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

Yvette’s costume for Tracy Morgan in A Couple of Dicks

Could you describe what your studio does?

We do specialty costumes. I make things that most costume shops either can’t, or won’t, because it’s not cost-effective. They need to make 50 of something for it to work for them, since they have an army of stitchers that need to be fed work constantly.

The last job I did was a cell phone costume for Tracy Morgan, for the film A Couple of Dicks. I made 16 of them in 10 days. They need 16 because he’s going to go through many phases of destroying this costume – he gets attacked by a pit bull, etc.

What’s your background? How did you end up starting a studio like this?

When I went to art school, I was going to be a graphic designer. Along the way I discovered that everything I made related to the human figure, somehow. Whatever the assignment, I would make either a person or clothing or some sort of performance. There really wasn’t a machine or a method that was not comfortable to me. For example, I’d go into the sculpture department and I’d weld a medieval coat.

Starlight Express

Awesome! What brought you to New York?

I got a job at the company which was making Starlight Express costumes for Broadway. They were the most complicated costumes I’d ever seen. When I saw their costumes, I thought, “I want to make things like that!” There was a shop full of about 100 people. They had a bandsaw in the back, cutting foam to go inside the vacuformed pieces that became the shoulders. There was a lot of spandex, and iron-on sparkly stuff, and studs and grommets. Every possible material was in these costumes. It was kind of the perfect entry for me.

It sounds like you found your niche pretty quickly.

Well, not quite. When I first came to New York from Kansas City, I was blasted out of here. In a single day I found out that my car was stolen, my roommate turned out to be a heroin addict, and one of my jobs ended. So I bought a little bottle of Smirnoff and went to the Fort Greene park and just cried! And this was back when Fort Greene was really nasty, not like it is today.

After that I ended up going to Hartford for a little while, to work for the Hartford Stage Company, a repertory theatre. But Hartford wasn’t my dream. I wasn’t thinking, “I can’t want to move to Hartford, Connecticut, the insurance capital of America!” That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to go to New York and be an art star! So I moved back here and gave it another go.

Yvette’s in her Pedestrian Project costume

So the dream was to be an Art Star?

In the beginning. Then I spent some time in that world. It felt like an insane asylum. The costume world felt much better. It had structure. The designers were crazy, but they weren’t AS crazy as the artists – they could show up for appointments. I bounced around between the art world and the costume world for a while.

Could you tell us about your famous Pedestrian Project? What was the concept behind that?

I started doing that in 1989, when I got to New York and realized it was really hard to stand out here. I thought, “Everybody is trying to be somebody – why not just be nobody?” And people did notice that! It was irony and satire at it’s best. I got to have my own little Art Star moment, and we travelled around the world. We were invited to go perform in 8 or 9 countries. They paid us to go, and I got to be the visiting person with the entourage.

I discovered that I didn’t really like it. It’s exhausting to boss people around all the time. It really is. The artist in me kind of just wants to be left alone. I don’t do good work unless I have my quiet time. When you become that person, you don’t get quiet time anymore. If quiet time is where you get your inspiration, then the whole house of cards just falls.

And at a certain point it became clear to me that I needed to pay the rent on a regular basis. The practical side kicked in – I realized I don’t have a trust fund, and nobody was dying soon, and I’d played the lotto twice and didn’t win…

Yvette for Lion King

How did you start your studio?

It was an organic process, that nobody really prepares you for. I’d been freelancing for a while, hopping from job to job. You get your name around enough and people start asking you to do things. It’s a natural evolution. People came to me asking for costumes, I said, “Yeah, sure,” and then I thought, “Where am I going to build this?”

I had a loft in Williamsburg on N. 3rd, back when there were always cars and dumpsters on fire and there were hookers all up and down Wythe Avenue. My roommate and I watched the news once and saw a crack house getting busted, then realized it was across the street from us! We looked out the window and there were cop cars everywhere.

