She’s managed to turn her cheeky sense of humor and fabulous fashion sense into a wildly successful business, at the crazy young age of 27. What more could we ask for? Check out more of her work at http://a-morir.com

Let’s start at the beginning – when did you start bedazzling and befabulousing sunglasses?

I will show you the first thing I bedazzled. It’s my Motorola flip phone from when I was sixteen. Which I like to keep around for when people say, “It’s not durable.” This is eleven years old.

Fast forward to a couple years ago – I’d just quit the marketing industry and gone through a life change. I was working at a boutique to kill time before starting grad school at NYU for a Masters in Costuming History. I wanted to either work at the Met or be an authenticity expert for films and TV.

One day I bedazzled a pair of eyewear for myself. I was like, “Oh, I’ve got these stones, I need new glasses, let me just… ” I wore them into the store i was working at, and literally they were like, “Um, why don’t you sell these?” I made four, and they sold out really quick. They were in the New York Post, and were on Mariah Carey. Rihanna and I met, and she bought four pieces, and she kind of helped champion it. When the biggest pop star in the world wears your most unique design… She wore the chain ones out, and it was very shortly thereafter that this blew up. It was really that quick.

In seven months I’d quit grad school, quit working at the store, and I’ve been doing this full time since July ‘09. It was just the thing, at the time, that made sense for me. And so I did it.

How great is it to be able to say, “I started a crazy eyewear company, that’s the thing that made the most sense!”

People that I haven’t seen in a while ask, “What do you do now?” and when I tell them they’re like, “Well of course!” I guess bedazzling is kind of my destiny.

That’s the title of the interview right there.

Yes!

How have you managed to get so much acclaim and your pieces on all these celebrities?

It’s funny, because I come from the marketing world, so you’d think I’d be really good at email blasts and reaching out to people. I do not do any of that. I’ve never sent out an email blast. This is probably the first season that I’ve actually emailed my line sheets to buyers. Last year I think I opened 17 accounts, and it was all because boutiques emailed me saying, “We love your stuff, do you wholesale?” Yes I do!

This all really just came to me, because I was doing something nobody else was doing. I’ve been really fortunate in that sense. And that’s how I always want it to be – I want the work to speak for itself. I think that’s why all the celebrity press happened quickly and has continued to happen, because the work does speak for itself.

What has been the hardest part of the business stuff to learn, once you started doing this full time?

Apparently I’ve got a really good sense for business, or so my accountant tells me. I feel like it’s a lot of common sense. But the legal formalities, like registering with the state, are tricky. Luckily there are books that are written about that.

Other than that, time management. Figuring out a good life balance has probably been the trickiest. For a long time I didn’t go to the gym, I didn’t go out, I didn’t see my friends. I was just here working. Which is part of what you have to do at the beginning. When you start a business, you spend basically every waking moment on it. Even if the business is doing well, and you’re not worried where the next bit of money is going to come from, it’s still the only thing that you do. “Why don’t you come to my party?” Bitch I have shit to do! I have emails to send out! The business completely envelopes your identity.

I always have this thing, this thing that’s much bigger than I am. But I love it – this is the stuff I would be doing in my free time anyway. I wouldn’t do anything else – I would just roll around in glitter all day!

Do you see yourself moving into more costuming? Looking around the studio, you have the helmets, masks, bras… all kinds of stuff.

Yes and no. It’s very difficult when you start off as one person and you control everything. If you look at any major business, there’s way more than one person working there. Even the most incredible “one-person operations” have three personal assistants, and there are teams of people running the show. I want to get there, and once i do I can focus less on actual manual production, I’ll be able to expand into designing more. But I don’t want to overextend myself. I’d rather focus on being the best at custom independent eyewear. I want to be the best eyewear designer that you know of.

Do you do a lot of custom pieces? How much of your work are things people commission?

I’d say it’s like 25% commissioned work, 75% what I already designed. It’s interesting because the pieces that are commissioned sometimes later turn into my new lines. All of the weird show-piecey stuff, like the helmet or the mask, were commissioned. A lot of the Lady Gaga stuff was commissioned. Her team will say, “These are your inspirations. We need these accessories, in this color, using these elements. Can you do this by tomorrow?” And I’ll be like, “Yes I can,” and then I’ll start to cry, but I’ll get it done.

What’s your favorite pair of glasses right now? What are you most excited about?

I’m most excited about the d’arcy [pictured below]. I feel like once a season, so far, I’ve done something that really pushes the envelope. This is the fourth collection I’ve put out. The first season was the very first four styles that I did, which was like the “aha!” moment. The second season was when I did the chains, and I was really happy with that. The next batch was when I did the Barracuda [black glasses]. People are lucky if they get one noteworthy piece in a lifetime. I was recognized as a master in design at a Nike conference, and on the top of every weird end-of-year best accessories list, from InStyle to Rolling Stone. And I was kind of like, “Really?! Awesome!” So the d’arcy is the style I’m most excited about now, where it looks you have a nose-to-ear chain.

All of your designs are a jump past eyewear – it’s eyewear mixed with things you know from other places.

Exactly. That’s my weird subversive humor.

How do you find your design inspiration? What’s your process? Even though I know it’s hard to put into words, because it’s kind of a thing we just do…

Yeah, if you are an authentic creative you just sort of do it. It’s harder for me to cook a meal properly than it is to come up for an idea for eyewear. It’s a whole mix of things – it can be I found a really good frame and want to do something with it because I like the shape, or I found this great material and I want to incorporate it into something, or I think up something I don’t think has ever been done before and challenge myself to do it.

Design duo Andy Pressman and Renda Morton share a love for design, sure, but it was a common obsession with a certain Fleetwood Mac album that launched Rumors — the name of their web, print and interactive design studio — which they founded in 2008 with original partner Holly Gressley. Now, Renda and Andy bounce ideas off of one another in a charming “sparring sibling” style, with all the bickering and building taking place in their Brooklyn studio. Unfortunately, Fleetwood Mac was not blasting as part of the creative process, but there was a Frank Sinatra-esque melody in the air.

Whatever they are listening to, the Rumors studio should keep that Pandora station streamin’, because their genius collaborations have already nabbed them clients like New York Times Magazine and Bidoun Magazine of the Middle East. With new designer Zack Seuberling on board, the Rumors team shows no sign of slowing down. Check out more of their work at http://rumors-studio.com

How did the name “rumors” come about?

Andy: We went through so many names. Part of the trick about having a collaborative studio is you only have so many things you share. And we all like Fleetwood Mac. At the time we were heavily, heavily into it.

Renda: Yeah. Tusk is our favorite album, but Rumors was the best studio name.

How did you two hook up and begin working together?

