Every family, every person, every home has a centerpiece, that one place where everything and everyone comes together. For some, it’s a playroom filled with kids’ laughter. For others, it’s the backyard where memories are grilled into every summer day. And for many, it’s the kitchen – where stories are shared, meals are created, and memories are built.

At The RTA Store, our people are that centerpiece. As a family-owned and operated company, the team behind the scenes is what truly builds the heart of the home for every customer we serve. And really, what’s more important than that?

In this month’s The Heart of Our Home spotlight, we’re featuring Ed, our Technical Operations Manager, so you can get to know the heart of The RTA Store.

Melissa: Hey Ed! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today.

Ed: Absolutely, looking forward to it!

Melissa: So what is technically your title? What do you do?

Ed: My actual title is Technical Operations Manager. It feels like a good mix of everything most days. But basically to sum it up best is I’m our CRM administrator and I help with tech in all capacities essentially like our software and stuff like that. And I work every once in a while with hardware. I work with a lot of our partners pretty closely and make sure things are integrating properly and just making things better for our teams.

Melissa: That makes sense. Even though it’s not my full background, for about 3 years before working at The RTA Store, I was doing marketing within cyber security. So, at least I got a little bit of an understanding.

Melissa: Then what is it about cabinetry that you love?

Ed: That’s a good question. I will say I love organization. I cannot stand clutter to any extent. So having cabinets where you can keep all of your stuff and this is where it’ll be, is just essential. It’s not even a question mark of should I have cabinets or how many or whatever. It’s like however much stuff you need an equal amount of cabinets because if you keep stuff on your counter, I will slap it off. (both laugh)

Melissa: I wish I had half the organization that I see sometimes with cabinetry because right now it’s literally just a square and it’s like what can I fit in here and how and it’s not efficient when you actually cook daily, which I do, and bake. But I agree with you, it makes so much sense to have the organization that cabinets have now, especially when you see all the options. Even once you have it, it’s one of those things where you don’t realize how you actually lived without that in the kitchen. Especially the kitchen.

Ed: Yeah. I don’t know a time before cabinets, but I imagine that they struggled with keeping stuff organized and cooking and all that sort of fun stuff. (both laugh)

Melissa: What is it about working at the RTA store that you love? What’s your favorite part of The RTA Store specifically, working here?

Ed: I view what we do as a tech industry. We’re essentially selling cabinets online in a space that, prior to the internet, wouldn’t even exist.

So the whole ecommerce experience is really cool. I think it’s a great experience too, being able to work with people online and sometimes you lose a certain tone or whatever through text it’s hard sometimes, but I grew up in the age and era of playing games online and stuff like that. You can have personality in your text even if people aren’t always going to pick up on it. And I find it fun to have those kinds of conversations.

Melissa: Yes, I agree with you. I’m very much the type of person that overreads into texts where if I just get an okay, I think, What’s wrong? Why are you upset? You don’t just say okay. You say, “Okay!”

Ed: Yeah, all those things add up! It almost comes across as passive aggressive if you use a period. I can understand a comma, that’s fine. You’re just not enthusiastic about it, but a period it feels like you’re like, “All right, this conversation’s over.”

Melissa: It is very “ending” (laughs). But I have to ask now, who started working at The RTA Store first, you or your sister? Did you bring her into the mix?

Ed: Me by years actually! Basically, she was working from home kind of for COVID, but her job wasn’t really being accommodating. She was working in the social services kind of area and she was going to people’s homes where she was like, I’m definitely going to get COVID, this doesn’t seem good. And I told her she should apply to The RTA Store. And not too long after she started.

Melissa: It really is awesome to see it’s not just family owned and operated by the Ackerman family. There are multiple times where I’ve spoken to people now and they’re like, “yeah, and then you can talk to my sister in another department here, you could talk to my husband, whatever it is.” And I’m like, this is fantastic

Ed: Yeah, there’s always been a lot of people who are from the same family and such who have worked here even in the office.

Melissa: I have to say it’s so much fun learning about everybody too because I’m like, yeah, this is a great way to show the personal side of the brand, but also it’s really fun to get to know everybody like this.

Ed: That’s also one of the perks of my role is I feel like I talk to pretty much everybody in the company to some degree. And we work these remote jobs where basically your coworker that you work with every day could basically be across the world. So it’s really cool and interesting to see how the world’s developing in that way.

