Visionary, entrepreneur, designer, artist, mentor, adventurer, business leader, philanthropist: Janice Feldman, maverick founder of JANUS et Cie, an award-winning comprehensive global lifestyle brand, wears her many signature hats with panache. She named her company JANUS after the two-headed Roman god, whose dual profiles capture her zest for innovation, respect for tradition, and passions for creativity and commerce.
From 1978, when she launched JANUS et Cie, until the company’s acquisition by Haworth in 2016, Feldman built her firm from a single representative showroom into the world’s leading full-service design resource for contemporary lifestyle furnishings, textiles, and accessories. With a laser-like focus on elegance, design, quality, and exceptional service while strategically identifying and conquering new and emerging markets, she expanded the company’s reach from its original Pacific Design Center footprint into an international network of twenty showrooms and flagships in Los Angeles, Sydney, Singapore, and Milan.
Early on, Feldman began developing her own designs, which prompted JANUS et Cie’s transition into manufacturing. To further broaden the company’s contemporary offerings, she undertook collaborations with the world’s leading designers and innovators, including Piero Lissoni, Paola Navone, Orlando Diaz-Azcuy, Mark Rios, Michael Vanderbyl. To honor design’s legacy, she not only forged an exclusive relationship for select signed reproductions of pieces in Chatsworth’s gardens, she also engineered the next generation of Loom to celebrate America’s heritage of woven furniture.
Feldman’s numerous honors include being named a Woman of Action by the Israel Cancer Research Fund in 2001; receiving a Doctorate in Fine Arts honoris causa in 2017 from ArtCenter College of Design; accepting the Network of Executive Women in Hospitality’s ICON Award in 2017 and the IIDA’s Titan Award in 2018.
A gourmet cook and wine connoisseur, Feldman loves and gives exquisite parties. She belongs to the Ordres des Coteaux de Champagne, the official guild for promoting the wines of France’s Champagne region. She continues to paint, works happily in her garden, and celebrates the life well-lived with her husband, Mitchell Grossman, and her beloved blue Belton English Setter, Jami Moon. In her recently completed art and design studio, she plans to discover the next chapter of her life.