Today we’d like to introduce you to Duncan Watson
Hi Duncan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My husband John Davenport grew up here in Jacksonville, while I grew up down in Houston. We both moved to Los Angeles to attend college in 2002, where John attended UCLA and I went to Loyola Marymount. We met 9 years later on the beach in Malibu.
We love real estate and homes and have sold residential real estate in Los Angeles for over 15 years. This parlayed into us helping clients with small remodels to their new homes, which then grew in scale.
In 2019, we made a trip back to John’s hometown of Jacksonville, TX, where we noticed the vibe was changing quite a bit. Jacksonville has really invested in itself and its downtown central business district.
We met so many people our age who had moved away and learned valuable life skills, only to want to come back to Jacksonville where they could apply their knowledge and wisdom to their own community.
It inspired us to (on a whim!) buy a beautiful older home in Jacksonville. We then began overseeing an intensive remodel on the home with hopes to use this home as a “getaway” spot away from L.A..
Then COVID hit.
Jacksonville became a great escape for us. We remodeled our home over two years and decided that Jacksonville had everything we wanted. Nice people, great people, and gorgeous scenery all around. The quality of life improvement was so noticeable.
In 2021, John and I had the opportunity to make one of our dreams come true; which was to open our own furniture and home décor store when an old building we loved came for sale in DOWNTOWN JACKSONVILLE. We bought and completely remodeled the historic building and in the Fall of 2023, we opened our brick-and-mortar store, Davenport Home + Design.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road getting here has most certainly not been smooth. Potholes still come out of nowhere, sometimes! Construction always presents its own issues. Additionally, having never owned or operated a retail space before, we had to just roll the dice and see how it went.
I guess, what I’ve learned since owning this store, is that we don’t know anything! What we mean is that there’s always a huge unknown. You can use statistics or historical data to predict how things might go, but you never know. This was very frustrating to me at first, but it has become one of the most enlightening and entertaining aspects of owning this store. You never know what’s going to happen on a given day! I know anyone who owns their own business can appreciate that.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Davenport Home + Design offers high end furnishings and home décor, as well as interior design and decorating services. We also offer custom furniture design and reupholstery services.
Our work is classically design-forward and functional, and often a little edgy.
We aren’t selling trends to keep up with the Joneses. We are selling elevated design for those seeking individualism and elevated and unique style.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
We drink a lot of tequila.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @davenporthomedesign
- Facebook: @davenporthomedesign
Image Credits
Photo credit Cassie DeVillier
