Good Neighbor Podcast for the Greater Chattanooga Region

Casey Ridley of The Designery: From Pre-Med to Nationwide Home Organization Business

August 23, 2024 • Scott Howell

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What if you could revolutionize your home organization while supporting a local business? Get ready to uncover the inspiring journey of Casey Ridley, the founder and president of The Designery. From a pre-med student at UGA to leading a nationwide enterprise with 27 locations, Casey shares his story of entrepreneurial triumph and passion for creating functional living spaces. Discover how The Designery offers a full range of services, from cabinetry to countertops, tailored to the needs of homeowners, builders, and developers. Casey also shares insights on the importance of well-organized closets and invites you to explore their stunning showrooms in Chattanooga, Cleveland, and Calhoun.

But that's not all—this episode also takes you behind the scenes to debunk common myths about box cabinets and reveal the benefits of The Designery's custom solutions. Learn how the company combines local expertise with national buying power to deliver affordable, high-quality products. Plus, Scott Howell from the Friends and Neighbors Group makes a compelling case for supporting local businesses and invites you to nominate your favorite spots to be featured on the Good Neighbor Podcast. Tune in for Casey's valuable insights on balancing business with personal passions and discover how you can make a difference in your community.

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Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Scott Howell.

Speaker 2:

Hello good neighbors and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Friends and Neighbors Group of Cleveland, dalton and the greater Chattanooga area. My name is Scott Howell and I'm your host For you first-time listeners. You might be wondering hey, what's the Good Neighbor podcast all about? Well, it's to bring awareness to the residents of our communities regarding the locally owned and or operated businesses in Cleveland, dalton, chattanooga and all the surrounding areas in the communities. You know, small local businesses are the backbone of our communities and they really need our support. Joining me today is our good neighbor, casey Ridley at the Designery. Casey, thanks for being with us on the Good Neighbor Podcast.

Speaker 3:

Hey Scott, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure. I'm really looking forward to hearing what the Designery is all about. But before we jump into that, would you like to share anything with us about yourself and your family?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, sure, I'm glad to. So I'm a Chattanooga native. I grew up in Chattanooga, north Georgia area, went to high school in that area and I'm always around, lots of family there, lots of community ties there. I live closer to Atlanta now. I'm a big UGA fan. I went to school at UGA, so I'm a big Dawgs fan. Don't hold it against me, but I do love pretty much anything with competition and football is one of them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that's great. So is the designery, a local business here to the Chattanooga area.

Speaker 3:

It is so. It started in Chattanooga. We have locations now in Cleveland and Calhoun and numerous other locations throughout the United States actually. So we have about 27 locations now, but our base of operations is still Chattanooga. For our fulfillment facility, we have several locations there and, like I said, that was that that's where it started. And, like I said, that's where it started and that's definitely where I still consider home.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It's hard to get Chattanooga out of your blood. I tell you the whole Chattanooga area hard to get it out. So let's just dive right in. Tell us all about the design.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely Scott. So the designery is a full turnkey kitchen, bath and closet company. We specialize in cabinetry, but we also sell flooring, tile, countertops, accessories several other things that you'll use throughout the kitchen and bath and closet space. We work with homeowners, builders, developers pretty much anyone that needs those services or products we work with. We have multiple showrooms and, of course, we work on appointments, but we also welcome walk-ins as well.

Speaker 2:

Okay, and you said you have offices in Cleveland and where is it? Chattanooga area?

Speaker 3:

So it's technically Rossville but it's basically Eastridge. So we always just tell everyone that we're right over that state line there in Rossville.

Speaker 1:

But we're, you know, five minutes away.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. And then we also have locations in Calhoun, georgia, so a little bit further south, but not too far.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so if somebody is in any one of those areas, they can just go to your store and walk in and see what you've got. Is that what you're telling me?

Speaker 3:

Exactly, exactly. So when you walk in it's you know beautiful showroom. You have several kitchens around you, cabinet product all around to pick things out, make selections, tile, countertops. You know truly full turnkey. We work with clients of contractors, we work with spec builders, we work with multifamily developers and much more, but the showroom is kind of that central meeting place to make a ton of selections.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. You do closet also, closet organizing.

