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Homes

Furnishing a second career

A mid life switch puts a banker into interior decorating.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published June 10, 2005

PALMA CEIA - When Jim and Diane Enterlein were first browsing for a mid life, second-career business, they never thought about decorating.

Consider that a resounding never.

"I like good home furnishings, living in a nice home and having nice things," Jim explained as a crew of a half-dozen interior decorators buzzed around outside his South Tampa office.

That was the extent of it, he admits.

Jim, now 43, who played college baseball at Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y., was a banker who spent his entire career at Chase Manhattan. The couple met at the bank, right out of college, and followed career trajectories suited ideally for the left-brained.

"We're both corporate born and raised," says Diane, 42.

But these are strange times we live in.

Jim, who left Chase when the company downsized, knew he wanted to start his own business. He met with a franchise broker and considered his options. He knew this much: "I wanted to manage professional people, and I wanted professional clients."

The couple ended up buying into a small but quickly growing suburban Chicago company, which offers a novel approach to home design: full-service interior decorating services out of a well-stocked furniture showroom and design studio.

The company offers clients a thorough interior-revamp package in a cozy, homelike setting - from fabrics to flooring to lighting to upholstering.

Members of the store's team will even wait at a customer's home for furniture deliveries.

Now with nearly 21 stores opened or opening nationwide, the chain, Designs of the Interior, sits poised at a serendipitous time.

The Enterleins' store at 2202 S Dale Mabry Highway, next to Light Bulbs Unlimited, opened in October and is already drawing 300 serious customers a month. A second Florida store that recently opened in Jacksonville is owned by the chief financial officer of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

"We are amazed at the amount of traffic we've had in here so far," Jim says. On a rainy Wednesday morning a stream of customers ducked in for consultation or to browse the 2,500-square-foot furniture showrooms and design offices. Interior decorators were assembling a storyboard for clients in Thonotosassa who were arriving for a final conference that afternoon.

The store's demographic, the Enterleins explain, is a youngish to middle-aged woman without the time - or the artistic leaning - to pull together a polished, finished-looking living space.

Their design consultants hail from a wide swath of the decorating business.

Among them: Patricia Leopold holds a degree in art history and worked for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. John Mills worked in the mid 1990s at Tampa's Design Concepts Unlimited, specializing in art and antiques. Betty Ross designed summer homes in Saratoga Springs and Lake George.

Some excel in window treatments, others in lighting. That kind of specialization, coupled with the resources to design a living space quickly, is getting them noticed.

Says Jim, "We're pulling in customers from Riverview, New Port Richey, South Tampa, New Tampa, all over."

Though the Enterleins live in Westchase with their 13-year-old daughter, they decided to locate the business in South Tampa because "we noticed a loyalty to locally owned businesses - up and down Dale Mabry and Kennedy," Diane explains.

A smallish, comfy showroom with myriad furniture and accessory choices, and lots of professional help, seemed made to order for the South Tampa neighborhoods teeming with homeowners refurbishing old homes or building new ones.

Most of their customers are simply too busy to fool with all the details necessary to decorate a home well. The store offers window treatments, rugs, bedding, faux finishes and thousands of accessories, from hurricane lamps to wooden bowls to leather magazine holders. Even the floors are a source of inspiration: acid-washed concrete in a shade of deep cranberry.

"We can pull it all together for you - quickly," Jim says.

That was the original idea behind the first Designs of the Interior, launched as a mom-and-pop business back in 1983 in Barrington, Ill., a well-heeled, horsey suburb of the Windy City.

"It was a teeny-tiny operation," says Jim Evanger, the chain's founder.

With the new millennium's explosion of television home shows and shelter magazines, the company began franchising in 2000. The real estate boom didn't hurt either, particularly with people investing in second homes or vacation rentals.

"We're living in a charmed time," Evanger says.

Interestingly, the business seeks out franchise owners just like the Enterleins: serious business people who are not in the creative end of the business.

Evanger says he doesn't want to stereotype but "with really creative people what they really love is doing great work, and they tend to not be as interested in the business aspect. The challenge is to get a strong business person at the helm and the creative and talented people working with the customers."

DOI, he says, is about a new age in customer service with a focus on home furnishings unlike big furniture stores that do it the other way around.

The company doesn't manufacture its own line of furniture - it carries items from more than 200 vendors - and therefore doesn't need to move inventory from its showroom floor.

"For someone who's a second homeowner or who's buying a condo in Florida to rent out, we're a single contact," Evanger says. "They can go back to New York, and we'll take care of everything."

[Last modified June 9, 2005, 10:29:11]