Renda: Andy can tell the story about how I met him.

Andy: I was hiring for a job. I had a website I was making and I needed a developer, and somebody pointed me towards Renda Morton. So I sent Renda an email. After I hit send, I thought to myself, “You know what I should do? I should go on Myspace and see who this person is.”

Renda: And this was back when Myspace was the thing.

Andy: So I do, and I search her by email address. Then I accidentally ended up sending her an invitation saying, “Andy Pressman wants to be your friend on Myspace,” and inviting her to join Myspace. As if this were an important business gesture.

Renda: He wrote me an email saying, “I’m really sorry. Please ignore this. Please continue to think of me as a consummate professional.”

Andy: I was like, “I know how to spin this—by being up front. That’s what professionals do.” But it turns out she never got the Myspace email in the first place.

Renda: That’s how we met. That’s how I knew Andy was cool.

Nice damage control. Some of the best relationships are formed through Myspace.

Andy: Separate from that, we shared studio space in Dumbo as independent designers. We were collaborating on projects and it just made sense at a certain point to bring these things together.

Renda: We went and interviewed other studios or collectives to see how they ran their business to try to figure out what the best way was for us.

What is the hardest part about collaborating on a design?

Andy: We’re pretty good collaborators. Do we run into disagreements? Sure.

Renda: That’s what makes it good!

Andy: What makes it good is the fact that you’re not talking to yourself. The nature of collaboration requires, to a certain extent, disagreement or at least a separate perspective. Maybe the most difficult part is working with somebody day in and day out and knowing their quirks and knowing what they are going to say about something. It is not unlike sparring siblings. Being able to know this is a safe space, but still be able to say that something is stupid.

Renda: We always have to sit next to each other.

Andy: We always conceptualize together, even if we are working on separate projects.

How do your design aesthetics differ?

Renda: I don’t know

Andy: Neither of us have a particular style.

Renda: But I can tell if Andy made something.

Andy: And I can tell if you made something. A designer does certain things because they appeal to him or her and you see that in their work. But I think part of our process is about the ideas more than it is about the design. We both have different things we like to do. I’m not anywhere near as capable a programmer as Renda.

Renda: He’s better at writing emails. Writing really difficult emails and awkward emails, like the ones where we are saying we can’t do something or need more money.

Andy: I would say I’m more invested in print typography than Renda.

Your job requires you to work closely with your clients and understand what they want. So what makes a good client?

Andy: Sometimes we try to give them what they don’t know they want.

Renda: We want something that will make them happy, but also something that will make the people that have to use the thing that they make—whether it’s a book or a website or an exhibition—those people have to be happy too. Which, in turn, makes the client happy.

Andy: We have two clients essentially. We have the people that hired us and we have the audience. So in some cases we end up being advocates for the audience and what the user would want. But what makes a good client? We’ve been trying to put our finger on this lately.

Renda: We had one project in Greece where we had a client who told us to do whatever we want and would approve everything, and money wasn’t so much an object. That turned out to be one of the worst clients because he just didn’t care. He wasn’t invested in the project.

Andy: The best clients are smart and engaged. They take part in this dialogue of what the output is. It’s a fundamentally collaborative process. Like what I said before, we are not fundamentally surface designers or graphic designers. At the heart of it, we think about what it is that we’re doing or saying and how we say it. So the very logic of the thing that we work on is up for grabs and discussion. We want clients to take part in the generative process. They need to be open to ideas and open to rethinking preconceived notions.

I would have guessed a designer would hope for a client that gives them more creative freedom to do whatever you want!

Renda: If I did whatever I want I would just sit. That’s what I wanna do.

Fair enough. You guys mix a lot of print work with online design. Does this say something about the future of graphic design or where your studio is headed?

Andy: It definitely says something about the present. That’s something that distinguishes us as a studio—we do all of those things… We like working with clients that want something in terms of an exhibition space, the Web, and even a catalogue too.

Renda: And it changes all the time. The iPad came out six months ago and now everything’s different. Six months from now, things will feel different again.

Andy: How things are made really is changing much faster people see. We like taking part in that.

So you guys are always adapting. How do you plan to grow in your studio in the coming years?

Andy: I don’t feel like we need to make an effort to stay on top of things because that’s just what we are curious about by our nature. We just follow those pursuits and it’s been taking us to interesting places. I’m content that we grow as readers as these objects grow as reading devices. As a studio, we do not want to grow to be a business where we have to manage multiple designers at once.

Renda: No. We live in this neighborhood and it’s nice walk to work everyday and not have to go to Manhattan.

Andy: Our ideal growth comes from clients and projects and not the size of our business. We are always looking for more clients that interest us.

What projects are you working on right now?

Renda: We are working on an exhibition for the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. We are really excited about it.

Andy: We are excited because they are smart people and very engaged and really excited about the ideas. Because they are excited about the ideas, we can throw out things that are like….

Renda: What if the museum were re-curated this way?

Andy: Or what if the space wasn’t the way you traditionally conceive of an exhibition space?

Renda: And we get to go to Montreal, which is fun.

When is the exhibiton?

Renda: November 11. We also just finished a thing for the American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter—the Center for Architecture. This week is Architecture Week, so for the whole month of October, they bought all the ads at the West 4th Street Subway Station and they are showing all their members’ projects—architects that are based in New York and what things they are working on.

The opening ceremony of “Made in New York” will be held Friday, Oct. 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the West 4th St. Subway station. Stop by for a glass of wine (staying within the parameters of Subway boozing, of course) and some thoughtful analysis of New York architecture. If we’re lucky, the night will also include some clever dialogue on spinning classic rock into a savvy business influence—an art form that both Andy and Renda have clearly mastered.

The theme they gave us to work with was “rebirth to renewal” – so our idea was to make a key rising up out of a pool of liquid.

After coming up with the concept, we designed the piece in Solidworks and had a vacuum-metalized rapid prototype made.

Zoe in the TOUCH gallery.

When did you start TOUCH?

TOUCH is super new – a year and a half ago, or less. But I’ve been a product development consultant for many years. I used to be the director of design development for Artecnica. I worked on all those projects. It got to a certain point, though, where I couldn’t be in a corporate environment. I like my freedom.

I began consulting, as well as working with social organizations. I started combining designers with social organizations.

How does TOUCH help the designers you work with?

Some we represent because they can’t produce their designs by themselves. Some, they can produce but they’re not ready yet to hit the market themselves, because it’s a big step. So I’ll take care of that for them. And others, they don’t want to deal with it, because the product is too expensive, so I’ll take it in to a different manufacturer and I do it. We go through the whole manufacturing and packaging thing, and then some of the products become TOUCH’s products.