Speaker 3:

You said we do yeah, we do a lot of closets and it's incredible the things that you can do out of the closet material and it's all about just making your space more functional. And you know, I think closets are a very undervalued part of the home. That is very, very important in your day-to-day life and if you have a clean, put together closet, it just really sets you off for success. Every day you wake up and get going. And we do that for a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

I used to own a house. It was an old home and they had taken and put a closet organizer in them and one of the master bedroom was amazing. It was just amazing the way they had done it. So I can attest to that. So, casey, what's your position with the?

Speaker 3:

company, so I'm the founder and president of the design room.

Speaker 2:

Wow, well, congratulations. I mean you don't look a day over 80. So I mean you're Now all y'all can't see him. He's a young guy. So congratulations. It's quite an undertaking that you've done there, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. I couldn't do it without great, great employees and a great network around me. You know I started at a young age, but I've been extremely ambitious, had a very lucky and blessed few years and have just really worked very hard to get to us to where we are now.

Speaker 2:

Well, tell me about your journey. What brought you from getting out of school and going into this type of occupation?

Speaker 3:

school and going into this type of occupation? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's kind of funny. I mentioned earlier about how I'm a big Dawgs fan and how I went to UGA, and so I'll kind of start there.

Speaker 3:

You know, in college I was actually a pre-med student. I was very involved, actually did a lot of volunteering at Erlanger and Memorial and several other hospitals throughout the Chattanooga area, just throughout my high school and early college days of just you know. You know, giving back to the community and volunteering, so much so that I actually got a scholarship for that from Ronald McDonald House there in Chattanooga. So you know, I was very involved in the pre-med route until I had organic chemistry and then quickly discovered that. You know, pre-med route until I had organic chemistry and then quickly discovered that pre-med just was not for me. So I quickly went to my advisor and said, all right, I need something else. Clearly medicine is just not my path anymore.

Speaker 3:

And from there I switched to business and I just got super involved. I got involved in entrepreneurship program, created several different companies while I was in school and just fell in love with it. So once I got to the point of graduation I said, all right, I know I don't want to go the corporate route. I know I want to do something entrepreneurially. And there was a salvage company out of Chattanooga called A1 Surplus or A1 Kitchen and Bath, and yeah. So I basically bought that company, we rebranded and then we grew it from there to you know where we are today.

Speaker 2:

Nice, nice. Well, congratulations again. That's it's. Wow, I mean I'm impressed. That's a thank you. I love it when young people take a hold and become successful. I just interviewed a couple this morning that have become very successful with each other, so that's wonderful. So you know, talk to me about some of the myths and misconceptions that people have sometimes when they go to try to do some of the things that you offer and they're a little apprehensive about. You know exactly who to approach, how to talk about what they you know they want. Tell me, talk to me about that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's several different kind of misconceptions throughout the kitchen and bath space in specific about what quality truly means, what price point truly means and what you need to do to achieve those things, and one of those stigmas is that custom shops have this perception that they are superior than you know. Maybe box cabinets is kind of the phrase that people might use. What's funny about that is it's just really not true, right? So you know, having a company that has the box cabinets, if you will, there's, there's incredible things that they can do. They're very custom actually, and so for us, for example, you know we use equipment that are just out of reach of custom companies. So that could be something like the way we do our dados or the way we dovetail our drawers, the soft tail or the soft close items, right? Things like that that we do throughout our building process and throughout our manufacturing is so much more superior than just what someone can do in a small custom shop. And you know, like I said, that's a misconception in the area that you know we're constantly trying to. You know set straight, because you know you can come to us and get something of really, really good quality actually better quality in most areas, but for a fraction of the price, because there's a lot less labor and it's much more consistent, and you have all those things to take into account.

Speaker 3:

Thankfully, we've been able to grow to the size we are.

Speaker 3:

So, even though we're a local company and you're working with local staff, local team like I said, I'm from Chattanooga but you're also getting the buying power of a national brand who is bringing that to you, which is just incredible and, like I said, it gives you a lot of opportunities there as a homebuyer or as a builder.

Speaker 3:

That you're working with a local team but you still get all the benefits of kind of a larger company.

