Nick Arambula Mike Fretto and Chris Lee with Neighbor
Neighbor is a Phoenix based outdoor furniture company. They launched in late 2020 with a teak lounge collection and have since expanded into dining and accessories.
Neighbor distributes with Crate&Barrel and Huckberry, but their sales are predominately through their website. They started the company driven by an desire to find a way to disconnect and build more memories with those we love, in the midst of the pandemic.
Nick Arambula is a reformed CPA, who left the world of public accounting more than seven years ago. However, his exposure to corporate tax and management consulting have made Nick pretty good with numbers and strategy.
Prior to Grand Collective, Nick was the Interim CEO and COO at Tuft & Needle. He played a key role in growing revenue from $40M to $200M through expansion of physical retail stores and product distribution, by establishing deals with Lowe’s, and Crate&Barrel. As Interim CEO, Nick led the company to its most profitable months since inception.
In his spare time, Nick can be found riding his bike or dancing to any song from Trolls with his daughters, Chloe and Eva.
Mike Fretto is our craftsman. Mike is nearing 20 years of experience in design and brand development. Early in his career Mike was a consultant supporting clients like Facebook and Coca- Cola, all while finding time to build his own non-profit that benefited poverty stricken citizens by telling their stories through design.
Before Grand Collective, Mike was the Head of Product Experience at Tuft & Needle. In his time at T&N, Mike played in pivotal role in building the brand and products. In short, if you opened a product from T&N in the last four years, Mike had something to do with every element of that process.
In his free time, Mike explores the outdoors with his kids, Eleanor, Abraham and Boone.
Chris Lee started his career managing a team in the Midwest on a factory floor. That introduction to manufacturing gave Chris a strong foundation in supply chain and process optimization.
More recently, Chris led critical operations at Tuft & Needle as the Head of Supply Chain. He was responsible for enabling the business to go from manufacturing and fulfilling a few hundred mattresses a week, to nearly 10,000 a week at its peak.
In addition to supply chain contributions, Chris facilitated the introduction of new products and played a key role is conceptualizing T&N’s award winning Mint Mattress.
When not working – which is a rare occurrence – there is a good chance you’ll find Chris crafting his latest DIY endeavor.
