AHP 051 - Kellie Sirna (Studio 11 Design)

Speaker A: You're checking into a, uh, hotel podcast featuring conversations with innovative leaders in the hospitality industry, from hotels and motels to suites and boutiques. Hosted by Jaime Black,

Speaker B: Hyma Black, a hotel podcast. Very excited to be joined today by Kelly Serna, owner and principal at Studio 11 Design. How are you doing today? Good.

Speaker A: How are you doing?

Speaker B: I am great. Thank you so much for taking time today to connect for a podcast interview. I'm excited to talk about all the cool design work you're doing in hospitality and everything you have going on.

Speaker A: I'm excited to talk about it, too.

Speaker B: I always like starting at the beginning whenever I'm talking to someone for the first time. So, you know, give us some background. How did you start in design work and hospitality? Like, how did you get to where you are now?

Speaker A: So, um, it's an interesting story because I initially started with the wrong degree. I don't think we should all have to know what we, we want to do for the rest of our lives. At 18, I certainly didn't. So, uh, my degree is in international business and Spanish, um, which I still use often, but got out into the field for about six months and decided I really wanted to still pursue my love for interiors. And, um, went back to school for more full years, which, as the middle of five kids, my dad was definitely not happy. He's okay now, but he thought I was crazy going back for interior design and swore I couldn't make a living being an artist. So he's. Again, he's okay now, but that took a minute. I worked for an international firm for about eight years before realizing I wanted more flexibility with my boys. Um, I kind of wanted to pivot and try this on my own. And that was the creation of Studio 11 design. So 13 years later, um, here we are.

Speaker B: Wow. And so, you know. Yeah. So this launched in 2011. What have been some of the learnings, takeaways that you have gained from almost a decade and a half of running your own design studio?

Speaker A: It's definitely, um, learning something every day. I had to learn how to be a good manager, an owner, learn how to build. I've been through restructuring. I've been through two recessions. So I guess I would say, you know, rolling with the punches and not being afraid to dive in every day to learn something new. It's. It's definitely a work in progress.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's true. I, uh, mean forever. I'm sure that the learnings are not going to. You could do this 30 years, 40 years and still be I've been doing audio work for quite some time, and there's still things I'm learning every week, every day. So, you know, what have been some of the highlights of your career during that time? Cause I know, you know, I mean, you've worked with, like, some really big names in hospitality, like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and, you know, a number more.

Speaker A: So starting the firm. I, um, had a business partner at the time, and, you know, we didn't even know each other. And so it was really interesting. I think we had a couple of lunches, decided that we liked the opposite sides of the business. She was incredible at, you know, payroll, invoicing, accounting, sales, scheduling, and budget. I was more the heavy creative in the inside projects, pulling fabrics, finishes, the aesthetic. But then, in addition, the relationship side was something that I loved. I love building these relationships with our clients and being out at the investment conferences. Obviously, I'm not super shy. Um, I love getting to know new people. So I hate calling it business development, because I just really believe it's more about relationships. Um, so started with, you know, kind of learning there. And one of the highlights, I think one of our first big breaks was getting a project, ironically, in Haiti. And, you know, most people probably wouldn't be as excited, but getting to work within such a unique culture. We used all local artisans anywhere and everywhere we could. Local tile, local artwork. Um, and the Haitian people are so insanely creative and can create beautiful things out of almost nothing. We used recycled oil barrels and T shirts, and, um, just. They're so insanely resourceful that it was really incredible. So that was probably one of the biggest breaks. We ended up on the COVID of Hotel Business Design magazine. We're running desks from a vendor at the time, so it was kind of, uh, the first time we'd really been seen.

Speaker B: And so yourself and the firm, you specialize in kind of four sectors. The multifamily, entertainment, hospitality, and food and beverage. If you want to maybe break down kind of how that division of focus works.

