Community Highlights: Meet Kari Smith of Arroyo Estate Sales and Liquidations, LLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kari Smith.

Hi Kari, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My husband, Kyle Deise, and I started Arroyo Estate Sales & Liquidations in 2019. At the time, we had a store on Melrose, but had been thinking that long-term, we didn’t want to be store owners. Our store, Regeneration Vintage, had begun as solo project that grew out of my life-long love of all things vintage. I began collecting as a teenager, but didn’t begin selling until around 20 years ago, having quickly decided that a career in costuming in film and television wasn’t for me. I bought and sold at flea markets, vintage shows, privately from people and collectors throughout the country, and estate sales.

My husband helped out as much as he could in the early years, but he had a career in film and TV that he had no intention of leaving. That changed with a series of injuries and surgeries forced him to take extended time off, and eventually retire from production altogether. During that time his involvement in my business became greater and Regeneration grew and grew. We worked a lot of long days in the first few years, but through our combined efforts and very different skill sets, we were able to grow our business to the point of opening a retail location.

Our business and our lives seemingly changed over night. We worked harder, made a better living, learned an overwhelming amount about business very quickly and really thrived. It was fun, challenging, and emotionally rewarding in ways we didn’t anticipate. However, we quickly learned that what we had been warned of was true: we were married to our store. Vacations were rare, vacations together were non-existent, life revolved around work and to make more money we would have to devote even more time and energy to the business. So we formulated an exit strategy.

I was constantly shopping estate sales and knew a number of company owners professionally and socially. With full disclosure, we picked their brains, discussed the pros and cons, and imagined a different future for ourselves. With our store lease running out, we incorporated Arroyo Estate Sales at the end of 2019 and sat on it. We fully intended to move slowly with the roll out process, maybe taking a small job here or there, maybe having my husband work a sale or two to get our feet wet. And then March 2020 came and Covid changed everything.

Our second to last day in the store was clearly the end, though we had no way of knowing it at the time. A designer had been in the store pulling for an 1980’s show and was going through her pull, making final selections when she got a phone call. Production was shut down indefinitely. She was our final customer at our store. We came to work the next day, but quickly decided that we didn’t want to be there and even if a customer showed up, we didn’t really want to be around them. We locked up, went home to Altadena, did what everyone else was doing–we gardened, we ate, we worried, watched the news, talked with friends, played with the dogs, and waited. And then the riots came.

When the George Floyd protests hit we knew our store was an unlikely target, but in an abundance of caution we pulled all of our merchandise and put it into storage. While we were spared when the looting and violence stopped at Highland, several of our friends’ stores closer to the city center and Hollywood weren’t so lucky. At this point, three months or so into the pandemic, we could see the writing on the wall. Our revenue had dropped 95% in a matter of days since the lockdown started, there was no timetable for a return to normalcy, and when my husband ran the numbers, we would have been $250,000 in debt to keep a store alive that wouldn’t have a lease, and that we weren’t sure we wanted anymore.

We had spent 2020 so far getting our ducks in a row for the estate sale business: website, business cards, bank accounts, insurance, making contacts, etc.. In the meantime, we were able to generate some income from selling some of our store’s inventory online, but it was no where near enough to sustain us, even in the short term. We weren’t bored, though. We re-landscaped our yard, grew vegetables, made bread, and had the same weird covid non-vacation/vacation that so many others we knew were having. Sometime in May of 2020, our lawyer called. Were we ready for our first client?

Our lawyer lived a five minute walk from our house and the potential client lived across the street from him. Having spent the previous three years commuting from Altadena to Melrose, this was a dream come true. We couldn’t have been more fortunate to work with them–they were kind, gracious, patient, and had some really amazing stuff, some of which dated back to their ancestors who came over on the Mayflower. It was a crash course in estate liquidation. We called in all the help we possibly could to educate us on things that at the time were out of our field of expertise (rare currency from the Civil War, for example), and we had our first in a number of incredibly grateful clients. Our business has evolved over the last 6 years, but the core remains the same: estate liquidation, in all it’s forms.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There are the obvious foreseeable challenges–potential clients finding us, maximizing revenue, minimizing costs–the usual challenges that any business faces. The primary unforeseeable challenge has been the emotional work that is required. We are encountering people in what is often one of their most difficult times–after the death of a loved one, most often a parent or parents. Being sensitive to this while also maintaining healthy business boundaries is a constant challenge. Not everyone who needs our help is someone that we will take on as a client.

Perhaps our biggest challenge had nothing to do with business. Since 2017 we had been residents of Altadena. While ultimately our home didn’t completely burn down, it was severely damaged due to our back house burning down. We have been displaced ever since and due to forces outside of our control, there is no timetable for our return. Yet, while 2025 was the most challenging year of our lives for several reasons, our business thrived during that year and continues to thrive in 2026. We had a single client for 2025 for whom we liquidated her warehouse of collecting on a massive scale and conducted five separate liquidation sales. We were as busy as we ever could have wanted, providing a much needed break from all of the rest of life’s challenges.

As you know, we’re big fans of Arroyo Estate Sales and Liquidations, LLC. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a full-service estate liquidation company in business since 2019. We are fully insured and carry a bond when we take on a client. We provide traditional estate sales, where our team discovers, researches, and prepares for sale the entire contents of the client’s home; estate buy-outs, both full and partial, where we purchase some or all of the contents of home; and estate clean-outs where as a service we empty the contents of the home so that the real estate process can begin. When we conduct a traditional estate sale, we research and price every single thing, setting up the home as if it were a retail store. Our process and accounting is fully transparent so that our clients can see how much was sold, how we received payment, and how they will be paid. We believe that what sets us apart is our retail experience, our organizational and logistical skills, and our integrity.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
Great Expectations, Catch 22, and any books on antiques that we can get our hands on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://arroyoestatesales.com/
• Instagram: @arroyoestatesales
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arroyoestatesales/