Charlotte County Florida Weekly

Varied VISION

Andre Carrero has started several different businesses, attributing his success to “breaking the yolk.”



Andre Carrero was inspired to go into business by the ice cream truck that used to come to his South Miami neighborhood when he was a boy. RUSTY PRAY / FLORIDA WEEKLY

Andre Carrero was inspired to go into business by the ice cream truck that used to come to his South Miami neighborhood when he was a boy. RUSTY PRAY / FLORIDA WEEKLY

I T STARTED WITH THE ICE CREAM MAN. A young Andre Carrero would watch the truck pull into his South Miami neighborhood. He would watch the people line up to get popsicles, fudgsicles and ice cream sandwiches. He would watch them walk away with smiles on their faces. And while he snared his share of sweetness on a stick, what he was really interested in was the guy selling the desserts.

“I was 10, 11 years old,” he recalled, while sitting at a conference table at COLAB, the business incubator in Venice he co-founded with his business partner, Ken Wagner of Shine Media. “All the kids were running up to the ice cream truck and spending their money. I was trying to figure out how I could sell it to them.”

Finding his way to the take-in side of sales has brought Mr. Carrero, 38, to Venice, where he brought his primary business, Venice Sign Shop, in 2015. He doesn’t have a formal business education. He does have experience and a knack for turning a personal interest into a profitable venture.

Andre Carrero sits in his office chair in an alley behind his business on West Miami Avenue as his son DeAndre, 16, looks on. Mr. Carrero picked the alley to illustrate that his vision reaches beyond the walls of his office. RUSTY PRAY / FLORIDA WEEKLY

Andre Carrero sits in his office chair in an alley behind his business on West Miami Avenue as his son DeAndre, 16, looks on. Mr. Carrero picked the alley to illustrate that his vision reaches beyond the walls of his office. RUSTY PRAY / FLORIDA WEEKLY

“There’s no degrees here,” he said. “It’s sort of just God’s grace allowing me to experience all this.”

Since arriving in Venice, the father of six has bought and sold a barbershop, started a bicycle-driven ad system and established the incubator, COLAB, upstairs from the sign shop in the Pattison Building on West Miami Avenue.

He has plans to start a podcast company and stake out an artists’ venue in downtown Venice not far from his headquarters on West Miami.

“It has been a process,” he said. “This is all part of a vision. We don’t want to waste time. We want to make money.”

The podcast company would offer a studio to be leased to potential media mavens.

“They’ll have the opportunity to get on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play. You just sit and drop content.”

The vision also includes an artists’ haven opening Dec. 1 that will offer exhibit space in an alleyway and outside the box of Venice’s downtown arts-and-crafts village. Located off Nassau, it will be called Alleyway Art Gallery.

“We’re kind of going to break the yolk and do something separate and different,” Mr. Carrero said. “We think that, in doing that, we’re going to grasp the art community and bring it in. We’ll actually create our own art walk that will be the hub.”

Mr. Carrero was born in Bogota, Colombia, and came to South Florida as a boy with his family. In high school, he was one of the kids who hung out in the parking lot. Despite the ice cream truck’s impact on his early life, he went to work in the warehouse business after high school.

A few years later, he became an advertisement representative for High Times, a magazine about marijuana use. He also sold ads for USA Today.

“It was a great earning curve, but it was way too stressful,” he said of his tenure at USA Today.

One day, he was talking to a friend who happened to have a large-format printer.

“He was like, ‘Hey, do you want to broker for me?’” Mr. Carrero recalled. “I said, ‘Sure.’ I started closing a bunch of deals, but I was paying designers for my projects. It was way too expensive.”

So, he started to design himself.

Perceived necessity also prompted the barbershop venture.

He said he and his wife could not find a suitable barbershop for them and their children. “My wife Michelle and I took a leap of faith and opened up a barbershop. It’s still open. It’s called the Parlor.”

They sold the shop a few months ago so they could finance the expansion of COLAB, the first and only business incubator in Venice.

COLAB is space to help entrepreneurs who cannot afford premises when starting. It’s an alternative to renting an office and provides a professional office in a private location, a desk, office equipment, Wi-Fi, and a conference room, among other services. Florida Weekly is one of his tenants.

The print shop below is reflective of Mr. Carrero’s faith in God, respect of the past and dedication to the future.

The floor is an epoxy craze of blue, green, orange and gray. One wall sports a caricature of Albert Einstein and a quote: “I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are mere details.”

“He was all about science, math,” Mr. Carrero said. “Yet he wanted to know God’s thoughts.”

Art on another wall offers a view of Brooklyn, where his sister lives.

Mr. Carrero also has a portable Underwood manual typewriter sitting on a table. He says he wants to write a book for his kids on it.

“It’s like a time capsule,” he said. “When you write with it, there’s authenticity you don’t get with a computer.” ¦

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