The first job I did in my loft was a set of costumes for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak dance company. Then the Lion King came around. I had worked in a shop making the mock-up costumes for their first reading with Michael Eisner. When the show got picked up, they asked me if I would make all the hyenas. Then I got a call from Nickelodeon, asking me to build the costumes for a pilot project.

Yvette with her Rugrats costumes

Wow – so the big names started rolling in!

Yeah. All of a sudden I had an incredible amount of work! After that pilot was shot, Nickelodeon awarded me the project of making all their costumes for theme parks. I was in my little loft and I had to expand. I subletted a space in the Pencil Factory to fabricate the fiberglass molds that were needed to build the giant character heads. I hired people. We did a lot of work there – Blue’s Clues, Pokemon…

We were doing Scooby Doo and Jimmy Neutron when the World Trade Center came down. We could see it from the top of our building. The blackout also happened when we were in that building. We had made the big giant plant for the Broadway version of Little Shop of Horrors, and were loading it into a freight elevator when all the power went out. If it had been a minute earlier we would have been trapped in an elevator with that thing.

Now you’re based in the GMDC – what brought you here?

The theme parks were sold to new management, and the orders became less. I started doing less of that work and more one-offs for ad agencies and commercials. I needed less staff and less space. I’m getting back to being the kind of studio I was in 1997, when I was making costumes for Baryshnikov. But now I have this tidal wave of experience under my belt and really know what I’m doing!

How is the GMDC different from other studio spaces in the city?

We like to describe ourselves as a bit of a benevolent landlord. When a check’s late, they don’t get a letter from a lawyer – we kind of work with them, and sometimes we’ll find out that this guy doesn’t have a lot of work but this guy does, and we put them together.

That’s incredible – definitely not your average building!

We do things that a traditional landlord wouldn’t do. We know a lot about the individual businesses. One of the reasons we know a lot is because they’re so interesting and cool, quite honestly! It’s true. It’s really true. Another reason we know is because the more we know about them, the more we can help them.

There’s a lot of cross-pollination. A lot of our tenants do work with other tenants. The metal spinner here at 1155 Manhattan Ave. makes all the lamp bases for our lamp manufacturer at 810 Humboldt St. You bring together all these creative people and they find a way to work together somehow.

Artists and artisans in New York are constantly getting kicked out of their studios – that’s another one of your draws, correct?

Exactly. We’re a bit of a port in a storm. Our phones are constantly ringing with people who say, “I was in this building for 18 months, and now the landlord wants to turn it into a condo.” We’re a non-profit organization. We’re not looking to say, “Hey, let’s flip this thing and build a condo!” They come to us for long-term stability, and because our lease rates are slightly below market rates.

Our minimum lease is 5 years, with an option for 10 years. Obviously people are concerned about how much they’re going to spend on rent, but they also need to know that if they come in here, set up their shop, build it our, spend 20, or 30, or $50K, whatever it costs them to move and set up their shop, that they’ll have 10 years when they’re not looking over their shoulder.

Could you talk a little about how the GMDC started, and what your mission was?

Sure. We started, actually, around saving this building – 1155/1205 Manhattan Avenue. In the mid-to-late 80s there was a loose group of small manufacturers here. A lot of woodworkers. But it was a little bit like the wild west – there were people living here, and there were parts of the facility that weren’t occupied. Then the property owner lost the building to the city for non-payment of taxes. The city started managing it, and they were strongly considering knocking it down.

Some of the legitimate manufacturers got together and tried to save the facility. This building is over 300,000 square feet! It’s long story, but in short, they were able to save it and the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center was created. The newly-formed GMDC bought this building from the city for $1. That was in the 80’s – that world doesn’t exist anymore.

That’s an amazing story. What happened once the GMDC owned the building?

The city gave us some money to begin fixing it up. That was 17 years ago. Then we went on to do a series of other projects – 810 Humboldt Street, 7 St. Nicholas, 132 Harrison Place, and most recently, 221 McKibbin Street. We bought these buildings from private property owners, and we put money into them and brought them to the marketplace for small manufacturers and artisans.

