Luxury design firm Soucie Horner is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, honoring its many milestones since Shea Soucie and Martin Horner founded the firm in Chicago in 2000.
But the firm, rebranded this year as Soucie Horner Design Collective, is always moving forward, focusing on what’s next.
And part of what’s next is an expansion of its hospitality business, a particular passion for Horner — and a stepping stone for what he hopes will be the establishment of Soucie Horner as a full lifestyle brand.
Becoming innkeepers
Soucie and Horner have always enjoyed traveling and hospitality design. As things began to slowly reopen after the initial Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, Horner and his fiancé, Ryan Vogt, started taking road trips, visiting small towns throughout the Upper Midwest, “basically in a three-hour radius of Chicago,” Horner says. Charmed by the idea of owning an inn in one of those towns, Horner decided to take online innkeeping classes through a school in Vermont.
It was a trip to Saugatuck, Michigan, that led to Soucie Horner’s first foray into innkeeping. “Ryan and I been here over the Fourth of July weekend and kind of fell in love with it,” Horner says. “You had the lake, you had the art, you had the culture, you had the elevated culinary scene. … I was looking at the homes and the cars and the way people were dressing, and I knew it was our demographic. I said, ‘This is a place where we need to be.’”
Saugatuck also happens to be the site of the Wickwood Inn, then owned by gourmet food veteran Julee Rosso and her partner, Bill Miller. The 1937 Colonial revival was built as the home of Frank Wicks, former mayor of Saugatuck, and turned into a bed-and-breakfast in 1981, by Sue and Stub Louis, who modeled it after the Brown’s Hotel in London.
“I’d been cooking with Julee Rosso’s ‘The Silver Palate Cookbook’ since the first year I was out of college,” Horner says. “I knew her cookbooks. I knew her brand and I knew Wickwood’s famous history. So, Shea and I jumped in the car, and we went and met her. We told her what we were up to. She was looking to sell and retire but she didn’t want to sell to just anybody. She wanted to make sure her legacy was being carried on. Shea and I were telling her about what we do and how we’d bring design and product and hospitality to the Wickwood. So, the inn never officially went on the market, but we bought it in October 2021.”
When an adjacent property — a home that had been in the same family for 70 years —became available, Soucie Horner bought that, too, opening it as The Bungalow, part of the Wickwood Inn, in July.
As part of the gut renovation of the three-bedroom Bungalow, Soucie Horner also added a “spool” (a small pool with spalike features) and turned a dilapidated garage into a pool house.
“At the Wickwood, we don’t allow television, but we put a TV in there and made this cozy little place where you can go and watch the game, or whatever you like,” Horner says. “… So, we’ve extended the property visually past what the Wickwood was. We’ve turned it into a bigger property and bigger idea.”
About a year ago, Horner and Vogt bought another historic property, Fairview, not far from the Wickwood Inn and across from the town’s Clearbrook Golf Club. After a gut renovation of that home, it’s now an extension of Soucie Horner Hospitality, too. (Vogt is an equestrian but has a passion for antiques, Horner says, so the two enjoyed furnishing the home together.)
(Fun aside: Horner refers to Fairview as “the wedding” because he and Vogt were deep into wedding planning when they decided to buy the house, which Horner found one morning scrolling Zillow (“probably my obsession”) while Vogt was skiing with his family in Colorado. “I kept sending Ryan pictures and calling and calling but he wasn’t answering. But I knew this house was going to sell really quick, so I sent the pictures to his mom and she said, ‘What’s this?’ and I said, ‘It’s our wedding.’ And she said, ‘Do it.’” So, did Vogt, when Horner finally reached him. The couple is still planning a wedding, though they are now thinking it will be a smaller, more personal affair, possibly at Fairview or the Wickwood Inn.)
While Horner and Vogt were tackling Fairview, Soucie had been renovating a coach house behind her home in Chicago, turning it into a hospitality property called The Carriage House.
