Patrick Johnson spent years searching for the perfect place to set up a new showroom in Sydney’s CBD. But once he was invited to inspect a recently vacated space inside heritage-listed St James Trust Building on Elizabeth Street, it took him less time to sign the lease than it takes to finish a light dinner at haute spot Bambini Trust downstairs.

“Rob, my business partner and financial controller, said ‘you’ve taken two years to find a space and then you signed a lease in two hours? You are the most annoying person in the world’,” Johnson recalls. “But we just knew when we walked in here, we’re like, yes, this is right.”