Featured Business: Curate Homes, a Boutique Residential Building Experience for Your Future.
For The Evergreen Insider’s first-ever featured business, Jeremy Parker from Evergreen Property Group connects with Jamie Leithart, Director of Sales Curate Homes and learns the distinctive qualities that make Curate Homes stand out among builders, their mission to cultivate creativity in the residential world, and their unwavering commitment to treating clients like family. Get a sneak peek into the exciting future developments and projects that Chattanooga residents can anticipate from this exceptional business, showcased by Evergreen Property Group.
What was it about this business that made you want to be a part of it?
Curate Homes was founded on the fundamentals of integrity, honesty and quality. Before Curate being started in 2019, we saw the need for a more boutique streamlined experience to offer to the average home buyer. Being able to incorporate all three of these into our market and our company as a homebuilder has been invaluable. As Design Director, I get to live out my passion daily with our many talented team members. Another quality that Curate has and a motto I have always lived by was "treat others like you want to be treated". That allows for our customers to truly feel like family members. That is something that is really big to our company, is feeling like family.
Does your business have a stated mission statement, the reason for its existence?
Yes, our motto is " Cultivating Creativity - A boutique residential experience for your future welcome home.
The meaning of our motto is that we hope to be a cultivation center for creativity within the residential world. Our showroom is set up like a boutique. Everything you would and will need for a residential build is in one spot with designers here to guide and help you along the way. We cultivate the showroom with the most common, newly released and trending materials to ensure that we cover all design elements from classic to modern design, and everything in-between.
Has there been a particular relationship with someone without which you would most likely not have experienced the success you have?
Definitely, the person who sticks out the most is one of my Partner's in Curate and our current President Paul Teruya. He, as a visionary, has allowed me to have creative freedom in guiding our company design related to where we are now. Secondly, every team member on our team aids in education and support to each element of our brand and in return allows for the overall design of each and every home to come alive. Like I said before, we are all family with one goal. Offering a truly unique curated experience for each and every person.
What makes your business unique and how does it contribute to the vibrant culture of Chattanooga?
Curate has a unique land acquisition component to it. I think we are so different in our diversity of properties. From urban areas like The North Shore Heights Community to The Black Creek Golf Community to building on your own lots, we offer unique varieties of options when it comes to land. Also, our talented design teams thrive on helping each of our homebuyers design their home specific to their lifestyle/needs while thoughtfully capturing the best qualities of their selected homesite.
What has been the biggest evolution that you and/or the business have experienced since starting out?
Wow!! That is all I have to say. From a new business starting just right before the height of Covid with major supply chain issues, to pivoting from custom building to remodeling and rebuilding after the Easter tornados in the East Brainerd when we saw our community in such needless to say we have seen a massive evolution in our business on a personal growth standpoint.
Can you share a significant challenge your business has faced, or is facing, and how you've overcome it or plan to overcome it, especially considering Chattanooga's evolving landscape?
I would say our biggest challenge as a builder came with the supply chain issues in 2020. As most materials and or building products rose to unfathomable prices, we as a company made a hard and unique decision. We decided as a company, we were not going to raise prices on existing contracts or cancel any of those agreements. It was a tough financial decision but we felt strongly that the position to stay true to our agreements even when it was hard aligned with our company mission - treat others the way you want to be treated. We took several losses, but to us as a company that was a moral stance we decided to take since at the time we did see a lot of builders cancelling contracts on their clients. Of course, this came with daily pivots, flexibility from our clients, combatting losing vendors, and so much more. Looking back, we have evolved in a company learning how to pivot at the drop of a hat, and come up with innovative solutions to look out for our client’s interests while allowing us navigate our ever changing industry.
What exciting plans or developments can Chattanooga residents look forward to from your business in the near future?
We have two new and exciting phases opening up this Summer for our Builder Reserve section in Black Creek as well as several designer spec homes breaking ground in Northshore and on Signal Mountain. It’s always exciting to see homes we have been carefully planning and designing actually come to life!