“It’s a three-bedroom house with a wine cellar and a loft. It’s spectacular,” Horner says. “So now we have two more properties in our portfolio for Soucie Horner Hospitality.”
To the mountains and the beaches
And Soucie Horner doesn’t plan to stop there. The firm’s founders want to expand its hospitality arm to include inns or boutique hotels in the mountains, on the beach and in an equestrian area — specific locations still to be determined. Via overnight stays and through dining and events at each location, guests will be able to immerse themselves in different versions of the Soucie Horner experience, Horner explains.
“The property is important,” he says. “We’d prefer to find an existing property that has historic references so we’re buying something that already has a reputation and then we come in and turn it into a Soucie Horner project.”
For the Soucie Horner Hospitality projects, design starts with the architecture, history and geography of the place, but Soucie and Horner also are getting a chance to impart their personal design sensibilities on the projects.
“When we started the business, Shea and I did everything together. We wrote the orders; we designed together. We were creating all of this. … Shea and I still have weekly meetings and are always with the team, but we have different responsibilities in the business now, and we rarely collaborate on projects anymore. We have our own teams and projects, so it was really interesting when we bought the Wickwood because we’d never done a property together that was ours,” Horner says. “If we had each done it separately, it would have turned out differently but it truly is a reflection of both of us, together.”
As excited as Horner is about the hospitality work, Soucie Horner has two other busy design divisions — residential and commercial — as well as its SHIIR Rug division, developed in tandem with Oscar Isberian Rugs. (When Design News Now chatted with Horner, he was supervising a SHIIR Rug photo shoot for the spring collection at Wickwood. Horner and Vogt’s springer spaniel, Oliver, who makes frequent appearances in Socie Horner marketing was, of course, on set, too.)
The firm’s link to product design will help Soucie Horner’s evolution into a lifestyle brand, another of the firm’s goals, Horner says. Already, the firm’s hospitality arm is partnering with several home furnishings brands at the Wickwood, showcasing products throughout the property and offering them for sale. Brand partners include Waterworks, Vispring, ALT for Living, textile artist Lynda O’Connor, La Bottega and Matouk. Guests can purchase items on-site or order online via the inn’s website.
Horner would like all Soucie Horner’s hospitality properties to eventually become “living, breathing showrooms.”
“We already partner with high-end brands that we know and love. We do sell our mattresses and our sheets and our pillows and some art and objects,” Horner says. “I would love to have even more for sale. That’s the plan. You could come in and buy the chair, and it would be our design, or it could be a found antique. It makes even more sense to me when we have this kind of sophisticated country house in Michigan and then you go to (a Soucie Horner property) in the mountains and you have a different style where you could buy product. Then you go to the beach and that’s a different style, and Shea’s place in the city would be a different style. … That’s the new frontier and I’m really excited about it.” For now, the Soucie Horner team is working on how to operationalize and scale such an endeavor.
The collective
Soucie and Horner, who met as students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, have built a team of 78 across its four divisions — including a chief marketing officer, chief financial officer, director of procurement, director of architecture and creative brand director — that is allowing the founders to dream big and take on new endeavors. Many on the team are scattered around the country to better manage projects and expand the business and there’s a secondary office in Naples, Florida.
The firm got its first client in Naples in 2008 and has gradually expanded its presence there. Soucie Horner recently renovated a new Naples office as part of a larger residential property makeover. It also gives the firm’s staff a place to stay when they are in the area for a project. A new pool is an added perk for visiting team members.
The ideas of teamwork and collaboration led to the company’s rebranding from Soucie Horner Ltd. to Soucie Horner Design Collective earlier this year.
“I like creating new things. I like creating businesses. I think that part is a lot of fun, and it’s something I enjoyed as a kid. I always loved creating and dreaming,” Horner says.(But) “it all goes back to the idea of collectively doing all these things together,” he adds. “(Hospitality and lifestyle) are the next things we’re going to do but we have a really great team behind us that’s allowing us to do it. We couldn’t do what we do without them.”