Can you tell us about your tenants, the small manufacturers that are based in the GMDC?

Our tenants are a really interesting group. This is kind of a snapshot of modern, urban manufacturing. Outside of some food processing and some bakeries that are still around, there aren’t very many large-scale manufacturers left in New York City. Or the Northeast, for that matter. But our tenants, we think, represent the future of urban manufacturing.

What kind of things are they making?

We have some traditional North Brooklyn woodworkers. Then we have someone like Richard Webber. If the Museum of Natural History finds a tyrannosaurus rex, and they don’t find all the bones, they bring the bones to him and he puts them together and builds a frame to support them.

That is so cool!

Yeah. He has specimens up in his shop that are millions of years old! It’s a very interesting, eclectic group. Another tenant is Irca Metals. Francisco is a metal spinner. He takes a flat piece of stock and puts it on a lathe and makes a light fixture, or a pizza pan, or an urn. We have a jewelry guy who takes antique bakelite plastic, adorns it with precious and semi-precious stones, and sells $20,000 bracelets to Barney’s. Again, it’s a very small, custom operation.

You guys are going to meet with Yvette Helin, right?

Yeah, we’re interviewing her next.

When you go up to her shop you’ll see Jimmy Neutron’s head. She made the costume for the Geico gecko! It’s a very creative, interesting shop. But she’s not turning out 100 of anything. It’s usually one or two very custom, specific things. Even our woodworkers are not high-volume manufacturers. They’re doing commissioned furniture, one-of-a-kind pieces. In the case of someone like Yvette Helin, she’s serving a very distinct commercial, theatrical niche. She needs to be here because her big clients are based on 42nd St.

The guy who’s doing jewelry needs to be here because the Barney’s buyers are in New York. And because he wants to have his bracelet on the next cover of Elle, and the magazines are all here too. The architectural woodworker needs to be here because he’s probably doing a fancy brownstone on the upper east side, or a board room on Park Avenue. We have another tenant, Milo Mottola, who has done the windows for the major department stores at Christmas-time. All the mechanical things, and all the creative things that go on, are done in his shop. He needs to be here because Saks Fifth Avenue’s creative director is coming over twice a week to see the progress.

The common theme is that they’re all small, custom, value-added manufacturers that need to be in New York City, because this is where their market is – they need to interact with their clients.

Stay tuned for interviews with a few of the manufacturers working out of the GMDC!

Steven Urbatsch and Matthew Josephs run Material Process Systems. Their extensive shop focuses on architectural and furniture fabrication. During a slow period in the shop due to the recession, they dreamed up the idea for RE/BUILD. Fast forward a few months and the show is just about ready to open, May 15th at Gallery 1889 in Greenpoint.

Construction of Daniel Harper’s piece for RE/BUILD

How did you come up with the idea for RE/BUILD?

Matt: The first quarter of 2009 was slow for us. And that’s when we hatched this plan. Things were starting to compress and condense in the market. But we still have this beautiful shop, we still have the guys that work in it, we have a lot of material left over from previous jobs, and we have relationships with a lot of really great designers.

Steve: We invited some designers and architects that we knew to come in and design pieces using the extra material we have sitting around. As designers and architects, they like to have parameters, and so we gave them certain constraints, but they could kind of make whatever they wanted.

Matt: We figured, hell, let’s have a party. Let’s do something fun with the resources we have. But not just fun – also experimental and interesting. Let’s play with ideas that we’ve been kicking around. Let’s realize some of these crazy notions and put them to the test.

Where are you holding the show?

Matt: Gallery 1889 is 1066 Manhattan Avenue. It’s the corner piece in a group of property that’s been in my family for about 100 years. My great-grandfather settled in Greenpoint back around the turn of the century. The last century. My father is the third-generation proprietor over there. As times have changed, the business has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. So he still has this property, and he still runs a store, but 1066 has been vacant for about a year and change now.