The TOUCH gallery [image via Dwell]

TOUCH is also a gallery, right?

Yes, my partner Peter Scherrer and I got a space, which we called TOUCH. I looked at the whole space I thought, “OK, we can do dinners, talks, exhibitions…” But I didn’t want it to be like a gallery where every two months we have to have a new show, even if we haven’t found something good.

Every time I find products, or projects, or some sort of interesting thing related to product design, we do it in our space. Like when I saw InDisposed, I said, “You know, let’s take it to LA.” But most of the time it works as a showroom, as a studio, one part where we do consulting and the other part where we do branding. Peter runs Studio Mousetrap where he does branding and PR.

What interests you about product development?

Design is going through a very strange moment, a shift now. We had the moment of the products that were inflated, or the products being more conceptual, all of that. I think now, you can’t detach yourself from the production. The process. You need to keep yourself very close to how things are made – understand that world. That’s the world I’ve always understood, because the designer passes on to me and I actually go and working with the artisans.

I come from Brazil, where we work a lot with artisans. There is always someone who makes your product. At the same time, I don’t like to use that too much as a marketing tool. Yes, there is a story to how things are made, but I believe that the design has to be good. This is not charity, it’s business.

The Alada line in Touch’s booth at the gift fair.

How do you choose who to work with?

I think it’s about the energy, always, that we are all on the same page. We care about the environment – we’re thinking about it, at least. We’re learning, because we don’t know everything. We’re learning that we need to pay attention, but at the same time, we’re in a super conflicting moment. Do we really need to buy anything? And then we all make products! But what are we going to do with all this trash that is around us?

We come from this culture. We cannot just stop completely and say, “We are all going to go be hippies on a farm!” That’s not the solution either. The world cannot just collapse from one day to the next.

So slowly, more and more designers wanted to work with me and more towards what TOUCH is about. I think there is a good energy and there is a good approach. We’re super strict about the materials that we use and the designers that we work with. We’re creating a kind of a collaborative.

What brought you to the gift fair?

TOUCH has been growing, and suddenly I thought, “Wait a minute, there are all these products, I have to start selling them.” I’m very happy to be here at the show, because we’re doing well! I feel like the economy is picking up and people are more positive. It’s been interesting to see which designs people pick up. Different stores like different things. It’s been great to see how many people are interested in sustainable objects.

Rolha candelabra, made from cork and aluminum.

Do you have any advice for designers and creative people who want to start doing their own projects?

Just keep doing it. I think discipline is super important. The designers that really make it have an amazing amount of discipline. Self-promotion is also very important, being good at self-promoting doesn’t necessarily you are a really good designer. It’s important that you have that, but the integrity of what you do and the quality of the work will pay off more.

And do the shows. Go to all of the shows possible. Go to Milan, 100% Design… I think you have to do that to create your network. You need to be in front of the people and learn what they think about your product. Make all the mistakes. Put your work out there. I think that whole process makes you a great designer, if you are talented and have a good idea!

I adore the Drop piggybank.

Thanks so much for meeting with us – you’re a true guru on the topic of creating your own path as a designer and entrepreneur.

It’s something that I talk about a lot. In 2006, I did the keynote at SXSW Interactive. I spoke about firing your clients and making your own clients. In the past 5 years, we’ve seen a lot more small-to-medium size creative studios trying to find their own way and take greater control over the work they do, as opposed to just selling it to somebody on a work-for-hire basis.

With all the tools from the internet at your disposal, you’re enabled to do so much with just a few people.

Yeah, definitely. Manufacturing, distribution, marketing, sales, customer contact – all of that is supremely manageable by a very small team. In the traditional model, you have this big corporation where the creative department is in the back, and they’re those wacky people with the Tabasco ties and chattering teeth in their cubicle, and everybody is a little afraid of them because they’re so “wild.” The rest of the company is the marketing, production, distribution, all of that. Well, our idea was that the little creative team could do everything.

Coudal really does seem to do everything. You have the ad model, you have physical products, you have a consultancy… I’m curious, what came first?

We were a pretty traditional design and advertising consultancy for a long time, 9 or 10 years. We did fairly visible work for a lot of cool clients. We redesigned the Houston Astros’ identity system and all of their uniforms. We worked for national restaurant groups and came up with brand names for restaurants. We also had this Coudal.com site, which was surprisingly popular.

After September 11th, the economy kind of took a dive, and through no fault of our own we lost a bunch of business. Some clients decided not to advertise, or took stuff in-house, or whatever. It wasn’t because we weren’t doing good work; it was circumstances beyond our control. At that point we had to make a decision about whether we were going to continue to chase client work, and ultimately do work we weren’t particularly proud of for people we didn’t really like, or find another way that we could go forward.

The SEED Conference put on by Coudal Partners [photo via flickr]

How did you start to find that other way forward?

We looked at our assets and our liabilities, and we said, “Well, we have this audience that comes to our Coudal.com site all the time, and they must be like us, if they read the things we put up. If we can find a way make, create, sell things that we need, then this audience might need it too.” That was the idea. In 18 months we wanted to have half of our revenue come from things that we owned, as opposed to work-for-hire.

And then nothing happened. It was easy to talk about, but we just went on and did brochures and identity systems for this and that. We also did a series of films with two guys called Slowtron. The films are short profiles of artists and designers, talking about their work. People really liked the videos. They were viewed hundreds of thousands of times. We got a call from a distributor in the UK, who said they might be interested in pursuing this idea as an episodic television show. And we thought “This is it! This is exactly what we wanted – we made stuff on our own, and now here’s this opportunity.”

We were putting together a DVD to send over to the UK, and did a beautiful design for what we wanted it to look like, when we realized that there was no interesting packaging available for CDs and DVDs. They were all crap, like the plastic boxes that you have at Blockbuster. Somebody here had a disc from a European stock photo agency that was in a really sweet case. We took all of the paper out of it, made our own paper, cut it out with an Exacto, put it together and sent it off to the UK. And that’s where that story ends.

Nothing happened?

Nothing happened. We don’t even know if they ever got it, because the guy we were in touch with got fired!

But we thought that it was so hard for us to find a nice case, maybe other people were having this problem. And we’re pretty crafty, so making customized paper inserts wasn’t that big of a deal, but wouldn’t it be nice if all the templates were set up properly and the paper was perforated ahead of time? One thing led to another. We found the company that made the cases, in the Netherlands, and we met with them and made a deal.

That was the beginning of Jewelboxing, this really sweet system for doing a short run of DVD or CD packaging. We launched it, and we made 13 sales on the first day. We thought, “Maybe we’re on to something!” All of a sudden Jewelboxing became the big business. We had a client that was different from all of our other clients – we owned it and could do anything we wanted with it.

