. And it turned out the uh escalator was engineered for Chinese body weight and body size and not American body weight and body size, because we had our our size is like a third more body, and so there was too much weight on the escalator, was it was tripping the switch to turn off because it was overloaded. So they had to adjust, adjust that mechanism, and then it was fine. But those are things you never dream about when you're designing a project. You just do the best you can to get it up and open and running. And that was I remember that was that was an unusual curveball. But we got it, got it going.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

You know, that project is definitely an arrival moment. I mean, it's still operating at a high level, even on the I was there this past Christmas and it was jammed. And it's it's the that's gotta be the most expensive real estate for New York retail is to be on that on Times Square, you know, and and they've been there and they've been a staple for years, and there's no doubt about it. It's amazing that CG's had a hand in that kind of process of retail history there. I mean, we've got multiple projects across the street from each other, which we can talk about that in a second. But you know, I want to talk a little bit about now that you're seeing the brand arrive and you've put a lot of the time in, and like you said, you've invested your own personal time to create and generate awareness and market CG. Talk about building the team a little bit. What were the traits you would look for in creatives or in folks that you wanted to be a part of the brand and to work with every day? What what did you look for in those in those people?

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Um, what I learned early on is not every good designer is a good consultant. You have to have a personality. Um and designers have to learn how to compromise because not every idea is going to get accepted by a client. And also learned that you how you present your ideas is extremely important. Early on, we hired in a uh consultant to come in and work with our team, and how to have to read body English from your client, how to listen to your client and mimic how they what they say and what they're talking about, um, how to project and speak, you know, what words to use or not use, how you what you how your own uh body posture was important. Just things that you they don't ever teach you in design. School. And it was important for our designers to understand that because they're selling the idea. And I can swear, I have seen great ideas not get accepted because the presentation was done poorly. And I've seen mediocre designs get accepted because the presentation was really good. There's a lot of energy and dynamic with what was going on by the presenter. And uh so the theatrics was somewhat important. And how you how you how you presented yourself with confidence was important, that you believed in what you were doing. And quite honestly, our designers did believe in it because they knew they because we had a brand strategy around the design, and we had an informed brand strategy because of the research we did on consumers, the designers knew what they were doing that was right, or they had confidence that they were going in absolutely the right direction. And we worked early on with our clients on how to like start the funnel wide and narrow it down with opportunities and solutions. And we made the client a part of the decision process. And these are just things we learned over time. Um didn't learn that, didn't know that day one. Uh to once you got the client involved with making decisions at because there's option A, option B, option C, narrow it down, they were part of that process. And at the 11th hour, they couldn't come back to you and say, nah, we don't like that, because they were part of the decision of making sure that they did like it. And because uh you know, like I said, I've learned early on, if they vote veto something later on, then you have to change it at your at your costs because it's your hours. Typically you work on a on a fixed fee. Um the only you know, not many clients would let you just go hourly on things.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

All right, so let's start transitioning into a little bit more of the present day, right? Where you make it out of the 2000s, you make it out of a crazy housing crash where you retain everybody and you keep everybody together, again, adversity multiple times throughout your career, you know, as a business owner, and then taking that leap to start your business. But I want to talk a little bit about the the 2010s. So now you've arrived, right? You're working on projects like Whole Foods, you're working on projects like Target and Starbucks and Wendy's Verizon and FAO. You know, how did you position CG's brand image to continue attracting opportunities like this?

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Um, I I think that was important. Well, the the the one big one in that period of time was Verizon. We did five major flagships stores around the country for them. And they were each one was very unique to the uh the the region they were in. And we had, and I'm not exaggerating, we probably at any time had 25 or 30 people working on that project. And it was around the clock. It went on for like three years or so. It was just a lot of work. Well, that floated the boat and you know covered a lot of sins for quite a while. And uh I think what our clients gravitated to us for is we offered um a really full service of from concept to execution. We didn't build anything, we were not a construction firm, but we managed the whole fabrication process and sweated the details all the way through from all the graphics design and and fixture design. We did the detailing and detailing uh we were able to keep Clatt's budget in check because we sweated the details in our design studio. We had one or two guys, that's all they did was work out the details on the fixtures and the stored design itself, the architectural detailing. Um we made sure that we gave the clients the drawings, they were ready to go. There weren't going to be any surprises. And when uh contractors and the fixture suppliers got those documents, they they could see they were tight drawings, and they gave us, gave our clients then good bids, they were tight bids, because they didn't have to put in a fudge factor of there's a variable because we don't have enough information. If there's not good information, then they're gonna have the price higher just to cover their their exposures. And we we were pretty tight with all that. Uh I think that's why we were attractive to a lot of people and we had a good reputation in the marketplace. Um we were considered one of the probably one of the top five creatives in our industry, and I'm very proud of that. Um it's tough to maintain that, to be honest, because uh when you're number one, everybody's looking at you. And I'm not saying we were number one because we we were in we were in a grouping. And when we started out the our company, there weren't many people that were in our space. And when it all ended up, there was a lot of people doing what we did. So you always had to like always get a little every year incrementally better. And uh so that that was a challenge, and our staff was up for the challenge. They I'd go through the studios and look at what they were doing and talk to them about their ideas and why they did this, why they did that. They're to a person, they were excited about their work, and there was a lot of pride uh that our designers had um in being the best they could be, and it was obvious, it was apparent. And uh we we embraced that. Um they're the rock stars. Like um, your any studio is only good as the people they have, and you have to take care of them and let them know they're important and give them their give them their due. That's uh that's how we grew the company.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