Steve: We’ve had our eye on this particular space for quite a while. And then one morning we were just sitting in here brainstorming, and it seemed like the moment to take advantage of it.

Construction of John Seward’s piece for RE/BUILD

Let’s talk a little about your company, Material Process Systems. How did MPS start?

Steve: We’re both sculptors, that’s our background.

Matt: Recovering sculptors.

Steve: Matt had a wood shop and some space over here, and I had a metal shop down the street. We knew each other, and we were working on some projects together, and it came to a point where it made sense for us to merge. We teamed up on the office and the support staff. We do mostly commercial and residential projects.

Matt: Much of what we work with here is sheet material, in the metals and the woods. It creates an interesting set of parameters within which we can work.

When you decided to put together a show, who are the designers you brought in?

Steve: We wanted the designers who came in to have a feel for what we do. Except for a couple people, we’ve worked with everybody before. They’ve got an aesthetic that is suitable for what we make.

Matt: Let’s go down the list. Simon Eisinger, he’s a partner at Lynch / Eisinger / Design. He’s someone we’ve known for many years and we’ve done quite a bit of work with. Including some really remarkable stuff for Nike – 2 stores for them.

Nike’s Geneology of Speed exhibition, fabricated by MPS

Steve: There’s Matter Practice, which is Alfred Zollinger and Sandra Wheeler. They’re another Brooklyn architecture and design company who we’ve known for many years. I think I met them 10 or 12 years ago. Periodically we’ve done projects with them.

Matt: And Dave Scott – who’s more than just a participant, he’s a very close friend and ally. His office is in this building, and he works out of this shop. He makes much of his own goods and produces his projects here. Together we have a strategic alliance, I guess you could call it. We produce the Plateau line with the very same material that the black bench is made out of. So Dave Scott’s a very close friend and a dynamite designer.

Steve: And then, John Seward is a Pratt student. We thought it would be great to get a little bit of a different perspective.

Matt: Working with students, and there are two, John and Elizabeth, is central to the idea of RE/BUILD. Because the students represent something fresh and new and different and untested.

Construction of Elizabeth Cordes’ piece for RE/BUILD

Matt: And Dan Harper was brought to us by the co-producer of this event, Susie Watkins. Honestly, we don’t know him that well, but he’s blowing our minds.

Steve: He came in kind of late, so we’re actually just working his piece out right now. Hopefully we’ll be able to pull this thing off. It’s this crazy contraption – he’s more of an artists than a product designer, so it’s actually not going to be a furniture piece. It’s going to be this thing that moves and cycles.

Construction of Daniel Harper’s piece for RE/BUILD

We’ve had several people come to us and tell us about offsite shows they’re putting together. We started to feel like this year is really going to be about the offsite shows. Nobody’s got the money to take the standard route, so everyone’s doing really creative stuff.

Steve: In a way, not having any money kind of liberates you. Nobody expects a fancy gala. You can just make cool stuff and forget the pretenses.

How did your partnership start?

We both went to Carnegie Mellon for communication design. We lived together in the beginning of college, in a shitty old house with 4 other people. We started just discussing a lot of things and bouncing ideas off each other.

Could you talk us through a few of the different projects you’ve done?

The “Smoke Campaign” was a shoot we put together during our junior year at CMU. It was really our first attempt at putting together a shoot and handling everything ourselves. It gave us a taste of how to organize and approach these sorts of projects that we were always talking about.

We had the idea during a class critique. Paul was showing me these photos done by Miles Aldridge, while the professor was talking about the profit and marketing techniques of tobacco companies. And I’d been really into rhinestones. It all synthesized into one concept, and we started blinging out tons of cigars & cigarettes. We got really lucky with timing, and some great people went out of their way to help us out. The photo below is a portrait of Hollywood Classic, a local Pittsburgh rapper.