Speaker 3:

And so we take that concept and we kind of mesh that together about the custom shop and the RTA shop and we kind of mesh that together to be what is now the designery. So you know, if there's one thing that I could, you know, set straight out there and and you know, rather you shop at the designery or not it is just, you know, look at all your options, don't necessarily just go to a custom shop because you think that they're better, because in reality they could be, but they could also not be. And so I definitely, you know, advise people to just look at your options and make sure that you know you're really comfortable with the route you're going, that the quality is what you want, the price point is where you want it to be and you don't just accept what you know. Certain people who maybe have outdated information and more outdated, you know, set of beliefs, don't accept that and, you know, try to see for yourself what um opportunities you have in your area um as well that's what, hey, that's what the competition is all about.

Speaker 2:

We can get multiple prices and you just check out the quality. That's what's far. It's what keeps us all honest, right, competition absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

You know there's a reason why. You know kroger and walmart are always nearby, home Depot and Lowe's are always next door. You know competition is extremely important and it's what makes the industry thrive. So I, you know, always love to network with people who are doing a very similar thing. I love to get to know them, I love to learn from them and vice versa. I hope I can teach them some things every now and then as well. And you know, competition is extremely important and it's never something that we should shy away from. And so people who might be listening out there, who are in the industry, I hope they aren't offended by some of the opinions that I say today, but at the same time, I hope that they can respect and maybe learn something on their own as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, we all know what we're doing, what we're good at, and and, uh, you know. We also know if we produce a good product or an inferior product. We all know that. Uh, so you know, you know. Then there's some people you know and and and not to say. When I said I guess I shouldn't use the word inferior, I apologize for that. We all know when we offer cheaper products, there's some people maybe can't afford the high-end stuff. They can't afford that and they need a better price point. There's nothing wrong with offering top of the line and maybe middle grade. We've got to have something for everybody, that's for sure. I have to make it affordable. Whatever we do, it has to be affordable for the market that we're going after. You met a while ago. You're married. You make you all go. You have, you're married. Uh, what do y'all like to do for fun when you're not working?

Speaker 3:

well, I do work quite a bit, um, but I will say that when I'm not working, I do love tennis.

Speaker 3:

I love getting out on the courts and you know, hitting, hitting around, rather, that's with friends, family or, you know, in leagues that I'll do around the area. I'm actually in a league in the dalton georgia area, so I'll do a league there. Um, I love golf, I love pretty much all sports. Rather it's watching them or doing them. Um, I will say I'm not quite as in shape as I once was, scott, as I'm sure that a lot of us can relate to, um, you know, but nonetheless it's fun to get out there and still, you know, still participate.

Speaker 3:

If I'm not doing those things, then just, you know, quite frankly, spending time with family, you know I love. You know, like you said, I have a wife. We're very close with all of our siblings and our parents and just everyone that is close to us. We're very close with them and, you know, we just love spending time with them. So that's another part. That could be seeing a movie and doing something like that, or it could be just having a family dinner on a Saturday night when we get the free time, so anything like that. And then the last thing I'll say is traveling. Everyone loves to travel, right, I am a sucker for learning and history and traveling to enjoy those things.

Speaker 2:

So I love history. I love learning more about people, places and things, that's for sure.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

You know, casey, you're young, you've built a good business, and I would like to ask you a kind of more personal question. Can you describe any hardship or life challenge maybe that you went through? That you know after you've come through it and you look back you can say, hey, you know I'm better or stronger for what I went through.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a really good question, scott. Obviously, and especially for the fellow business owners out there, you all know that there's a ton of challenges that you will go through throughout the walk of life of being an entrepreneur. It looks glamorous from the outside. Looking in, scott is being a younger guy. So you know, you're young when you get started and sometimes there can be a stigma or a lack of respect based on age right, and you know it's kind of funny. You look at people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any of those people and you're like, well, they started out really, really young and they went, you know, and became really successful, but most of the time people don't remember that they were 20 or 21 when they got started they remember their 30s or 40s, when they made a billion dollars, right and uh.

Speaker 3:

So, you know, I think one of the challenges is just earning people's respect from employees, customers, colleagues, um, you know so much more there's. You know, there's a sense of prejudice just against young, young people that are kind of in a place of authority. They think that, you know, it was probably given to them and that's just kind of the obvious thought people jump to, and sometimes that's true, right, there's a stigma for a reason, like, I get that. But it is something that I had to personally overcome and I had to earn respect from people and I had to work every day to prove that I, you know, deserved to be where I was and that I worked very hard, with a lot of strategy and a lot of intelligence to get me there. And you also have to have the right blend of humility, though, to mix into that. So confidence and humility, you've got to blend those things together in order to earn that respect.