Well, I think that's one, I think giving credit where it's due is always important because you know these people, just like you're investing in to build them up, they're investing their time and their passion and their effort and their creativity into it. And I I think you've nailed it right on the head, and I think this is really one of the number one differentiators about CG from any agency, is the idea that the creative is the product or these designers are the product, and you have to build an environment where they can be creative without those bounds, and then you can tie that together with somebody who can put those towards solutions, right? Okay, we've got a creative over here. Let me rein you in. I love your ideas. How does it solve this problem? You know, you got to have that balance, but that's something you've been a master of and you've always found a way to do. And I want to actually trans this in that transition that thinking into this next question. As your role became more and more senior, you know, from you starting out actually doing the projects, being responsible for that output, to building a team and overseeing the team and managing, you know, talk a little bit about that. You know, how did your role evolve and were you always learning new things as you continued to grow in your career?

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Yeah, you start still you started asking that question earlier, and I unfortunately I got a little off track with that. But as we as we were looking for new talent, I would always get into how did they think? Um, it's not the how pretty the picture is, it's how did you get there? Yeah, why did you make that decision? And uh show me the purpose. And whether they were doing um final artwork on graphics or they're doing the details on how a soffit went together, or the fixture design, or whatever, or the interior space itself. Um I wanted to know why they did that. And even young, like I would I've worked with PAVE for a number of years, the president of PAVE, and I got to meet a lot of young design students, and they became our farm club, quite honestly, because I would see these students who are exceptional at whatever university they are at in their projects. And we hired a number of them just because I'd have conversations, and so yeah, this is this one's a keeper. And we'd make an offer, and uh a lot of times they would come on into CG. And uh that's how we built really a great a great team, just understanding how they thought, because in our space of retail design, because I you know, it's not a pretty picture, it's all strategy and psychology.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

And uh you know one another, it's like psychology, what the how is that important? Well, you have to understand wh why a customer is motivated, how you get them inspired. Nobody needs more stuff. We all have plenty of stuff. You just have to convince the customers they need this, and and here's why. And it's the storytelling in the stores. Uh I guess we learned early on about storytelling. Um, we did work with Disney, and they informed us a lot. I had a friend who worked there, a design design friend who worked there, and he got us involved, and that was a great experience. And we learned about how to put together the story, and we use that ongoing for a lot of our clients, like develop the story and the tagline, and here's why, and here's what here's your customer, and here's what they aspire to, and how you're gonna get them there, and build them, build that customer's confidence that they can be that person. So it was just it's it's like making a movie in a way. It's uh it was the the uh the whole process is really interesting. Uh, being in those early brainstormings on any client project was just a lot of fun. It wasn't like there was no wrong idea, no bad idea. It just you collected a lot of things and then sorted it out and narrowed it down.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

So I want to talk a little bit about your career in retrospect now, right? So from you know taking a risk to arriving and developing some of the most amazing retail experiences in the world. I mean, award-winning retail experiences, you know, national press, international press, the whole nine yards. Let's just kind of take a 30,000-foot view and a and a look of everything. You know, when you look back on your career, do you think that you had a certain superpower, if you will? And if and if you did have a superpower, like a greatest gift, what do you think that was that you kind of were able to offer everybody, your team, clients, anybody?

