Welcome to another episode of our serious SLD Meetups by Super Luxury Group, where we connect with some of the most interesting players in the luxury market. My name is Alvaro, and today we'll be having with us a very special guest. His name is Justin and Nate Fox, CEO and founders of Fox Tera Design, and they will be talking about how to turn your residents into a resort through the passion and customization behind all the luxury pools and landscape design they do. We will also be talking about the current trends in the industry and about their humble background to get all the way to work on some of the most incredible multi-million dollar homes, from LA to all over the country.
We will be talking about the key elements when looking to take your home to the next level. Enjoy. Ooh, dynamic duo, what's happening guys? How are you?
Good morning. Good morning. How's everything going, Nate and Justin? Great.
We're excited to be here. Thanks for having us on too. Thank you. Of course, of course, of course.
Bye, pleasure. And I'm sure that everybody tuning in today is going to really enjoy the conversation because who doesn't dream of having a beautiful backyard in their homes, right? I think this is the dilemma today on how we can make our space look better, and I think that if you have the luxury of having a nice backyard, you definitely want to work with you guys. Tell me a little bit because you're currently in California, right?
Correct. Yeah, we're in Southern California, so we actually have our design company, which is Fox Tera designed that we actually own, also our own construction company, which implements a lot of our own stuff and our county. Beautiful. How has it been recently with everything that is going on?
I'm sure that everybody that is currently living in a home or looking to be at a new home, they're really taking in consideration to upgrade their game to make it more enjoyable through a nice backyard. Absolutely. Especially our tagline is kind of residence to resort. Everyone because all the resorts are closed basically, so everyone wants to take advantage of the situation.
Make it something personal, like their own personal resort in their own home. I just want to pull something up quickly because this is exactly what you guys are working on. I want people to understand that you guys are not just doing luxury pool or landscape for regular homes. We're talking about multi-million dollar homes, like mind blowing, backyards.
These are so dreamy. When I look at these things, I feel like my own resort, so this is so nice. Yeah, I was going to say it's been interesting too because our tagline like Nick said is from residence to resort and sometimes even people on Instagram are saying like, hey, how do we book a place at that spot? No, no, these are actually home resorts.
These are not core to book. But it's really like our concept and even starting this business was truly to allow people to feel like they could escape into their own private oasis. And so we really try to take a pay attention to more of the details and also try to be very inventive with what we come up with and not try to be something that's a copy and paste of some of more traditional elements. I love the tagline from resort to your home.
This is very nice because it is really amazing. Yeah, for residence to resort like this is very nice. Now I have a question like you've seen this guys before, but I think everybody that is listening to us today will love to learn how somebody gets into this type of work. Why looks repulsed landscape?
Very humble beginnings. Very humble beginnings. I think truly my story started as I found this in almost 14 years ago, but as a gardener, I literally was cutting grass, even creating high school to pay my college tuition. And so it's just been kind of a very gradual progression.
It wasn't something where we started here. It's really been literally starting the bottom. Our first project was a $3,000 sprinkler installation with grass and sprinklers. And so it's just been clients asking, can you give concrete?
I said, yes. You know how? Our clients asked, can you barbecue? Yes.
I don't know how. Eventually even about seven years ago, I feel asked me for a pool for our first time and said, okay, I'll figure it out. And so it's really kind of started there. Wow.
That's really incredible from humble beginnings all the way to amazing landscapes and pools like this one that we can see right here. Very, very amazing. And I always wanted to know how is it's working with your brother? Who's the favorite one for the mother?
Well, Justin is my older brother. But it's been great because actually our personalities are very different. Even the way we design is very different because we have kind of different aesthetic viewpoints, which is great because every design we collaborate on, we critique each other and neither of us have big egos. So, you know, we can take it.
You know, we can really listen to each other's suggestions. And it's honestly great as a designer. If you have another designer who's on the same wavelength as you to be able to see things that you can't, and I think that's what makes our designs strong. And the brother too is just like, we can have that conversation and not feel like we're pushing like an employee.
Like it's like, we're pushing each other. And the natural writer is there to do better. It's just healthy. Great.
This is the mix of power that has taken you so far. What's the hardest part of working together and especially in this industry? I would say honestly, one thing especially this year we've learned is we really want to make sure we meet our clients expectations in the construction industry, especially there's so much where people, I mean, they want to enjoy their backyard immediately and give them realistic expectations that there will be delays whether we cannot get them chill on time or do the weather. And I think that's kind of usually the best issue is managing the clients expectations to get them a realistic timeline of when they can really enjoy their backyard.
I think just making sure that clients just understand that it's a journey, whether it's design, where we're doing this construction depending on our other company, it really is a journey and it's a process. It's not some instant gratification that you'll get by going through this process. So what are some of the trends that you've seen? There's some trends, you know, like I think right now especially when it comes to, you know, flooring tile, the bigger, the better, everyone sees, you know, giant pieces of tablet like slabs.
But I really feel that Justin and I, we try and steer clear of trends per se because we don't want anyone to look back in a work in five or seven years and say, oh, that was very 2020. So we try and, you know, we definitely try to keep up on, you know, what's out there, but we also don't ever try and rely too much on trends because it's all about customization. Customization and like our point is to really kind of, we're, our goal is to really be the trend setters for this industry. We feel like there's a lot of, there's just a lot of dated looks that are out there.
