DesignGlut.com

Ryan Deussing and Randy J. Hunt of Supermarket

2008-11-19T09:35:00.004-05:00

Supermarket is an innovative website which allows independent designers to sell their wares. Curated by its founders, it has a wide range of objects, but not so wide that it overwhelms you. It's a fantastic venue for designers to put their work up for sale online without dealing with headaches like coding a website or setting up a merchant account. www.supermarkethq.com

Ryan, you have a webstore, Elsewares, which came before Supermarket. Tell me a little about how that got started.

Ryan: I had a previous life as a documentary filmmaker, and at the tail end of a PBS project I realized that I enjoyed making the film's web site as much as, maybe more than, the process of making the film. Around the same time, in 2003, a friend of mine came up with an agitprop product called Bush Cards, and I helped him build an online store that was extremely successful. I wanted to repeat that experience, so I turned to other products that I thought the world should know about, and - thats how Elsewares started.

Randy, what is your background?

Randy: In design, as a graphic designer. I started working with Ryan through Elsewares, and it really just evolved. We committed to the idea of Supermarket, and decided to turn it into something.

So what made you want to expand into new online territory and create Supermarket?

Ryan: Supermarket came out of what Elsewares wasn't. Elsewares is a traditional online retailer: it holds stock, carries inventory and we ship all the products. There's always been a limit to how large it could get, and how large we wanted it to get, and that in turn has always limited the number of designers and great products we could work with.

How do you curate the designers on Supermarket?

Ryan: What we aim to do, by curating the collection, is not create something that's exclusive, but rather the inverse - create a site, a platform which attracts as much good work as possible. We find that good work attracts good work, so we just try to follow this vein of good design, and there are things which naturally fit into that.

Randy: It's very intuitive, kind of a gut reaction - it's what would you buy yourself? Can I be a fan of this product?

Ryan: If there is any criteria it's, "Would I buy this, and tell my friends about it?"

Randy: It's a rare occasion when we have to ask each other, "Do you think this fits?"

Do you have any loose figures about how many designers there are on the site, and how many products?

Ryan: The last time we published figures it was several hundred designers, and more then 6000 products. But it's not quantity, its quality - we want people to have a sense that they can always go to Supermarket, see and find cool stuff, and not be overwhelmed.

It's interesting when compared to Etsy, which has blown up into this massive thing. How do you feel the two sites relate?

Ryan: Etsy has obviously tapped into a big handmade thing. There's some overlap between designers that sell at Supermarket and Etsy, but beyond that we're different web sites offering different experiences, which works for us.

What kind of traffic do you get, and how have you built it?

Randy: We started with what was happening organically, and tried to amplify it. Based on the reputations, and the visibility of many of the designers selling on the site, we were already generating a lot of traffic. Everyone thats selling gets to benefit from the traffic funneling in, so some of the less popular designers, or people who don't have the name recognition, get to benefit from those who do.

We started to see two things happening simultaneously: one was that some mainstream blogs would have things to say often about specific products or designers, and occasional about the site at large, and at the same time, very personal blogs, where people journal about their personal shopping experience or day, were writing about their experience on Supermarket. We started looking at both those responses, and reaching out to people where the site, or specific products and designers represented on the site, seemed like a good match. Traffic has been pretty organic. Its not as though were sending "please blog us!" emails. We were just forming relationships.

Ryan: Often it starts with a blog mentioning us, and we'll take a moment to reach out and thank them. Blogs of all kinds are really important, not just the superstar ones. We also have our newsletter which goes out every two weeks, and we try to keep it, like the site, regular and bite sized. Its not trying to stop your other train of thought to digest it, but rather act as an introduction to get to the site and check it out. Its hard to strike that right tone between interruption and offer, and keep someone interested without pestering them.

One thing that you have that's really useful is the collective blog, could you talk a little more about that?

Ryan: We started blogging about cool products, before Supermarket was ready to go. I couldn't just sit around and hold it in till we were ready. It was a way to draw attention, and get people to join the site, but also to share information, and have a continual conversation with our customers, without always being in sales mode.

The way it works on Supermarket is that designers can actually add to the blog. Sometimes its a post about their new product, and sometimes they'll be blogging about other things which are tangentially related - like a new store, or show they're in, and thats great.

Are there any new projects on the back-burner or new branches? Where do you see the Supermarket heading?

Ryan: Well now that we're a year in, we see these things within Supermarket where we've only touched upon the potential. There's no small number of things we have to work on. We do have some other things on the burner, that we think might be graceful outgrowths of Supermarket - but they aren't ready yet.

Randy: I think one of the other things, other then the software development per se, is the idea that we can help designers to figure out how to do the stuff were doing. The blog being there, shows the importance of taking a good photograph, announcing new products in multiple venues, writing a good description - all things that work to the designers benefit. And just on a very human level, allows us to reach out to designers and help them think of things they might not have. We can reach out to designers and say: hey maybe you want to try this, maybe you want to reorganize your store this way, have you considered using these tags, heres some links to other photographs of products like yours. We're doing this in a very manual way, but we've definitely touched on ideas on how to take our business insight if you will, or marketing insight, and hand it over to people as often as possible.

Ryan: Exactly, and some of these are things that designers might not spend their time thinking about, because they think its some business problem, that you can just make good products and surely they'll sell. We're excited to share the information we have, and highlight examples of things being done well by other sellers, so that people can learn, and not just do what they're already doing, but grow their business.

One of the things thats really interesting about Supermarket is that its looking at the bigger picture, its about creating a system rather then a product or webstore - could you talk about this?

Randy: Supermarket really is a system. Your designing this set of tools for people to use, thats not isolated in a storefront product , but exists in this space where people are already comfortable. Its a bridge between the business world and the personal. No one wants to deal with software, they just want to sell the stuff online. No one wants to deal with a merchant account, they just want to get paid. No one wants to have to install the blog, they just want to express themselves. There are a whole bunch of designers, with a lot of ambition, who have developed their skills in this we can do anything moment, where all the boundaries are blurring, that the assumption is that they can do everything. Supermarket helps facilitate that.

I think it's a big design challenge, for Supermarket, that it has to be a store which fits all different types of products - in some ways it really has to recede. How did this affect the design of the site?

Randy: We definitely approached that when designing the experience of using the site. Its important that when you go to the site you see your screen filled up with other people's work, we just create the context.

Ryan: We've also been impressed by how much people appreciate not just the product but the person, the designer, and the story behind what's for sale.

What do you consider your biggest success so far?

Ryan: It's satisfying to have something that people appreciate, that gets them talking, and which leads to more people seeking us out.

Randy: Interestingly, its funny: if you google Supermarket, we're the first thing that comes up - above any national food chain. It wasn't like we sat down and tried to make this happen, it happened organically, the pieces just fell into place.

What advice do you have for creative entrepreneurs?

Randy: It's important to break things down into really small pieces. The idea of Supermarket is pretty lofty and open, you've got all these types of people and product, and we got the most traction and tangible results, when we focused on one or two things for a period of time, accomplished them, and then focused on one or two other things.

Ryan: I also think it's important to be authentic. Don't be tempted to "stage manage" your business to look like anyone else's. Be yourself, speak in your own voice, and just use the tools at your disposal to get your message and your products out there. Forget the press release.

Harry Allen & Associates

2008-11-14T12:39:00.003-05:00

Harry Allen opened his New York studio 15 years ago, and has created a solid business encompassing both product and interior design. He is best known for designing the Moss interior in SoHo and the Reality line of products, including his piggy bank which is cast from an actual pig. Read on for his story and wisdom on starting a creative business. www.harryallendesign.com

What do you think is the biggest stumbling block when starting a business as a designer?

I think the whole designer/maker thing is a bit of a trap. Where you start a studio, you buy a bandsaw, and you start making things out of wood and then you're selling those things. The problem that I've always seen with that is, first of all, you'll make the same thing over and over again. Which is fine, some people like that, it's admirable, and there's part of me that wants to do that. But I also think it's very limiting and you can get sort of stuck in a rut and it's hard to get out of it. You tend to not actually charge for your time; you're charging for the piece. You figure it out and you're making $15/hr, you might as well be a janitor. To avoid that trap, I always had other people make things, and I always paid them, and added whatever profit I wanted to make to that, and then try to sell it to the stores.

Also, in the beginning, I was doing things that when I look at them now are totally impractical. I'm glad I did those things, but now I know why I didn't sell those things. There's always that fine line between doing things that are useful and can fit into people's lives, and doing things that are artistic. Though there is now room to be that art/designer, thanks to Moss and Wallpaper. You can sort of be that person who sells $50,000 one-off tables. But it's about as predictable a road to success as being an artist, which is a really hard thing to do. If you want to make one thing, if you want to sit in the studio and make something that's a real personal expression, and it's going to be cast in diamond, and it's going to cost $8 million, yeah, that's a business plan. That's one way to go. But you sort of have to think about who it's going to.

