John Reed and the value of a small detour

John Reed was traveling through Northern Italy to meet a potential business partner when somebody suggested a detour. There was another person he ought to see: Rino, a furniture builder who painted and collected antiques. Reed went. Years later, the memory he chose to tell included Rino's moving hands, his laughter, and his young daughters playing nearby. The furniture mattered. So did the company.

The visit grew into a small selection of tables and cabinets, then into Arhaus's Bell'Arte Collection. Rino's daughters eventually joined him in the work. A diversion from one appointment became a relationship stretching across generations. A calendar might have called the detour inefficient. A furniture merchant could recognize an opportunity with rather better manners.

That encounter offers a useful way into Reed's career. He co-founded Arhaus with his father, Jack, in 1986. The company has since become a publicly traded retailer with more than 100 showrooms in the United States. Yet the revealing part of his story often happens before a piece arrives on a showroom floor, when he meets somebody who knows how to make it.

A father, a son, an old Cleveland building

The first showroom occupied a building in Cleveland's Flats neighborhood that was already about 150 years old when the Reeds renovated it. An enterprise devoted to the pleasures of home began by giving an old address another use. Reed remembers close attention to the details before opening; customers queued down the street when the doors were ready.

The father-and-son beginning helps explain the particular affection Reed shows for family workshops. In his account of those early sourcing trips, he describes exploring markets and studios, asking questions and taking chances on products he liked. The business depended on personal judgment: finding something worth bringing back, then persuading a customer at home to see its appeal.

There is an intimacy to that kind of buying. A chair comes with the person who built it, at least in the buyer's imagination. Reed kept returning to the makers, and the relationships became part of what Arhaus could offer. Customers might begin by admiring a finish. Behind that finish stood years of conversations, experiments and repeat orders.

The sofa that sent him south

As Arhaus grew, Reed wanted an upholstery assortment with a particular combination of qualities: shapes and fabrics with staying power, wood frames made from responsibly sourced material, and construction intended for years of use. He couldn't find the selection he wanted. He went looking for the people who could make it.

His search took him through the foothills of North Carolina, visiting workshops and meeting the specialists behind upholstered furniture. Cutting fabric, tailoring a cover and building a frame are separate skills. A sofa presents itself as a single, comfortable object; its production resembles a small committee whose members must agree on every seam.

Reed describes finding craftspeople who shared his priorities, with some of those working relationships continuing decades later. The episode puts a practical meaning behind his interest in craftsmanship. Wanting a certain product sent him out on the road. Finding the right hands gave the idea a route into somebody's living room.

“When I couldn’t find what I wanted, I set out to build it myself.”

John Reed, on the beginnings of Arhaus upholstery

The commitment acquired a physical address of its own. In 2021, Arhaus opened a 500,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in North Carolina. Its domestic production now sits alongside its relationships with makers abroad. For Reed, the geography of a collection can include both a workshop across an ocean and a factory much closer to Ohio.

What a knot in the wood can tell you

In Mexico, Reed met Javier while seeking artists and woodworkers to collaborate with. Javier worked with salvaged timber and naturally fallen trees. The features that could make a board troublesome for one furniture maker - knots, marks, scorching - gave this maker something to work with. Reed saw a different kind of product emerging from that attitude.

Their partnership developed as both businesses grew. Javier added workshops; his three sons joined the enterprise. Collections expanded, while the approach continued to make room for the wood's individual character. Reed's recollection is especially attentive to that way of seeing: a material could help determine the design, carrying evidence of its earlier life into a new room.

The environmental ambition also predates Arhaus's stock-market life. Reed has said the company committed at its founding to avoid wood harvested from rainforests. Later initiatives included reclaimed materials and a partnership with American Forests. These are stated commitments with practical consequences for buying. They put questions about origin alongside questions about proportion, texture and price.

Italy supplied another variation on the family theme. Rino continued making Bell'Arte pieces with his daughters Sara and Monika. In other Italian partnerships, Arhaus found textile weaving, chairmaking and lighting. Reed's assortment expanded through these connections. The small detour had opened onto a much larger network of skills.

Fresh flowers, fresh paint, familiar customers

Reed has an equally definite view of what should happen once the furniture reaches a store. In a 2015 interview, he called retail theatre. He described fresh flowers arriving weekly and stores being repainted twice a year, with spring and fall presentations. The aim was discovery around each corner, with enough detail to make people imagine a room of their own.

“Retail is theatre,” he said. The phrase has room for a little mischief: few theatres invite the audience to buy the set. In Reed's version, customers could take home a complete look or adapt it. Presentation gave the separate objects a shared setting, making their possible use easier to picture.

His view of expansion was selective, too. He described choosing locations according to the market, property and available space, rather than adding stores for the pleasure of counting them. Online shopping belonged in the same conversation. He observed that many web customers lived near a store and already knew the furniture in person.

The later Studio format tested a smaller setting for that encounter. Arhaus opened its first Studio in Carmel, California, in 2020, combining a more intimate space with customization and design services. A large showroom and a small studio have different dimensions. Reed was pursuing the same useful moment in both: helping a visitor decide how something could belong at home.

The merchant takes a seat at the earnings call

Reed's career at the top has included a break. He served as chief executive from January 1997 through December 2015, then returned in February 2017. Arhaus went public in November 2021. The founder who had traveled to workshops now also had to explain the business to shareholders, on a schedule less forgiving than a leisurely dinner in Italy.

His continuing involvement in merchandising makes that combination interesting. The company must turn individual taste and long relationships into an operation that can deliver across the country. A promising new collection needs more than an appreciative first glance. It needs production, distribution, floor space and people able to explain why a customer should care.

Storytelling became a more explicit part of that work. Arhaus's Storied series visited the people behind the products: Mexican woodworkers in Rooted, Italian artisans in Bellissimo Segreto, and American upholstery makers in Uphold. Reed explained in 2024 that customers had been asking to know more about the craftspeople. Their questions gave the company a reason to open the workshop door.

The films and books also suit a founder whose working memories tend to have a cast of characters. Ghost Robot's This is Arhaus film series centers on his unscripted recollections, including a table that took a month to build and sold in a day. The discrepancy is a merchant's miniature drama: a long stretch of making, followed by one person's quick decision to live with it.

Forty years in, more color on the floor

The current business gives those memories considerable scale. Arhaus reported $1.38 billion in net revenue for 2025. In the second quarter of 2026, revenue reached $385 million, up 7.4% from a year earlier. These figures describe the company Reed leads; the more personal continuity is his attention to what goes into the next collection.

In April 2026, Arhaus expanded its Trade Program for interior designers, with Reed emphasizing customization and closer relationships with design professionals. The ambition extends the original act of introduction. A maker needs a buyer; a designer needs furniture suitable for a particular client. Arhaus wants to occupy more of the space between those two needs.

August's fortieth-anniversary collection brought saturated upholstery, expressive woods and a made-to-order stone program offering 12 stones and marbles. The palette included olive, oxblood and heritage blue. After decades spent looking at materials, Reed was still presenting new ways to put them together. The room had acquired rather more color.

His story returns, finally, to that Italian diversion. A furniture business can measure its progress in locations and revenue. Reed's recollections keep another kind of account: the people met, the children who later joined the workshop, the pieces still being made years afterward. Somewhere between an appointment and a detour, he found furniture worth bringing home. He kept going back.