Family Office Of Elie Tahari Hires Cushman Exec To Launch Brokerage Arm

When Jeremey Tahari was 6 or 7 years old, his father — legendary fashion designer Elie Tahari — pulled him out of camp to place his hands in the cement on the side of a two-story retail building in East Hampton.

Two years ago, Jeremey brokered the sale of that building, 1 Main St., to the world’s fourth-richest man, Bernard Arnault. The sale broke the record for the priciest retail sale per square foot on Long Island. And it solidified the younger Tahari’s ambitions.

“It's kind of the story of how I got my footing in the family office. I saw that the real estate wasn't being managed properly,” Jeremey Tahari told Bisnow in a Zoom interview Wednesday. “Slowly, I realized that I had a knack for it.”

Tahari, who will turn 24 in August, now leads Tahari Realty, a full-service brokerage that is one of several companies owned by the Tahari family's private equity firm, Tahari Capital.

He got his broker’s license during the pandemic while completing an undergraduate degree at New York University. While looking through the family business’s real estate portfolio, he realized ways to extract more value from the properties, such as leasing them to luxury tenants and refinancing their debt.

“The brokerage was set up initially internally to service that stuff,” he said. “When I realized that I could also serve friends and family in a way that — they were probably not getting that sort of owner and ownership mentality from a broker — I started reaching out.”

He hired Jordan Sutton, formerly a director at Cushman & Wakefield, at the end of last year to head up the brokerage, which has arranged more than $500M worth of deals in two years, Tahari said. 

“I do see a lot more boutique shops opening up, in terms of brokerages,” said Sutton, now managing partner of Tahari Realty. “I do really see the Tahari Realty brand becoming a powerhouse in that world.”

Tahari Realty is under the umbrella of Tahari Capital, which serves as the parent company of the Elie Tahari fashion brand, the family’s shipping company, Tahari Logistics, and its venture capital arm. Tahari Realty does leasing and capital advisory for Tahari Capital but is more focused on third-party deals.

Sutton and Tahari met four years ago when Sutton’s team at Cushman was marketing a multifamily property in East Harlem and the Tahari family business put in a bid. After that deal closed, Sutton pursued Jeremey Tahari for months when the then-student mentioned wanting to reposition the family’s retail assets, eventually helping them sign Cartier to 1 Main St. before selling it to Arnault.

That sale wasn’t Sutton's first tangle with big names. Last year, he represented Steve Croman in the $20M sale of an 80-unit Hell’s Kitchen multifamily building. He represented Jeff Sutton two years ago when Wharton Properties sold a medical office building in Great Neck for $13M, according to Traded. He had also represented Wharton in 2022 when the firm sold a Brooklyn retail building to Lloyd Goldman, founder of development firm BLDG, for $17M.

“From what I learned, it doesn't necessarily matter the shop. Real estate is a relationship business, and if they want to work with you, they're going to,” Sutton said.

In the four months since Sutton joined the firm, Tahari Realty has become the exclusive broker on $80M of investment sales listings in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. It is also handling eight Manhattan retail assignments and is brokering $250M of debt transactions across a range of asset classes on behalf of sponsors, Sutton said.

Sutton, who is 32, swapped a career at a publicly traded brokerage that employs some 52,000 staff for the opportunity to lead the creation of a vertically integrated real estate firm with national ambitions.

“Obviously, it takes a lot for me to make a move from an established shop to essentially a startup boutique brokerage,” he said. “Jeremey's passion and drive, and on top of it, really getting to build something myself — where at Cushman, and I love the organization, I think they're great people — but rather than being another cog in the machine.” 

Tahari said he hopes to grow the brokerage within the next five years, while Sutton identified Boston, California and Florida as markets for future expansion.

He is bullish on multifamily as an investment class, especially in Manhattan, where rents are at an all-time high. But luxury retail is likely to remain the firm's bread and butter. 

“I think there's great synergy between luxury retail clients and a name like Tahari because we uniquely understand the nuances, wants, desires, needs of what the retail business is like,” Tahari said. 

Tahari Realty Chief Operating Officer Adam Croman is the son of notorious landlord Steve Croman and has been Tahari’s “best friend” since he was 13. Adam Croman spent two years running multifamily investment firm RockSolid Ventures, which also appears to have received investment from Tahari Ventures, before joining Tahari Realty. 

Sutton, who has a combined decade of investment sales and retail leasing experience, is the only person at the nine-person Tahari Realty who wasn’t already a family friend, Tahari said. Other employees include a professional racing driver, a musician, and an aspiring tech startup founder who was Tahari's classmate at NYU.

“I think one of the unique parts of not just the leadership team but everybody on the team is that they are interested in the business, because it's a generational thing,” Tahari said. “When the blood runs through the veins in that way, your competitive edge, your hunger to perform is just a little different than someone who hasn't been doing that for generations.”

One of his biggest lessons in business — and in life — came from watching his father. Jeremey Tahari said his emphasis on treating both clients and employees well came from what he observed growing up.

“He was known a little bit for his demanding leadership style back in the day, and I think he had a high turnover rate in this company because he was someone that was feared,” he said. “I think there's a lot to be learned from the sins of our fathers.”