As a designer, I feel like in the beginning I made things harder than they needed to be. People like Target, they really just want a pillow with a little chick on it. In a way, you have to figure out how to give them that pillow with a chick on it, with an edge. Or, it needs to be YOUR pillow with a chick on it. Or you don't give them the pillow with a chick on it, you give them something else, but you give them something else that that person can relate to. And you think about who's going to be buying it.

When I started designing, it was really hard for me to get out of my own life. Really, people want a lamp with a base that sits on a table next to a sofa that fits into the format of their life. You can break that format, and you're going to find a few people that want a broken format, that are attracted to that, or you can stick in the format, and you can reach that much of the population. There are a lot of really interesting things to do right in the format. You don't always have to break all the rules.

I feel like the core point there is to really think about who you're selling to. Especially if you're a designer/maker, you can get caught up in "I'm doing this because I feel a need to create this thing." But if you want to step it up into a business, then it's not centrally important that you feel a need to make these things. It's more important who is going to consume them.

Exactly. Really, the business plan is to say, "OK, what's missing in the world? I'm going to make that thing!" And maybe it's, oh, the world needs Calvin Klein underwear. You're satisfying this need for something that was not there. But the problem with that is it's not always fun. I can't imagine that underwear was hugely rewarding for Calvin, except for the fact that it made him billions of dollars! But that's why he kept doing the collection, to feel creatively rewarded. I think you've gotta do a little bit of everything.

What I love about my Reality line is that it actually does both things. A lot of people want it, and I enjoy it. That's the sweet spot. That's where you want to be. But it's hard to get there.

You managed to turn your school thesis project into a business. Could you tell us a little about that transition?

My design degree is my grad degree. My undergraduate degree was in political science. I did the whole "academic" thing and I got that out of my system, basically because my parents highly recommended that I do that. So I did it. I'm not bad at that stuff; I graduated cum laude and I can read and I can write and analyze things. I'm very happy that I have that degree. But then I moved back to the city and started realizing that everything that I enjoyed doing was creative, was what I had done in high school. You don't change. You don't just go off and study political science and then decide to be a political scientist. It was innate in me that I was going to be creative.

So I went and took some classes, and ended up at Pratt. But then I was 27, so when I got out of school, I was like, "I've gotta figure this thing out." I went to work at a cosmetics firm called Prescriptives, which is a very high-design branch of Estee Lauder. They hired me in store design. I worked there for a couple of years. One of the guys who I worked with also did furniture, and had shown in the furniture fair for a couple of years. I looked at him, and I thought, "God, that's what I want to do." I quit my job, and I took some freelance work, but basically I took the whole spring off and I took my thesis and I turned it into real product. I had it made, etc. My grandmother had died and she left me a little bit of cash, so I took that money and I funneled it starting a little furniture business.

At the time, I had studied under the big shadow of Philippe Starck. He was THE design star at the moment. Everything was shaped like a horn. Prescriptives was a totally different influence - they were very modern, everything was Jacobsen chairs. My furniture was a reaction to what was going on at the time, all the trendy Philippe Starck stuff.

I had some luck with it. I did that for a couple of years and sold quite a bit of it. But then a got a little bored, actually. Bored, and it was so scary. Because you're making things that cost $3,000, and I'd have to lay out the money, and then it breaks or something... It scared the hell out of me. I got through a couple years of it. Plus I just kept making the same thing over and over again. Even though it was this really flexible system, and you could do a lot of things with it, I just realized I was going to be doing the same thing over and over again. So I stopped doing it. And then I designed another line of furniture, I did some lighting, I started adding to it, and then some of the interior work kicked in. That was when Murray found me and I did Moss.

What's really cool about your work is that you do everything from spaces down to tiny objects. Could you talk a little bit about getting into interiors?

Prescriptives was what got me into interiors. The art director there hired me to be in the interior design department, even though I was an industrial designer. And that was pretty visionary, actually. The United States is all about pigeon-holing people. It's like, if you've designed one thing, then they'll come back to you and you'll design the same thing over and over again. It's very hard to do different things. So here's this guy hiring me to do interiors. He had the ability to see that someone could do other things. That was where I got the experience. And then when I broke out on my own, a second visionary person came along, and that was Murray Moss.

He saw my furniture, and asked me to design a store for him. That was a nice little job, at the time, and it's turned into much more because the store has gotten so famous. At the time it was a little job down in SoHo!

I realized that interiors was a potential source of income and I couldn't ignore it, even though I really wanted to be doing the furniture and lighting and product design. That was really where my heart was. And now, my business is about 50/50, if you can believe it, interiors/product design. It's split right down the middle, and I like both equally.

There are a lot of things about interiors that are different. You need more people. It was really difficult when I was doing it by myself. Now I have a very competent staff. There are so many more details. You can really get your head around a product. You know all the details really intimately and you can go deeper and deeper and deeper into the details, whereas in interiors you can just never get that deep into everything. Also, if you have that product design experience it's like, I'm used to telling them where the screw goes, you know? So then you're like spending all your time worrying about where the screws are going, when what you really want to be doing is defining the big picture. It's a very different game.

But doing one informs the other. I love having both of them. I do believe that all designers should have the opportunity, or, that you become a better designer if you have the opportunity, to cross fields. It's good for your head. I learn one thing one place and bring it to something else and it's more expansive, in a way. It's all sort of the same thing, you know? And now I'm doing a whole bunch of graphics, too, which is a whole other thing. But I've really consciously... I'm just doing that graphic project on my own, because no one's going to hire me to do it until they see what I do. If you want to go somewhere, I always say this to people, it's like, I would just tell people, "I'm a furniture designer." And then all of a sudden you become a furniture designer.

So that was the story of how you went from furniture to "bigger" things. How did you go from furniture to "smaller" things, like the Reality line that you're so well known for?

It's hard doing product design, getting people to believe in you enough to do a piece of injection-molded plastic for them. It's very difficult to build enough confidence in people. But I managed to do all that; I had a few people who believed in me a lot and allowed me to do all that stuff.

A couple years a go, I looked at my roster of clients: Target, Estee Lauder, Corian, which is DuPont, and there might have been another one in there... They were these big corporate clients. Which is great. That's what you aspire to. But then you get there, and you realize that all you're doing is sitting in these big meetings and trying to satisfy a team of eighteen people. I do love that work; I love coming out of a meeting, listening to all these different things and you find the one sweet spot where everyone's happy with it. That's really exciting, it's really fun, it's a very satisfying experience. But it's also very different than just going, "Eh, I want to cast a pig today."

It's a very different thing. What makes one fun makes the other one fun too. It makes the other one the opposite, the antithesis of it. While on one side, there's a brand you've got to work within, or you're helping to shape a brand, or solve a problem, or whatever it is you're doing for your corporate client, the other side is like, "What do I want to do today?"

I really missed that. I thought, "I want to give that manufacturing thing another go." And I had the idea for the Reality stuff. I did the hands, the candlesticks, and the pig first. Honestly, what I liked about them was that they were small goods. And the reason that I thought I could give a go at the manufacturing business again was because they were these small goods. That was why I got out of manufacturing the furniture. When I say "manufacturing," it was like, I had a wood guy, I had a metal guy, I had a basement. I wasn't like a factory or anything. This time it was, I had a guy who could cast the resin and I had a basement. It was no different. But you can fit a whole lot more pigs in a basement than tables. I knew that it was a different formula, and I had a feeling that I could make it work.

The piggy bank kind of started it. I was like, "This is a great idea to do the cast piggy bank from a real pig!" And I wanted to get it out there before anyone else did. Sometimes you get that frantic feeling like you have this good idea and you've gotta gotta get it out. I showed it to Mr. Alessi, I showed it to the guy who owns Magis, Mr. Perazza, I showed it to Umbra, I showed it to a bunch of people and everyone rejected it. They were like, "No, you know, we're not doing pigs this year." But I knew it was a good idea, so that was what prompted me to just make it, get it out there, and start selling it. At that point in my career, I'd been designing store interiors for years. So that all of a sudden when I had goods to sell again, it wasn't like when I was doing the furniture, which was just like a shot in the dark. I knew all these people, and they were really great, they bought into it.

I had it for about a year, maybe a little bit more, making them and selling them. And then I showed with an old friend at the furniture fair, Ross Menuez. He's a great designer and he has this company called Salvor. He was doing all these animal prints, and we sort of saw a pig, an owl, let's put them together, so we did. We showed together. And then it turned out that his business partner in Salvor ended up picking up the production of the Reality line, and that whole company became Areaware. Which is the company that makes and sells them now. They have great distribution, and sales have done very very well all over the place.

I liked what you said about your initial furniture line being a reaction to the Philippe Starck style, and then the Reality line being a reaction to what you were doing in the corporate world. Is that a big part of your design philosophy?

I never really thought about it like that before.

Do you have a design philosophy that you apply?

I like to think that I'm broader than one philosophy. I like to think that I'm not the person who takes the same aesthetic and sort of stamps it on a bunch of things. My work is appropriate to what I'm doing, and I have enough stuff going on that I can draw from a variety of places. I'm interested in your question about the reaction, though. It's very interesting. I don't know, I think I could probably write a whole dissertation on it!