Jewelboxing by Coudal Partners

You obviously didn’t stop there, though.

Well, then we wanted to get the word out about Jewelboxing. Not only to the core Coudal.com viewers, but to a larger community who we thought might be interested in it, like wedding photographers and architects and film students. So we started dabbling a little bit in doing online advertising.

It was a total clusterfuck. It was completely impossible to buy the markets that we were trying to buy at any sort of reasonable cost, and the paperwork and research and headaches involved were just a pain. You can see where this is going. We were like, “OK, screw this, we’re going to do it ourselves.”

We talked to Jason at 37signals and our friend Jeffrey Zeldman in New York who runs A List Apart and said, “Look, we’re going to build this little ad network, called The Deck.” It started with us 3, and now there’s 41 properties in The Deck. Last month we served up almost 50 million ads for advertisers like Adobe, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and all kinds of different people.

The Deck, Coudal’s ad network

And then you had two “clients” that were projects you owned and could do whatever you want with.

Right – and The Deck sort of came out of Jewelboxing. We also created a very successful company called The Show, in which we went on tour with bands like The Pixies and Dead Can Dance and recorded concerts. We mixed and matched them and sold specific concert performances from the bands. But as digital music was growing and CDs were waning, we decided that this was going to be a sunset business, so we wound it down.

Then we built Field Notes. Our friend Aaron Draplin in Portland had a goofy idea for this little notebook. We thought it was less than goofy, and we made a deal together and created the notebook. Now it’s in a hundred stores and we sell hundreds of orders every day online. The thing that’s cool about Field Notes is it appeals to a rifle-toting budweiser-drinking mammal killer, AND a coffee-swilling fedora-wearing pretentious Brooklyn hipster. It has a totally universal appeal.

Field Notes now come in limited-edition colors.

So do you only work on your own projects these days?

We still sort of do client work – we do once in a while take on a project if it’s particularly interesting or particularly lucrative.

We have this thing called Layer Tennis, which is a live design event on Fridays. We actually created it way back in 2001 as a total goof. We invited people to play from all over the world and it was a big success. But after a while, a lot of people were copying the concept, and we were doing other things, so we just sort of put it on the back burner.

Then we were dealing with Goodby out in San Francisco on some work for Adobe. They needed something to promote CS4. So we brought Layer Tennis back, and offered it as a sponsorship. In a way Adobe is our client, except rather than us selling our services to them, they’re sponsoring this thing we created.

You’re getting paid to do what you were already doing.

Right – except much bigger now. In the final match we had 40,000 people watching live. So it’s been very good for Adobe as well. We’ve done 2 seasons, and we’ll most likely do another. So now we own this ad network, we have some consumer products, and we do these sponsored web things.

Layer Tennis is a super fun design event by Coudal and Adobe

What’s next?

I don’t know what’s next! It’s kind of a joke, but we’re proudly “without business plan” in our 13th year. We’ve had a lot of things not work, and that’s OK too. If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!

What was the hardest part of building your businesses?

At the point where we made a conscious decision to move away from the traditional work-for-hire model, things weren’t going very well. And nothing gets your attention faster than not having enough money in the bank to make payroll on Friday! But I think that, to a certain extent, you can overcome financial fear with hard work. So just work 12 hour days. So do the fucking brochure. And then get on to what you want to do.

Everything’s not all unicorns and rainbows, and sometimes it’s a little scary, but we are a lot happier than we were in 2001. And there’s something to be said for that.

What’s your advice for people who want to set out on this path?

You need to have the stomach for risk and you need to have good ideas. Let’s just assume that those are the givens, that without either one of those nothing else makes a difference.

I know a lot of people who are in our position, who used to work for The Man or whatever, and now are making records or making films or designing clothes or creating products or screening posters or any of a million other things. And all of them, without exception, all say exactly the same thing and they say it in exactly the same words: “I should have done it sooner.”

When you think to yourself, “In 18 months I’m going to start my crocheted beer coaster company,” the problem with that sentence is the 18 months. What you’re really saying is, “I’m afraid.” Do it now. If you bankrupt a company before you’re 25, that’s like a badge of honor! Get out there.

STPLxAIRWALK collection

You do so many things – I’m really curious, timeline-wise, what was first? What was the first project you created?

First was clothing. I was at Parsons School of Design for graphic design, so I guess you could say that was first. But it was just schooling. I didn’t make any money from it.

What inspired you to do clothing?

It started because I was taking a silkscreening class. They taught you how to silkscreen on canvas and paper. Well, my friends weren’t really about putting art up on the wall of their shitty apartments that they shared with six people. There probably wasn’t even a wall – more like a curtain! I wanted to make tees for my friends to wear. That was really how it started. And the funny story is that Parsons didn’t allow you to print on t-shirts.

Really?

Yeah. They didn’t allow it. So a friend of mine and I would break into the silkscreen lab. We would leave a window open and climb in at night. We would come in with a pillowcase full of tees, set up a sweatshop, and print stuff. It was really, again, just to give out to friends.

STPL collection Spring 2009

That changed on March 7th, 1997 – my birthday. I was going to go out with my girlfriend and get a nice dinner. She wanted to get her hair done, so I dropped her off at a hair salon. While she was there, I went shopping and walked into a store on Lafayette – Triple Five Soul. Back then, in ‘97, Triple Five Soul was a boutique; it was a much smaller operation. I walked in and the manager said, “Hey, that’s a cool shirt you’re wearing, where’d you get it?” I told him I made it, and he said, “Well, if you make 12, I’ll try to sell them here.”

Nice!

That was the first order. I always wonder, if my girlfriend wasn’t doing her hair, or if I didn’t go in that store, literally this whole thing that you see might not exist. I had no plan to do it. It’s weird to think that if I’d made a left on Crosby or something, my whole life could have been changed!

So what happened next? Did you start trying to sell the shirts more?

No! [laughs] It just happened.

In a week, the guy at Triple Five Soul told me, “We sold out. We’ll take 24 this time.” So I made 24. Then another store in SoHo, called Union, saw what we were doing. They said, “Hey, we love your stuff. Why don’t you do a different design for us, and we’ll start ordering.” So I was selling to two shops in SoHo, all the while, still breaking into school with my friend to make the shirts.

Eventually it got to the point where my studio apartment in Chinatown was like a sweatshop. There were boxes everywhere. I had my friend in fashion design cutting labels and sewing them in. I had another friend making hang tags for me. I remember one time when we had to get an order out the next day, the needle on the sewing machine broke. It was the last needle. And it was 3AM! I started calling all these places to try and get more, and finally found a place that was open. I skated up to 70th St. When I finally brought the needles back, they were like the holy grail! That’s how we started. It was pretty fun.

