Today we’d like to introduce you to Larry Gerow.
Hi Larry, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
18 Marais Designs is a story of two designers. First, with myself, Larry Gerow, who after graduating with a visual merchandising degree, I launched a visual display company called Area Code 212 Designs, Inc. For over 25 years, ‘212’ did window design, interior merchandising and holiday installations for various stores, salons and shopping centers throughout the Twin Cities, including Mall of America, Galleria of Edina, Ridgedale, and a chain of salons in New York.
Then I met Brian Kotz, who joined Area Code 212 Designs as a lead visual merchandiser specializing in floral arrangements. Before joining ‘212’ Brian was a premier custom floral designer and floral design educator whose creations have been displayed in many respected design events in Minnesota. He expanded his creativity to interiors as a professional visual merchandising at Area Code 212 Designs. Brian’s passion for design is also expressed in food and he trained as a chef at the LeCordon Bleu Culinary Arts, where he was recognized with high honors.
In those days our focus was visual merchandising — window displays, interior vignettes, holiday decoration — for department stores, salons, boutique stores and malls,
With the slow decline of department stores, we closed Area Code 212 Designs, pivoted, and went to work at two different large home staging companies as lead designers. Since real estate was taking off and new home builders were increasing housing developments, it was a good move for us. We would do interior design of entire homes and condos — at a minimum the living room, kitchen, dining room, master bedroom, and bathroom — coordinating all the furniture, wall art, and decor to fit the personality of the home.
About four years into that, we were approached by JB Hudson Jewelers to provide all their seasonal window displays and outdoor planters. We realized that we missed our roots and wanted to work for ourselves again. This is how 18 Marais Designs was born, in 2018. We were back to our first love and everything was going smoothly and we were taking on more new clients, until 2020. Then COVID pandemic hit, closing public buildings and shortly after that, the George Floyd riots ravaged downtown Minneapolis. Overnight, everything stopped.
So while things were shut down, we once again stepped back and thought about how we could evolve our design skills. Even though brick and mortar stores were mandated to be closed, we knew people who still wanted to have private events that were memorable. That’s where we stepped in and started using our design skills to create beautiful event designs, chef-designed catering, and stunning floral designs to make people smile.
Now that Minnesota stores are opening up and flourishing again, we’re getting calls from past and new clients needing visual merchandising. We are happy to be in retail design again, along with our new passion in events and catering.
We are humbled by our experiences, grateful to every client, and find that springtime has a deeper meaning to us as we look forward to the new hardy growth that will soon sprout up through the cold melting snow, from darkness upward to a new life.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not always been a smooth road. There was the Financial Crisis of 2008 and many of our large clients went out of business or lost their marketing budgets. Covid-19 closings and George Floyd riots in 2020 impacted retail business’ ability to be open to the public and eliminated foot traffic on Nicollet Avenue — Minneapolis downtown’s shopping district, food and entertainment artery and where our main client, JB Hudson Jeweler, was located. Retail in Minnesota has changed, It’s becoming more digital, not as many brick and mortar locations, not many large department stores or grand window displays, We’ve had to continuously adjust — expand, downsize, pivot, embrace — to the current zeitgeist of the Twin Cities.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We design interior and exterior retail spaces and private homes, holiday installations at shopping centers and stores, event design and management, catering with exotic flavors and hand-crafted foods, floral design and outdoor planters. We try to provide a more elevated experience to our designs.
We want to take the burden of design project management off the plate of our clients. Even if we can’t directly provide some unique or unusual request, we have an robust list of people that we can contact to help complete the project and make the client happy. We coordinate the project and handle any unexpected hiccups so our clients don’t have to sweat the details.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
We have been successful by exceeding our client’s expectations. We do that by partnering with our client and fully capturing what their vision is, producing what they ask for, and taking it to another level with elements that are happily unexpected and beyond what they imagined. We love to ‘wow’ them!
Contact Info:
- Email: info@18Marais.com
- Website: 18Marais.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18marais/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/18Marais/