As a student, that's what everyone does. You're in this rebellious period and you see what's going on out there and you're like, I'm not gonna do that! Or, I'm gonna do something DIFFERENT, I'm gonna make my name, or whatever. So I think that's kind of a student thing. And then, maybe I just haven't grown up! [Laughs.] Really, though, life is a series of actions and reactions, so I have a feeling that it's more that than it is any philosophy. I'd like to build it into a whole thesis, though!

What advice do you have for young designers?

When you're young, everything seems very very precious. You have an idea and it's the most precious thing in the world. Everyone always wants to know how to protect it. And then as you get older, you realize people will not steal an idea unless it's already making someone money. You only steal an idea that's valuable. Just an idea is not valuable, unless it's been tested. That's what I've experienced, anyway.

What you realize is, the hardest part is making it. That's where the commitment comes. I always liken it to the birth process. Conception is really easy, but it's the labor, and then the birth, and then the nurturing, that's the hard part. The idea part is great, but its worthless unless you make it into something and you demonstrate it to people.

I think that's a big part of what sets apart people who actually make a career for themselves, is that follow-through. I think that's really what separates people. Exactly what you just said - it's easy to have a prototype, but to have something that can wholesale is much, much more work.

Yeah, price structure, or whatever. And I used to think that was like magic, that the business people stepped in and they figured it out. But then you realize that many of these small companies are figuring it out the same way you would. You sort of think that "business" is "objective." Like it's this world in which you deal with people in a "business" sense. And then you realize that the people who you do the most work for are people who you get along with. They're people who you would have played around in the schoolyard with, you know? There's not some magic, objective playing field. It's very subjective. And you really only want to work with the people that you get along with and have a like mind with, and that's how good things happen. All those myths just get broken down over time.

One of my questions was how you got clients when you were just starting out, and I think you already sort of answered it in that they were people who you already knew, which I think ties into what you just said about working with people who you're friends with.

What's so weird is that all these people who I was starting out with, we were all in the design trenches at Prescriptives or wherever, the first couple of jobs that I had... I wish I actually had had more of that. I wish I had worked at about five companies before I broke out on my own, because all of those people that I worked with have gone off and become creative directors and now they can give me work. Or they tell two friends who tell two friends. It's amazing how that network grows and changes and morphs into people who are actually of influence and can actually make decisions and can actually sign a check. It's like, Wow! How'd that happen?

Once again, they were just people that you were going out to drinks with after work, or whatever it was. It's also weird what comes around. You'll be focused really hard on trying to go after some job, and then the next day someone from your past calls and he's like, "Oh, hey, how are you, my sister Bonnie's starting a blah blah blah," and then that ends up being your next job. It wasn't what you were focusing on it all, it's some curveball. I always say to the guys in the back, you won't even believe how work gets generated in here. But it's about having those sorts of ties, those long tentacles, the deep roots.

Alex and Christine of redstr/collective

2008-11-10T17:00:00.005-05:00

redstr/collective is the collective effort of Alex Valich and Christine Warren. A step ahead of most designers, rather than just talking about the things they don't like in the world around them, they design responses. And their actions speak much, much louder than words. www.redstrcollective.com

I read your philosophy on your website, and it mentioned how you see yourselves as "DJs of design, sampling, mixing and spinning together from different sources to create something entirely unique." I think that's a fantastic analogy. Could you talk a little about that?

Christine: Well it kind of goes back to, there aren't any new ideas. You can't be truly original. Everything is built upon something that came before. So you have to take that into consideration when you're creating something. Why start from scratch? Find a couple of things that are doing something well and bring them together and mix them up. Musicians sample sounds. We sample form, or color, or texture.

Alex: But it's like the difference between a late-'90s Puff Daddy song and a really good Chemical Brothers song. We'll take stuff, and sample it, and abstract it, rather than just sample the exact thing. We won't take what we call the "Cast This" route, which is just taking something you find and casting it. That's the Puff Daddy version.

In my opinion, in order for sampling to work well you have to go the "idea" route. If you're going to copy something that already exists in the world, it can be really cool, but there has to be a conceptual reason behind it. Your version has to illuminate some deeper meaning in that common object.

Alex: I also think part of it is that casting is a very simple manufacturing method. For example, when you first learn to slip-cast porcelain, the first couple molds you're going to make will be of something you have in your house. You'll cast a tabasco bottle or something. And it will look pretty cool. But you shouldn't think it's anything more than that.

Christine: It's an easy trap to fall into. An important part of "sampling" is "editing". That's what makes a great designer - someone who can really edit.

That's where having two people helps.

Christine: Exactly.

Alex: And that's another reason why it's great to collaborate with other people. Say it's the two of us collaborating with two others. It really makes it even better. You come up with some really good stuff together. I always enjoy it. We're going to be collaborating with Scrapile on a furniture line for ICFF this year.

Christine: With the right people, you can get better, cooperative work.

Alex: The one person design "star", or whatever the fuck they want to call it, pretty much puts out the same shit over and over again. Their stuff all looks the same.

Christine: And that's definitely not what our work is about. We're always thinking what would be most appropriate.

You started redstr/collective in 2003. What gave you the confidence to strike out on your own?

Christine: I don't even know if it was confidence. We were just jobless, and we had nothing else to do, so we were like, "Might as well make our own stuff."

Alex: I always tell people the same thing. Sheer stupidity. I really go with that. The other thing, too, is that we were given a good opportunity. At the time we were both freelancing for random people. Christine was working for Boym Patners, where she worked for 8 years or so.

Christine: I kind of knew the inside of the business, from them. They didn't make any money on product design. They'd get $8 royalty checks. That doesn't pay any bills. So they did all this exhibition design work. But it was interesting, they started doing the monuments and stuff then, and so it was like actually you could make a product, and sell it to a small base, and actually make some money. So it was like, well if they can do it... That kind of showed me that you can do your own stuff and make money. If you're smart about it.

Alex: And after that, we met with Dave Alhadeff from The Future Perfect, just when he was starting his store. He had like one piece of furniture in there.

Christine: He wasn't even open. Basically he needed to find people with stuff. Which was really key for us and for a lot of designers, because it brought a lot of people together. It was the right thing at the right time, and it just was great.

Alex: We didn't even have anything produced, yet. We just had ideas and random prototypes and we didn't know what we were going to do with it. We met with him, and he was like, "OK, I want this many of this product and this many of this product in 2 months." And then, fuck, we had to make them.

Christine: It was a good problem to have.

Alex: We had the ambition, we had the background to do it, and then we were given an opportunity. Those three things, I think, were vital to how we started.

Christine: One of our first products was the barf bags. We went to ICFF one year, maybe 2002, and it was just really horrible. It made us kind of ill, and we wanted to make a statement about it.

Wow. I love that product, and it makes it even better to know that it was a reaction to ICFF.

Christine: Yeah. We just had to do something to respond to it.

Alex: Our attitude is, if we see something we don't like, it's better to not just talk shit about it but actually design something as a response.

Christine: All designers can talk shit. It's easy to say, "That sucks," or "I had that idea last year."

I think that's a great way to turn a negative into something positive - to actively respond. And then, once you guys were making things, how did you get the word out about your work?

Alex: A lot of us who were connected through The Future Perfect - Jason Miller, Tobias Wong, Scrapile, and others - started doing group shows together. And that was really important, because it drove people to see the work. And off of that was the press vehicle.

Christine: People were dying to see something new and interesting, so I like to think a lot of it happened because the work was just good. But at the same time, you have to know how to get it out there.

Alex: I think we all had the feeling, at that point, that it was a lot better to get attention for us collectively as a community or a movement. And then the work on its own, each individual piece and person, kind of stands out.

Do you think this community/group of designers you've been talking about still exists?

Alex: Some of the people are still around, and some of them have splintered off. I think the nature of the design business was a certain way between 2003 and 2006, and after 2006, the things going on in the economy have kind of caused people to go their own ways. There aren't so many of these group shows. There aren't so many of the sponsors that want to pay for these group shows. Everyone started struggling more just to pay rent, and that kind of put a damper on it.

It's great that you brought up sponsors. Independent designers have to know how to approach that world and make them care about design. How did you guys get sponsors for your shows?

Alex: Sometimes we reached out, and sometimes people would come to us. A lot of times with the group shows, because they were done either through The Future Perfect or curated by Tobias Wong, there'd be a sponsor already in place.

Christine: Well anytime you're throwing a party, you've gotta have liquor, and you don't want to pay for it. Alcohol sponsors are so easy to get. They're whores.

Alex: A lot of times you can get the liquor sponsors not just to give you the free liquor but to pay for the invites, and staff, and bartenders and stuff.

Christine: And we've done some eco-products with sponsors that gave us new materials and asked us to do something with them. That's always fun.

