It all started with a chair. When Jacob Sudhoff and Jerry Hooker were furnishing their home two-and-a-half years ago, they selected a white chair from Italian brand Giorgetti for their foyer. They were smitten with its elegant shape and exquisite finishes, and started looking into its Italian designer.
They discovered in Giorgetti a 120-year-old brand which handcrafts everything from furniture to marble countertops to lighting fixtures to cabinets from its workshop in Meda, north of Milan.
“The only other company that provides the scope of products for a home, from the kitchens to the bathrooms, is IKEA,” Sudhoff laughs. So like IKEA — but for the ultra-wealthy, from one-of-a-kind marble slab tables to plush velvet chairs to sleek, hand-tooled cabinetry.
Hooker, a principal at Mirador Group, an architecture, interiors and landscape company, and Sudhoff, the CEO of his eponymous company that provides sales and marketing for builders and developers, were uniquely situated to see the potential Giorgetti might bring to a different kind of project here in the states. They brought in developer Stolz Partners and got to work.
The result is the Giorgetti, an ultra-high-end condo project in Upper Kirby that has recently broken ground and is under construction. Every detail of the project has been intricately designed in a partnership between Giorgetti, the Houston-based Mirador and Sudhoff companies, and Georgia-based Stolz Partners.
The design of the building itself, a low-slung seven stories filled with 32 custom residences, is modeled after a popular Giorgetti cabinet. Each feature of the home is customizable based on the owner’s preferences, and Giorgetti’s craftsmanship will be seen in every room of the home. “When it comes to details,” says Giorgetti managing director Giovanni del Vecchio, while thumbing a vein in a single-slab marble countertop in the company’s soon-to-open showroom space in West Ave, “we have a maniac passion.”
The building’s 50 percent sold, and many of the owners have already been to Meda to visit the Giorgetti workshop. “We found it was hard to explain the scope of the craftsmanship without really seeing the artisans at work,” Will Stolz, founder of Stolz partners. After buyers tour Giorgetti’s factory floor, they’re sold. “We’re creating apostles,” Stolz laughs.
The building’s units are going for between $1.5 and $4.5 million, and move-ins are expected at the start of 2020.
If you can’t wait to get a look at the high-quality craftsmanship, Sudhoff and Hooker have opened CASA, a 10,000-square-foot retail outlet to showcase of some of the finest Italian brands, including Giorgetti; Poltrona Frau, which provides the leather interiors for Ferrari; premium hardwood purveyor Listone Giordano; and others, each with their own mono-brand concept space.
“We want to bring superior-quality products and services to Houston, under one roof, as a one-stop solution for homeowners and developers alike,” says Hooker.
The Giorgetti entrance.
