Today we’d like to introduce you to Tony Diamond.
Tony, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My mother graduated from Hami High, my father from Inglewood. They met at USC during the OJ era and had yours truly shortly thereafter. All of my Uncles went to USC and after graduating Beverly Hills High School, I too went to USC. My DNA mapped looks like the 405 Freeway at the Wilshire Blvd exit. I love this city. I love that the American Dream is still alive and well in LA. I love that Angelenos are optimists. I even love the traffic – the more traffic, the more people and the people are what makes this city great.
When I’m old and gray and it’s just me, my lazy boy, and cup of pudding, I want to look back and know I did something cool with the time I had. That’s what drives me every day with StayTony – to create the coolest corporate apartment company in the world. To do that we start with location. We only open locations on the best block, on the best street, and in LA’s best neighborhoods. Currently, we have two locations in Hollywood, two in West Hollywood (both opening soon), and one in Beverly Hills (and one in Atlanta). Venice should be coming soon but it’s not official yet.
Next, we brought on LA artist and interior designer David McCauley. The only direction I gave David when we first started was to make every piece of furniture so it could stand on its own like a sculpture. To do this, David custom designs every piece of furniture from scratch. For example, our coffee table at our new location opening this month in Hollywood includes two different sized travertine geometric cubes placed underneath the coffee table. They seemingly belong with the coffee table because it looks good, yet they are totally random – it’s awesome.
Has it been a smooth road?
Our biggest challenge is becoming a brand. We have uniqueness and desirability with our design and locations but now we need scale. Scale can’t come quick enough for us. When I’m telling someone about StayTony for the first time and their response is “so you’re an Airbnb” I literally die a little inside. Airbnb is Crazy Eddie’s commodity extravaganza and StayTony is the farthest thing from a commodity.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
For the last year, we’ve been in development on the first ever technology enabled operating model where corporate apartment guests will be able to rent our apartments for 1 -3 months by financing rent (interest-free for six months) and making monthly payments starting as low as $237 per month. That’s not a typo – $237 per month. We will be launching our technology Spring 2019 and we’re confident it’s going to change the direction of our industry.
We are also taking a unique approach to growth. Our competitors are subleasing blocks of apartments in existing buildings. The problem with subleasing is its capital intensive and it puts the operator and the landlord on opposite sides of the table. We have taken a page out of the hotel playbook by partnering with landlords à la the hotel management model. In the same way that the W Hotel brands and operates a hotel property owned by somebody else, StayTony brands and operates an apartment building. This approach allows building owners to participate in the upside created by our business model to the tune of generating 50% greater profit from their assets.
We currently have four locations spread throughout Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Midtown Atlanta and we’ll be opening two more locations in West Hollywood this summer. That totals 63 units spread across six locations and we have plans to add an additional 100 units across three more locations by the end of 2019.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
The short term rental industry needs to change. Airbnb is creating tremendous skepticism among guests. There are millions of property owners and millions of different experiences and many of them are not good. Yet Airbnb has become synonymous with short term rentals and that is tough to compete with (even for corporate rentals of 30 days or more like us). That is why we created our financing innovation, we knew we had to do something to shake-up the industry by giving guests the first ever truly affordability payment option.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://staytony.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stay.tony/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/staytonyofficial/
Image Credit:
StayTony
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
