Hosted by ANDMORE CEO Jon Pertchik, The Market Makers goes behind the scenes with creative and business superstars from the worlds of design, furniture, lifestyle, and home. If you’re ready to grow your business, elevate your brand, expand your network—or just get a sense of what’s trending next—this is where you’ll want to tune in.
Each episode pulls back the curtain on the full arc of transformation: the beginnings, the breakthroughs, and the big reveals. You’ll hear how today’s most dynamic leaders turn bold ideas into real impact, setbacks into smart strategies, and sparks of creativity into long-term success.
Taking the first seat behind the microphone is someone who’s no stranger at all to the media spotlight. Quite the opposite! Thom Filicia, one of the OG Fab Five from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, comes bearing tales of panic (and not!) in a SoHo elevator, childhood obsessions and fantasies, and how the unexpected yet incomparable pedigree of his design path ultimately led to his belief that great design is truly egalitarian and belongs to us all.
Thom Filicia: The scary, amazing journey
“I was just a design nerd.”
And aren’t we all? Filicia goes on to talk more about a mindset familiar to most of us: “I was renting an office…starting (my) own company…you know, it’s like all of these things that are so scary are also the thing that gets you to the next thing you’re going to do.”
His upbeat, forward-thinking attitude as he shares his stories of personal growth and career trajectory are informative, encouraging, and motivating. After Filicia recounts the time, as a college student, that he just casually rang up Albert Hadley (of Parrish Hadley) on the phone, he goes on to exhort us, saying, “It’s a journey. Yes, it can be a bit scary, but you also have to just say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna jump in and make it amazing.’
Filicia’s willingness—actually, determination, to make the journey, do something new, with a fresh set of parameters and challenges, has become as much his calling card as his familiar-from-TV voice and visage.
The heart of his art
Which is why we can meet up with Thom’s work, if not the designer himself, while strolling the showrooms at Market. In addition to his NYC design firm and showroom (named Sedgwick and Brattle after the cross streets he grew up on in Syracuse, NY), you’ll also see Filicia’s design influence in partnerships with Feizy Rugs, Visual Comfort & Co., Vanguard Furniture, Wendover Art Group, and Cyan Design. His belief that good design belongs to and should be available to everyone drives these efforts. It’s at the very heart of the many ways you can bring his artistry into any of your projects.
It also means that the questions Filicia is asking as he’s connecting with the design community at Market – questions like “What are people excited about? What’s the energy on the street?” “What do they think is missing?” – go on to deliver the answers to you and your clients as well.
In this podcast, at Market, and in his daily interactions with clients and collaborators, it becomes obvious that, for Filicia, “it’s creating that dialogue and having that open forum (that) is really awesome.”
We think so, too. That’s what made Thom Filicia the perfect person to help us launch The Market Makers Podcast. Listen and see if you don’t agree!