Melissa: It is. Especially because The RTA Store, it’s been that way for a long time now. Pre-COVID but COVID kind of jumpstarted that where a lot of people went remote that had never been remote, including me. And there are so many more companies than I realized that have been remote for well before that.

Ed: So, on that point, it goes back to my point about us being ecommerce too. Our office operations which in general prior to COVID, you had to be there. That’s the only way you can operate a business. Because it’s ecommerce, we clearly saw that we could do that entirely remotely. But in the earlier stages really the only parts of the company that were entirely remote or virtual were designers, interestingly enough.

Melissa: It actually is interesting because you’d think about design work like you’d want to meet the designer and be doing it with them, but at the same time, there can’t be a designer in every city. It’s literally impossible. So, it’s kind of interesting. It’s one of those things where now that you think about it, it actually makes sense that they’d be all remote, but first thought, you’d be like, why are all the designers remote?

I mean, look, if we were to get to a place one day to have multiple showrooms, that would be awesome. As long as it doesn’t lose the family aspect because I feel like that is like the differentiator for The RTA Store because it trickles down, and everybody who works at The RTA Store has that similar kind of mindset of just family-oriented even for people who aren’t married or don’t have kids, it doesn’t matter – family means everything to almost everyone who works here and it’s really beautiful to see that because family is the most important thing to me. So it’s nice to see how many people still have that type of mentality today.

Ed: Yeah, absolutely agreed. And it is definitely a very strong theme of working here. Even if you don’t have as tight a family and everything like that. Being around so many other people who do and it sort of bleeds into the whole company.

Melissa: It really does. It’s like they always say, you hire management to all be of a similar kind of mindset, so that each department operates similarly culture wise, even if you just go by the basic business stuff, right? Nobody’s a micromanager. Everyone’s super supportive. Everyone’s collaborative. Everyone enjoys helping each other out on the business side. But also, I mean, even just when I interviewed, I remember thinking, I’m just a social media manager, why am I meeting the CEOs? And then I had the interview and I thought, this makes so much more sense! And actually, it was really cool that I ended up meeting the CEOs who are brother and sister.

It’s actually awesome that I work with them every day. And it’s so different than in the past where if anyone were to say “Wow you work with the CEOs every day??” It’s seen as a scary thing. But they’re fantastic and it’s a lot of fun.

Ed: That just speaks to the small business aspect of it, too. Like I said, because I feel like I touch base with so many different people throughout the day. It’s like when Samantha or Tyler reach out, it’s not like, I better stop everything I’m doing. No, I’ve worked with them long enough that they’re aware I’m probably busy if I’m not responding immediately.

Melissa: That’s true. It’s been 8 years now, right?

Ed: Yeah 8 years!

Melissa: That is also such an awesome thing to see, where it’s anniversary over five years, I’m like, that’s awesome. It not only says,  good for you that you’ve been at a place for that long, but also you clearly love it and they clearly love you. And you don’t see that today in a lot of companies at all anywhere.

Ed: Yeah no, most people bounce around and that sort of thing.

Melissa: Either because they had to or because they wanted to. I’m a millennial and a lot of people always looked at millennials as like, you just job hop why don’t you have any loyalty? Meanwhile, there’s no loyalty from the company. Why am I going to work 10 hours a day at least, right? Weekends, nighttime, answering emails after hours for the company when they don’t support their employees? And that I went through two different tech layoffs because of being in the tech world before landing at The RTA Store. And the first time it was a massive layoff and I was so sad that it happened because I genuinely liked working there and the one after that was like a blessing that it happened.

Ed: It was so obvious right?

Melissa: Not monetarily obviously, that was rough (both laugh) but in the long run even looking back on it, I am so glad that that happened because I was working after hours all the time where I had that hour and a half in between where the kids eat dinner, we put them to bed, and then back on at work and it was just never enough especially with social media. There are so many companies in tech that want to see exactly how many customers they got from a post. That is literally not possible. This is not how social media works.

But The RTA Store gets how everything works together and it probably has to do with, as you were saying, the fact that it’s ecommerce, right? It’s a different type of world and understanding that world also means that you understand the other tech parts of that world like social media and online business.

Ed: I may be ignorant on the topic, so pardon me if I’m wrong, but I feel especially knowing the internet era and how viral things work, you can’t predict that. When you’re making something with marketing, it’s a gamble.

You just have to try to make your hand the best hand it can be. But that doesn’t ever guarantee anything.

