Flamingo Estate, an L.A. Lifestyle Company That Does It All

LOS ANGELES — Flamingo Property, a way of life firm set in a Forties Spanish-style home within the hills on the border between the Eagle Rock and Highland Park neighborhoods, sells candles that scent like tomatoes and rosemary. Oprah Winfrey named them certainly one of her favourite issues.

Pink is a theme for each the model and the home. Its facade is pink stucco. Its Pink Moon rosé was made to match the colour on the underside of a flamingo’s wing. The corporate makes botanical merchandise, not all of that are apparent hits. Final Christmas, its notorious nine-pound sack of manure (utilizing a synonym for excrement) that value $75, went viral. It’s at the moment out of inventory.

For $80 earlier than delivery, one can buy a 6.5-ounce jar of dried strawberries dusted with guajillo chile and a squeeze of lime. They’re snacks, sure, but in addition they’re statements: In the event you can afford them, cash is just not one thing that considerations you. Every little thing is shipped in packing containers printed with the motto: “We’re a house for radical pleasure.”

Although Flamingo Property was named after the house of its founder, Richard Christiansen, the identify implies one thing far larger than the seven-acre lot he shares with Aaron Harvey, his accomplice (and the artistic director of the corporate), and their canines, Daylesford and Freeway.

“A possible investor simply came visiting and was like, ‘Wait, every part is from right here?’” Mr. Christiansen mentioned. “She was anticipating tons of of acres in the midst of Los Angeles.” He needed to clarify that although Flamingo Estates, the model, was impressed by his home he now makes use of elements from 110 native farms.

Mr. Christiansen purchased his residence eight years in the past. It was as soon as a porn studio, and he reworked it into an Instagram playland.

“It’s excessive,” mentioned Martha Stewart, who has recognized Mr. Christiansen for years and wrote the foreword to the Flamingo Property cookbook ($78). “He buys a home on the highest of the hill overlooking Los Angeles, and he transforms this ex-porn king’s mansion right into a veritable paradise of gardens and deep, darkish baths and furnishings that’s loopy and good. He seems like a younger boy with pink cheeks, and he’s beneficiant and considerate and busy, but you by no means suppose he’s that busy.”

The vibe skews colourful and vaguely tropical. In the lounge, there’s a limited-edition David Hockney “Caribbean Tea Time” display and a big floral printed couch from the Belgian designer JP Demeyer, combined with chairs and aspect tables purchased at Parisian flea markets. Within the kitchen, a terrazzo flooring in shades of mint, white, black and rose is dominated by an unlimited vintage range. Simply off the kitchen is a small bar with classic Baccarat crystal decanters and bamboo stools.

Mr. Christiansen’s house is the place practically every part the model sells is staged and photographed, and it drives gross sales. It has additionally served as a background for Quentin Tarantino and Margot Robbie to be photographed for journal spreads, for Billie Eilish to be interviewed by the BBC, and for Emily Weiss, the Glossier founder, to host her child bathe.

It could be simple to mistake Flamingo Property for a lodge or membership. “I assumed it was a public house that individuals may perhaps buy a ticket to, like a backyard,” Chrissy Teigen mentioned in a voice memo. She requested Mr. Christiansen over Instagram if she may convey her household. “We pulled up and I knocked on the gate and Richard popped out, and I used to be like, ‘Oh my God, wait, this isn’t a public entity of any form.’”

Mr. Christiansen gave them a tour, and her children performed with the chickens. “I totally consider Richard is an angel or an alien from one other planet,” Ms. Teigen mentioned. “On the threat of sounding very L.A., he has this power about him and this aura about him that’s actually particular.”

They ended up making three jams collectively — as within the form of jams one spreads on scones, not the musical selection.

A Man With Many Concepts

Architects from the French agency Studio KO did the renovation of Mr. Christiansen’s residence, basing a few of the landscaping on scorching climate gardens in Morocco. Surveying the grounds after an exceptionally chilly and moist California winter, Mr. Christiansen sounded poetic: “The sage has exploded, the wisteria has purple blooms. The orchard is so joyful, it’s prefer it’s singing.”

There are climbing jasmine vines and a cast-concrete bathhouse with a hearth and tiles that match the Balearic Sea. Mr. Christiansen is fascinated with sometime making a Flamingo Property “temple to bathing” — impressed by the one at Flamingo Property.

However he’s a person with many concepts. Final yr the corporate launched $250 jars of honey culled from beehives positioned within the gardens of celebrities, together with Ai Weiwei and Julianne Moore.

“How wild is it that LeBron’s honey on the Westside tastes utterly completely different from Tiffany Haddish’s in South Central,” Mr. Christiansen mentioned. He’s nonetheless negotiating who will take part subsequent.

Ms. Moore mentioned the method was simple. “There’s a beekeeper in Montauk he contacted, and she or he tended the bees and picked up the honey,” she mentioned. “We proceed to have the bees.”

Mr. Christiansen stood together with his canines contained in the goat keeper’s shed, an area the dimensions of a small workplace, filled with jars with labels that learn “fermented indigo” and adorned with customized hand-painted wallpaper from the British firm de Gournay depicting native natural world: cactuses, owls and cliff roses.

