Distinctive in style, size and finish is a Healdsburg console.
Having grown up the child of a business owner (my father, now a retired pharmacist, owned a small drugstore that my brother and I worked in from the time we were about five years old), I can’t help but prefer family-owned establishments, particularly those with extensive histories. I love to hear the owners explain how their grandparents or great-grandparents got started, and how the business has changed since its inception.
The Darien Design Center is a perfect example. Opened in 1928 by Louis Christman, the great-grandfather of Erik Christman, current co-owner of the company, the operation originally began as a piano manufacturer. “My great-grandfather had extensive knowledge of woodworking and furniture,” Erik explains. “When customers couldn’t make payments on their pianos during the height of the Depression, Louis turned his attention to furniture and began selling pieces out of his house, until he moved his growing business to the site where Grieb’s Pharmacy, on Route 1 in Darien, is now located.”
During the late 1940s, Louis relocated the aptly named Christman Furniture to the company’s current Darien location — 523 Post Road. Here, he converted what was formerly a restaurant into a burgeoning furniture business, and, over time, with the help of his son, Warren (Erik’s grandfather), he added to the existing space.
“My great-grandfather and grandfather sold furniture and lighting primarily, and my father, Gary, who began working here as a teenager delivering furniture, took over the business in the mid 1970s,” says Erik, whose mother, Melodie, has also worked at the company for many years.
In the 1990s, Christman’s employed yet another generation, when Erik followed in his family’s entrepreneurial footsteps and began assuming more and more responsibility within the family business. Eventually, he became co-owner with his wife, Jackie, a former municipal bond trader with a knack for interior design. Two years ago, the company was officially renamed Darien Design Center.
A Matter Of Choice
Today, Erik wears many hats, focusing on sales, operations and day-to-day details, while Jackie and Melodie concentrate on the interior design, sales and merchandising end of the business.
The new company name is apropos, as Erik, with the business in his blood, has observed how interior design has in fact changed since his great-grandfather started Christman Furniture. “Our customers today are buying not just furniture but the complete interior-design package, including in-home design service,” he says. “Whereas there was once one style of sofa and six fabrics choices, the options now are limitless and very flexible … we can change virtually any aspect of an upholstered piece, while case goods, like dining tables, can be customized, as well.”
With nearly 75 percent of the company’s clients choosing “off the menu,” as Erik refers to it, virtually every sale is considered custom. “Customers can choose from among hundreds of sofa styles and thousands of fabrics, either from among the 10,000 we have here or COM (customer’s own material), plus trims,” he says. “We can piece together a sofa from different styles and sizes of arms, backs, legs and fillings, and we can design a dining table using whatever type of wood, leg, top and finish the client likes.”
With so many options available, what are homeowners choosing? “We’re seeing a dichotomy,” Jackie Christman notes, “with many clients choosing to decorate the upstairs of their homes more traditionally and the downstairs living space in a more transitional style, meaning possibly a traditional piece of furniture with some more graphic- or geometric-patterned fabrics … essentially, a blending of the two.”
Jackie and the other knowledgeable in-house designers typically start with a retainer and a visit the customer’s home to measure and determine what is needed. “I encourage people to keep the same palette — often featuring neutrals — moving from room to room, with different pops of color in each space,” Jackie says. “We might suggest a neutral sofa, for example, and then add brightly patterned and trimmed throw pillows, which can be switched out seasonally or whenever the mood strikes…that way, the client isn’t stuck with a couch that they’re tired of in a few years.
An Edgartown side table is reminicent of summers at the shore.
Interior Design: The Next Generation
Many of the business’s customers are eschewing very formal pieces in favor of more adventurous design, according to Jackie. “More useable, upscale, less-formal pieces are selling,” she says, “particularly in linen, textured, natural or geometric patterns, and in shades of light gray to charcoal and steel blue … with orange, turquoise and jade as some of the more trendy color choices for pillows and accessories.”
Clients are also requesting family friendly, serviceable fabrics, with those labeled indoor/outdoor becoming more popular inside the home. “People want their children and pets to be able to live and play in their living rooms and family rooms,” she says. “They don’t want to be afraid to sit on the couch.”
Lighting is also key in any decorating scheme, according to Erik, who explains that while newer homes are abundantly lit, older homes — so prevalent in Fairfield County — are more challenging to light. “We try and strategically place lamps in these older houses,” he says, “while new construction — with its many, often larger, windows — means there’s less space for tables on which to place lamps … we wind up with furniture floating towards the center of the room, and no place to plug in a lamp, except in a floor outlet. I’m waiting for the perfect cordless lamp to be invented!”
In the end, it all comes down to quality and trust, says Erik. “I grew up with my family constantly reinforcing the concept of quality as the most important factor in interior design, and trust the essential element in any retail business,” he says. “Clients rely on our expertise, and when they spend more, they should get more — pieces that last for years. And if someone does have a problem? They can call our store, and talk directly to the owner — that’s me.”
For further information: 203-655-8739; dariendesigncenter.com.