Alex: Getting sponsored isn't just about having someone write you a check. Like Christine was saying, materials sponsors or vendors can pay for the production of things. We've done shows with Bettencourt Green Building Supplies, where they supplied all the materials. That helps the designers out a lot.

What do you consider to be your biggest success so far?

Christine: For me, probably the American Dollhouse show. We had a good body of work and it was a vision that we presented. I'm really proud of that. And also the cups, because we've gotten to sell them!

Alex: The cups have done really well. They've been in a lot of publications and magazines. The fact that the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA picked them up kind of made me the happiest. I think the cups combine everything we've learned both creatively and in terms of running a business.

Rob and Matt of The Brooklyn Salsa Company

2008-10-31T07:12:00.000-04:00

Rob Bowman and Matt Burns are two supremely creative individuals who are building a salsa company in addition to their respective acting and music careers. Why salsa? Why not? With a focus on using healthy, high-quality ingredients as well as giving back to the community that inspires them, this is a brand that everyone can get behind and support. (If only for the hedonistic reason that it tastes incredible.) www.bksalsa.com

You've recently been speaking to the buyers of certain large supermarket chain about carrying your salsa. How did that come about?

Matt: This girl moved into our building.

No. Really? What!

Rob: We are not even kidding. It's a great story. Matt and I have been creating this company for the past 6 months. About 2 months ago, these girls moved in to the second floor of our building. We were constantly hanging out with them, and partying with them, because this entire building is a community. Everyone is always hanging out, people are always throwing shows downstairs, people are always drinking together on the weekends. A month or so ago, we finally started talking about what we do for a living. And she said, "Oh, well I'm a buyer for this company." And I said, "What?! Guess what I do!"

Matt: So that's been really cool, because they've been so supportive. They know what the product is and how it can be sold and what its potential is. They've been able to give us a better idea of how to approach the market we're going into. They've also given us pointers about how to approach our packaging, which is so important. We originally wanted a very short, wide jar, but we can't have shelf space for that. Because we have five salsas that have to be lined up next to each other.

So let's go through your five salsas, which are named for the boroughs of NYC.

Matt: Manhattan is the most traditional of our salsas. Manhattan is really the salsa that I would expect to go to Mexico City and find from the street cart. And Staten Island is the green. It's a tomatillo-based salsa, it's made with these tiny fresh tomatillos, which are just hard green tomatoes.

Rob: It's very limey. Very American flavored, too. One of the things we're going after is, every single other salsa company goes for the Mexican style of flavor, branding, and everything else. And we're trying to go the complete opposite direction. We're trying to say, "Listen, we understand the influence, but we are an American salsa." Staten Island... The only other thing that can be said for it is its our salsa verde, you know, the green.

Matt: Really wild, new flavors that we're introducing into the salsa market.

Rob: What you'll move on to... This is Queens. Everyone has their own personal favorite; Queens has always had a key to my heart. This is the tropical.

Matt: I just love the smoothness of it. I like the textures that we've been able to find.

Rob: A concept that we're trying to bring to the forefront is that the latin meaning of salsa is simply "sauce." That's what it is, it's sauce. It's not just for chips. The fact is that if you try, what you're about to try right here which is the Bronx, if you try that on a burger or on a hot dog, it is one of the absolute most delicious things you'll have.

Matt: Exactly. They also make really good marinades. We want to create a product that can be used for everything. You can add rice to one of these salsas, and another can of tomatoes, and turn it into something different. It's a product that is so multi-faceted. It's just a flavor-maker.

Rob: So this is the Bronx. This is our eggplant curry salsa.

Matt: All of the peppers in this one are roasted over a flame, to make them black, and we keep the charred skins on. It basically is a bangbarta curry. But now it's cold, and it has a lot of citrus so it tastes like salsa. But you can heat it up, and you can add it to a burger or to rice or to quinoa or to anything else. You can have it as a main dish just by adding some more of your own sauteed vegetables and water and turning it into a sauce.

Rob: Let's go ahead and let you guys try Brooklyn. Here's the thing with Brooklyn, which I absolutely love. It's our hottest salsa. But you can taste it, and then the spice sneaks up on you. Give it a solid five seconds.

Matt: It's really an interesting way to spice a salsa, because you get the flavor and then the heat is a background to it. It's a salsa for spicy food lovers. It's a delicate spicy flavor, but it's also very intense.

Alright, that was amazing. While we continue to stuff our faces, onto the next question... How have you gotten your company into the press?

Rob: Basically I am our own PR department. I'm constantly reaching out to different publications. BushwickBK.com is a local website here, and contacting them was our first step. We wanted to see if we could get on there and spread the word. We did end up getting a write-up there, and after that, we had a girl come to us and ask if she could write about us in the NY Press.

Matt: And already we'd gotten some coverage on Yelp from when we were doing a month of taco delivery in the neighborhood, when we were just starting out.

Rob: Our first marketing idea was, hell, let's spread the word by delivering tacos for a few weeks. So we actually, for a solid 2-3 weeks, had this taco delivery service. It was a standard vegan taco that we made. And the concept was, you chose what salsa you wanted on it.

Why didn't you deliver to us? We didn't know there were tacos going around!

Matt: We flyered anywhere we could in our neighborhood, to get the word out. But then we couldn't really meet the demand.

Rob: And I think that speaks for itself. We have seen something that a lot of companies in the startup phase don't have, which is a ton of demand.

Matt: Yeah. We run out of the salsa immediately. We just made that whole refrigerator-full of salsa, and it will definitely be gone by the end of the week.

What's your next step?

Rob: That's a great question, because there are so many different phases. The next step is finding investment.

Matt: Which is actually not a step that we are very afraid of.

Rob: I never would have hopped into this concept if I didn't think we had a solid business model. There's $646 million dollars worth of salsa sold in the US every year.

Matt: And that's just the US. Imagine the international potential.

Rob: So far we've invested a certain amount of money, and that amount has gotten us farther than our wildest dreams. So now it's a matter of, what could we do with much more than that? I had a really great conversation last week with an old co-worker of mine, who's now working for a start-up company that has had several rounds of venture capital come in. They're now on their third round of funding and they just got $8 million.

It's out there.

Matt: It's totally out there. These people are just trying to find new ways of making money.

Rob: We're looking for a very small number, compared to that. basically, that's the phase we're in now. The last few months have been constant brainstorming. And then it's about constantly promoting. Every single week, we're reaching out to get more press, or dropping off salsa to anyone we can think of. And it's fun. it's exciting. It's creation.

Matt: And we're doing this on top of pursuing acting and music. This is such a fun and cool way for us to release energy, make a livelihood for ourselves, and also promote and give back to the communities that give us inspiration. This salsa is a wicked mixture of eclectic flavors that together make a good thing. And that's how we feel our lives are. And we want to sponsor artists, athletes, humanitarians, everyone. Give back to as many people that need nourishment or need life or music or culture or anything.

Rob: Here's the key aspect that I feel completely differentiates us from every other salsa company. We're trying to define a lifestyle behind this. We've been sponsoring music shows, so it's The Brooklyn Salsa Company presents this band, this band, this band... And we just did a fundraiser last week for a youth center called the Misled Youth Network. We did a fundraiser to help them pay their rent, and it was great. We've also reached out to local artists and asked them to play around with our logo. Our good friend Matt Craven did this really intricate, interesting piece for us.

Matt: And now we can use it as a logo, but we can also spread his name and his work. We've noticed so many companies doing this recently, too. Ed Hardy's doing it, 1800 Tequila's doing it.

I think companies are now starting to really participate in the cultures or subcultures they try to align themselves with. It's no longer enough to advertise and forge some kind of bullshit connection.

Matt: Exactly. Also we're not trying to create any type of new lifestyle with all of this. We're trying to expose a certain kind of lifestyle that is, I think, extremely important. The whole world is watching right now to see what our generation is going to do with ourselves, and how we are going to turn things around.

Hell yeah! Do you have any advice for other entrepreneurs starting out?

Rob: I think the best advice is to completely believe in your idea.

Matt: Yeah, you have to really trust your idea, once you have it. And you can't let anybody sway your vision. So many people will be like, "This is how you should do it," or, "I don't connect with that," and you have to know what YOU connect to and what the heart and soul of what you're doing is. Eventually, everyone will re-imagine their thinking about it. They'll come around to your side.

Rob: Along with believing in the idea is knowing how to take constructive criticism well. We've been big on constructive criticism. Especially with taste testing; that's how these salsas have been honed over the last six months. We've done probably a total of 10 sponsored parties, and every single one led to revisions.

Matt: We're always asking ourselves, what can this be? What should this be? Since it is still in the idea stage, we can dream as big as we want.

I think you have to.

Rob: You have to think big.

Matt: How do we take over, literally, the world. And really be the best.

Rob: World domination, via salsa.

Matt: It's not like we think, how can we put more salsa on the market and make a little bit of money? We think, how can we make the most money of any salsa company, doing it the best way possible? It's so ridiculous, that when it actually is on shelves, people are going to say, how awesome! Everybody is going to tell the story and everybody is going to be behind it and everybody is going to think it's the greatest thing in the world because everybody thought it was totally crazy in the beginning. Every company is crazy in the beginning.

