Happy Friday. This is The Shake 🤝: the free weekly newsletter influencing you to ditch the cold winter and head down south for winter ✌️ 

Here’s what we got this week:

• The House That Hats Built 🤠 

• Beanie Babies To Real Estate 🐻 

MARKET RADAR

The House That Hats Built 🤠 

It’s almost that time. As winter creeps in, all the snowbirds from up north begin to head south to ditch the cold weather for sunny Florida.

It made us think… when did this trend even start?

Turns out it became trendy in the late 1800s because of legendary hat maker John B. Stetson - the man who made the first cowboy hat.

I guess Western wear is also back in style now… thanks Yellowstone

As a businessman, Stetson had multiple novel ideas that led to the growth of his hat empire. One was to use traveling salesmen to spark expansion. Another critical strategy was to move his factory outside the dense city of Philly to get the space he needed for a 12-acre site while speeding up logistics. Seems like he had a knack for making smart real estate moves. 

After successfully running his hat manufacturing business, John Stetson accumulated a fortune and rubbed shoulders with elite citizens of the late 19th century. 

One of those citizens was Henry Deland, who convinced Stetson to visit Persimmon Hollow, Florida (now Deland). This visit birthed the idea for Stetson to develop a winter retreat down in Florida, despite his wife’s discomfort with the area.

In 1886, Stetson began constructing the grandest home in FL during the 19th century. It became Florida’s first luxury estate.

Sitting on 2 acres, the 10,000+ SF estate blends Cottage, Gothic, Tudor, Moorish, and Polynesian details that showcase a sublime example of Victorian architecture. It has complicated interior carvings, 16 patterns of the nation's most rare and intricate parquet wood floors, and 10,000 panes of original leaded glass windows.

But the backstories make this home even more glamorous… 

One of Stetson’s buddies at the time was a little-known inventor named Thomas Edison. 

As a courtesy, Edison oversaw and managed the installation of electricity in the estate. It’s one of the first homes in the entire world to be designed and built with Edison electricity.

Another friend of Stetson was Henry Flagler – a man we coined as The Godfather Of Florida. 

Flagler decided to have his Florida Railway System construct a private stop close to the luxury estate so the finest "art" in architectural building materials could be delivered on-site during construction.

Summary: It’s nice to have powerful friends.

Once developed, Stetson was no stranger to inviting others into his home. The estate was known to host magnificent parties, paving the way for other snowbirds to follow suit. 

If you were to go back in time, you’d see elites like the Mellons, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, Flagler, Baron Frederick DeBary (of famed DeBary Hall), President Grover Cleveland, and King Edward VII (then Prince of Wales) at these parties. 

Today, the estate is rated as a Top 10 Rated Attraction in the USA by Tripadvisor.

Beanie Babies to Real Estate 🐻 

Weird headline, I know. I can’t lie when I started reading the articles that inspired this week’s newsletter, I was hit with a blend of surprise but also intrigue as this is one of the more interesting stories I’ve heard.

I’m a 90s baby, and I still consider the 90s to be the era of the coolest toys. To name right off the top of my head we had the essentials: Hot Wheels, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Super Soakers, and other stuff that couldn’t have fit more into what my 8 year old brain wanted to do every day. We also had weird things like Furby (I still get nightmares to this day), and who could forget the Gameboy Color. It was a helluva time.

Another thing that we had? Beanie Babies. Why? I’m still not entirely sure.

These little stuffed (with pellets?) animals weren’t comfortable to lay around, and honestly didn’t make much sense to me, but like I said, we all still had them. I should mention that my name is Ty, so I always thought it was cool that there was a red tag that had my name on it, but I never really thought about it past that point… until today.

Turns out the guy who created Beanie Babies, Ty Warner (ahh it all makes sense now) is a big-time player in real estate.

I found out from a headline on CoStar and I couldn’t help but crack up: “Beanie Babies Billionaire Looks To Bring Luxury Brands to Coastal California Hotel”. I couldn’t wait to read into this, but found out there’s more than what’s going on in his Biltmore California vacancies. It turns out, there's some serious bad blood between Ty Warner and the Four Seasons management team, extending its icy grip to the Four Seasons resort in Midtown Manhattan.

The heart of the matter? Money, of course — the hotel has been hemorrhaging cash for years, pandemic or not. Warner dug his heels in the face of the Four Seasons' demanding upkeep fees sensing impending doom. He asked the Four Seasons to cut him some slack and proposed adjusting the fees based on the hotel's profitability (or lack thereof). The Four Seasons wasn’t having that.

Since Four Seasons doesn’t own the properties in its portfolio, this became a stalemate multiple times over as Warner held plenty of control over the situation. A three-year battle ensued, and finally, the hotel is set to re-open in 2024.

Same goes for his California location, the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, California.

The Biltmore, which has been shut down since 2020, is now expected to reopen in 2024 around Memorial Day. They have 10,000 square feet of spa area and 7,400 square feet of retail space vacant and ready to market. The shopping lineup? Expect "Rodeo Drive names." While Montecito might be over 85 miles from Beverly Hills, these luxury retailers are bringing the same appeal closer to home for Santa Barbara County shoppers.

In the end — was there really any other solution? It seemed pretty evident that Warner wasn’t going to just let go of these class A+ pieces of real estate and Four Seasons had nowhere to go leverage-wise.

I’m still shaking my head at the fact that I had no idea this guy was so involved… all from stuffed animals.

FIN 🤝 If you enjoyed this week's edition, don’t be selfish — share with a friend!

^{DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.}