Melissa: Yeah. Literally social media marketing is trial and error. If they were to sum up what social media is, it’s trial and error because you could put a post out and it does so well and you’re like, that’s amazing let’s do it again. Even if you do it differently it doesn’t matter – dud.

Ed: Yeah, exactly.

Melissa: It’ll be a complete dud. It’s crazy how it changes.

Ed: Yeah, I feel like with the internet, it’s just filled with unpredictability, and not in a bad way because I’m somebody who enjoys change. I like change. I hate the idea of being stagnant.

Melissa: You feel stuck.

Ed: Exactly. I don’t like being stuck in a rut. Hence me moving several states basically just because I couldn’t deal with the winters anymore. But you have to be on top of your game.

Melissa: It’s true. And it’s coming too from someone who isn’t active on social media personally, posting myself or my family. But also at the same time, I also look at businesses on social media. I’m still a consumer. And so it’s a lot different looking at social media from a business standpoint and from a consumer looking at businesses than it is consumer to consumer. It’s still very much a necessity business wise.

Ed: That’s just the nature of the internet, people used to always say when you have that sense of anonymity you just feel like you could say whatever you want.

But I’ve always found it entertaining seeing when I’m scrolling on Instagram reels or whatever seeing businesses replying, I’ll see Hyundai replying to a reel and I’m just like what does Hyundai have to do with this?? (both laugh) I feel like companies are creative with it though. That’s what does well for companies too.

Melissa: It’s one of the reasons why you almost have to have some sort of wittiness to your brand while on social media, especially depending on what platforms you’re on and what you’re doing. With us for example, because we’re a necessity cuz everyone needs cabinets, but at the same time it’s a luxury to get new cabinets, get the specific ones you want, get all the different accessories and stuff together, right? The chef’s kitchen that everyone dreams of. So, we need a little wittiness, especially when we touch upon Reddit. And I got to tell you, I was excited for Reddit.

Ed: Yeah, I think Reddit has the most anonymous factor to it. I feel like, the most successful social media companies that I’ve seen online, I remember Wendy’s back in the day on Twitter. I feel like they had people with really strong clapbacks and I’m just that that draws the eyes, that gets the attention.

Melissa: It was great, Wendy’s was so fresh! (both laugh) Reddit’s personality is like that on their own platforms, like Reddit’s LinkedIn page for example. They’re active on LinkedIn and sometimes the stuff they say is just hysterical. I’m like, whoever is doing social there, they’re probably having so much fun responding to people because they literally just can say whatever they want because that’s what Reddit is known for.

So I don’t know if you saw them already from reading the other blogs, but here comes the rapid fire. This is always a fun one. If you could choose a non-obvious cabinet in a room… so, for example, it could be something like, a baker corner in the pantry or a toe kick drawer in the bathroom or something crazy, like Tyler wanted a speakeasy type of room behind your bar. I think that’s brilliant and I don’t know why we don’t sell it (both laugh). But if you could have a non-obvious choice of cabinets in a room in your home, what would it be?

Ed: I’m going to probably be biased because I won one of the raffles from Wolf, but I saw an episode during COVID with Guy Fiery who had some crazy outdoor cabinetry. 100% I am getting cabinets for my grill. If money is not an issue, I’m having a nice big patio with cabinets underneath all around my grill.

Melissa: Especially since you’re in South Carolina now!

Ed: Yeah, basically I would just live outside.

Melissa: I can get on board with that. I agree with you. Outdoor cabinetry is one of those things you don’t really think about, especially because that’s the last kind of cabinetry that you would think of because you think, I need cabinets in the kitchen, in the bathroom, it could be totally useful in a living room because you have an entertainment center anyway, maybe the dining room… Outdoor is the last type people think about, but it makes so much sense when you see it.

Ed: Yeah. I mean if you have a nice backyard and if money isn’t an issue, you have an inground pool, you have a big patio, it’s a no brainer. What would be better in your garage or something?

Melissa: Ok so what is your desert island food of choice? If you were stuck on a desert island, what one food would you want?

Ed: I’m just stuck eating the same thing every single day? I would typically go if it’s a last meal kind of thing, I’d go a little crazy. But this seems like an easy chicken parm choice for me. I could totally eat chicken parm every day.

Melissa: Interesting. I kind of get sick of sauce after a while.

Ed: Really? I guess that’s the Italian shining through on me, because I could easily eat Italian food probably every day, too.