Rob: Ben and Jerry's was just two guys that liked to make ice cream. And they turned it into this huge thing, and they also have one of the best company ethos and give one of the highest percentages of their profits to charity. We're not starting a bank. We're not starting something that has the potential to become corrupt. We're starting a salsa company. This is something that's going to be able to have a positive vibe, a positive influence. Something that can make us money, but is still fun.

Mark Goetz of TZ Design

2008-10-29T06:45:00.001-04:00

Mark Goetz is an accomplished furniture designer whose work for Herman Miller stands next to mid-century classics by Eames and other legends. He is a source of inspiration to his students and a source of advice to his former students. We met him in his Manhattan studio and discussed his approach. www.markgoetz.com

What is your personal design philosophy?

I don't view myself as a signature designer. I don't try to create a Mark Goetz style. I'm much more interested in appropriate design. If I do my job correctly, the products I create, not only express my point of view, they equally express the personality of the companies I design for. They're an extension of the brand. I go into companies, try to understand what their strength is, and give them products which will make them much stronger and visible in their respective markets.

My business centers around improvement. I like working with companies who are financially strong, with good distribution, but are in need of a new product direction. I love designing chairs, but I'm less interested in doing one chair for a company. I'm more drawn to a company who wants to reinvent their entire line, ones who want to transform their business through design.

For most of my 20 year career, I really just worked for two companies, Herman Miller and Bernhardt Design. Recently that has really expanded. While I'm still working with Herman Miller, I'm also working with a variety of other companies. It's fascinating because each company sees the world differently. Each has unique capabilties, different types of facilities, and achieves their success differently.

You've worked for a variety of high profile clients including Bernhardt, Marimekko, and Herman Miller. How did you get up to this level?

Early on in my career, I approached Herman Miller with a few pieces I wanted to design for them. They considered them, and when opportunities arose, they contacted me. I've worked for them off and on for eighteen years. It has been a tremendous learning experience to have access to their design, research and engineering departments. My first production chair for them was the Aside chair, a stacking, high volume project.

At the end of the project, during Neocon, they asked me if I'd like to design a sofa for the home which could compliment their existing collection. I remember beads of sweat forming on my forehead, and asking, well, didn't Eames and Nelson design some of the most important sofas of the 20th century?

What they wanted though, wasn't merely an innovative design, but one that could be a usable centerpiece of the home. A classic sofa that could work within their collection, but could also fit into everyday life. The resulting piece, the Goetz Sofa, is the piece that I'm now the most known for. It's a quiet piece which listens to the masterpieces around it. It doesn't try to assert itself against the other classics, but rather it works within the context of their history. The back of the couch is visually striking, because it features both the beauty of the plywood which connects it to Herman Miller and the mitered plywood detail which distinguishes it from the Mid Century Modern pieces.

As for Bernhardt, I worked with them for about seventeen years, creating a good portion of their contract seating collection. Over several years, I designed 70 chairs for them. There was one year when I designed 17 pieces in 6 months - if a piece didn't go out each week I was behind. The company was still young in the contract market then, and we all really worked together to define a new direction. Working for them, without question, formed the bulk of my experience.

When did you decide to strike out on your own and start TZ Design?

I got a job designing a store display for a fashion designer. Although the project was complex and time consuming, I felt so honored to do work I loved, I was initially going to ask only $1,000 for several weeks of work. Then a model maker I had worked with told me that he had bid $8,000 for the job. He said, "Why don't you ask for more, and create a scenario that also works for you?" So I asked for 5,000, and when I got it. I couldn't believe I was doing what I loved and getting paid for it. At the time $5,000 seemed like all the money in the world. I thought it would never run out! So, once I'd made the money, I quit my job.

When I was first working for myself, one of the most memorable days was watching the people outside my window as they went to work in the morning. I would watch the men with briefcases passing by, and I envied them. They knew exactly what they were going to do that day, where they were going to work, and what their responsibilities were. I had no idea what I would do, who I would call, or how I would spend my time. I felt really nervous about the whole situation.

I started my business by just reaching out to companies. I would call them on the phone, introduce myself, and tell them I wanted to design for them. You have to make a point to get to know people, and establish a connection with the other people in your field.

When designers go to companies and say "I would like to design for you," they are asking two things. Firstly, they want to design so they can make a living, but secondly, they want to be told that they're good. They want this stamp of approval that they're talented. That's not the role of a company, though. I learned early on that if a company wasn't interested in my work, I had to ask them why. Sometimes the answer is as simple as "We have a freeze on product development," or "We have three in house designers." Or the owner of the company is also the designer, and no matter how good your piece is, you're not going to design for them.

Eventually Tim Richartz and I founded the studio TZ. We found an artist space which we renovated, and called the studio TZ because both our names ended in those letters.

What was the first piece you had manufactured?

I designed a chair named the Washington Avenue Chair which I pitched to Brickel Associates. I went in, showed them my sketches, and they wanted to put it into production. The piece pretty much went forward without revisions. I remember thinking, wow, this is going to be so easy to make a living as a furniture designer! It was one of the only times in my career that this has ever happened. It's still on the market, but through Geiger. Brickel was bought by Geiger, Geiger by Herman Miller, and Herman Miller still offers the chair for sale through Geiger. Its funny because now, after twenty years, I'm designing for Geiger again, so it's really like I've come full circle.

You also teach design. How has teaching affected you as a designer?

Teaching has given my the ability to verbalize and develop my philosophy about design. I've always been open to lots of different approaches and vocabularies in design, as my own personal taste is very eclectic. I get bored if I work within one narrow path for too long. Teaching a furniture design class, where the students are encouraged to create whatever they want, is a really good fit for my own point of view. I try to leave my own taste out of it, and help students navigate to their personal goals. This is my 16th year of teaching, so I've taught a lot people, become very good friends with many of my former students, and collaborated with a few of them. I just designed a bench for Blank Blank, a company started by one of my former students. It was a great compliment, but also a great challenge.

We recently interviewed Todd Bracher, also one of your former students, with whom you started to22. Could you tell us a little about the studio?

Todd Bracher, Efe Buluc and I started a conceptual group together. We wanted to create designs which were meant to capture imagination not respond to market concerns. The idea of to22 came about right around the change of the millennium. Everyone was saying we better prepare for the 21st century, and we we're laughing, saying, "well we're going to prepare for the 22nd."

Most of our projects have really just come out of good times, humor, and enjoying talking about the future of design. The work was very much about experience based design. Each project dealt with both time and personal investment. For instance, Unbroken, a piece made of shattered ceramic plates, was about letting go of our objects. We are constantly considering the pieces around us as precious; we clean them, keep them on a shelf up high, and protect them. This is was a piece where we literally smashed something to create something else entirely new. It was a great experience, and design wise, against everything that I'd ever been taught.

What advice do you have for someone trying to start a creative business?

My first piece of advice is to always be creating. Whether you're getting paid for it or not. I think one trap you can get into is just stopping. You don’t necessarily need to make a living with the same work you generate to creatively express yourself. You can continue to explore your language and voice outside of paid work. I think it's also important to take stock of what kind of work you want to do, and go out meet people who are succeeding with that kind of work.

When we look at brands, the best brands, we see them as a company. We see the showroom, the signage, the glossy facade - it can be very intimidating. We tend to forget that companies are run by people, people we can meet and introduce ourselves to, get advice from, and show our ideas to. Opportunities begin when people talk to people.

When I first started, I was so nervous, I remember riding an exercise bike, just do get my heart rate up and give me the confidence to call companies. Some people I spoke with were very open and we’ve remained friends for years. And, some companies were not as nice. You never know how someone will respond when you approach them. You can never predict which companies will say what, who you will become friends with, and who you'll work for. What is most important, is to continue learning, keep creating, and have the courage to share your ideas.

Matthew Waldman of Nooka

2008-10-26T18:52:00.002-04:00

Nooka is synonymous with innovation. The brand's founder, Matt, had a vision of graphically depicting time in a new way. He turned that vision from a napkin sketch into a highly successful lifestyle company. If anything will inspire you to follow your dreams, this story is it. www.nooka.com

We started this blog to tell the stories of the entrepreneurial community. Design Glut always gets a lot of questions about how we got where we are, and we don't really have good answers because we're kind of flying by the seat of our pants. But then we realized, everybody's kind of flying by the seat of their pants.

That's a great observation. The thing is, after you've actually done something, it gives the illusion of everything being strategic when it works out well, and that's generally when people see it. But you're absolutely right, the stories are interesting because so much of it is happenstance.

Of course, the strategic part is understanding when something good has come your way and leveraging it to the next step, and the next and the next. When I look back at the Nooka story, everything looks so strategic. Everything was done at the right scale at the right time, in hindsight. And yet while I wasn't 100% flying by the seat of my pants there was definitely some of that in there.

How did you come up with the idea for Nooka?

