Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Roman Rotges. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Roman, appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

I remember taking the distribution for Eichholtz back in 2014. I was still living in France then moved to the US. Came with a nice starting investment and blew it all away quickly with some wrong decisions. Took years to get enough experience to know where to focus and where to pass. Looking back at it I think I was crazy back then and completely inexperienced. I would do things very differently today. But isn’t the case for all of us when we look back at the past. I was still young in my mind, with no wife and kids and only one thing was important: succeed or dye trying! )) Risk is a personal thing and we all have a different interpretation. For me it was starting in a new industry with no experience but a lot of will and courage and making it in the US!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Born in France, first came to Miami in 1991 & used to live in Venezuela at some point. Started as a real estate developer before moving to the furniture industry. Now we run 6 websites, distribute over 20 brands and we are opening in Q3 2022 the largest furniture store in the design district (17,000sqft). Aiming to become the largest distributor of European furniture in the US within the next 10 years.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I met my wife in Amsterdam. She had other professional activity at that time. After a year together I wanted a professional change. I convinced her to follow me for a new adventure personally and professionally. We went to Bali, she has Indonesian ancestry. It was too messy and exotic for a business. We thought about the US, my family had real estate in Miami and I spent quite some time in Miami when I was younger. So we talked to Eichholtz and quickly realized the potential for the US. Our choice was made!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We had so many up and downs in the business. Being French and knowing Miami as a tourist is a very different thing when you want to build a business. Between 2015 and 2020 we opened and closed 3 stores. 2 in Miami and 1 in Houston. It wasn’t easy to understand the brick and mortar retail aspects of our business. We kept pushing with online sales, that was the only thing working. We opened more websites and finally came up with interesting numbers. These numbers were good enough for Eichholtz to trust that we could be their right partner in the South East of Florida in order to partner for their first retail flagship location in the US. We are now working on a 17,000 sqft showroom in the design district, it will open Q4 2022. It’s really the best representation of what it takes time to build a business, being patient and having this capacity to recover from complicated situations.

Contact Info:

• Website: oroa.com
• Instagram: oroa_eichholtz

Image Credits
Eichholtz