STPL collection Spring 2009

How did you go from having your clothing line to doing work for clients?

People who were fans of the t-shirts would come to me and say, “Hey, I heard you’re a graphic designer, can you help us with our CD cover?” Or business card, logo, party flier… Various little odd jobs . I started taking that on as well, and the business kind of became twofold.

So when you graduated, were you set up enough that you just went straight into doing your own thing?

I didn’t graduate. I dropped out. It was my second year, sophomore year, that I was doing this.

Wow, that was quick!

I’m a hustler. I get bored easily. I’ve gotta do something! My sophomore year those two SoHo stores were putting in orders for 24 or 36 shirts. Then this Japanese guy bought one of my shirts at Union and told them, “I want to talk to this guy,” so they gave him my number. He calls me at home and he says, “I want a shirt, and I live in Japan.” And I was like, “That’s awesome! I’ll send you a shirt in Japan.” And he’s like, “Uh, no, I want 1,000 shirts.” My third order! 1,000 shirts.

No way. That’s when you have to drop everything and just do it.

I was like, “Please hold,” and started screaming and jumping up and down on the bed. And then got back on the phone, “OK, yes, 1,000 shirts, we can do that.”

But I had no idea how – how was I going to break into school with 1,000 t-shirts? That was really when I said, OK, I can always go back to school. But this opportunity – I’m not going to tell this guy, “Let me graduate, let me take my finals first.” It was now or never. I took the opportunity, and I haven’t gone back yet. But I do teach now! I teach at NYU, Parsons, and I just started teaching at Columbia University, at the executive master’s program. I don’t even have an associates degree! It’s kind of ironic.

Reed Space in the LES

It makes you think about the value of school.

It does. I think school is for some people and not for others. It just depends on how your brain is wired.

So your clothing brand was taking off, and your consultancy was taking off – when did you open Reed Space?

Right as the clothing line was doing well, I knew I wanted a retail store. When I would go to visit stores that carried Staple, I’d always be a bit disappointed. As a store, you’re not worried about individual brands, you’re worried about your whole shop. I would think, “Why are they displaying it like that?” Or I’d listen to a guy selling it to a customer and I’d think, “That’s not the concept!” It just wasn’t right. I always felt, “Man, I want to open my own store.” And not just to sell Staple, but to represent brands properly and in a way that they respect and appreciate.

In 2001, 9/11 happened. Our office at the time was on Division St., which is in the shadow of the World Trade Center. I couldn’t go to my office for weeks. Sometimes they would let us in, but the electricity was shot. If you printed and faxed and got a phone call at the same time, all the power would just go down. We had to move.

Why did you move to the Lower East Side?

One of the other things that I like to do is DJ, and I was DJing at this place that doesn’t exist anymore, that was on Orchard St. DJing would mean getting off of work at 5AM, standing outside with your records, and waiting 20 or 30 minutes for a cab to come. This was 2001, so the LES wasn’t like now. You had to hope that cabs would come by.

One night, as I was waiting for a cab, I looked across the street and I saw this “For Rent” sign on a storefront. When I looked in the window, I saw that the store went through the whole block and had a second entrance on Allen St. It was amazing! I immediately typed down the phone number. I called the guy, and then the next day I went to go look at it.

Reed Space in the LES

So you moved your office into that storefront?

Originally, it was Reed Space on one side, and Staple Design in the back. I built a partition to separate the space.
The idea was to have a design studio, and then make clothes and just put them in the store. Plus we could talk to our customers – it seemed perfect.

A couple years later, we moved Staple Design out, and made Reed Space the whole thing. The split space wasn’t big enough to carry all the brands that I wanted to be in Reed Space. And we were trying to work in the back, but every 30 seconds someone was coming in. In the beginning, only 10 people a day would come in, and it was fine. But once there was a constant stream of people, we couldn’t get any work done. So we had to separate.

Wow – so Reed Space just kind of took off on it’s own.

Yeah. Again, maybe if I wasn’t DJing that night, or if I didn’t look in a certain direction, there would be no Reed Space. I never said, “I’m going to open a store. I’m going to hire real estate agents, and scout locations, and create a P&L, and a budget.”

In the beginning my path was very random, and it felt random. But more recently, I’ve learned the ability to listen to that voice in me. You could say that it was totally random that I went to Triple Five Soul, or totally random that I found Reed Space. But I think that there is some sort of ethereal voice that compels you to do these things. The key to success is listening to that voice and acting on it. I think if you can get yourself in tune with that, whatever you want to call it, third eye, or soul – different people have different words for it – then you can start really rocking.

STPL collection Spring 2009

So as the whole thing grew, and you started bringing other people in and making a business out of it, what was the hardest lesson to learn? What was the hardest part of all of that?

People management. I’m still working on that one. It’s hard. We have a team of, depending on the time of year, anywhere between 18 and 20 people. The team is the most important thing, because no matter how smart or how hard-working you are, there’s only 24 hours in the day, 7 days in the week, and you’re only one person. You can only do so much. You need an army of people to help you.

I didn’t take any business classes or anything like that, but I do now read a lot of business magazines. The one thing that I always am intrigued about is management skills, for lack of a better word. Trying to figure out how to get the most out of people. A really big part of my job now, as President or CEO, is making sure that people are in the right position to do the best job possible. You might have a person that is a great person, but stuck in the wrong seat. You put them in the right seat and all of a sudden they’re a star! You don’t want to just fire somebody – you’ve got to make sure that you’ve vetted them properly.

That’s a really good attitude to have. What are you working on now? What are you excited about at the moment?

Well, let’s see. I just came back from Europe, and we showing/selling our Spring 2010 collection. Now, the second you get back from that, you go straight into designing and brainstorming for Fall 2010.

We’re also working on the next issue of Reed Pages. Quite honestly, I haven’t been this excited about a project in years. And it’s ironic that it’s this old-school art form – making a magazine. It’s experimental, in the way it’s done, and the feedback we’ve gotten on it has been incredible. I’m not looking to make millions of dollars with it, because it’s a dying industry, but it is something that I’m really excited about.

Jeff’s new magazine, Reed Pages

One last question. What does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur? What’s your advice to people who want to work for themselves?

Be prepared to work the hardest you’ve ever worked in your life, and multiply that by 100! And, hey, some people aren’t cut out for it. That’s cool, that’s why they make desk jobs where you just clock in at 9, clock out at 5, and you’re done. Your definition of “hard work” really has to be redefined. I talk to some friends, and they say, “Oh my god, it was such a busy day, I had a meeting! And I had to go to the bank! It was so hard, there was like a long line at the bank…” And I’m like, “I did that from 9:15 to 9:30!”