Before I started Nooka, I was doing art direction for traditional advertising. This was mid-90s. But, on the side, I had my own website. I would make crazy animations for poetry, or little art projects. No one else was doing this at the time, which I didn't know. It was just something that was interesting to me. If you searched for web pages that had mixes of technologies, it was me and maybe ten other people.

Then I got a call from someone in Japan, a friend of a friend, who was searching for art directors that understood the web space. They wanted to invest in opening up a design studio in New York, which would handle interactive design, because there were no designers in Japan who had this experience yet. We set up the studio, New York Zoom. We were doing everything from branding, structuring websites, to programming them.

At that time, it was very difficult to get clients to understand that if you don't make the site intuitive for someone to use, it's not going to be successful. Now, that's pretty much understood, but back then it was like banging your head against a wall. I started obsessing over intuitive design. What is intuitive design? I would look at a pair of shoes and shoelaces. And I would think, god, it takes forever to learn how to tie your shoes. It's pretty difficult for kids. That is not intuitive. Now Velcro, that's intuitive.

When I was in that mindset, I saw this huge wall clock at the Landmark Hotel in London. I got a flashback to being taught how to tell time in first grade. And I thought, if you have to teach kids how to tell time, then it's not something you just intuitively know. That set off a little spark in my head - how come there aren't more modalities for expressing time, as it's such a basic concept.

I started doing sketches on napkins, and came up with some ideas that I thought were really cool. I sent them to my lawyer and we got design patents on them. And then I did prototypes, little 3D models. I was friendly with Tom Dixon, and one day when we were having coffee in his office I showed him the designs. He liked them, and he said, "You know what, Seiko has been after me to do watches, and I'm really not interested". He gave me their business cards and said, "If you tell them that I sent you, I'm sure they'll talk to you."

I had contacted Seiko. I had contacted everyone. I had a drawer full of rejection letters from every watch company, including Seiko. But when I contacted Seiko again, they were like, "Oh, you're a friend of Tom Dixon!" I guess they thought maybe I was as famous as him? Whatever. They did my watch. We had one model that came out.

And then later you ended up taking over manufacturing yourself?

Seiko had a very successful sub-brand, Spoon, and my watch was a part of that group. But they decided to change their business structure and shed all their sub-brands. I didn't even know that they had done this, until I got a call from the MoMA store. I had gotten my design into the MoMA store through my own connections. I got a call from them one day, saying, "We tried to reorder the watches, they're doing really really well, and Seiko's telling us they're not going to ship more or make them any more. What happened?."

It was the first I'd heard of it! I got angry enough that I complained about it to anyone that would listen. Eventually someone said, "Oh, you should do it yourself." And I was like, "What do you mean?"

I was introduced to this guy Eddie. He does watch manufacturing for major brands, and goes back and forth to Hong Kong. I met with him, and got some estimates for doing a very limited run. I figured, "OK, I can afford to do this. Even if I don't sell them, it's probably more interesting than having the money sit in a bank, and I'll have Christmas and birthday gifts for everyone forever."

That was literally my train of thought. Of course, I thought it would be great if they sold out, because then it would triple my money. But even if that didn't happen, I felt that it would be very satisfying and that it was something I needed to do.

So I did it. And it sold out in 8 months.

How did you market the watches?

My process was not, "Oh, I love watches. I want to make a watch." So I never really even thought about watch stores. Quite consciously, I knew it would be lost in a watch store. It's really an anti-watch watch. It's a precision timepiece, but it's not a watch. It's not that category.

Having it in the MoMA store presented it as an art piece, or a design object. That, to me, makes sense. And then, like we said, when you look back on things and they seem strategic... Being in MoMA was very strategic. WIthout hiring a sales staff or doing trade shows, I started getting calls from stores that wanted to order. Buyers from all over the world look at the MoMA catalog.

I got a call from United Arrows in Japan, that they wanted to carry the watches. I didn't know it until this happened, but if you're in United Arrows, it's like being in Barney's in New York. All the buyers in Asia look at what Arrows buys. So it was this really perfect cascade effect. MoMA led to Arrows, Arrows led to Hong, Kong, Singapore, Korea... It just was this organic progression.

Of course, now we have a PR agency on retainer and proper sales staff in 3 countries plus distributor arrangements in other other countries.

What's the future of Nooka?

There were a lot of mistakes in the first couple of years, being with the wrong people who didn't understand the brand. Now we spend a lot of money traveling and doing education about the brand. To us it's not a watch, it's a brand. We see it as a fashion brand, and we really want to see it expand beyond the watches.

We're coming out with a line of patented belts and wallets. We're doing a wallet system and a new type of belt. And it's all going to match a new up-and-coming watch. It will be a whole collection. Part of that collection will also be a fragrance. I think the fragrance gives the message that we really are producing a Nooka lifestyle.

The people that buy Nooka, the people that really embrace it, understand that there's a philosophy behind it. And people really get a lot out of it, which is very satisfying to me. People send me emails, or I meet them, and they tell me, "Looking at this watch every day reminds me that there's always another way to do something, and it makes me very happy." Someone just told me that recently, and I was like wanting to cry! They really got it.

You've also gotten into teaching. What have you taken away from that experience?

Yes, I'm an adjuct professor at Parsons. It's amazing. Even for me, in the beginning, it was very difficult to be articulate about my process. When you're teaching, you have to articulate design process otherwise you're not giving anything to the students. So in that sense, I get as much out of teaching as the students get, because I have to hone my presentation and communication skills.

The reason I started teaching was because I got so sick of looking at horrible graduate portfolios from American design schools. Some people criticize me for hiring so many foreigners. At one point I had mostly Japanese designers. Now I have Spanish and Australian staff members, it's very diverse. But the fact of the matter is I see better portfolios from Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Spain than from the US. I wanted to be part of the solution to improve this situation.

Why do you think that is?

The reason is really quite simple. There's a lack of a design culture. Americans may try to argue this point, but you can point to the Netherlands or the UK, which have well-endowed government sponsored organizations that support design as a discipline and as an art. Since their schools are nationalized, the deans can afford to be very picky about their students. Whereas in the US, a school is just a huge business, so they'll let pretty much anybody in.

What advice do you have for designer-entrepreneurs?

It's sort of a yoda-type sage advice: Ask for advice, but also know how to ignore it.

In my experience, people would say, "I'm in the watch business, and we've tried to do designs like this in the past, and I can tell you that you are not going to be able to sell them. Cut your losses now. Don't do this." It sounds intelligent, like this person knows what he's talking about. But you know what, you have to know when to ignore that. I think it's important to be confident.

But you do have to listen. There are so many things that you do need advice on, like legal matters and internet presence and intellectual property and going international. There are all kinds of things that people who go to business school might know, but people like you and me don't. I think it's important to listen, ask for a lot of advice, and really ignore anything that feels wrong to you.

Also, you know you're doing it wrong if you're spending more on time planning, or trying to get financing than designing and actualizing. I think that's the big trap. It's a problem that students have, too. The time you spend talking, writing, looking, and researching should be a smaller percentage than time spent doing, making, and showing.

The more one takes on all of this business stuff and this business language, the harder it is to get back to your creative place. How do you deal with that?

It's really, really hard. It's a process. You have to learn how to delegate and let go. But in order to do that, you need to find people to trust. It's really good to be involved with a school to get interns. Interns can be a lifeline. They're going to enjoy learning from what you're doing, and they're also going to help you free up your time to do what you need to do.

I went through a back-and-forth, where I tried to pull back and not do any of the business, and only do the creative and the design parts. And it just wasn't great. Until you get to a certain point financially, you can not afford to not be involved on every level. So unfortunately, until you have millions of dollars floating around in a bank account, you may never be free of that. You're always going to have to be on top of everything. Or you're going to have to become really comfortable with things not going exactly the way you want them to.

A big danger for people who run their own businesses is that they don't create systems, because they're doing everything themselves. They keep it all in their head, or they have it all in their sketchbook. I'm probably worse at it than with my own company than I am when I do branding for third-party clients, but what I'm trying to do is create systems. I want everybody in the studio to be able to create things that look Nooka, based on the Nooka system. And that will free me to do more creative stuff. I still do business stuff, but am not so overwhelmed that I'm working until midnight every day.

Alissia Melka-Teichroew of byAMT

2008-10-21T16:40:00.004-04:00

Alissia is a hotshot designer from Holland who currently resides in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Her products are clever, witty, and have quite a bit of character. We went over to her studio to find out how she's built her career as an independent designer. www.byamt.com

So how did you get the word out about your first product?

I designed the "Handful of Plates" when I was in school in Holland. The plates were already in the press in Europe a lot before I graduated. Then I approached a manufacturer, and he wanted to pick it up right away. It was really easy, because he'd already seen the product and he knew it.

What's your impression of US vs. European design? We've been asking a few people this question now, and it always seems to be a real hot-button issue.