Speaker 3:

And it's, you know, it's a challenge and you know, and that's something that I think, for the most part, I think I've overcome that and I think that because of that, my work ethic is so much better than you know probably ever would have been and I have, you know, just really achieved some incredible things, and I think it's from that challenge and just being able to work through that challenge and overcome that challenge and have difficult conversations. So, you know, I would say that challenge I'm better off for.

Speaker 2:

People will ignore certain things, like your youth and different things like that, if you provide good quality work and stand behind it. If you don't stand behind what you do, then people don't care how old you are, they don't care how you got where you're at. If you're not going to stand behind it, you're going to have the most impressive story in the world. If you don't stand behind what you do, they don't care. There's an old saying people don't care what you know. They want to know how much you care If we stand behind what we do. That's the main thing. If there was one thing that you wish our listeners could know about the designery, one thing that they wouldn't know unless you told them and you'd like to shout it from the rooftops, casey what would it be?

Speaker 3:

Scott, that's a great question, you know. So we have a list of values that we really try to live by, and one of those values is community. One of those values is community. And you know, as as cliche as it is, we are super involved in the community, from high school sponsorships to little league teams, the chamber events, you know, and much more you know. And then you know we are also involved with our community from a national level. We have, you know, we're a proud sponsor of Dr Carson's foundation.

Speaker 3:

We also work with a company called Operation Homefront who helps veterans get placed after service, and so all of those things that we do is just our way of giving back to the community. Rather, it's a local level or a national level. It's really important to us that we not only say that's our value but we live by that, and I really encourage everyone out there to. I know we can get lost in that day to day grind of building a business and satisfying our customers and all of those things are extremely important, but at the same time we have to reflect. And how do we give back and how do we live by, you know, our community standards or values or ethics that you know one might possess, and so I hope that I can kind of give that to the listeners of hey. Community is very important and the design stands by the work that we do in the community and and the ways that we try to give back and the hope that we have to give back even more as we continue to grow.

Speaker 2:

That sounds awesome. That's a good answer, really good answer. I can tell you made it to not just one, it was canned. I appreciate you. You know we thank you for being on the program today. But before we go, I know a lot of people would like to know, online or offline, how could they reach you, how can they get in touch with?

Speaker 3:

you Absolutely Well. Please reach out. I mean, I'm super involved in LinkedIn or Facebook. My name is Casey Ridley, so you know, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or Facebook, visit us at thedesignerycom or, of course, feel free to stop by any of our showrooms. You know, one of them is on Key Street off in Cleveland, tennessee, and the other one is off of Direct Connection Drive in Rossville, georgia, off the East Ridge exit. So stop into our showrooms. Visit me on LinkedIn or Facebook, reach out to me or check out our website at thedesignerycom. Reach out to me or check out our website at thedesignerycom and I would love to connect with you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for being on the show today, Casey. I hope a lot of people see this and reach out to you and find the satisfaction they need and what you're offering. So thanks a lot for being with us today, buddy.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, Scott.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure To all the good neighbors of the Cleveland and Dalton and the Chattanooga areas and after after meeting with you know, with Casey and learning more about the designery, I know he hopes you'll take a moment to consider all they have to offer and remember them when you're in need or want the products and services they provide. And before ending this episode, I'd like to thank you, all the listeners. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to visit with us at the Good Neighbor podcast. Always remember to support the locally owned and or operated businesses in Cleveland, dalton and the whole greater Chattanooga area. There's so many communities and towns that I wish I had the time to mention all of them, but we know who you are. You know who you are and there's businesses in all these little areas and we need to be supportive of them. So we'd like to ask you to remember us on Facebook, instagram, pinterest, youtube Just, we're going to be having TikTok videos for long. Go there and like us and help spread the word to the local people in this great Chattanooga area about this podcast and they can learn more about local businesses that they can support.

Speaker 2:

My name's Scott Howell. I'm with the Friends and Neighbors Group. Everyone go out and make this a remarkable day.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPClevelandcom. That's GNPClevelandcom. That's GNPClevelandcom, or call 423-380-1984.

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