Melissa: My Italian side is opposite (laughs). I’m half Italian. Don’t tell my dad because he’ll yell at me for not saying half Sicilian! And half Greek, but because of that, we never order Italian food except for the fact that my daughter’s obsessed with pizza. That would be like the last thing we order because unless I’m following a specific recipe, the flavors I tend to use at home just end up being Italian flavors.

Ed: Yeah that’s totally fair. And honestly, I might be more biased to say that just because since I moved down here, there aren’t any good Italian places. I haven’t had good Italian since I’ve been in New York, pretty much.

Melissa: We know we do have really good Italian food here. Even outside the city. There’s a restaurant in town here, Tiramisu. Their food is genuinely fantastic. Aand we’ve had multiple date nights there because that’s the Italian food I will get and it’s still some actual Italian dishes that aren’t Italian-American, but also your classic Italian-American food. My husband’s family is a very large Italian family. I for some odd reason don’t have a large family even though I’m Greek and Italian but my husband’s family does Christmas Eve and so we started hosting once we got a house, and we’re talking like 30 people pre-COVID… now it’s more like 18-20 people, which to me I’m like it’s only 20 people coming this year (both laugh). Now I’m in that mindset, but if there is no chicken parm, someone will be mad. So our grandma has to make chicken parm for literally any type of party.

Ed: Yeah. I mean, that’s the standard – you can never go wrong with any kind of Italian meal. If you try to go too fancy, you might get a bad dish that night or you might not enjoy it at least.

Melissa: No, that’s true. And you’d probably have to try pretty hard to mess up chicken parm. Other than burning it obviously.

Ed: Yeah, exactly.

Melissa: Okay, I can respect that! And if you could live anywhere in the world, where would you want to be?

Ed: I’m 100% going with a Caribbean island. To remove winter entirely would be just a blessing. But I went to St. Thomas a couple years ago and I feel like that’s the perfect mix for me. You have the beach and mountains. So you have a choice, do I want to go on a hike today or something like that, want to go exploring, etc.

Melissa: That actually does sound like a lot of fun. I guess you’d have to deal with potential storms in the terms of hurricanes. But I mean, you’re going to have a storm either way. Hurricane or snow, pick one!

Ed: Yeah, exactly. You’re never escaping weather entirely no matter where you go.

Melissa: No, not at all. So, last question. Who or what, Ed, is the heart of your home?

Ed: That’s an easy one. I’m going with music. I listen to music all the time. I cannot work without music. I feel like I need rhythm in my life. It really surprises me when I talk to people and they say they watch shows in the background when working. I’m like, you need a rhythm! Don’t you need some groove?? Are you just bobbing your head to people talking? That would annoy me!

Melissa: So, it’s funny. I’m more the TV person, but it’s because I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what I’m doing with the music because I can totally tune out the TV and have it as background noise. I would be singing too much with the music! I tend to listen to a lot of Greek and Italian music, so I don’t even know what they’re saying to begin with. So it definitely distracts me more to have music on. But I do understand the sentiment! It would be very hard to live without music.

Ed: I pretty much wake up and put music on. I’ll go to the gym… and have music on. I’ll get back, cook breakfast and all that. Got to have music on. If I have it silent for longer than a minute, I’m looking around “What’s wrong?”

Melissa: It’s true though. I mean, it’s interesting with music. You can listen to music because of your mood, sometimes you’re in a mood where you want that sad music to belt those ballads, right, that you want to listen to. And there are other times where you’ll listen to music specifically in order to change your mood.

Ed: That’s a good point. and there’s just so many different kinds of music, too. I need to be listening to something new. New music Friday makes Friday my favorite day of the week. Ever since they made that transition from new music releasing on Tuesday to Friday, I was like, why did this take so long?

Melissa: What’s your favorite genre then?

Ed: I’m gonna have to go with hip-hop. Easy. I grew up with it. In college I ended up writing my thesis paper on hiphop essentially. The title of my paper was actually South Asian-American hip hop.

Melissa: That’s awesome! So, I know it’s not hip-hop, but that just brings me to the dying question then. If you’re into music, how do you feel about K-Pop Demon Hunters?

Ed: I know nothing honestly.

Melissa: My god.

Ed: I’ve only heard of it in passing

Melissa: You should watch it. It’s good. (both laugh)

Thank you very much for this. I know we’ve kind of met each other on and off on Slack, etc., but definitely nicer to get to know each other more this way. And it’s fun! The blog’s fun for sure.

Ed: Yeah, absolutely! I appreciate you picking me and that I’m in it. Always more than happy to help, too.