JANUARY 2022 ISSUE | NO. 23
Hello 2022 Inside: More than 100 New Intros Retailer Stock & Trade's big news Plus, meet new team members
New Year, New Gear CEO, Brad Cates Ready for new? We’ve got it. At present we have some 18 months of product development approved, drawn and ready to move forward. More exciting still is that as our assortment comes together, you will begin to see Sarreid evolving faster and faster into a dynamic whole home resource. The best part is that our speed to market with new products is second to none in the industry. Since joining the company in late 2019, I’ve made it my mission to create a company that is dedicated to being in stock with unique designs that are true to our roots, while making the buying, service and availability process better and easier with every mile we log. As 2022 begins and we put a record-breaking 2021 in the rearview, we literally have hundreds of new items already ready to launch. Since your success is our success, we ask that you regularly monitor the Sarreid site for the new and immediately available. As soon as product arrives, our crew is photographing, creating videos, and adding assets like a welloiled machine to the site. We love the High Point Market, and we look forward to seeing all of you this Spring, but we’re not standing still in the meantime, and neither should you. Our engine is revved, and we’re shifting into an even higher gear to deliver a brand new, better than ever Sarreid. Together we can make your assortment, presentations, go-to-market strategy, and business easier, faster, more fun and profitable. Get ready to roll! Right Behind the Scene views of the design process. From renderings to finished samples.
Above Interior view of Stock & Trade's retail space. #52772 Serrated Edge Iron Coffee table
RETAILER SPOTLIGHT 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.
Above An exterior view of The District, opening in Fall 2022.
“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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New Intros View Now
"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." --Michael Carey, Stock & Trade
Above Interior view of Stock & Trade's retail space. #52636 Long Hall Bench
TEAM SPOTLIGHT with Straaton Inc.
Michael Straaton
Big news on the sales front this month: Sarreid and Straaton Inc. have joined forces, with the wellknown group of sales professionals now representing the line in Illinois, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas. The team is led by the incomparable Michael Straaton, who got turned onto the better home furnishings business working straight out of school in his father’s Merchandise Mart showroom back in the days when the Chicago show was de rigueur. “When I started things were very regionally-specific and very show-centric. Other than High Point and Las Vegas the shows have gone by the wayside now, and that allows you to focus more on being proactive and bringing your game to your customers, rather than reactive,” Straaton describes. His customer has shifted dramatically too. “When I started in the business it was retail, retail, retail,” he says. “That changed with the Recession of 2008 when a lot of people went out of business and never came back. Today our customers range from larger design groups to individual designers, as well as architectural and hospitality firms, stagers and model homes. As a salesperson, you can’t pigeonhole yourself: You need to be open to the opportunities that are in front of you. Especially since designers are so project specific. You need to understand who is working on what, and their timeframes, and then be able to put your best foot forward with your vendor.” Most important, “a person has got to trust you and the vendors you represent. Sarreid is a vendor that people trust and that performs. From the quality to the designs, stock levels, customer service, marketing, publications and website, you have to have it all to be successful today and Sarreid has everything needed to make anyone who gets involved with the line successful whether they are a rep, a rep company like us, or a customer. It’s a winning combination for everybody.”
The Stratton Inc team: Beth and Jeff Cousins, Mary Alice O’Toole, Ryan McWilliams, and Stan Terry. Behind the scenes, Elise Straaton, the third generation to join the family business, manages marketing and media for the team.
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