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Homes

Some things never go out of style

An Ybor City immigrant passes on his ethos of hard work and customer service to his family, who run Design Interiors.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published September 2, 2005

YBOR CITY - The Cadrecha family defers to Robert Cadrecha Sr. as the storyteller. In an office of their Seventh Avenue furniture showroom, a bright yellow building with mosaics of Spanish dancers and armored knights, the 65-year-old takes the floor, his children gathered around, the memories detailed as old photographs.

"It's a business that has provided for three generations of family," he says, sipping coffee and remembering. "It's managed to survive because it changed with the times."

The family-owned furniture company, Design Interiors, with 50,000 square feet of showroom space at two locations, traces its roots deep into Ybor City, where thousands of immigrants, including family patriarch Belarmino Cadrecha, found work in the cigar factories.

"My father's first furniture customers were mostly people he knew from working in the cigar industry," explains Robert Cadrecha Sr., Belarmino's son.

Belarmino Cadrecha's story was typical for its time, but like a boys adventure novel, his journey took a savory twist. He arrived in Ybor City in 1914, alone, a 16-year-old with a sixth-grade education from a fishing village in northern Spain. When he set out for the United States at the behest of a second cousin who owned an Ybor cigar factory, the seas were so rough that the ship that carried him had to turn around and go back to shore for the night. Family lore has it that he came by way of the Port of Tampa, rather than Ellis Island.

He went to work first as an apprentice in the Cuesta Rey cigar factory, known to locals as El Reloj for its big clock tower, and later at Perfecto Garcia. There, he honed his skills as an inspector, packing the cigars according to color gradation. The job depended on perfect youthful vision; he worried that age and failing eyesight might cost him work.

So, at 46, he took a chance, expanding his side business of repairing and refurbishing old furniture for the families of his fellow cigar workers.

"It was during World War II, so no one was buying new furniture," Cadrecha recalls. "He had started the business while he was still working in the factory. My mother was a schoolteacher and she was able to provide an economic cushion so he could open the store."

Initially, Belarmino sold refurbished second-hand furniture, beds with flat springs and cotton mattresses, oil stoves, iceboxes and a good selection of hardware in a corner of the store.

"At first he couldn't decide whether he wanted to be in the hardware or furniture business," Cadrecha remembers.

When he was 16, Robert told his father he was finished with school and ready to try his hand at the furniture business. He had started working for his family as a boy, picking up weekly payments with his dad so customers wouldn't have to mail them.

"In those days, you put 10 percent down on a piece of furniture and made weekly payments for 18 months," Robert recalls. On Sunday afternoons, father and son drove in the family's 1946 Dodge truck to the homes of customers in Ybor and West Tampa, then picked up a fresh loaf of Cuban bread at Alessi Bakery or headed to the Goody Goody restaurant for lunch.

By the late 1950s, the Cadrecha family business was beginning to flourish and included two showrooms and a large selection of new furniture. As soon as Robert was ready, his father handed him the keys to one of the warehouses; he and his older brother, Bill Cadrecha - now 76 and still a co-owner - began to strategize ways to make the business grow.

Over the years, it has gone from used-furniture dealer to a mobile home furniture supplier during the postwar boom years to a high-end furniture dealer open only to the interior design trade.

Today, it's a fine-furniture retailer open to the public with two locations in Ybor: 1300 and 2234 E Seventh Ave.

They could relocate, they say, and turn a profit on the real estate that has risen enormously in value. But for now, they choose to remain in the historic district they call home.

"We want to stay here because it's part of our personal history," says Cadrecha, who also serves on the Ybor City Development Corp.

Nearly every member of the extended family, including Robert Cadrecha Jr., a priest at Nativity Catholic Church in Brandon, has worked in the business at one time or another.

Currently, day-to-day operations are run by Robert Cadrecha Sr., son Matt Cadrecha, 39, and daughter Mary Jo Polo, 40. Polo started in the customer service end of the business and worked her way up over the years to furniture buyer. Matt serves as the operations manager.

"We have a very much eclectic, unique style. We don't like to see ourselves coming and going," she says of the selection of eye-catching furnishings including the hip, cottage-revival style natural wicker dining chairs and cabana bed on display in the front of the 1300 E Seventh Ave. showroom.

Polo, who holds a degree in accounting from Southern Methodist University in Texas, started in customer service because that was important to Belarmino, who always told his children that when he walked the streets of Ybor he wanted to be able to look every customer in the eye.

Belarmino's legacy of hard work helped the family achieve the American dream.

Says Robert Cadrecha Sr.: "We all still work the floor selling whenever we have to."

- For more information, go to www.designinteriorsfurniture.com

[Last modified September 1, 2005, 08:26:09]