GREG FIESER
LOS ANGELES DESIGN MANAGER
I’ve always been interested in home interiors and design. The true story I love to tell is that my mom stopped sending me to my room as punishment around eight years old because I would just go in there and rearrange the furniture. She’d come check on me two hours later and I’d be a happy little kid just sitting there with a whole new layout. My career path has bobbed and weaved in various directions over the years, but always with some kind of artistic bend: actor, cosmetologist, television casting producer, landscape designer, Feng Shui consultant.
When I found Spade and Archer, I was in Portland and working in furniture, lighting and home goods retail as a Visual Manager. I remember it very clearly: I came home frustrated after another long day of holiday retail customer service and decided I needed a different career, STAT! Retail had served me well and I was happy to at least have a job, but that’s all it was for me. I enjoyed the visual aspect of my job. I loved moving furniture around every day and setting up displays. However, the grind of customer service coupled with the oppressive nature of large corporate retail was cracking my skull. I’m a creative person all the time—not just the few hours a day allowed at a store. So I very quickly thought about the few industries where I could be creative full-time, have adult autonomy, and do something that spoke to my deepest skills. I came home that dreary December day and started looking up local home staging companies. I knew a little about staging and I had a background in design, so it seemed like the good fit. I looked up six companies (that’s it!) and crafted a heartfelt and possibly desperate cover letter. Three never responded to my email at all. Two said they would look me up in April when they were hiring. And one responded a few days later with an offer to meet and discuss. That one response was from Justin Riordan, owner and founder of Spade and Archer Design Agency.
We met at a coffee shop for a casual interview. Justin spoke about his company, its humble beginnings and its optimistic future, as well as its design aesthetic encompassing contemporary, modern and antique furnishings. I was impressed by his business model as well as his expansion ideas. “Did I have a problem relocating?” Not one bit. I’d finished my time in Portland and was ready to move on. Justin said the job opening was in Seattle and I soon had a second interview up there in January. Oh, and speaking of moving, would I mind moving to LA in a year or so when that new office was set to open? No? Great!
I took the bus up to Seattle for my second interview which went well, I suppose, as I was asked to come back up in February for a working interview. I started working full-time in Seattle in April. In the flash of an eye, we got a great opportunity to open our Los Angeles office in September, so I returned to the Southland after a four-and-half year hiatus to the Northwest and started working on the new office. I put a lot of sweat equity into opening our new warehouse. I was so gratified when we started staging homes all around LA.
This new career path that I put myself on has been such a blessing. In my own home, I can only rearrange my furniture so much before it becomes exhausting and redundant. In my work with my Feng Shui clients, I can only make suggestions to how they should arrange their spaces but the actual work is up to them. In my retail work, I was always conscripted to a limited space and a corporate ideology or template. But every time I stage a property, it becomes a brilliant space all uniquely unto itself. When I close the door on a freshly staged house I’m impressed (and self-satisfied) that it always looks better than when I got there. Home staging seems to be a perfect fit for me-- I get to use all my talents and a lifetime of varied experience every day. I can’t wait to see where this path takes me!
