Showroom

BY PHIL HAGEN

>>> The Gerrity Group, Las Vegas, Nevada

The Gerrity Group's contemporary building.

As a lifelong tracker of the taste level in Las Vegas, Jan Gerrity has seen a lot of tacky over the years. But just after the turn of the century, she felt a rumble of sophistication and knew that it signaled a seismic shift.

"I saw it coming, and that it was speeding up," says, "but it really wasn't here yet to where I could develop a full design center and showroom."

She had left behind the wholesale floral world to work as the manufacturer's rep for Los Angeles-based Kneedler-Fauchere, handling both residential and hospitality clients in Las Vegas. But the high-end wholesaler didn't see enough evidence of evolution here to branch out, so Gerrity, who has watched her city grow from 250,000 to 2 million, started the Gerrity Group.

Sure enough, a few years ago a more sophisticated Vegas did emerge, thanks to the surge in high-end residential — and demand for savvy interior designers — that came in the wake of the hip new Strip era. While her business plan was right on target, and the land for her dream facility had been purchased, the contractor wasn't as sharp. Nearly two years she waited.

Lines represented include Richard Schultz outdoor furniture

"The high-end market was booming, so I felt like I was behind the eight ball," Gerrity says. "It was a feeling of watching it all happen without me."

Today you wouldn't know whether the Group missed a beat in conquering its niche as the go-to place for designers and architects in the hospitality and residential sectors. The showroom, which finally opened in March 2006, immediately became a beacon of contemporary sophistication in a city overcoming years of Old World abuse.

Inside the 5,000-square-foot industrial-style space, a small loft office for sales reps and management hovers above a showroom filled with a free-flowing series of designer workstations and showcases of cutting-edge furniture, wall coverings, lighting and accessories — lines not available anywhere else in Las Vegas.

By the front entrance, there's a stage set of James Duncan's Miami-chic lobby furniture. Along the large glass-and-metal garage door sits an array of sturdy, contemporary outdoor furniture from designers such as Richard Schultz, Dodaz al fresco and Giati— the kind of stuff you sit on at Wynn Las Vegas' posh patios.

Furnishings offered include contemporary, but comfortable, looks.

The showroom quickly transitions back into interiors, with displays of Casella lamps and distinctive furniture lines by Henry Hall Designs and Berman Rosetti. Then, in the back corner, a flooring workstation is filled with idea books, a resource library and samples from high-end rug makers such as Polar Carpets and Rugs. Adjacent is a large space of hanging fabric samples from 25 different manufacturers — Pollack, Christian Fischbacher and Nuno among them.

In the very center, beneath the office loft, is what showroom manager Ashley Claeson calls the "inspiration room." Consisting of a large table and walls of meticulously organized and bright-colored memo bins, it's a well-lit, energizing place where interior designers can work with clients to pull a scheme together.

This user-friendliness is one of the qualities that separates the Gerrity Group from the competition. "We try to be a one-stop shop," Claeson says, "to have everything under one roof." In fact, Gerrity doesn't even like to use the word "showroom" to describe her space. "We're a working studio," she says.

Also, "showroom" comes with the connotation that all the furniture is theirs to sell off the floor, whereas the Gerrity Group simply places the orders and earns money only through commissions.

A kitchen vignette at The Gerrity Group.

It's a difficult operation to explain, given that the city's unique hospitality sector makes up 80 percent of the business. There aren't too many design centers set up to deal with casino refurbs, let alone multiyear, multibillion-dollar projects such as MGM Mirage's CityCenter. As Gerrity understates, "When you're working on bedding for all of a hotel's rooms, that's a lot of hoops to go through."

Gerrity is big on customer service, which starts with two outside sales reps whose legwork includes daily visits with the major resort clients. No wonder the Gerrity Group has earned two NEWH Hospy Awards for Best Manufacturers' Representative. Another selling point is specialization in custom ordering (whether it's paintings by Vegas artists or carpet for a corporate jet), often made possible because of the staff's close-knit relationships with manufacturers and textile mills.

Another forte is their "extremely good" relationships with purchasing agents, Gerrity says. "Their timelines are so compressed here, with huge amounts of money at stake if they don't come in on time. So they call us at the last minute, and that's our favorite thing, because we turn it around and make it happen for them."

That, and the fact that the Gerrity Group knows how to rise to Las Vegas' new level. Such expertise tends to make an impression on designers from New York or San Francisco, who historically tend to have low design expectations for Sin City.

"Sometimes," Gerrity says, "we just want them to know there's a lot more here than there used to be."

The Gerrity Group, 5193 W. Oquendo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89118; (702) 255-8267 or www.thegerritygroup.com.