Francois started UM (short for Users & Makers)
with a mission – to celebrate the craftmanship behind great design. In Francois’ words: “In music, the musician plays the instrument. But in design, as soon as you start to touch a tool, you become instantly downgraded. You become a nobody. That’s always baffled me.”
They are last, but certainly not least, in our series of interviews with companies based in the GMDC.
Milking stool by UM
What advice do you have for someone who wants to start a creative business?
C: For every ten projects you go after, probably one comes your way. But you still have to put your energy into all ten, because you never know what’s going to pan out. And you have to deal with what comes down the pipeline. It’s not going to be all rock-star projects.
F: Have a vision. Never give up. Tons of people will say, “That’s crazy, you can’t do that.” Personally, I have the vision, and I think I can. The vision for UM is that I really want to be respected as both a designer and a maker. You can’t let yourself get defeated, even when other people try to bring you down.
Did you study furniture design?
F: I’m kind of an impostor. Colgate officially studied it.
C: I went to RISD – first I studied industrial design, and then I switched to furniture design.
F: Myself, I studied business in Europe a long time ago. I grew up in a very traditional French family. Nobody was an artist – you had to be a lawyer, engineer, whatever. So there was family pressure to go to school for something else, but I was always a designer. I worked for big design companies for 10 or 12 years. I always wanted to build things, though. So I went to RISD, but I didn’t finish the program. I left and did a one-year apprenticeship with an established furniture maker. I felt that doing it was better than just studying it.
C: When I was a sophomore, they lumped us together with the first-year grads to learn how to use the power tools and all that. I had class with Francois. Then he left, and by senior year he was my teacher! I took his studio. He had lived three lives in the time it took me to graduate.
Three-ring table by UM
Why did you start UM?
F: Business is very vision-driven, when you start. Later, it becomes not about vision at all, it’s very nuts-and-bolts. But the first leap of faith comes mostly because you have a vision or a passion. I felt like there was this funny split in the design world between the concept development of things and the making of things. I never understood that. I worked for a consulting firm that was very conceptual and strategic, but always suffered in the physical execution of things.
I’m always surprised how, in the design world, there is this split between the people who think up concepts and the people who implement them. In restaurants, the superstar chef is the one in the kitchen. In medicine, the surgeon is both the brain and a pair of hands. In music, the musician plays the instrument. But in design, as soon as you start to touch a tool, you become instantly downgraded. You become a nobody. That’s always baffled me.
Colgate and I decided to create a place where you can build and bridge the conceptual world with the production world. This was one of the reasons for founding UM, which stands for Users and Makers. The idea was to connect the people who use it the products to the people who make it.
DTL table by UM
When did you guys start working together?
C: Right out of RISD, I started my own company, and built primarily free-standing furniture. Francois was busy doing larger jobs, and he would call me up to come to New York and help him build out a project. That started happening more and more, and we realized that maybe we should work together. We decided to move to New York and set up this studio.
F: All of the business we had was always in New York City, so we moved here two and a half years ago and set up a shop. Last year was our best year ever. Last year we were hired by Calvin Klein to do a bunch of products – we’re still working with them. We did a couple restaurants. We did this eyeglass store, Moscot.
C: We did a couple sound recording studios.
F: We work with wood, some metal, fiberglass, carbon fibre, corian, glass… We touch everything. When we started, my idea was to go into custom furniture. I thought custom work was more like haute couture, as opposed to prêt-à-porter. With custom work, you never do the same thing twice, and you get to do high-end projects for high-profile clients. The problem is that it’s hard to make any money – the projects are very time-consuming and expensive. Last year was a great year, but then boom, the economy fell.
Have you changed your business model because of the economy?
F: Yes – for Brooklyn Designs and ICFF this year, Colgate designed a new table. It’s called C-beam, and it’s flat-packing, relatively inexpensive, and “green.” It’s the first time we’ve done something “green”.
C-Beam by UM
I like that you’re putting “green” in quotes.
C: It’s not good enough to make good decisions and be responsible – people need a tangible thing that is “green.” People in the buildings near us are throwing out working kitchens, television sets… They dump, in a week, as much as we throw out in a year. And yet we get attacked for “not being green.”
I have such a huge problem with that. When you’re a small company, everything you do is so low volume. You couldn’t possibly have the kind of environmental impact that a large corporation will.
C: Plus our table will last for 100 years.
People need to learn the difference between “green” and “socially-resposible.” Something can be socially responsible without being made from compressed paper.
F: Compressed paper or Plyboo, right? Well, in addition to making things that are durable, we manufacture in Brooklyn. We support the local community of designers and fabricators. Keeping jobs and manufacturing around is, to me, more important than using “green” materials.
Especially at a time when we’re all worried about the economy, companies like you who are actually creating jobs here should be recognized for that.
C: You would think so, right?
F: Back to your question – because of the economy, we are developing our first products like the C-Beam that come in a box ready-to-ship, as opposed to custom pieces. Thanks to the economy, I should say! We’ll see how that goes, and perhaps we will continue in that direction. I think in the future we will have two levels. We’ll still do the high end, custom, totally one-of-a-kind work for clients. Those pieces keep me excited and inspired. But we’ll also have products that are more mass-produced and more accessible in terms of price.
Light Screen by UM