Meet Jennifer Ridel | Interior/Product Designer, Business Development Consultant & Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jennifer Ridel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jennifer, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Risk is tied to hope. With maybe a side of delusion. Partly, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Coming from a very humble upbringing-the plus side of that-I see now, is the ability to survive & be scrappy and innovate. You’re forced to make shit work, because you have no choice and its sink or swim. I always chose to swim. I never made my upbringing a reason why I couldn’t or wouldn’t kick ass. Even though I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do, I knew with certainty, what I didn’t want for my life.

How it began…
What gets me going in the morning (other than coffee) is the sense of possibility. Quite literally, anything is possible. How great is that concept? For me, for you. I can do nearly whatever I want and provided the time & energy, make what I want to happen and put those wheels in motion. With my work life, in the beginning of my career, as a student and beyond in the UCLA Arc/ID program, I’d worked for several ID/Architecture firms, within different disciplines, to figure out what I really wanted to do and where I wanted to be. I’d tried Hospitality, Residential, Commercial Design, Historical Preservation… I’d soon find, that actually I liked most of it- but more importantly, I found out that I wasn’t the greatest employee in the corporate world. I worked well with others, sure, but the firms both boutique and large, had dated and limited ways of operating. Many were not open to new ideas or different ways of doing things and I felt beyond frustrated, to say the least. How do you grow or innovate without change? No one heard you, let alone wanted to hear you, especially being the intern or the junior designer. After a few years and a few firms, I’d experienced enough and was also fortunate enough to be in a position where I felt I could go it alone and do things differently with my own practice. I don’t know that I’d ever thought when I first started my design career to have my own company and I sure as hell didn’t know how exactly, but I winged it. I was more than willing to hustle, had some fancy cards printed, told friends and family, left my cards at my small gym reception desk and before I knew it, my very first client had arrived. Whoa was it a big one. It was for the Mayors office, support staff and conference rooms of a suburb in Los Angeles. I had no idea what I was doing. I walked into the meeting in my conservative business attire, met with the Mayor, Council Members and a few others and owned it. I prayed they didn’t see me sweat. Because I most definitely was. One of the women asked how old I was. I said I was 32. I was, in fact, 23. Long story short, the project happened. I soon had my first residential project near the end of that…then things became a bit of a rollercoaster, which is par for the course in this business. The gaps between projects, permit delays, clients indecisiveness, financial constraints and lack of flow in projects was brutal. Life was good. Until it wasn’t. None of it was easy. I pounded the pavement, hard. At the 11th hour, when it seemed like things were about to fall apart, a client with 2 sizable homes landed on my lap- things very quickly snapped into place. More projects would follow and I was doing ok, but I still had lag time between projects and needed to find a way to fill in the gaps and create additional streams of revenue.

What started off as casual chit-chat, would soon change the course of my career. There was a small fabric shop here in LA that I would frequent and was friendly with the owners. I’d jokingly tell them that nobody knows that I shopped there because it was an embarrassing hole in the wall! At some point I was asked what I would do if it was my store. It told them to gut renovate, update and toss 80% of their dead textile inventory. Well, yet another long story short, I did just that. Before I knew it, I’d taken over from Interior Designer and Editor/Buyer, to creating a position for myself as a Creative Director and handling business operations, general company development and growth. I’d traveled all over Europe, attending design and textile conferences and began meeting with various mills, sourcing and buying fabrics for the showroom. I’d noticed clients would come in, buy the fabrics, only to take it elsewhere to have furniture, drapes and pillows made-I suggested this company keep these sales in-house and find a way to provide these services for the clients. Guess who got to figure that one out? I soon met with local manufacturers of furniture and drapery workrooms, to put the company in position to offer these services, vertically integrating all product offerings, start to finish. I ended up designing a 90 piece line of furniture for the company. It was pretty exciting to be given carte blanche to design what I wanted and what I knew would sell. I did it with the fabrics, and having customized furniture with my clients for their projects, so it wasn’t exactly foreign to me. I’d also added home accessories and lighting, to get closer to supplying many of the items designers needed to create a project, but also to generate additional revenue. It was a win-win. I created inventory and POS systems with talented software developers, created a new logo and packaging, hired web developers to create an e-com site, they never had before, (& I did pitch a very new thing back then, called an App. They thought it was crazy, it was expensive to dev back then and surely no one would ever buy anything off of their phone or tablet! Ha!) I also created an employee handbook and guidelines (with the generous help from my sister, who is an HR Executive) hired sales teams and began hosting design events in this newfound showroom destination. I’d joined ASID as an Industry Partner, connecting the business to valuable members of the design community; business steadily increased and was booming, to say the least- during the 2008-09 recession no less. An additional location opened in Orange County to meet the demand. There was a program and structure in place to replicate and scale. It was a success.