One comment I always get is, “Man, if I was just as lucky as you…” You know what, come to my office at 3AM, and I’ll show you how lucky I am. You don’t see that part – all you see is the Nike that came out, or the finished art exhibit, or the trip to Paris. It’s really hard to explain how much work goes into making those things happen.

We may have been late to the party, but we’re making up for it by bringing you an interview with the founders, Serap Demirag and Deger Cengiz, about how they started and their vision for the space.

You’ve got a great group of designers in here. How did you go about finding the people you wanted to work with?

We researched and came up with 35 different designers. Then we called them one by and one, and visited their studios. I’ll be honest with you, when I first came up with the idea, I though the designers would have huge egos and rock star personalities – but every time we left a studio, we’d be overwhelmed by how nice they were.

What made you decide to open a furniture store?

I saw this beautiful table by Palo Samko at the Architectural Digest show. I was so drawn to it. Then I realized he was a Brooklyn designer – I didn’t even know Brooklyn had a design scene! That started everything.

I started looking into it, going to BKLYN Designs, and realized how much much talent is here. And I realized how much beautiful furniture there is that’s not being showcased. I wanted to open a store in Williamsburg to show it. I’d already been in the home furnishings field for 15 years. I loved furniture, I knew about it. I realized opening a store was too much work for one person, so I asked my friend Deger if he wanted to be partners. He jumped right in, and we started doing it together.

[image via Apartment Therapy]

I found the space last March. It was still under construction, so there was some time for us to prepare. Initially I was going to open in October, but it was postponed, which was good because that was the worst time in the economy.

Why weren’t these great pieces already represented in showrooms?

Since the work is made locally, out of beautiful materials, it makes the pieces very expensive. It’s expensive for the designer to even sell to customers directly. And normal showrooms need to mark up the prices two or two-and-a-half times to be able to make money and take the risk of buying a piece of furniture. With that kind of markup, these pieces become so expensive they are unsellable.

[image via Apartment Therapy]

So how have you gotten around that problem at VOOS?

We came up with the idea of making this more like an art gallery. We take a small commission, and sell the pieces at their list prices. Then we approached designers with the idea, and they loved it. We asked each designer to show us what they already had in stock, and picked from those pieces for our initial opening inventory.

Moving forwards, we are going to switch out the pieces in the space every two months or so, to showcase more of their work. The idea is to sell a designer’s pieces off the floor, to give them the means to make something new.

Also, since all the designers are local, they can customize their pieces. If a customer comes in here and wants a coffee table longer or shorter, or in a different material, it’s possible. We’re the place for those kinds of things. Anyone can come here, talk to us about what they’d like, and we can help them work with the designers to get exactly what they want.

[image via Apartment Therapy]

I love the concept. You’re not just a store – you’re also a community resource.

People like to know about the designers. We can tell you how Takeshi works right down the block. Every piece has it’s story, and we know it because we are friends with the designers. People like that. It makes it all much more personal.

Now I feel this pressure – we really need to make it for the designers we represent. Some of them are expecting babies. Some just became dads, others are having another child. They’re real people.

How do you want VOOS to grow?

We need to become a destination for interior designers and architects. What I didn’t realize was going to be so difficult, is bringing the Manhattanites into Brooklyn. Our real clientele, who is going to buy the $9,000 table, usually uses an interior designer. That’s why we need to get them to know about us.

People are starting to hear our name though, and once it really sticks in their mind it will be easier. You can see these are very beautiful, solid pieces. They are not just a fun design. We passionately love the work that is made here.

[image via The Architect's Newspaper]

What led you to start Jimmyjane?

The real turning point for me was going to dinner parties and talking about what I do. I would go on about my other design projects, but when I mentioned that I might be working on designing vibrators, that was all anyone wanted to talk about. Everyone would lean forward, start asking questions and begin this dialogue. It was like an informal focus group. People had many more thoughts on the matter than I would have imagined, had far more experience then I had anticipated, and were willing to talk about it.

FORM 6 Waterproof Rechargeable Vibrating Massager

I sat back and thought, “These people I’m talking to have nothing to do with the products that are the market right now. What if I create a product that makes sense for us?” Jimmyjane stemmed from that “for us, by us” concept. Nobody was making products like this.

LITTLE SOMETHING vibrator – in gold and platinum

So what were the first products like?

We really started from scratch, and solved the problems that were inherent in every vibrator. Toxic materials, noisy, scary-looking, hard to use, and not waterproof. Plus every vibrator has the same problem, that the vibration will eventually destroy the motor. So we designed and patented the only vibrator with a replaceable motor. You can change it out just like a battery.

Replacement motor for the LITTLE SOMETHING vibrator

Wow. Let’s back up. When did you first know you were interested in design?

I studied electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins, and worked for a while as an engineer at the Lawrence Berkley Laboratory on the human genome project. It was an extremely cool place to work, and I thought, “If I’m going to love engineering, I’m going to love it here.” But I still wasn’t totally enamored.

So I left, knowing I wanted to do something different, and ended up traveling for the better part of a year. While in Europe I met a professor at the Domus Academy. We were hanging out in his apartment, where he had all these weird objects and things half-made and half-unmade. I asked him what he did, and he described industrial design to me. It sounded like what I wanted to do – what I’d thought engineering would be like. When I returned to the states I looked into graduate schools, and ended up going to Pratt for my masters in ID.

Where did you head when you graduated?

I worked for a number of years at Ecco Design; it was really just a continuation of my education. The team that I was with were just amazing designers. It was such a transition from the academic view of design to the reality. I designed a lot of staplers, and did a lot of work on Motorola and Herman Miller projects. It was a great environment to dive into.

Then I moved to Alchemy in San Francisco, who ended up getting acquired by Frog, and we became the design team for the Frog Design office there. It was a phenomenal experience that introduced me to “big design”. I was there for two years, and at the end of it I was running a massive project to design 50 flat panel monitors. That project really tapped me out. I felt like what I was creating wasn’t meaningful. I loved the process, I loved drawing, but at the end of the day I had this sneaking suspicion that I was driving consumer demand without delivering anything more then incremental benefit.

EMBER Natural Emollient Massage Candles

What did you want to be doing?

I wanted to work on more meaningful projects, and have a wider role in the process, rather than just handing off my designs to clients. I wanted to eliminate some of the middlemen between myself and the market. So when I left Frog, I started Plink, an independent design and consulting firm.

Then, in the first couple months, I was approached by a couple of clients that asked me to look into products related to sex. Simultaneously. Nobody had ever come to me with this problem before. I went to a trade show of sex products to do some research. My first though was, “Whoa!” I had very limited experience with this stuff personally. But everyone else was just treating it like their industry, so I started picking stuff up and looking at it like a product.