I guess there's a difference because there's a cultural difference. I don't think design is something that Americans grow up with. We do grow up with it. Especially in Holland. It's such a designed country, it's almost ridiculous, from the tiles, to signage to lampposts, post office boxes etc. So it's going to be different. There's a taste-level difference, and there's a difference in understanding proportions, color, etc. There are good American designers and there is good American design, but there is less than there could be.

I think mostly it's the design education in the US. Anyone can get into design school here. I don't feel like the bar is very high. And it's a different type of education, because of the amount of money it costs.

That was something interesting which came up when we interviewed Robert Langhorn, who teaches at Pratt. He mentioned how students here feel they have a certain entitlement to passing classes, because they're paying so much money to attend.

Right. Teachers in the US are too afraid they're going to offend someone. I think the first thing you need to learn is that any commentary on your design is not personal. It's about your work. If everyone took everything that someone said personally, no one would function in this world. You shouldn't be offended about that kind of criticism. You usually kind of get pissed off for about a second, and then you let it go.

Also, it seems like students get the chance to learn to have their own signature work. The schools kind of say, "Now you're going to learn this," and "Now you're going to learn that." The schedules are so tight students are always in school. They never have time for themselves to really think about their projects. Schools are open 24/7, so there's no discipline enforced. There are no points when the school or the shop closes, so you have to stop working. Students just go 24/7. Which doesn't teach you work ethic. It becomes this 24/7 thing.

I know I work a lot, but there's a point where you just have to stop. My husband Jan works from 9 to 6 and then he's done. The brain turns off, and he's off looking for food or thinking about soccer or something else than working. And that's much more what we learn to do in Holland. We had to - our school would close. It might seem like a little thing, but you actually learn to think very rationally and very quickly. You're more orderly. You maybe even come to better conclusions about your designs, since you're not constantly in front of your work. By pulling away ideas come as well.

I'm going to segue that into another question I have: Do you have any advice for someone trying to strike out on their own and start a business?

Yeah. Be honest to yourself. Figure out if you can really do it. If you can really push yourself to work every day. Maybe try freelancing first, and see how that goes. If you're going to start on your own, you need capital. Or you need to know you have freelance jobs that can support you. Little gigs here and there that have nothing to do with your own stuff.

Living off royalties is hard. You need a lot of royalties to make it work. Another way is to sell your own pieces. But that isn't easy right away, either, because you need to invest first. A lot of people have this romantic idea of working for yourself. But it's not really like that.

Yes, I think you learn that really quickly.

In a certain sense it is, because you do set your own schedule. But you still have to call people between 9 and 6. And we work with Europe a lot, so we need to get things out as early in our day as possible. Even though you're on your own, you are still going to end up on a schedule.

You also have to be honest about if you really have the skills to work on your own. Figure out what you're really good at, and what your signature is. What you do and what you don't do. Maybe you do it all. But there is always a certain way in which you do things.

I think in order to compete, you have to have something that you can sell as your strength, something to set you apart from the crowd.

Not necessarily. I think some people have good enough connections and they do well even though their work is not that interesting. There are always things out there which don't seem competitive. There are these moments when you don't really agree that someone's design is that interesting or that innovative, but you still see it everywhere. Some people are just really, really good business people. Then again it probably is good that I don't always like everything out there, then I would have nothing to design anymore and it would seem even more useless to design more objects.

What has been your biggest success?

About three years ago, the rings took off, and basically my normal life as a designer was over. The rings gained a lot of momentum and are still going. The glasses are also doing really well, but I think the rings were more innovative at the time they came out.

You've worked with manufacturers and distributors, as well as manufacturing and distributing your products on your own. What do you see as the pros and cons of each route?

You learn a lot when you do your own distribution and manufacturing. I did everything for the rings myself. Because of that experience, when I work with companies now, I know what's going on behind the scenes. Or what's not going on... If you've never sold your own stuff, it's harder to understand the different cultures and how people buy or don't buy. Another thing is that even though a store might be so prestigious and great, they're often hard to deal with.

At the same time, if you don't have to learn these lessons and you find manufacturers for everything, and you're happy with the way everything goes, then by all means go that route. The pro of working with a manufacturer is you don't have to do anything, and you get royalties. The cons are that you might miss out on learning some things.

Can you give us any details about what's on the horizon for you?

Well, more products are coming out for the Dutch company that did the Treehooked. They asked us to do some new pieces. As well as an older piece that has finally been taken into production by another company. More soon on that. And we've been asked to do an interior for Art Basel in Miami as well as 5th Avenue for Christmas. As well as possibly consulting for a Design Centre in NYC.

Philip Wood of Citizen:Citizen

2008-10-17T11:25:00.000-04:00

Citizen:Citizen makes some of our very favorite design objects. They somehow manage to marry utter luxury with biting social criticism. Philip told us how Citizen became the brand it is today, and delved into the company's philosophy. www.citizen-citizen.com

How did Citizen:Citizen begin?

When we started, the idea was to bring British design over to America. I was working with two business partners. The thinking behind it was that America was a bit backward. We felt that they were 10 years behind what was going on in Europe, as far as the advancement of design and object culture.

It probably still is.

It's certainly not where Europe is. That's a whole bigger conversation, though. But the general premise was that we could bring what we saw in Europe, particularly what was going on in London, and cross-pollinate it. One of the ideas was to hopefully open a gallery in Brooklyn, and bring what was going on in the eastern part of London over to New York. And then conversely, take what was going on in Brooklyn and cross-pollinate it back to Europe.

That was the initial notion. So we set up a gallery in New York and brought over some Frederickson Stallard pieces. About a year later, my business partners decided that they wanted to get day jobs. It was really left to me to understand whether I wanted to keep Citizen or walk away from it. And if I did keep it, what would it be?

I realized that I was most passionate about the objects in the collection which were more conceptual. They were really commenting on themselves, or the history of the material, or their context within the culture. From that moment, it was very apparent where I wanted the company to go. I started working with Tobias Wong, and we brought in Cory Ingram, who did the Crude perfume. We collaborated with Jimmy Jane. There was a whole raft of new designers and artists.

Where are you positioning Citizen:Citizen?

I think we're very consciously commercial. We're not ashamed of that. I think a lot of art galleries pretend they're not commercial, but in my mind Wal-Mart and Gagosian are not that dissimilar. On one level, they're really not.

We've landed, curiously, in-between these two worlds. We're not quite a manufacturing agent. We're not just coming in with a lot of money and a lot of expertise in making and selling, although there is expertise in making and selling. And we're not the artist. But then, we are.

You're not not the artist.

We are living in a middle ground, between artist and producer. We do both. And maybe that's a good thing. I have been both an artist and a maker, so I understand the problems on both sides.

What stores have been doing well for you?

Well, you have to work with what's in the market. There's a huge difference between the stores that we sell to and the store that we will build. At the moment, the stores which we've built have been pop-up stores. Whether it be the pharmacy space that we built down in Los Angeles, or the mini-market that we collaborated on here in San Francisco.

If you think about a store, it is a context for the objects. Citizen's about these objects, and you're providing them with a context. A store is also about selling, and there's all kinds of psychology behind that. Wal-Mart has store psychologists determining the whole layout, determining where the bread counter goes, etc. They do whole scientific studies on spending patterns.

Of course, none of us smaller stores are that sophisticated. And yet, we do have an understanding that the aesthetic, the interior, and the way people go around it will probably affect their decision to buy. It's affecting their belief in you, and therefore their belief in the objects.

For us, one of the things that is really challenging is finding the right context to sell the objects. On one level, we're commenting on consumption, overconsumption, and global capital. But we're not just deriding it, we're also participating in it.

Wholesaling your objects poses an interesting challenge, because you're handing your objects off to someone else and hoping that they carry your brand message on correctly to the customer.

Yeah, it has to translate, doesn't it? We're doing something so fucking difficult, in many ways. We're very commercial, but in some respects it's not overt. We're walking a very confusing line. I've always thought of us more as a fashion brand than anything else. We're definitely not a giftware supplier, like Areaware or Charles & Marie. I'm not dismissing what they do, but that's not our intention. I could go and do that, but I don't want to. We're trying to do something cultural.

The whole point of Citizen:Citizen is that you could take our object and put it in one of those giftware companies. It could exist there. But then it would be a really different object. I've provided a different lens through which you look at it. When you place the Citizen:Citizen lens over something, it hopefully illuminates new ways of seeing the ordinary.

There's nothing more poetic than when you see the ordinary afresh. Whether it be through a wonderful teacher at school, or through your own personal development. Or through art, maybe something moves you. Or through culture. You go to another country and suddenly you realize a lot more about your own country when you come home. You have these moments of mild enlightenment.

What we're trying to do with our objects is to create that paradigm shift.

Can you tell us about any new objects that will be coming out?

I've just been speaking to a guy called Tomas Kral. He's taking these very standard glass objects, such as ketchup bottles and jam jars, and re-valuing them through manipulations like etching and cutting. He's taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary. It's also very interesting from a recycling standpoint.

Going back to the conversation of American vs. European design, what do you think is going on there?

