For 20 years as an engineer, cobb pearson harbored the dream of life as an entrepreneur, forging his own company and making a difference in the lives of others.
That idyll came to fruition in 2021 with Garage Living, a custom firm devoted to transforming what is often the least appreciated room in a house. Today, the company has showrooms in four cities catering to homeowners’ dreams.
For Pearson and his staff, it’s all about showing clients what an efficient, useful and attractive space a garage can be. “The phrase I hear all the time is: ‘It’s just a garage,’” says Pearson. “I ask, ‘Would you say that about other rooms of the house that are not used as often as you use your garage?’ We counter that concept by helping people realize what the potential is and what their garage could be. When they see that the finished product looks just like the drawing we gave them, when they compare before and after photos, clients are so excited.”
Garage Living’s product line blends quality, diversity and utility, offering flooring, cabinets, wall storage, specialty storage racks, secure storage, garage doors, four-post car lifts and renovation services, from painting to electrical and lighting.
“What we do is objectively beautiful while solving the problems people have with their garage spaces, and our customers are thrilled with the result,” says Pearson, who was an industrial engineer in the energy field and later a consultant before taking a different path. “For much of my career I was uncertain if I was making a difference. I wanted to do something more tactile. I knew that if I could find an opportunity to work in people’s houses, it would be something both my clients and I would enjoy. And it’s been true. I find great joy in updating my own space and now can help foster that feeling for others.”
The company is called Garage Living for a reason. It’s about designing a garage to fit one’s lifestyle. Pearson says having a garage cleaned up and organized, having a certain aesthetic, is important to clients. “Having a nice car and an ugly garage doesn’t work,” he says. “The idea is to make the garage aesthetic consistent with the rest of the house. A lot of the time the problem is that people have no infrastructure in their garage. So, they clean it out every year, but it gets cluttered again. We give them something better that is more intentionally designed, and customers find it easier to maintain.”
The company has 15 full-time staff, including four designers that service its Alpharetta and Marietta showrooms, along with new locations in Birmingham and Opelika, Alabama, which opened last year.
Every product is designed in North America by Garage Living’s highly skilled development specialists, whose core focus is on innovation, high-quality craftsmanship and the use of durable, premium materials. Their work also minimizes waste.
While Garage Living also serves the commercial market, chiefly with industrial and commercial flooring, residential work is its sweet spot.
“We can pretty much do anything, and clients don’t even have to leave their homes while we work,” Pearson says. “If they value organization, we can curate the tools they have. If they don’t have time to clean out the garage or organize their stuff, we can do that too. If they like cars, we can create custom detail stations with commercial-grade reverse osmosis water filtration, vacuums and air stations. Our customers want a little bit of everything. They’re not just looking to throw more junk in the garage. They take full advantage of our skill set.”
Flooring accounts for the largest portion of the business, capitalizing on the trend of finished garage floors. The company’s Floortex polyaspartic coatings are a next-generation resin that fixes a lot of the problems associated with epoxy, such as yellowing due to UV light. Rubberized and heavy duty, it’s also easy to clean, making oil and chemical stains a thing of the past.
Although some clients may come into the showrooms with a clear idea of what they are looking for, most opt to place themselves in Garage Living’s hands. “We have a great website, and people will look at it for weeks or months or even years before they contact us,” Pearson says. “And they might say they want to mimic the Upcountry or another design that they’ve seen on our website, customized to fit their space.”
Pearson says they regularly see two types of clients: First, people who are in their forever home, often recent retirees, who want to do things thoughtfully in a way they had not been able to do in the past. Second, people who have very nice homes and often nice cars and who realize that the cluttered garage is disturbing the joy of car and home ownership.
Garage Living can accommodate any request, and Pearson notes that car collections, garage workout spaces and business start-up spaces are other common use cases. More unusual requests have included saunas, influencer videography studios and homeschool education spaces. “All of these clients have one thing in common: They want a space that’s organized, attractive and functional. That’s our specialty,” Pearson says.
A typical consultation begins with brainstorming in the client’s garage. “Everything we do is customizable,” he adds. “For instance, our Signature line of cabinets alone has 49 standard color combinations.” Next, Garage Living gets exact dimensions and photographs to build a digital representation of the client’s garage. Finally, as a last step, clients typically come into one of the showrooms to see sample colors and pieces and make final tweaks.
Company representatives also travel regularly to support clients throughout Georgia and Alabama or to serve client’s second homes in the mountains or at the beach.
“I’ve been here in Atlanta since 1997, and real estate values have skyrocketed. Many clients are electing to renovate their homes, including the garage, instead of moving. And a lot of people have been calling us for car lifts in particular to avoid having to move. Car lifts have become a very important business for us. Traditionally, car lifts were something you saw exclusively at vehicle service shops, but increasingly they are being used to store cars vertically inside people’s garages,” Pearson says. “We can usually turn a two-car garage into a three-car garage for around $10,000, which is attractive to clients that need extra vehicle storage and would otherwise struggle to build a new garage.”
Garages don’t have to be jam-packed junk rooms. Garage Living helps clients turn the garage into an extension of their lifestyle, a room that complements their vehicles and the rest of the house, and increases their enjoyment of the home. *
Bill Thompson covers the arts, design, film and books.
