Handing over the California Dream: Kirkwood Series CEO Leverages His Movie Industry Abilities

When LODGING spoke to Alex Kirkwood, founder & CEO of the eponymous Kirkwood Series, he turned into “in chaos mode in escrow closing on two deals” for his mercurial-growing luxury boutique hotel investment, pattern, and management firm. At finest 38 years of age now, Kirkwood described an outstanding profession route the put he moved from a a success Hollywood movie advertising profession to constructing a boutique hospitality real property project known for its one-of-a-kind properties—all of which pretty significant conforms to the industrial belief he created as a 14-year-customary.

Kirkwood mentioned he first realized about the worth of real property as an investment from his uncle in Seattle, who heart-broken his earliest plans to pursue a profession in the movie industry. “He mentioned, ‘Ought to you high-tail into the movie industrial, you are going to be in a job to genuinely crush it, on the opposite hand it’s a demanding profession, and besides you don’t secure to include your work,’” Kirkwood associated.

However, Kirkwood majored in leisure advertising at Chapman University and, after graduating in 2007, secured a field in L.A. as an assistant to a producer of impartial films. At final, his three movie industry roommates also purchased jobs in L.A., nonetheless meanwhile, Kirkwood had to are living on a boat in Marina Del Rey as he could perhaps now not come up with the money for to rent an home on my own.

twentieth Century Fox and First Purchases

Kirkwood described the components—including a real property connection that led to a field at twentieth Century Fox—that inched him faraway from a promising profession in the movie industry to at least one in hotel real property, including a interval throughout which they overlapped.

Whereas engaged on a movie, he grew to change into pleasant with producers who owned a hotel in Mexico, which motivated him to start poring over a dealer friend’s listings. Oddly, it turned into that relationship that introduced him into contact with the pinnacle of advertising at twentieth Century Fox, who employed him to make trailers and posters for the home theatrical lunge portray division. He remained in the coveted studio machine for larger than 5 years, rising to director of ingenious advertising. “It turned into there that I genuinely lower my teeth, working 18-hour days,” he recalled.

Yet, at one level, whereas working as a ingenious advertising director at Fox, he realized he would by no design excel at it—now not the manner his uber-proficient colleague, the SVP of advertising, did. “He turned into honest appropriate on the job; he could perhaps salvage in two hours work that took me two days,” Kirkwood mentioned.

On the other hand, that colleague turned into pretty much less proficient at capitalizing on alternatives in real property, which got here so without difficulty to Kirkwood. “That’s when I made up my ideas, if I’m capable of’t be absolutely the absolute best at this, I don’t prefer to attain it,” he commented. Even working 18-hour days, he had purchased three properties—two shuttle leases along with his family, and a third, The Palm Springs Lodge, as a joint project with the family that owned the hotel in Mexico. Provided that capability, he figured, “That turned into presumably what I’m speculated to be doing.”

Going It On my own

So, he quit the movie-industry job many would private killed for. “Everyone thought it turned into a puny of crazy to leave the studio machine in the feature I’d worked so exhausting to secure finest to start at on the subject of sq. one,” he mentioned.

His family contributors, who he known as “founder traders,” were supportive. They’d already joined him in shopping shuttle properties for his or her family to abilities collectively and rent out again in 2012 and persisted their improve for the first six accommodations and shuttle leases that launched Kirkwood Series in 2016.

Worthy to his surprise, all did now not high-tail neatly on the origin. “I believed I’d simply leave Fox and the banks would roll over and finance despite project I proposed. As a replacement, I had a nightmare of a time getting my first rotund solo deal. I honest couldn’t build the financing collectively on the deals I wished. I had merely sufficient capital to pursue but every other deal. If it failed, I would be one deal faraway from turning into an Uber driver.’”

Fortunately, that deal—The Hideaway in Santa Barbara—worked out, and The Kirkwood Series began to comprehend off.

Boutique Level of curiosity

Kirkwood mentioned allotment of the world with getting financing when he turned into beginning out turned into likely his insistence on focusing exclusively on the boutique segment, unlike many of the flags the lenders more readily invested in on the time he turned into launching his company. That segment remains his focus: “I in point of fact like a uniquely boutique, localized abilities and particularly take care of historic structure, which is why most of our resources are historic.”

Because the Kirkwood Series has grown, they’re making a loyalty program of their very include, and their properties—all of which are in California—can allotment the management sources of the corporate, he outlined.

And in difference to flagged properties which regularly is similar, there must not any restrictions on Kirkwood Series properties in the case of their distance from one but every other as a end result of competition considerations, because they save now not appear to be finest strange, nonetheless also diminutive. Three of the Series’s downtown Palm Springs properties are a case in level: the 18-room La Serena Villas, built in 1933; the 17-room Del Marcos Lodge, designed in 1947 by famend mid-century architect William Cody and named a Class I historic situation by town; and the ten-room Three Fifty Lodge, built in 1950 and renovated in 2017.

The Course Ahead

Kirkwood mentioned the corporate is poised to develop, with a roughly hybrid constructing that functions:

• The Guests and Family Fund, created from the first six accommodations and shuttle leases owned along with his family;
• Three other accommodations got in partnership with Somera Capital Management, a deal he backed; and
• A brand novel division devoted exclusively to Kirkwood-branded management contracts of third occasion-owned properties.

Describing the corporate’s plans and expectations for growth, Kirkwood mentioned, “We honest passed $100 million in complete real property. We are growing in the owned and operated portfolio and the joint project portfolio, and we’re now attempting to comprehend on our first hotel management contract the put we don’t private an fairness stake. At this level, we now private got a 10-property portfolio and a sturdy pipeline of deals in the works. Our workers is growing, too. Now we private about 150 staff and request that number to double in the arrival year.”

Classes From Tinseltown: The Cinematic Methodology to Lodge Assemble and Advertising and marketing

It’s honest that Alex Kirkwood, founder & CEO of the California-centric Kirkwood Series, walked faraway from his dream of making it in Hollywood to enjoy his dream of constructing strange properties in the hotel industry. Yet, he insisted, these dreams are now not so completely different. “I went from advertising a two-hour movie abilities to advertising a weekend getaway abilities—one thing apparent in the theatrical quality of our hotel advertising, including the ‘pedigree trailer’ we created for our portfolio,” he outlined.

Kirkwood offered a principal quote from a Fox advertising government that he mentioned applies honest as significant to the hotel industry: “Ought to you strive and make a movie for everyone, you find yourself making a movie for no person.”