And so we're really trying to, but I think that overall trend, if we were trying to put that in a caption, I think that it's connecting more with nature and actually is not as modern. It's truly kind of utilizing more transitional to look, meaning that you're integrating instead of white and blacks, maybe even more like tans and blacks. And not as much of the stark contrast. It's been interesting that we've been, we've been integrating some of that into our designs like the more natural tones.
That's interesting that you're mentioning that because I've seen some of your recent projects and it definitely stands out. I think that the concept that you guys are bringing into everyone's backyard when it comes to this multi-million dollar homes is very unique. And I think that it's always a pleasure as a property owner that when you are trying to build or upgrade your backyard, that you put something that is really customized, really unique, and it has, that's flavor, you know, the quality. And I think that's our job as designers.
I think overall, we are listeners and we love to listen to our clients. We have extensive conversations with our clients, you know, we're going over, you know, every detail and we're looking at so many different, even inspiration photos because we need to listen and really understand what is this client's taste, what is luxury for them because every single client has a different definition. And it's important for us to listen and hear that. So let me ask you that one because that's a good question and I always like to ask it.
What's it for you guys? For me, it's very easy. It's customization because to me it is a luxury to be able to create a space that is 100% you that has your personal signature over it. And I think our clients use us, you know, we're kind of the vector to bring that to life.
So to me, luxury is complete customization. For me, I would say it's on layers of detail. I love when clients walk into the yard and a lot of your yards are not that large. And when they can walk in and experience one aspect and then look to the corner or look to another area and see another level of detail that wasn't maybe even supposed to be there but it was thought of.
So I think luxury truly is layers of detail where there's an export of nature to you and join your yard. You're like, oh, I want to be part of this portion. So it's these layers of detail are really important to bring that luxury feeling to life. Customization and details.
I love it. I mean, that's right on point. I think that right now everybody that is tuning in is definitely going to start checking out your projects and they're so dreamy. I mean, I was showing this before, but every time you think of from a residence to a resort and it's really your home, this is exactly what you will get.
So what's been the, I guess, the funniest or fun part of doing this type of work? Everybody knows that there's challenges, but I'm sure there's also some fun moments throughout this process. There is. I think like you're highlighting this one of our favorite photos, but I think one of the fun really gratifying things was this client you're showing right now that we're putting on our post here soon had his daughter's wedding on that deck right next to that lit up tree.
And so it's really exciting and very filling for us. I mean, this guy has multiple properties to go anywhere and he chose his own backyard for his daughter's wedding. And so that's a very gratifying thing for us. Oh my God.
And it's really, really cool. I think one of the fun things for me is always just making the journey fun. Like I literally just were fun. They jumped into the pool just the other day because I wanted it to be like, I'm doing a job at Cold Pool.
Yeah, it was crazy. Cold, I was like, we just have fun. Like any time it's totally cool with it. So I'm like, they didn't care.
And it's just like making, making these, you know, we're building these other people's like, why not enjoy ourselves and jumping out of this stuff. Right, right. And then integrating and connecting with our clients and making it a fun along the way. I just, I don't know.
I would say what's really fun is coming up with something that we ourselves have not seen before. We like to challenge ourselves. We don't like to copy and paste from design design. So it's always, what can we give this individual client that even something that we haven't made before, we haven't designed before.
And it's a challenge, but it's also really fun. Just do, you know, to agree that that fantasy backyard that they want and it's just, that's really fun for me. Guys, we need to bring you down here to Miami. I mean, I will also see some of your work here because it definitely will add so much into it.
Absolutely. We love that. So you guys are my guests, so whenever you want, let's make it happen. So how are you currently promoting your projects and services?
Are you using social media a lot? We are. Yeah, really social media has been our platform for exposure. The other thing, we originally started with our website, we really wasn't doing anything for us.
It truly was more of a kind of a final, like landing part for people that found us on Instagram. So Instagram, truly has been our main platform and it's been exciting to develop. And we have, we're the front face of the company, but truly we have a lot of behind the scenes people that are supporting us. So this is not something we're just kind of throwing out there, you know.
And one thing we've learned in this journey too is that a lot of people, this is not a space that a lot of people understand very well. I think a lot of people really understand about the interior space, but I feel the exterior, even we found people are so fascinated about the whole process of instruction or even the details. How did you build that or how does that work? We get asked those questions all the time.
And I think because like I said, there's just not too much information specifically focused on luxury after living. And that's what we really aspire to become that main source. Yes. Beautiful.
Well said. Now I definitely encourage everybody to look them up on Instagram to see some of the work. So for those to need, please follow them. Fox, they're doing amazing.
And any last words or anything that you guys want to share? I think that we're excited to continue on this journey that we're on. I think that we absolutely love the South-West space. I've been doing it for 14 years.
Nate started exporting tiles from Italy and China like years in Spain years ago. And now he's part of this in the last four years. And so it's just really fun for us to take our level of passion and really, like I said, bring that feeling that people can have their own complete residence and transform that into that resort. So we just love what we're on.
We're excited about where it goes. So thank you for having us on this. Let's keep it. Let's keep it coming, man.
We're definitely doing amazing job. So congratulations on that. I encourage everybody to contact you guys. We're doing Texas Mississippi Florida.
We're doing research on projects. We're about to start. So yeah, Fox tier design, reset, Fox tier, but if you follow this follow Fox tier design, that's our, everything is going to be on the other caption and everything. So all the details will be there.
And again, guys, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure having you both. I wish you the best of luck. So you soon in Miami.
Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. We'll see you again.
Thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And I'll see you next time.