Speaker A: Sure. So we're primarily hospitality. Our love is hotels. And with that comes food and beverage, which is so incredible. You get to be really creative and tell a story. There's a narrative to each. Uh, most times, our food and beverage has its own identity, separate from the hotel, but within. Um, and then we started breaking off and doing independent hotels. Um, most recently in Dallas, we did Bob's Steak and Chop House one for him, uh, up north in McKinney. But, you know, we kind of broke off and we're doing Individual restaurants as well, and then entertainment. We got our first big break in 2017 doing a music venue. We built this beautiful, incredible music venue out of a parking garage, a three story parking garage. So translating that into this beautiful interior space, but thinking through, you know, sound intuition and security and even like AV hookups for famous bands like that was. That was pretty cool. Um, what's trending now is a lot of pickleball courts. That tends to be about the entertainment, tends to be about 10% of our business. And then multifamily, which is just always incredible. It's a little more recession proof. And then we get to really create hospitality, a hospitality look and feel, but within a multi family space.

Speaker B: Uh, something I feel like I have been noticing, especially in the last year as I've been doing this podcast and doing so much hospitality research, is I feel like the worlds of high end residential and then kind of hotel and hospitality are really blending. Whether that's like a single building that has a hotel and then residential units in the same space, or, you know, just high end luxury hospitality starting to really resemble the hotel experience.

Speaker A: Yes. So, you know, a lot of our multifamily clients come to us because they love the lifestyle hotels that we're creating and they want that look and feel in their multifamily, you know, public spaces. And then we have a small residential segment. We, we touch on it ever, ever so often, but that falls more and translates more into the luxury space. But we have. Our residential clients typically want that hotel layered feel. Our hotel clients want that more residential, you know, kind of a home away from home field. So they do really translate well.

Speaker B: Well, you know, you're mentioning hospitality, you're mentioning hotels. This is a hotel podcast. I'd love to talk about some properties, some projects from your portfolio that stood out to me where I thought these are really cool hotel projects. If that works for you.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Let's start with the Hutton Hotel in Nashville and the writer studio at Hutton Hotel. Uh, the writers room, for anyone who doesn't know. And we're going to link this at a hotelpodcast substack. But this is like an artist recording studio with the feel of like a plush boutique hotel suite in Nashville. So, you know, I would love to hear the story on this one because I think it's such a cool. I think more hotels should have like recording spaces on site for musicians and also podcasters.

Speaker A: Yeah, right. Um, it's funny, we are looking at podcast studios in some of our spaces now in another project in Nashville, but So that was the project I referenced with the music venue in 2017. And I think there were 17 cranes up, uh, at the time in Nashville. So 17 new hotels coming up. And the Hutton, you know, needed to find a way to be relevant and find a way to be interesting and unique within all these new hotels coming up. The Hutton Hotel was an office building at one point converted to a hotel. So there was, you know, some restraints that they had to work around there. So we decided, you know, let's put lipstick on a pig, for lack of a better term, and not touch anything architecturally in the lobby. We took a wall down in the restaurant to really create some fluidity between the hotel and the restaurant so that, you know, people in the bar could come and, you know, energize that lobby a bit more. And then we really focused our budget on this. These writers rooms. And that's what was really missing in Nashville at the time. So we worked with Dirk Spentley and Ryan Tedder of One Republic. Each one of them got a writer's room. We worked directly with them, Both of them. You know, Dirk Spentley was his hometown, so it was in the state of Arizona. So you've got this kind of very cool southwest feel. Layered rugs, all of the, you know, items. We went to all of these local vintage stores and purchased just super cool. I mean, like the 1970s pencil sharpeners that are screwed to the, you know, to the baseboard so that people can. I mean, you just. Those nostalgic moments we love for the guest or for, you know, someone to be experiencing this and have that nostalgia. We had a 1930s school desk that you could sit. But what, you know, we really had to do our history and do our homework on what writers need. And so it was a learning curve for us, which ended up just being so incredible. And seeing who has been recording in our studios and using them has just been really a really cool experience.

Speaker B: I mean, it's such a brilliant fit for a city like Nashville, which, of course, music city. And there's such a. There are so many recording studios there. There are so many artists. And it's not just country artists anymore. It's like that is just a major hub for recording artists of all sizes to pass through, to record at. And having that space at a hotel is. It's such a brilliant touch there. I love that.

Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things just to add on with these writers rooms, with this, we did the music venue, and again, we had a lot of restraints with these, um, with this parking garage, but we Thought about, you know, and at the time, Justin Timberlake and his amazing wife Jessica. We're staying there for a month. So we used them sort of as a case study. And how do we give them the privacy but let them feel. So we did these two story balconies. I mean, the ceiling height was maybe seven, seven and a half feet, like very low. But they could come and see a live performance and have that privacy. And then, you know, how do they exit and enter? And what are the AV hookups for all of their, you know, their trailers and RVs. And then we did these celebrity Penthouse. And it had, you know, you push on a door and it has this secret soundproof writer's room. Because we're thinking these artists are up in the middle of the night and this, you know, some of these, you know, maybe these, these verses come to them and they want to kind of jot it down and jam out a little bit. But then there's a lock off for manager or the, you know, the nanny or the babies. Like, we just thought through, what would you want if you wanted, if you were going to have a home away from home? And we had a. We have an 1800 mailbox. When you walk in the door and one of the experiences is you get a key. Re key that's, you know, Mr. Timberlake, you know, please open mailbox 18. And in mailbox 18 we have rushed, you know, the sound waves watercolored, uh, of one of his songs. So just those really key moments that give them that home away from home feel were. And it was a fun project to work on.

Speaker B: Yeah, clearly that's such a great concept and such a cool. You just never know when you get to like unlock a project. You're like, oh, we're just doing something with Justin Timberlake, you know, or the team from One Republic. Of course, that's just Tuesday, right?

Speaker A: Yes, I believe.

Speaker B: Um, now Canvas Hotel Dallas feels very colorful, feels very vivid, very creative. And I know Dallas is important to you. We're going to talk about Dallas in a moment as a city and your work there. But. But bring us into Canvas Hotel in Dallas and your work there.

Speaker A: So Canvas was an interesting project as we were challenged with a three month rebranding exercise, branding and design. And I don't usually admit that because we don't really want owners to come in thinking we can redesign an entire space in three months. But, uh, you know, this is what they. They were posed with. And rebranding the can. The idea of Canvas was to have it have rotating art Local artists, which obviously fit, you know, our lifestyle niche very well. And we really just went and it was a myriad of, uh, off the shelf and found items. So this is where our art and stylist team went to work. We liked the idea of it having a soho vibe. We wanted to bring guests because it's, you know, an area that isn't quite gentrified yet. Like people aren't hustle and bustle and the walkability down there is not as prevalent as some of the other areas in downtown Dallas. And so what would get someone to make this a destination to want to go stay there and so work by day. Beautiful Eddie's with art and accessories throughout and then more of a youthful feel, which I'm sure you can feel. But we had to salvage all of the furniture in the guest rooms. So what. Where could we be really impactful with that guest in the pieces that we were replacing? And so that was kind of where we were. And it was two part. We did the lobby in three months, but the guest rooms were all custom so that we got to kind of roll out a little bit later.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's very, very cool just looking at it online. And again, we will definitely link to that. So Dallas, I know that's an important city to you. You do a lot of looks like very meaningful work in Dallas. Dallas Women in business enterprise Young leaders in hospitality Delete blood cancer DK Ms. What can you say about what Dallas means to you and the work you're doing there?

Speaker A: It's home for me. I'm raising two boys here. I've, you know, been feel really lucky to have built a business in Dallas. It's, you know, very business friendly in terms of, you know, during COVID we were able to maintain our employees and stay busy and keep working. Um, so I feel like, you know, in our responsibility is to engage and be a part of our community. Um, we belong to a group called ncba. Um, it's a group that's more business driven. So as business owners we really, you know, nonpartisan, but we try and get our, our teams to get out there and vote to get, voting local, voting out, um, and get engaged in, you know, what's actually happening in your community. So a little bit more pro business, um, and pro city. And then, you know, DKMS is very near and dear to my heart. Um, I was heavily involved in that a few years back and still kind of trickle in and out of that. But I held a lot of bone marrow. We wanted people to get registered. It's super easy. You swab your cheek and you're registered as a bone marrow donor. I have four cousins that are in need of a bone marrow transplant that have been looking for their match for 20 years. And it saves lives. And so in other countries, like Germany, I think it's like 85% of the population is on the registry list, and it's significantly lower in the US People just aren't as educated on it. And then, you know, various other obviously are industry, um, organizations and women organizations. I try and give back where I can on those as well.