Which brought me to my next venture. A long time good friend and her husband watched, consistently heard about this crazy growth and overhaul I’d created for this company. Unfortunately I wasn’t being compensated properly for my work as promised- especially considering the newfound success I’d worked so diligently on with the LA/OC showrooms. It was clear, that it was time to move on. They implored me to do it on my own and they’d offered to help invest to get it launched. Months after that, I began to build a new showroom and gallery in West Hollywood. The opening was a success. I’d landed editorials in Elle Decor, LA Times, Luxe, Angeleno, House Beautiful, CA Home + Design, countless blogs and more. It was an unbelievable dream come true. I was working 18 hours + a day on it and looking back, I didn’t really savor & celebrate how far I’d come. I was too busy growing it. I pretty much had no life outside of work, but made the sacrifice. There were times where I would leave the showroom at night and get watery eyed because I just couldn’t believe it. I did this. We had wonderful clients, of course celebs included and it was all so exciting. The partnership was not sustainable, for a few reasons ( note: partners are a risk- some things are just not evident until you’re in the thick of it). Ah, if there were only a formula or test for long-term partners! Clue: There’s not!

I exited that partnership to create a new company in 2012, which through all of the madness, is still very much operating today, as my company, Foundation Studio. One of the biggest issues running a retail/trade showroom is with manufacturing. It killed me (& our clients) when a mfr would quote lead times to produce my product in 3-4 weeks, only to have it often show up months later. Zero accountability, no apologies and not a care in the world, if we continued to work with them or not. Building furniture product in LA, doesn’t leave one many solid, honest options-there’s just so much demand, they couldn’t care less if you stay or go as a buyer/designer. There was no concept of customer service at all. I get it, not everyone shares my work ethic and I know that no one loves your baby more than you. It still pained me deeply to disappoint my beloved clients, because it was seemingly out of my control and so far from how I operate. So I ended up opening my own manufacturing facility initially in the Van Nuys area of the Valley. I needed a place where quality, timing and visibility could be controlled better. I jumped right into it. I researched equipment, tools, materials and suppliers and set off to build a damn factory. I found talented builders, artisans, seamstresses and staff to assist in running it. Everyone, including myself thought it was crazy. It pretty much was, but sometimes you have to be a little crazy when you’re an entrepreneur. I also thought, if some of these manufacturers could phone it in the way they did, I could be fully present, do it better & different. No risk, no reward. We broke even our first year. I had no marketing plan- I initially had my own product built and later worked with designers and architects I knew for private label and custom product- it was more than enough to keep us going. They all had been traumatized with the local builders just as I had. Our space then had a showroom to display my line of furniture and fabrics, so clients who wanted to see the quality in person, could do just that. My company now has other showrooms domestically and in Canada, as well as 2 online retailers representing and selling my products. Its still growing and I am working on a new collection, finally, to launch early 2021. I’m also launching another exciting D2C/ B2B start up very soon. TBC…

I’ve been very active in the arts community, hosting (pre-covid) popup art/design events, as more of a passion project, as I am a huge fan of the Arts and Artists. It’s been a dreamy and sometimes stressful- don’t think it hasn’t been!-existence. Additionally, to this day, I will take on the occasional business consulting contract. I love going into startups and existing companies and sharing my knowledge, including my many mistakes, auditing, streamlining their processes, marketing, value engineering; its unbelievable how much waste there is, in even the smallest companies- from office supplies to redundancies across the board. The best parts for me, are saving them money and watching them grow.