The canines have a barely adversarial relationship with the goats, who dwell in a pen with the chickens. On a stormy Sunday in February, realizing the goats have been chilly, Mr. Christiansen posted a name for cashmere sweaters on Instagram. “I used to be like, ‘Oh, it’s freezing, the poor goats,’” Mr. Christiansen mentioned. Now the goats put on cashmere.

Mr. Christiansen stood overlooking proteas and mimosa crops that reminded him of his native Australia. His dad and mom have been beekeepers who raised him on their sugar cane farm in northern New South Wales. They didn’t entertain. He was a child obsessive about Chanel and Calvin Klein advertisements in magazines, who studied regulation after which went into advertising.

Flamingo Property started as a pandemic undertaking. After nearly 20 years at Chandelier Inventive, the company he based in 2005, Mr. Christiansen, 46, was depleted emotionally and bodily. The corporate labored with lots of style manufacturers and had places of work in Los Angeles, New York and Paris.

Mr. Christiansen was dwelling in Los Angeles. Chandelier was at a standstill within the early days of the pandemic. (He’s not concerned within the company.) That was when he met a lady who was at risk of dropping her farm as a result of she bought meals to eating places that have been closed.

He began promoting her recent produce to mates in $35 packing containers. Phrase unfold amongst different farmers who have been keen to affix. Farmers bought on to Flamingo Property, which paid them weekly in money. “It was $300 that week, $600 the following week,” Mr. Christiansen mentioned. “And you already know, it simply saved rising. One farm turned two, turned 5, turned 10 and now 110. We didn’t have any intention that it could develop into actually a enterprise.”

“In some unspecified time in the future we shifted to a mannequin that was extra structured, asking farmers, ‘Why don’t you plant stuff particularly for us?’”

Locals like Kris Jenner can nonetheless choose up farm packing containers, however that’s only one a part of Flamingo Property’s enterprise. Gross sales have doubled annually, Mr. Christiansen mentioned, noting that income was $10 million final yr. “We’re about to hit revenue this subsequent quarter,” he mentioned.

Seventy-five % of the purchasers, in response to info offered by Mr. Christiansen, are girls between 24 and 40 years outdated. They’re cut up evenly between the East and West Coast. “The chance for us is in cities like Chicago, Dallas, Miami,” he mentioned.

“I actually do suppose we’ve bought these two buyer segments,” he continued. “We’ve bought individuals who care so much concerning the atmosphere and about sourcing and about farming. Then I believe we’ve bought this buyer right here who’s a luxurious shopper, who thinks the home is curated and likes the model and particularly the collaborations we do, and generally they cross over. However very hardly ever, really.”

Making the Leap

The advertising aspect of Mr. Christiansen nonetheless burns very shiny. Every Sunday he pulls the knowledge on the highest 50 prospects that week and texts or calls them. “This one buyer was actually our greatest buyer over and again and again,” he mentioned. “And I used to be, like, I’m wondering who that is? After which I had a stunning dialog with him. After which, you already know, one factor led to a different. Now that buyer is an investor by way of a household workplace.”

Mr. Christiansen, at first, courted particular person buyers for funding reasonably than enterprise capital companies. “I hate coping with cash,” he mentioned. “I don’t even examine my A.T.M. steadiness.”

For all that, the Flamingo Property model simply closed a spherical of outdoor funding. It raised $7.5 million, earmarked for working capital.

“We’ve left the children’ desk and gone to the adults’ desk,” Mr. Christiansen mentioned.

“We spoke to some individuals who have been inexperienced buyers, and quite a lot of them have been, like, we’ll solely spend money on organic-certified or regenerative-certified, no matter — simply very didactic about it. I mentioned that for some small growers, getting licensed natural is absolutely troublesome. It’s costly.”

Mr. Christiansen can also be open to working with giant agricultural firms. “For me, progress can be that scenario the place folks say we’re removed from good,” he mentioned. “The chance for me is to work with somebody who’s bought room to enhance. In our trade there’s a lot greenwashing. It makes me irate that individuals give themselves a pat on the again for one or two elements which are goodish for the world.”

This summer season, Flamingo Property is opening a pop-up in an outdated auto physique store in East Hampton, N.Y., the concept being to convey your physique in for a summer season tuneup. The fuel station snack part will likely be known as the Inconvenience Retailer. There are books popping out later this yr, together with a workbook on find out how to dwell a pleasurable life and one other known as “Home of Radical Pleasure,” which will likely be a tour of the property divided by the senses.

Flamingo Property, the house, is vital to the attract of Flaming Property, the model, even when having one’s residence as a form of dwelling set and rotating feast might be annoying. Mr. Harvey, he mentioned with fun, is annoyed with it: “He’s uninterested in making the mattress.”

“Regardless that we’ve grown shortly, it’s nonetheless super-personal,” he mentioned. “We make stuff that I need to use within the kitchen. I take advantage of the cleaning soap within the bathe. I do all the social myself. It’s nonetheless my kitchen, my lavatory, my canines and my timber.”