Portland Pearl

Owner Richard Codanti spends almost every day at his award-winning store, the result of a lifelong passion for collecting beautiful things. Redford, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is Bella Casa's official greeter.

Today Codanti owns Bella Casa, a Portland, Ore., store that received this year's ARTS Award for Home Accents Specialty Store, Western U.S. "I started my first retail business in a small town about 25 minutes north of Portland after leaving an eight-year office job with Kaiser Permanente," he said. "I had the best-looking cubicle. While everyone else had tacks and paperwork, I dressed mine with artwork and knickknacks from home."

Bella Casa's 10th anniversary is this year and Codanti said his business has experienced phenomenal growth. "Within the last eight years, we've moved the main store five times and doubled square footage each time." In 1982 he moved to Portland, to an area known as the Pearl District, where Bella Casa's main store is located. The Pearl District is adjacent to Portland's downtown core, a transformed warehouse district of lofts, condos, boutiques, restaurants and art galleries. Codanti's second store, known as "the Bridgeport store," is in a lifestyle center of Old World European-flavored buildings.

Codanti said he feels his store is uniquely situated in the progressive Portland retail market. "There are definitely some that are more contemporary or transitional, but we create a different shopping experience. It's not a place where you're going to be able to come in and look and get out quick; it's a place that forces you to slow down, look, absorb and enjoy the details."

Sales associate Denise Blair elaborated, "Richard has the most extraordinary talent for ... I wouldn't even call it display ... he just puts it all together and you look at it and love it but you can't quite point out the reasons why. He is so incredible with that. One night we went through with him and spent a lot of time tweaking the merchandise. Within three days, everything that we tweaked or touched, sold."

Blair and Codanti especially enjoy watching customers respond. "A lady at the Bridgeport store said just a week ago, 'I've never been in a store where I like everything,'" Blair said. "This is the only store I've ever been in where I could take everything home and be happy with it,' and I thought, 'Wow.'"

Codanti added, "We are an instant gratification store — you see it, love it, it can be in your home today. We buy in multiples, but it's how we present it that makes it feel special and one of a kind."

One of the staff's biggest selling tools is the sharing of knowledge on history or construction. "We try to sell the uniqueness, the quality, the timelessness of a piece," Codanti said. "These are pieces you'll want to keep, the special accessories you're going to pass down to your children, not quick fixes from discount stores."

And as Bella Casa's business has grown and expanded, so has the product. "It's all about educating ourselves and educating our clients, and as you do that your sophistication and love of the product grows," Codanti said. "And you do that at each market and that's what you try to impress upon everyone else the more you get to know your product."

Last year he went to Italy and brought back a container of ceramic pieces. "We selected really unique patterns so detailed and hand-painted that you're not going to see them knocked off — large bowls with amazing handles, platters to hang on the wall, urns, all marked 'Made for Bella Casa in Italy.'"

Witnessing the product development part of the process helps form a connection with the pieces, he said.

"There's nothing better than actually getting to experience the product before it's made. We did 21 factories in 13 days and met many of the artisans around Florence, most in Deruta. There's so much in that whole Umbria region. I found it beautiful and loved it even more than the Tuscany region."

He also had a recent opportunity to tour one of Miami-based Fine Art Lamps' factories. "I learned that a hundred hands touch a lamp before it touches the box to get to you — we pass that experience on to the customer. The idea behind almost everything in our store is creating a sense of each piece as a treasure, a work of art, something you'll keep for quite a while."

Bella Casa carries a few gift items, including a favorite line of candles. "They're subtle, not too perfumy," Codanti said. "Everyone loves the line and loves to sell it, especially one particular scent. Customers always ask about it, which starts a conversation about the combination of ingredients. Then we invite them back to the candle area, and they go from scent to scent, invariably buy and start coming back to try different fragrances."

The store reaches its customers by e-mail, Web site, yearly events and trunk shows, community charity events, neighborhood and community publications, local home magazines, and a "well-attended holiday event that everyone gets excited about very early on," Codanti said. "We also do a commercial on local television that really portrays the ambience of the store and features the store mascot 'Redford,' a ruby-colored Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, who is at the store every day greeting customers."

Codanti also likes to have wine and food on hand for clients to make them feel pampered and to encourage lingering. "Customer service and being made to feel special is something we all want when we're out there, no matter what kind of business it is."

These days, Codanti's two biggest challenges are finding the right staff and making himself take time off. "Our staff is like family and works together as a team. I work seven days a week, obviously because I love to and because it's such a great environment, even staying late as many nights as I do," he said. "Sometimes I'll pour a glass of wine, put my feet up, hang out and watch a movie on the theater seating. You put your heart, soul and money into something like this, and it becomes your home."