Partners Arel Ramos and Eric Cody ran a vintage finds/modern design business and store called Stripe Vintage Modern in Miami for 21 years. Then, they came west and brought their hybrid design aesthetic with them. Their new shop, called Industry Palm Springs, carries unique pieces that they collected over the years plus local art. Celebrity clients include designer Jeremy Scott – formerly of Moschino – and Broadway producer Debbie Ohanian.
Olga Trehub
“The reason why we started the business in the first place is because we were both big collectors and shoppers, and we were just accumulating stuff,” Ramos says in the bright showroom. “Then, we were accumulating storage units. So, we thought, ‘why don't we just sell what we have?’ We could keep something and sell something. There’s always more.”
Ramos and Cody were part of the renaissance of Miami Beach while they worked as visual managers for high-end brands. The Art Deco revival of South Beach in the 1980s and ’90s spurred their interest in furniture and interiors. “We both appreciated design and value; we both came from a visual merchandising background,” Ramos says. “Eric was district regional for The Limited corporation, [and] I worked for several high-end fashion houses. We both had an eye for merchandising; that's what led us to what we do today and how people admire the way we show things and display them, because we're not just merchants – we have a visual background and a selling background.”
The project that brought the design duo to Palm Springs was a commission to redesign a 5,800-square-foot mansion in the exclusive Little Tuscany area. The home – which features four bedrooms, four and a half baths, two floors, a large pool, and a landscaped backyard – had not been touched in decades.
“When the owner, an old friend from Miami Beach, bought her house here in Little Tuscany, right away she called us and said, ‘I’m going to get this house, but only if you decorate it for me,’” Ramos says. “We said, ‘Yeah, sure, we'll jump on that.’ We started coming out more frequently to the property and working. We wanted the house to feel like her – an ultra-feminine place – but to keep in mind the age of the era of the house and the surroundings, the beautiful desert colors, the morning light that hits the mountains, the hues, the pinks and the purples, and keeping all that in mind.”
Olga Trehub
Olga Trehub
Olga Trehub
Olga Trehub
The duo works with light differently here than they did in Miami. “It’s because we have the mountains and the air is so different, you get different hues, more shading,” Cody says. “Miami is so open and bright all the time. Here, you get more nuances, you want bright and happy, but at the same time, you want it to be a little moodier, a little bit darker in a way. We also wanted that place to get back more to its mid-century roots, because it has gone through some ill-advised design.”
The result – after two years of construction and a complete interior redesign with custom-made pieces – is both sleek and warm, with flesh-colored velvet sofas and deerskin-patterned rugs. The kitchen features dusky blue tiles and cream cabinets, the bedrooms pop with vibrant pink palm-frond wallpaper, and every room offers stunning views of a courtyard and the San Jacinto Mountains. The house is often rented for private parties and film shoots, and was featured on home tours during Modernism Week in February.
Olga Trehub
Industry Palm Springs carries unique living and dining room sets, which are sprawled across several rooms. The shop has a colorful past; it was formerly a strip club called Pope’s Nudie Bar, and part of the circular center bar remains. Then, it almost became a dispensary but the owners ran into permit issues; then, it sat empty for a while. “When we came across the listing, because we were coming out to the desert often, and we always loved the whole vibe …,” Cody says. “It’s got a similar village vibe to what Miami Beach used to have. We're paying the same here that we were in Miami for twice the [amount of] space.”
Olga Trehub
“We would never want to do an online sales platform, because we enjoy finding things and then putting them together,” Ramos says. “With client interaction, it's more about selling the feeling than it is about selling furniture. When you're designing a house, it's how do you want people to feel, not what kind of a chair or a sofa do you want. We try to create an environment, a lifestyle, something that you want to have a part of. That started when clients would come in and say, ‘I have some mid-century things. I don't know how to fit them into my space. They're not looking the way I thought they would; can you help?’ We decorate and we style, and we move things around. A lot of clients come into the gallery and say, ‘I could just move right in. Can you recreate this in my house?’”
Ramos and Cody shipped three truckloads to Palm Springs from Florida and opened the store last fall. They plan to continue offering personal interaction with customers. They will host in-store events with local food and liquor to show off the shop to their neighbors. “The community has been so nice and welcoming, and we never get tired of looking at those mountains,” Ramos says.
Industry Palm Springs is located at 508 Industrial Place East. For more information, visit www.industryps.com or @industry_palmsprings on Instagram.
