Center for GOODS

Center for GOODS

The making of a modern-day Guild.
With experience as our primary goal, we set out to reinvent how one shops for the home by engaging all of the senses.

Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch are experienced storytellers attuned to how design makes you feel, given their backgrounds in designing entire worlds for major motion pictures their work has an emotional resonance to it, filled with intangible memories that your presence contributes to and builds. They’re experts at engaging the stimuli with an intention that is as much based on how as it is why. Remixing the chronology of experience in a rhythm that is a legato gradation of the truism that the objects that surround us meet needs new and old.

Moving from feature films to the practice of designing buildings and interiors under the moniker Roman and Williams, they further developed their language of structure and design that translates into their collection of lighting, furnishings, and accessories for the home. Undertaking the responsibility of a living heritage, their collection of original designs are cogent and refined, yet raw and varied with an emphasis on natural materials, master craftsmanship resulting valuable heirlooms that only get better with use and time – the impetus for the Guild. A complete extension of themselves inside and out and a representation of the things they believe in. A poetry of paradox meant to change the game of retail and turning it into a soulful, connected experience. More than a place to shop for home furnishings, the Guild is about relationships, a place to meet, eat, drink, read, discover new worlds and stop to smell the flowers.

This idea of the responsibility of heritage and time-honored methods learned through apprenticeship and experience enlarged the scope of the Guild to a global scale where Robin and Stephen along with Guild Ambassadors traveled the world to meet artisans in their element, supporting and showcasing them by bringing their art back to the Guild, to be part a dialogue that brings culture and identity into the same room. The Guild is a way of living that even Robin & Stephen aspire to attain, their way of setting the bar higher towards a way of life that knows no boundaries.

As they undertook this new venture into retail experience, they were receptive to the signals of how to make the Guild feel like a home, and that’s how it also became a home to Chef Marie-Aude Rose’s La Mercerie and Emily Thompson Flowers. Like-minded conspirators who organically came into the fold and a part of the Guild. Together they share a vision for quality, beauty and endurance.

There’s no formula but there is a visceral methodology and endless curiosity, that is an amalgamation of their body of work, filled with variations. The Guild is continually adjusting its experiential temperature, staying tuned to the present in an authentic, textured and comfortable way. An endless, growing conversation that elevates everyday life.