There's a huge gap. And it is not being filled and it is not being supported and it is not being sponsored. With all the will in the world, 100 underpaid creatives in Brooklyn are not necessarily going to change that. Change has got to be systemic and it has got to come from within the institutions. The concept of design has to be broadened and the whole discourse about design has to open up.

In many ways, there's been a lot more design going on here in the US. It's just very commercial. It's going on within Apple and Gap and Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn. And the Genentechs of this area, all the genetic engineering companies are incredibly design-heavy. All the Silicon Valley companies are incredibly design-heavy.

If you look to the last revolution, which was the industrial revolution in Northern Europe circa 1800, then a comporably-scaled revolution is taking place 20 miles south of here [San Francisco]. Design is often linked with huge cultural shifts. If you look at design in Victorian times, it was because of new technologies: steam power, the smelting of steel, new materials which became available, new distribution systems...

Design does not sit like a kind of crust on top of culture. It's deeply embedded. When we get these huge shifts, then we'll get huge shifts in design. The next huge shift is an understanding of what sustainability is. That's a great opportunity. But government needs to fund it. They can give tax breaks, or they can institutionalize it, or they can put it out to private contract. If they can invent the atomic bomb, then they can do new power systems. I look at design in this much bigger place.

Ryan Staake of Pomp&Clout

2008-10-16T02:25:00.002-04:00

Ryan is the force behind Pomp&Clout, and the king of video flyers. What is a video flyer, you might ask? It's a new promotional medium which is enabled by viral file-sharing. Pomp&Clout's eye for graphics and ear for beats are a killer combination, leading to amazing music-related graphics. www.pompandclout.com

How did Pomp & Clout start?

It started because my friend Aaron Vinton and I wanted to do a collective site, showing both of our work. Shortly after, another friend, Sam Hyde joined as well. Then at some point along the way we all kind of took divergent paths. I guess you could say I do more "commercial" work. Aaron has moved towards experimental art/audio. Sam's using his twisted humor and motion graphics skill to work more on comedy skits and animations... I held onto Pomp&Clout and began using it as my portfolio site.

What made you want to move in a more commercial direction?

I enjoy working on stuff that solves a problem or has a specific function. I still, of course, appreciate art and I think the stuff that Aaron & Sam are doing is amazing. But what I really enjoy working on are projects that go beyond the purely visual.

Could you give me an example?

A great ongoing project has been gwap.com. Gwap stands for "games with a purpose." It was initiated by a guy in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He won a MacArthur Foundation grant, also called the Genius grant, to create this site. His idea was to use the human mind to solve problems that computers can't easily solve. The basic premise is, let's have people play this game, and then let's get useful functionality from that.

Let's take the ESP Game for example. You and a partner see the same image and are asked to type in a tag for it. When you agree on a tag, you move on and are awarded points. After just a minute of play, you've agreed on six or seven tags. We record those six or seven tags and associate them with the images. Now a search engine will have a better idea of what's in those images. [gwap.com]

I think it's a really cool idea. I've become the art director and designer, dealing with everything visual and interactive on the site. It's very function-driven. These guys are straight-up engineers. They're good at coding. It's interesting to bring something different to the team. And they treat what I do as the end-all be-all of how it's going to look.

How do you find most of your clients?

The majority of it is word of mouth. Various people I know have recommended me to their friends who are in need of design. I got started by doing logos. Now the projects are mostly web-related, like with Gwap. I work with engineers who are in need of designers.

Lately I've also been getting into a lot of music-related stuff. It started with these "video flyers" I made for promoting the Lovelife parties. People have seen them and hired me to do similar stuff. While the website work mainly comes from tech people who need a designer, the music/graphics work comes from people seeing something I've done and thinking it's cool and contacting me about their project.

Could you explain the video flyers a little more?

I started throwing these dance parties in Providence almost a year ago, with three DJ/Producer friends. I came in to do the projections. It was something I'd dabbled in before that, sitting at the computer and throwing imagery up that I'd made or that I'd sampled.

I'd seen promotional videos that were done for these parties, which were kind of exciting but they were always just photos from previous parties. I wanted to try my hand at it, and try something different, something with a mini-narrative.

The first one I did was based on a thought I had at the club on the first night. The parties are in the basement. It's kind of a weird space, but we tried to turn it into a positive deal. The slogan was, "In our basement, we will be together forever." I remember being at the club and thinking that it felt like this sequence in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco walk into a club through the back entrance. So I sampled that video sequence and laid in all this motion tracking and spent way more time on it that I probably should have, putting together this thing.

In the end, though, a lot of people responded to it. I heard, "This is really cool, it fits the venue, it builds up anticipation for the party." Which was exactly the idea, to get people excited about coming out. So I kept making them. They're really fun, because they're somewhere between a music video and a commercial. It's obviously music-driven, because it's an ad for a dance party.

Do you see your work moving more in that direction?

Currently, doing web design and identity design brings in the money. But I'd love to get more into doing music videos in the future. I've started getting inquiries from people who want me to do music videos or other promo videos. The music stuff is really fun and also really challenging.

That whole culture is very discriminating and expects everything to be incredibly fresh. You can't fall back on old methods. But there's a lot of room for experimentation. I once sampled this deep-sea documentary footage of fish swimming around. I thought it was really cool, so I came up with a way to use it. I can throw in all kinds of random stuff.

Video flyers aren't very common, are they?

No, it's new. It's kind of sprung up with peer-to-peer video-sharing sites like Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook. Those sites have made it incredible easy to just throw something up and pass it around. If the video is cool, people will pass around the link, and a bunch of people see it who might not have otherwise heard about the event.

I do print flyers for the shows too, and I'm trying to make a cohesive set for each party, where the print flyer references the video flyer and vice-versa. We're creating both a visual and a musical identity. We've also started a Lovelife blog, lovelifewith.us. That's really fun. It's the four of us, the three DJs and I, putting up links to things that we're into and we think other people would be into.

Did you always know that you wanted to go off on your own and work for yourself?

I've always been interested in doing stuff online, and collaborating with other people. I freelanced all throughout college. In high school I ran a small shareware company called Melonsoft. I did the development, the design, the marketing... It was really exciting.

The internet makes it so easy for anyone to get themselves out there. What was Melonsoft about?

I started it in early high school, shortly after the first iMac came out. That's how I keep track of time. The initial iMac, aqua one, the one that killed the whole "beige" thing.

I taught myself how to write software. I made an mp3 player, a drum-machine program, a piano program... It was all kind of music-related, actually. I'd figure out how to do something and quickly hack together a program that kind of worked and looked cool.

And it was all shareware?

It was all shareware. Anyone could download it, and if you paid you could register it. I had a serial number system worked out. It wasn't much of a system. It was essentially a specific four-character string followed by any fifteen characters. I was kind of cutting corners. I actually found stuff on hacker databases, saying how to hack my serial numbers. So that sucked.

But other than that, it was cool. The software ranged from $5-$50. I was in high school and I was making decent money. It gave me the balls to just pay the overhead of a domain name and web hosting, put stuff online, and turn it into a business.

Do you have any advice on becoming an entrepreneur?

I would say that the most difficult part for me is handling all the business stuff. Not that I really have that much business stuff to handle. But make sure you have some sort of system in place, whatever it may be, to keep track of who's paid you and who hasn't paid you. I had a recent situation with a non-paying client... It turned into an altercation, over email, in which I was essentially threatened...

So yeah, keep on top of things, make sure you get paid on time. If you're doing freelance web work, especially if it's a new client, try to get paid half up-front. That ensures they've given you money and they know the situation and they know you're not just working for free.

That's one of the most difficult things, to actually get people to pay you and to realize the value of your services.

Exactly. And as far as the value of your services, when pricing a project, always try to overshoot. The client may negotiate you down. I think a lot of people coming out of school, especially coming from design or art backgrounds, don't really hear much about how to price projects.

There have been times when I way undersold myself and afterwards thought, "What the hell am I doing?" And then at times I've charged way too much, and people just laugh in your face and walk away. So it's kind of been an intuitive process and a lot of trial-and-error to figure it out.

It seems like a lot of people in our generation are looking for freedom in their work schedule, rather than the 9-to-5 thing.

If I went full-time freelance or started a one man studio, I wouldn't feel the need to work anywhere but my apartment. I think that's the beauty of this new web-entrepreneur culture, or whatever you want to call it. You can just work at home, do what you want, take days off. That's ultimately what I'd like to get to.

Even at my current job, a lot of the work I do can be done from home. I can connect to the servers, or email stuff. It's really unnecessary to physically be at your place of work. I think that's the future. People can be wherever they want to be. I've thought about the possibility of trying to get an RV at some point, and just have a 3G card, and travel around and do freelance.

That's awesome. Travel, work, make money.

Yeah. As long as you have internet access, obviously. That's the big necessity. But you could even be in a remote location, do a ton of work, and then drive to a cafe and shoot it off. So someday, maybe that will happen. Right now I'm kind of riding both worlds, the freelance world and the office world.