SPEAKER_01 54:27

I don't know if it's a superpower. Um, I just always enjoyed people and I could relate to people. I could understand, I could listen to the client, understand what their needs were, and how to get to the to what the problem was. I enjoyed that. And I liked I liked people and I liked our clients, and that for some reason we all got along well. And uh I don't know, it just it's a kind of a hard question to answer, just because it was nothing I ever done consciously. It was just kind of happened. Well, you know, I I enjoyed I enjoyed it. It was fun. Maybe that's why it did so it went so well, because I I enjoyed it. I it was just it wasn't work, it was just it was almost play in a way.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

Well, I kind of have an answer for you, and it's an experience that I had working with you. So, you know, we you and I got to work together for about a year, and that was I was learning a lot working from you and you know, working with you. But one of the things that I always admired is you have a really, really great way about bringing everybody down to earth, no matter what executive you're talking to, or no matter the situation. I remember we were talking to Sherwin Williams, and you and I were on a call with Sherwin Williams, and they were saying, Oh, hey, you know, we are we're working with one of your competitors. Do you know this company? And you were like, Oh, yeah, we know them, they're great. But you know, if you give us a little bit of time, I think we can show you how we're better, or how we can help you better. You know, and I've always loved the fact that you can use plain speak in a way that just makes you so approachable and friendly. One of the times that you schooled me up, and I still I still use this, we had a presentation for the clan. I don't know if you remember, but it was you, Lynn Rosenbaum, and I. And it was one of my first kind of pitch opportunities. And I think the pitch went great. I thought we killed it, and then we were going on a tour of and you know, I was green, so I was very excited and trying to offer as much information as I could about, oh, we could do this, we could do this, just spitting out ideas, giving them, giving it away for free, basically. And you pulled me aside and you were like, hey, listen, great job today. The pitch was great, you know. I I could tell you really put a lot of hard work in. You were like, Can I just offer you one piece of advice? And I was like, Yeah, of course, of course. You're like, hey, this is the time where you got to listen. You know, just listen to them, hear them out, because they haven't brought us on or hired us yet. And that's you know, that's when some of the magic's gonna start. You're like, just take this opportunity to just kind of settle in and let them talk to you, and then we'll figure out where to go from there. Sure enough, the reason why this is a learning moment is because they took all those ideas and implemented them anyway. So we didn't get we didn't get to do the work, and they ended up taking those those ideas and doing things with them. But now, anytime I'm in a situation like that, I've actively moved away from prescription, you know, for the past, I don't know, five years. I think this it happened six years ago when we did that. And now I'm like the furthest thing away from prescription, and I'm more about just listening and just trying to understand and relate. And you always relate to people so well. So, you know, if if I had to say you have a superpower, I would say it's probably that.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Well, the the one thing that now you as you talk about that it comes to mind is uh when we were talking to FAO Schwartz, and it was us and another company, other the last two standing, and they ended up choosing uh a boutique design firm in New York City that they really specialized in doing boutique kinds of retail, um, specialty apparel, you know, high fashion stores. And they did they did great work. And the client called us on the phone and because we thought, okay, either we're gonna get it or not. So I had our team sitting in the on the phone call, and they said, uh Danny, we're sorry, but we're we've made a decision to go with uh the other the other firm. Uh well, they're they're right here in in New York, and um we think their work is really good. And I said, Oh, I agree, they're they're a great design firm. They can give you a great design, but here's what they can't give you. And I went on to explain they don't detail, they just give you ideas and concepts. But there's no details they're going to be done. And I said, your store is gonna be very fixture intensive, very themed intensive. You got so many different brands in that store, they all got to stand out. And I said, Well, that's what we do. We're best at that. And we can give you every single fixture detail that's gonna be required for every different product type you're gonna be carrying in the store. And they said, Oh, really? And I said, uh, this is what we specialize in. I've said we've shown you their case studies of that type of work that we've done for MMs and Disney and you know, Universal and all those other kinds of brands. And I said, those are very themed intensive kinds of stores. And we did all the detailing, and that's how the store, and they said, Oh, we never thought of that. And they said, We need to discuss. They called back a half an hour later, we got the job. Pulled that one out of the fire.

SPEAKER_00 59:42

The last that was a buzzer beater right there, man. That's amazing. So, okay, so I I want to talk a little bit about this. So you've you've been all over the world for your projects. Are there any spots you know across the globe that stand out to you when you think back on your career and where you were able to visit?

