Plenty of designers helm namesake brands, and plenty more have launched their own storefronts. What’s less common, however, is for a designer to own and operate another company’s showroom—as in the case of Los Angeles designer Ryan Saghian, who will cut the ribbon next week on the first West Coast flagship for Dutch furniture, lighting and accessories brand Eichholtz.

For Eichholtz, partnering with designers is not an entirely new model—the company already operates storefronts run by designers in Alpharetta, Georgia, and on Long Island in New York—but the new space marks the brand’s first designer-owned showroom in a major market. Saghian believes it could be a unique opportunity to scale his broader business without placing added pressure on his firm.

He had been facing a challenge that will be familiar to many designers: It’s hard to grow a high-touch business. “I tell everyone at the end of the day, I’m in the service business, and service is impossible to scale,” says Saghian. “It’s been 15 years, and it’s become very clear that with 12 employees and with really big projects, with really big celebrities, this is unscalable. I need something that’s scalable, and product is scalable.”

Establishing a namesake showroom, however, felt like a risky bet. After asking around in industry circles, he learned that it was common for European brands to license their name and franchise their showrooms. An alternate route was born. “I wanted something that was big but still wasn’t known here yet, that I could grow with,” he says. “Really, it was like I manifested it.”

In reality, the journey to debuting the new showroom was years in the making, built on a working relationship that extends back to Saghian’s first design job. On that project, the client whisked him off to Salone del Mobile for a furniture sourcing field trip. There, amid rows and rows of Italian modern pieces, one brand stood out.

“I walked into the booth, and I was like, ‘Whoa. This is wow factor,’” says Saghian. Still, the discovery came with some disappointment: At the time, more than a decade ago, the Dutch brand wasn’t yet selling to the U.S. It wouldn’t be until several years later that he got his chance to reconnect, thanks to a sales representative who reached out with a suggestion. “[She] said, ‘I’m repping this new line. I think you’ll love it—it’s called Eichholtz,’” he adds.

The new space marks the Dutch brand’s first designer-owned showroom in a major marketCourtesy of Ryan Saghian

Before long, Eichholtz became a key resource for Saghian, especially as the company slowly began to establish a presence in the U.S. with a trade-only outpost at High Point and a retail store in Miami. One market the brand still hadn’t tapped? The West Coast. There, Saghian saw the perfect opening. Plus, it helped that Eichholtz’s chief creative officer, Edwin van der Gun, had already been following his work for years before the two connected.

“I said, ‘I love your [offerings]. I buy [them] all the time, but if I were to open it, you have to let me do it the way I want to do it. I have to have full creative control. ... You need to let me tailor it to the California market, the L.A. market. You guys have so many beautiful boucles and travertines and midcentury modern pieces inspired by Parisian interiors, and that’s what I really want to focus on,’” says Saghian.

In the new West Hollywood Design District showroom—a 6,300-square-foot space housed in a European-style townhouse—Saghian has done just that. Whittling down Eichholtz’s 4,000 SKUs to roughly 300 pieces, his curated selection mirrors his own design style while also paying homage to the early days of the brand, when founder Theo Eichholtz drew inspiration from vintage pieces collected from around the globe. Along with housing a variety of antiques, the space exudes a “wabi-sabi ambiance” that the designer says speaks to a shared sense of glamour between his L.A. clientele and the Dutch brand.

Saghian is inviting some friends to the party. The showroom will feature a handful of shop-in-shop partnerships, including Dutch oak flooring company Hakwood, British heritage brand Little Greene Paint & Wallpaper and Australian hardware brand Lo & Co. Elsewhere, personal touches enter the equation: In a nod to Saghian’s Persian-American heritage, a collaboration with visual arts platform Advocartsy will outfit the space with rotating exhibitions of Iranian contemporary art.

Saghian plans to delegate the day-to-day duties of the showroom (though he won’t be too far—he has relocated his firm’s offices to the same building). “I knew that when I opened, I’d be a great marketing person—great at putting the brand together the right way and bringing all the right people,” he says. “But I knew I needed to hire a showroom manager, a president and [a team] so that nothing needs to go through me.”

Though this venture may follow an underutilized path, Saghian is hopeful that his being both an L.A. and design community insider will help the Eichholtz brand cement its West Coast territory as it continues to expand throughout the U.S. market—a strategy that, if successful, will pay off for both businesses in the long run.

“Working with someone like me, I get so passionate and so attached, and I treat each project like it’s my baby, and I am so aligned with [van der Gun],” he says. “In one of the most competitive markets in the U.S., you only have one shot to explode on the scene.”