1. You have created a successful, very niche business in NYC; tell us about how you got started.

I had always wanted to be an interior designer. When I was growing up, my friends stole their dads playboys, I took my mother’s Martha Stewart Living and hid them under my bed so no one knew I was reading decorating magazines. But boys in the 1980s didn't tell their mothers they wanted to be a decorator. So I took a different course in life. In 2004 I changed careers and became a real estate agent, mostly because I loved fixing up homes. I started fixing up properties that couldn't sell with other agents. I have no design training, but I have 20 years of redoing people’s homes in order to sell them. I crafted my process organically through trial and lots of errors. I don’t look at it like a job or work, it’s my other child. I finally have the ability do the one thing in life that I always felt I was meant to do. It’s beyond fulfilling to be in this moment.

In the early days of Staged To Sell Home I was using mostly the contents of my apartment, at one point I even slept on a mattress on the floor because my bed frame was needed for one of my first really big projects at 150 Charles Street. I didn’t have the resources to buy something new so I used what I had and that has been my motto for a very long time. I’ve always thrifted and sourced from places like flea markets and estate sales, over the last 5 years Staged To Sell Home has grown significantly. In 2023 we staged $463,000,000 in real estate with just over 130 projects. It used to be just me, then a few helpers. I now have 10 full time employees and an army of contractors & vendors who help us turn over very complex properties quickly.

The main difference between designing vs staging is the way the end user is factored in the process. In design it’s all about the owner, their needs, their preferences, their taste and dreams. For staging, I'm being hired to mitigate flaws, accentuate the assets and to create something that appeals to a wide, yet specific audience that is often inundated with options. 99% of our sellers do not want to be involved in the design process and that allows us to move swiftly and execute at a high level.

I shop therefore I am. I come from a family of collectors. I can still remember going to visit my grandmother in Coney Island and being enamored by all her tchotchkes and needlepoints. I enjoy the hunt for pieces and learning about them. I love finding antiquated objects that are no longer used or in production and working them in as art objects. I enjoy getting to know the artists I work with and feature and how they go about their craft. It is fascinating to watch someone paint or build a vessel by hand.

I first saw Gianfranco’s work at your pop up and I was there talking with friends and i remember leaving the conversation and walking over to one of Gianfranco’s vessels...so it’s part ADD and part being completely drawn to and enthralled by an object that at the same time looks and feels complex, yet rough. There’s a raw masculine quality to each piece that’s wholly original.

I love design & art and I appreciate different time periods, aesthetic movements and try to incorporate them all into my work. It’s common for me to be designing spaces that range from Postmodernism to Baroque all in one week and borrowing from each period and trying to incorporate them all together (when appropriate). My personal taste can go from Bruegel to Basquiat. I think it’s important to understand, embrace & respect all different forms of art & design.

The biggest challenge in staging is timing. We work under duress. Everyone wants everything done yesterday, there is often very little planning time for our projects. We are often installing very detailed and complex homes after 1 site visit (that can be months out) or only get access 2 weeks before install day and only have an hour or so onsite to prepare.

Many other staging companies have a templated paint by numbers approach to their projects, which I find uninspired and often ineffective as you can’t design a new condo on Billionaire’s Row in the same way as a turn of the century townhouse in Brooklyn.

I love designing with the space, architecture & end user in mind, so we design every project as if it’s meant to be there, meticulously. But I very much understand why some companies just have one look. It makes it easy for them. But I’m not interested in easy. Easy isn’t artful.

Right now i'm working on the home of an Italian Princess who was married to a member of the Romanov family. Both are deceased and the apartment resembles and old world European home with exceptional stone and plaster work. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life (in New York) and it’s a project that I’m pouring my heart & soul into breathing a new life into. Expect to see quite a few LES sources heirlooms there... :)