SPEAKER_01 59:58

Um Dubai was the probably the most amazing place just because it was like going for to a stage set for George Jetson. Everything is so ultra modern and so many things were under construction all at once, you know, such a different culture. Um that was amazing in that in that regard. I've I still left an impression. I haven't believed we've done it and did a number of projects over there in in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar, but um I would like to go back to Dubai. I haven't been since uh for like 15 years. Um the one that I remember distinctively, though, we had a project in Moscow, and I remember it was a Friday night. I'd gotten there earlier in the day or something, and that Friday night I went walking through Red Square like at 10 or 11 o'clock at night. Two weeks later, I was walking through Tineman Square in Beijing on another project with a different client. And so back to back in those two communist countries and uh with projects, and that that left an impression. And the next day in Beijing, our client took us out on a Great Wall and walked a couple of miles on the Great Wall. That was that was significant in my in my mind. Uh, but we did projects in all kinds of you know, major cities around the globe, London and Cape Town and you know, all over Europe. It was just it was just you know, growing up on a farm and end up doing all these things. I was pinching myself every other day that how is this happening? But it was perseverance. I g I guess in my career, in my life, if there's one thing that stands out that I know I was really good at was perseverance, not quitting. Um things, you know, you can't stop. You gotta believe. And uh I think that's that served me very well because I I'm average talent, but I had a lot of willpower.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Let me ask you this: would you do anything different if you had to start over today?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Oh, the other I mean mistakes, sure, everyone does. That's part of business. Uh you gotta learn from your mistakes. Um, would I do a lot of things different? I don't think so, because the journey was so enjoyable. Um, there's a lot of stuff I would wish I could do over, uh, but it's mostly on a personal side, just um having the uh opportunity to spend more nights at home, I guess. You know, because the early years was a lot of travel, it was just hard work. You had like to get that 7 a.m. flight out of Columbus and get home at you know nine or ten o'clock at night and then do it again the next day. You know, do that two or three times a week in a row, and you know, your body gets tired, even if you're young. I I remember you know, the travel, the jet lag, uh going overseas and coming back home. And um it takes you a couple days to bounce, bounce back. But uh was it worth it? Oh wait, oh absolutely. You know, like just the the memories, the fun of doing what we did. Um the joy of seeing our staff vision, you know, seeing the projects built and working and the customers going in. I remember the uh we did a store for Hamley's in in downtown, Regent Street in London. And Hamley's was at that point probably one of the FAO Schwartz and Hamley's were the two, the two toy stores in the world. And uh Hamley's was the old one. And uh going in that store after we we got it built. I remember this man bringing his little girl on her sh her his shoulders, bringing her in, and she looked around and she's like maybe three or four years old. Daddy, daddy, we're here. I I just I that one's is seared in my brain. Like we in America don't know how good we have it. And when you travel around a lot and see a lot of things, it makes you realize how fortunate we are as people. Um, we're blessed.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:08

Well, let me ask you this. So, you know, let's round out to present day. Are there any brands that you're a big fan of right now? Maybe it's their product or their messaging or their stores. You know, is there anything on your radar that you're a fan of?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:22

Well, I can't say there's anything I'm a you know absolute big fan of. Uh, there's one regret that I have, I always wanted to do work for Tommy Bahama. I like their brand.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:33

I really like I like the I like the the pro the feel of the product and the styling. I'm relatively casual in my life, and that's that one that always appealed to me. I could never get them as a client. They were just married to a firm out in Seattle. They're based in Seattle, so I understand the fact they want to work with someone local. I get that, but I was always disappointed I could never land that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:55

Yeah. I can understand. I can understand that we all have our passion projects. I think if I could work with a brand, it'd probably be Guitar Center, because I think we could help them out a lot, you know. And we tried that. We did. We did, we did, we did try Guitar Center. Uh Guitar Center for the C. Congratulations. This close, they just didn't have the funding. Yeah, well, and you know, but in another world, in another life, maybe we're we're helping them out. Would have been amazing. Um, okay, so listen, I know you're active, I know you're golfing, I know you're doing all sorts of stuff, traveling, going from here to Florida. What's next for you? What do you got going on for the rest of the year?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:29

Um well, we're in the midst of a major remodel in our house right now. So we're our kitchen is totally blown up. We've moved walls around. We have uh Ellie's Art Studio right now is our secondary kitchen that has a microwave and a toaster and a coffee pot, and uh our refri uh secondary for refrigerators in the garage. But uh cabinets arrive next week and will be totally finished uh by first week of June. And in the middle of June, we're going on a 10 day trip. On the uh Rhine with some friends, my some friends from back uh back in my hometown. Gonna go on a Rhine or Viking cruise on the Rhine River and start in Basel and end up in Amsterdam and then wander over to Belgium for a little bit and then back home and then playing some golf over the summer.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:17

Well, you're busier than I am, man. So um, well, listen, first off, I can't thank you enough for your time. I think you have an amazing story, you know, coming from the farm to seeing the entire world and having such an impact on retail and the work that we do, you know, I I think it's something that I celebrate. You should continue to celebrate, and I think the industry definitely celebrates. And, you know, for those who are watching this and you made it this far, thanks for hanging out with us. You know, his story is obviously very captivating. We we chatted for a lot longer than maybe even I anticipated. So uh with that being said, that's this episode of Brands and Banter, the podcast where we interview cool people from cool brands. Again, nobody as cool as Denny Gerterman. But listen, if you're not subscribed to the gist, you gotta subscribe. That's how you can stay in the know with everything retail, everything design, and retail good news in general. And we'll stay in touch because we're gonna see you on the next episode of Brands and Banter.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

Max, thanks for the opportunity today. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:16

Absolutely.