My first reaction was, “I can make something much cooler then this.” A product that is better made, isn’t made of toxic materials, isn’t noisy, isn’t scary to look at, doesn’t have porn stars on the packaging, and actually functions when you open up the box. That was the first level.

What next?

When I got back to San Francisco, I thought, “That is a totally untapped market. Here is a place I can make a difference. This is important to people.” Instead of making an incremental difference, I could have a positive impact making people feel comfortable in their sexuality and not exposing them to harmful materials.

It seemed to me the industry had been resting on it’s laurels. It was able to sell crap, at unheard of mark-ups, to a public that was unwilling to step forward and say they wanted something better – simply because of the category. People were still buying these things, in spite of the fact they were toxic, noisy, and they had to give their credit card to someone they didn’t trust.

CONTOUR M – Ceramic Massage Stone

So where did you want to take the industry?

It was the most complex design project and problem I’ve ever under taken by leaps and bounds. It was so specific because everybody’s needs are incredibly unique. It’s not about ergonomics. It’s maybe 20% physiological, and 80% intellectual, emotional, and psychological. You create something specific enough that it functions well, but abstract enough that it meets everybody’s needs.

Adding to that challenge, it’s very difficult to have a dialogue with the consumer, since people are so evasive about their sexuality. They may not even be having honest conversations with themselves about what they want and need.

Which poses a huge problem, that you’ve clearly solved successfully, as far as how to approach consumers. You created a lifestyle.

That was always the goal. What we’ve created is neither a product nor a brand. A brand is a side-effect of the relationship with your consumer. A brand grows from products that deliver on their promise, honest design that is what it appears to be. That relationship with the consumer is what’s most valuable. You can’t make a logo and say you’re done. You’ve gotten nowhere near having a brand. I think that is a common misperception.

SPIN ME (With Benefits) – W Hotel & Jimmyjane partnership

Can you describe what Jimmyjane is doing right now?

We have two different lines – The Premier, which has limited distribution, and the Well Being Collection, which has very broad distribution. We sell to Selfridges and W Hotels, but we also sell to Whole Foods and Urban Outfitters.

This is about inclusiveness not exclusiveness. At times our price-points are exclusive, but actually that is our way of including another group of people. For some, to make the concept approachable, it needs to be seen and understood as a luxury product. Luxury is not something we aspire too, but a means to an end. That end being forming a connection with the consumer, and having them understand this in a different light.

We design products and experiences to provide pleasure, strengthen connections, and create possibilities. We’re not saying, “This is sexy, and that’s not.” We’re saying, “Here are a bunch of opportunities.” We’re providing the palette, but the key component is the individuals who paint with it.

Sexuality is a very vulnerable aspect of our lives. We are vulnerable physically and emotionally. We know who we sleep with, and why. The question stands, “Who are you sleeping with?” and with Jimmyjane, you know.

Prepara’s Power Plant

How did you two meet?

Ed: I had been freelancing at Smart Design for a year, and Dean had been there full-time for a couple years. We started working on a project together, and the project became more difficult than it needed to be. Why have so many levels of bureaucracy between your drawings and the client?

Dean: And Smart was paying us practically nothing. Ed and I thought, “You know what, if we landed one client job on our own, it would pay what our salaries are.”

E: But we didn’t want to get an office and overhead, without work, because that creates all sorts of pressure. We knew people who had done that – left their jobs, borrowed money from the bank, gotten an office, and then they’re already 30 grand in debt.

D: We worked out of each others’ apartments. Ed would come over and cut foam at my apartment, because I had a spare room. And I’d go over to Ed’s to get some sanity, when his ex-girlfriend wasn’t there.

FRS Watch

When did Pollen outgrow your apartments?

E: Eventually it got to a point where working from home was kind of embarrassing, because clients would want to come over. You’re masquerading as if you were a bigger firm.

D: In hindsight, I don’t really think the clients were embarrassed. I think we were embarrassed. You feel uncomfortable. But the client is already using you for a good reason, which is that they’re saving a lot of money. And they’re getting really good design.

E: In 1999, we’d been working out of our apartments for 2 years, when a posting came up for a place in the middle of SoHo. The price was too good. We thought, “Something’s wrong. It’s got to be a mistake.” It was on the corner of Prince and Wooster, looking down into the Camper store. And it was $1200 a month. It was small, though, like 500 square feet.

D: You’re exaggerating about the 500 square feet. Maybe if you included the outside air space. If you were six feet tall, and you leaned out the window…

E: Alright, it was 480. We measured. And at one point we had 7 or 8 people in there. It was a little tight! We spent 5 years in that studio. Our model shop took up a quarter of the space. Well, the only machine we had was a bandsaw. All our designs were limited to the size of the block of foam that would fit on it.

D: That’s really going to look good in the interview! When that’s written, it won’t even have a sense of humor to it. “Pollen Design only accepts projects that fit on their bandsaw.”

E: We have a huge bandsaw, now. And we have a disc sander too, so look out!

Prepara’s Parking Meter Alarm for Kikkerland

How did you get your first clients?

E: We decided we needed to each get a client, so neither of us was mooching off the other. Dean went to the CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, with his little leather briefcase/portfolio…

D: Every designer carries a leather briefcase. We know this now, because we’re manufacturers ourselves, and we do the trade shows. If you ever see a designer coming with a leather briefcase, you have to turn and hide.

E: At that show Dean landed a small manufacturer of cordless phones as a client. And then I went to the housewares show and landed a housewares client. My pitch was, look, I’m the guy that actually does the work when you hire a big firm. So instead of going through them, why not just hire me directly? I may be working in my underwear in my apartment, but it’s the same guy doing the work.

D: But that pitch only works to a certain point. It stops working when the projects get bigger. As time went on, we became the go-to resource for a lot of our clients. Not just for design, but everything from professional photography through to the packaging, even writing the copy about the product. Ed and I have different strengths, and we fill in each others’ weaknesses. As the company got bigger, we built a team around us, with other people that fill those gaps. As our team solidified, we were able to become a bit more picky about projects.

Prepara’s Cliq garlic crusher

When we first tried to set up this interview, you were in Germany. I assume you were at the housewares show in Frankfurt? Were you showing your Prepara line?

D: Yeah, the big story is Prepara now. When you do client work, you’re at the mercy of too many variables. How they market the product, who they go to to make it, all these things. We wanted to get to the point where we could do the manufacturing ourselves. Over the years, we’ve tried every other business model known to man. Whether it’s licensing, or retainers… Each option has pros and cons. Recently, 3 or 4 years ago, we conceived of the idea of doing our own line of housewares.