Speaker B: I think that's all great. It's all very, very noble and commendable. Well, Looking at Studio 11 Design, there are these two departments within your organization. Brand Bottega and Lou Verne. Let's start with Brand Bottega. It's described as a brand identity and design component. What does this bring to Studio 11 design? Like, what does it offer to clients?

Speaker A: So when I was kind of referring to the narrative before, a lot of times we're able to carry that through in collateral logo design. We love to get down to, you know, even what the menu looks like. We'll do market studies occasionally and even, you know, the uniform, because we think that entire story is really important. So there's an, you know, it's a small arm to Studio 11. We take on a couple of projects a year. We also partner with a lot of really great branding firms, um, that we support as well. But Brand Boatega has been really instrumental in clients that really want everything all under one roof and want this fluid story throughout. Uh, Lou Verne. Um, you can tell I'm very passionate about art and the art and the communities that we work in and really brought the art process back in house. So it's not art vendors who we still partner with and art manufacturers to do all the production on our art. We create the art or the art story or really put together what that art is going to be and work with a local artist ourselves. And then, you know, for guest rooms, you know, guest room production or something like that, we partner with our art manufacturers to do that. But we feel it's so important to our story that and to our design that my, my CFO calls it my nonprofit. But it really elevates our, our projects. And so it's, it's very, very important to us.

Speaker B: I, uh, mean, this is also cool. I love. Because I'm not a designer, I'm not a visual artist at all. You open me up in Photoshop, and I am not going to get a whole lot done there. And so I'm always in awe, ah. Of people who have that creative design skill set in mind. I think that's very cool and I'm really glad we got to connect today. Final question before I let you go. What trends are you seeing in design as it relates to, you know, hotels and hospitality projects in 2024?

Speaker A: We are really trying to pave the way and I think it starts with designers to push our vendors to be more sustainable. And I know that's a pretty typical question, but we're a little slow to the punch. And generally speaking, it's a wasteful industry. And so we're really trying to reduce that waste, ask a lot of questions, and really pushing the envelope when it comes to, um, using sustainable product, which is very, unfortunately, very slow moving. But we just had a vendor in our office two weeks ago that has a carpet that disintegrates in the landfill within 10 years. And it's so important because, you know, you guys don't see this, you only see the final product. But we may go through 10 huge 3 foot by 3 foot samples for each area of a hotel. So you've got 30 per hotel times 50 projects. You know, it's, it's, it's a lot. One of the things we do do is take those to the animal shelter so that these dogs can kind of have like a cozy little carpet sample, lovely carpet sample before they, before they do go into the landfills. But so we're trying to find other ways to use them once or twice, um, before. But I think, you know, I know it's a cliche trend, but it's something that we're really pushing for and striving to make headway more and more every year. So that's. And I think the guest wants to know what within their stay is responsible. And I think they love that story as well. So we're trying to make sure that story is relayed to them as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think sustainability is a trend that we're seeing everywhere in so many industries, but certainly in hospitality. I feel like that's coming up again and again and again. So I think that's great. And I love the part about giving these animals maybe a little bit more comfort in their life. That's certainly excellent. Kelly Serna, owner and principal at Studio 11 Design. This has been awesome. Thank you so much for taking time today. I appreciate it.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, Emma. Talk soon. You've been listening to a production of Dynasty podcasts find more Dynasty podcasts@, uh, dynastypodcasts.com for the dynamic Dynasty Dynasty descendants.