Travel, fashion, clients and an inner life fuel Dwayne Bergmann’s creativity
DWAYNE BERGMANN HAS CONCEIVED of designs in spaces that range from a luxurious vacation home on Fifth Avenue in Naples with a “fantastical environment” to the Southwest Florida Community Foundation in Fort Myers, where he used some of the location’s original rail-and-bus station components. After launching Dwayne Bergmann Interiors six years ago in a one-room office downtown, he has grown the business to include a staff of 10 creatives and a showroom on Metro Parkway.
He is planning in 2020 to launch a second showroom in Naples as well as his own line of furniture, all of which occupies him with a calendar booked out weeks in advance and working days that keep him going early and late.
Perhaps it seems incongruous that he made the leap to Florida from the Midwest as a rider and showman in the quarter horse profession years ago after dropping out of college on a full scholarship. But that’s his life as he tells it. It’s an entirely different world than the one he now occupies as the founder and principal designer at his Fort Myers-based firm.