I truly enjoy my work. Most of the time! More than a few former employees have gone on to launch on their own businesses after working with me, which is so wonderful. Of course everything is easy when you have most of the answers and I was always happy to share my story, resources and career arc with all of them. I wanted them to win and feel valued whether they were working with me or not. I’m so proud of them! I didn’t have a mentor, but I had my will and drive- it worked out ok! I love to give and help others grow. Its incredibly rewarding for me. I very much enjoy participating in fund-raising and philanthropic efforts whenever I can. There are many wonderful causes in this city we can all contribute to. For me, women and children domestic issues & solvency as well as teenage homelessness are causes I care very much about -they shoot straight to my heart. I hope to get to a place where I can fund these important issues more than I have. There’s so much magic, talent and beautiful inspiration happening in LA, to say the least. I’ve loved all of it. Some people gamble in Vegas, I roll the dice a little with business. Do I have a business degree from Wharton or anywhere for that matter? No I do not. I feel if anything, as wonderful of an opportunity that could be and I very much respect it, that it was an advantage in my case that I didn’t. I wasn’t entitled to win or even burdened by a set processes or procedure when navigating my businesses because of my degree. Its’ been a journey, to say the least. In some ways, I feel like I’m still getting started and I’m definitely not done yet…I’m very excited about what the future holds.

No pressure, no diamonds y’all. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes – and I’m not an inspirational quote-y person, but this one resonates with me quite a bit. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”- Thomas Edison

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I can go high and low on this one. LA is not the Walk of Fame or the Hollywood sign. Its a huge city with so many pockets and vibes in each and every neighborhood. I love a good hotel bar or a solid dive bar. My favorite is probably the Hotel Bel Air. Its a bit hidden and usually pretty quiet, which truly makes having a drink, relaxing and chatting so, so lovely. The dive bars I like are anywhere from the Valley to Hollywood to Pasadena- you can send me an email if you really want to know! Sometimes, I don’t want to be found! Ahhh Pasadena though. I lived there for a bit and loved it. The consistency with the historic architecture and many of its architectural gems make it so satisfying on many levels for me. The Langham (formerly the Ritz Carlton) is a great spot for a staycation & spa pampering. A nice tour through the Huntington Gardens is always a good thing. I quite like Gjusta & Gjelina in Venice, always delicious! In the summer & early fall, there’s a night market at Yamashiro, do that- then get happy hour with incredible views there. There a new little wine bar called Kensho there as well for light bites and drinks. I completely love the Tower Bar and Dan Tana’s. So old school, elegant and just solid! The Weisman Art Foundation is such an underrated treat, along with a little stroll at the Greystone Mansion. I’ll always have a sweet spot for Kings Road Cafe on Beverly. The coffee is wildly good & energizing & the food is great for lunch. I’ve been going since I was a teenager! I do attend quite a bit of design events and gallery openings-its always a curious adventure especially at the Gagosian, Regen Projects, UTA, Hauser & Wirth or Nino Mier Gallery. You go for the art AND the people watching! Ralph Pucci is hands down one of the best showrooms in LA, if not the US. Its truly spectacular. and stunningly curated. I really could carry on, which is probably why I’m the concierge/cruise director in my friend/peer circle!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Everyone I’ve worked with, or who has been in my life, for better or worse has helped get to where I am and inspired me. From Martha Stewart to friends and family, to UCLA, to former business partners. Its all been a wild journey, with learning experiences I could never obtain without having been in the thick of it and totally hands on. For that, I am grateful.

Website: www.thefoundationshop.com
Instagram: @foundation.studio
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferridel/

Image Credits
Foundation Studio