Renee DiSanto and Christina Samatas, the duo behind the Chicago-area design firm Park & Oak, are not ones to shy away from new challenges. In addition to running a successful firm, they operate a retail shop, Collected, and a cocktail lounge, The Parlour. Now, they’re adding Designer’s Trade Circle, a quarterly community-building event for designers, in hopes of countering the isolation that can accompany entrepreneurship.

While it’s not novel for design shops to double as event spaces, the pair felt strongly about creating free programming that would benefit the design community specifically. “Christina and I have always wanted to reach out to other designers, to collaborate, share ideas, talk about our businesses,” says DiSanto. “When we opened Collected [in 2023], we found that a lot of designers were coming in to shop with us—it’s actually a great market for us. So we decided to launch a designer circle just to invite people into the space to connect.” Because the retail space and cocktail bar are connected, the team was able to open up both, allowing attendees to spread out or sit down in small groups at a table with a glass of champagne, creating an event that could be both freeform and intimate.

The first gathering of Designer’s Trade CircleCourtesy of Park & Oak

For the first event, which was held April 10, 15 to 20 designers attended—some of whom are regular customers at Collected and others who found the event via Instagram—and the response was a rousing success. “We had printed up talking points so that there was a flow, and people really were talking to one another and exchanging contact information,” says DiSanto.

Attendees represented a variety of firm sizes and experience levels. “In particular, there were some people who run solo firms, and just having the opportunity to bounce ideas off another designer and have people you can turn to for advice is valuable,” says Samatas. “We got a sense of how this could be an opportunity to create a community where designers can feel supported by one another, which is really the goal.”

Looking ahead, the duo plan to bring in speakers for future events, tapping tradespeople like fabricators or photographers. “We had a lot of suggestions for future topics, from how to navigate new construction projects to what a good markup structure is. We saw that designers aren’t interested in just talking about design; they want to know how to market their brands and learn how they can make more of a profit,” says Lauren Lanham, the media arts and marketing manager at Park & Oak, who spearheaded the event.

DiSanto agrees, noting that she still finds much of the design community to have a “hush-hush” attitude about how they run their businesses. “It’s refreshing when you meet like-minded people who believe that we can share and help each other and that it’s not going to take anything away [to do so],” she says. “Our goal is to create an environment that cultivates that, and it helps everyone feel like we’re in this together. We can share best practices, share our failures. It’s about being collaborative versus competitive.”