E: In the past, when we had a couple of ideas on the drawing board we would have licensed them. Typically we’d deal with the patenting, go through the process, patent them and license them to other housewares companies. For the Prepara line, we had a couple ideas, and we decided to do everything ourselves. We already knew the manufacturers. We do the graphic design.

And then you showed it at the fairs?

E: Not yet.

D: You’ve got to have more than like 2 items. So you start thinking about what else would be complementary to it. One thing led to another. We met our third partner in Prepara, and he comes from a retail background. His job and expertise is in sales. He’s a very good resource; he knows the right people. We’ve been building it. Prepara takes up a lot of time and energy, but it’s something we’re both very passionate about.

E: We didn’t just wake up one day and start Prepara and have it succeed. There were a few failures before that. Dean and I had some steady clients at Pollen, and we had a nice retainer model, so we had spare time to tinker around in the shop. At one point we started a line of barbecue tools that didn’t go very far. And there was the “Shoulder Boulder.” There were a lot more that we probably don’t even want to remember. But they were critical learning moments, and otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get to where we are now with Prepara. Each of them was important.

D: I’d like to add something to what you were saying about the failures. You can do the best piece of work ever, some of the things that personally are more fulfilling to me, and it won’t work in the marketplace. It’s incredible, to me. You could do the nicest piece of design work, and it’ll win awards, and that’s like the kiss of death. The stuff that you think is going to fly off the shelves, doesn’t. And the stuff that you don’t even think is portfolio-w
orthy does really well.

E: Nobody has a crystal ball.

Prepara’s Trio tri-blade peeler

What’s your advice for entrepreneurs?

E: Don’t bet the farm. Hedge your bets. Take it slow. Try to get feedback from the marketplace before you lay it all down. Dean and I, over the years, have spent all this money taking things really far without getting a read from the marketplace. Now we try to get a read early on. Also, now that we’re selling product, our job is totally different. I don’t know, do you even consider yourself a designer still?

D: Design Director. More of a director.

Design becomes a smaller and smaller part of it.

D: You’re like an antenna, now. You pick up everything. You’re at the trade shows, so you hear feedback from actual users and buyers. You go to the stores, introduce yourself to the store manager, talk to them about your product and they’ll give you free reign to kind of hang out and observe. And then you’re speaking to the factories, on a different level from just being the designer. You’re the creator and owner, and you talk about financial things. Basically you’re like a huge antenna, receiving all this information, and it’s your job now to translate that to the rest of the team.

E: Another piece of advice is, when I was a young guy, right out of school, I didn’t really understand the value of an idea. You’re so focused on just getting your product out there that you give this guy 10% and that guy 15%. We had one guy who wanted to distribute our product and keep 90% for himself. But all he had was a warehouse. It should be the other way around; you should be getting 90%. Don’t let go of ownership of your idea. You should trademark it, copyright it, and patent it if possible. Then you should hire someone to sell it. You don’t really understand how important that is until you’ve been doing this for a while.

Rabbit corkscrew

This story is about how awesome Karl’s work is. He creates conceptual objects that we are huge fans of. His work is available here, in his online store. The story of how he started his studio is below. And there’s even more good stuff at http://www.oboiler.com

How did you get into design?

I wanted to do product design because I wanted to learn how everything was made, and to be able to make it. That sort of drives the way I think about design. The fabrication technique really informs what something will look like in the end.

What techniques/materials do you work with?

Metal, wood, plastics, resins… Everything. I figure out what the project needs.

I had a really challenging project recently that involved a lot of gears and springs and wind-up things. I was talking to a company about manufacturing it. They liked the idea, but wanted to see it in action. So I made a really crude model. You had to spin it really fast, but it worked! I made this little video and showed it to them. And they said, “That’s great, but can you make it really work?”

It was a real challenge. I ended up making a proof-of-concept dummy. It was a block, rather than the form it’s supposed to be in, but it was a block that they could take to China and say, “Here. Refine this and make it more efficient.” It had all kinds of crazy parts, things that I took from a Spirograph and gears from a dissected critter toy. But it really worked! Whew. After the fourth prototype and countless hours, I got it to work.

You studied product design at RISD. Did you come straight to New York?

After school, I went to San Francisco for four years. Until I got fed up with how slowly things move out there!

I was doing interior architecture and fabrication for a company called Sand Studios. I learned a lot about making really big, heavy stuff. Working with metal is fascinating. It takes so much precision and attention to detail. So I learned about that, but I was also interested in doing smaller products. I worked on my own projects in tandem with that job, making my own stuff on the side while building windows and doors and staircases for them.

When you moved to New York, did you take a job here?

No, when I left Sand Studios, it was sort of the understanding that I would help them for a little while and do freelance for them, because they had a lot of projects they had to finish up. But I was really interested in taking my own projects that I had begun, running with them, and seeing how far I could go.

And I had some friends here, you guys know them, Jan and Alissia. They’re nice product-design folks. I shared a studio with them. So it was really nice to get to New York and right away settle into a spot where I could work. I needed to have a shop so I could keep making things and prototyping. It’s really hard to have a bandsaw next to your bed!

How did you promote your own products that you were doing on the side?

The first time that I showed at ICFF was through DesignBoom. They’re nice folks. I sold a little metal campfire, that looks like logs made of metal. And I showed the thermotropic light that I designed. That was the first thing I actually committed to and went the whole nine yards – designed it, designed packaging and promoted it. That was a pretty cool little thing to do. I also had lace-patterned packaging tape, which I still sell. I got orders today! I’m surprised that thing is still going. That’s one of the cool things about the life of your products – they wander about on the internet and you don’t know where they’re going, but you get orders from Rio and Taiwan.

DesignBoom was good, it got me somewhere, on the internet at least. I got some blog attention and some press out of it. More than anything, it was approval. I learned, yeah, you can do this. It was very encouraging.

So where are you heading? What’s next on your plate?

For one, I’d love to do more furniture. Also, I would really like to start working with companies and having things produced. One of my ambitions is to have the luxury of giving a company a design, and then that’s it! Oh man, that’d be sweet. And I’d like to work with other people. I’ve been doing the freelance thing by myself for a year. After hashing the same ideas out in your head for a while, you start doubting whether or not they’re good. Finding other people to work with, and doing collaborative stuff, would be interesting.

What’s your advice for creatives setting out on their own?

Some friends of mine were recently asked that question, and their response was fantastic. It was, “Don’t be shitty.” That’s it. That’s the advice. Be nice to the people that you’re talking to. Be a good, honest person, and it will take you so far.

Also, it’s hard to go in with a plan of attack. You can say, “I want a business plan, and I want to talk to these people and have them produce my stuff.” But it’ll never work out according to plan. You have to just dive in.