This next shoot was for musical artist Patty Crash. Back in the summer of ‘07, we were working with this guy trying to launch his music label. The schedule for this shoot was really nuts. We drove around Long Island in a rented van with this music artist, a couple of friends, and our equipment. We were scouting locations for the shoot on the fly, for probably 13 hours straight! As grueling as it was, we got some good material out of it, and overall was a great experience. For this specific image, the owner of the label spotted a car rental place that had these great old-school london cabs. One thing led to another, and before we knew it he was letting us shoot in his garage with his cars.

Last October we did a series of photos inspired from the colors, textures and themes surrounding American novelty ice-creams and popsicles. This particular image was inspired by a ‘creamsicle’ palette.

What brought you from Pittsburgh to NYC?

First, in the summer of 2007, we lived together in the lower east side. Don interned for Giovanni Bianco Studio 65 and Paul interned Artists & Creatives. After those internships we went back to school and worked on ideas we had as much as we could in our spare time.

That’s when we started really tossing around the idea of making The Supervisory happen. In the spring of ‘08 we got the job to shoot a campaign for NOOKA. We came out to New York and shot for them the same week as graduation. Then we really kicked it to full speed. We moved to New York, started working on our website, organizing our portfolio, and hammering down our philosophy and direction. We got started with graduation money and an $8,000 credit card!

I love the work you did for NOOKA. Could you tell me a little about that shoot?

Well, we got the project when we were still students. We flew out to New York on a Friday, did the shoot, and flew back to Pittsburgh on Monday and had to deal with finals and graduation prep. It was pretty crazy. The inspiration came from “retro-futuristic” movies like THX1138, 2001 Space Odyssey, and Blade Runner. The overall idea was to create a really desolate and other-wordly experience with the images. We did the creative direction of the campaign aesthetic, along with the photography and post production. We’re actually working with them right now on their next campaign. Be on the lookout!

When you graduated and decided to pursue The Supervisory, what were your next steps?

We incorporated in July of 08 and right about the same time signed with Artists & Creatives. It was beneficial to have the credibility of agency representation. But we started to find that since we’re still in the early stages of our company, we really wanted to start genuine relationships with our clients and collaborators rather than trying to land huge agency clients. We recently left them, in mid-Febuary, and have fully struck out on our own.

Where is your studio heading? Who would your ideal client be?

Well, we’re actually working on a project right now for Danger, who’s pretty much our idea client. He saw a video of ours that we just put together because we were listening to and were inspired by his music. And now we’re working with him on a video! We really just want to stay open and not pigeon-hole ourselves in a certain role or a certain style. Since we’re coming from a design-school background, rather than a fine art background, we approach photography and art direction as problem-solving.

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.

How would you describe DESU’s philosophy?

I think that changes depending on what interests me at the time. Generally speaking, I work on a reductionist aesthetic; I try to distill an idea down to its essence. I try to look beyond function, and also study the process of making. How a piece is crafted is really important. If you have good clean lines, quality material, and impeccable craftsmanship, then it’s a combination that’s tough to beat.

How did you first get interested in designing and building?

I started designing furniture when I arrived at undergraduate school and wanted to improve life in a dorm room. I came from a typical small-town, rural, Midwestern background, and had limited exposure to fine art and design. I was really enjoying making furniture and designing the dorm room my roommate and I lived in. My mother suggested I take a design class, which I did and I became immediately hooked.

When I got out of school I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I really wanted to work in furniture, so I started designing pieces. I got a part-time job at a furniture store. They didn’t have any business at the time so I just sat there all day long, in this totally empty place, and designed furniture – I was young, hungry, and really passionate about it.

My roommate at the time introduced me to a metalsmith, and I hired him to build my first piece. After a while, I realized I couldn’t afford to pay someone else to build my pieces and set out to make my prototypes on my own. After about a year, I had built 5 pieces. At that point, I needed to get out of Iowa if I was to make a life in furniture design.

A good friend was teaching English in Japan, and he invited me to go over there and see what I could make happen. Somehow, I lucked into this gig working with a team of artists designing and building out nightclubs and restaurants in Japan and Singapore. I got thrown into the deep end of the pool, and learned enough about making things that I got to the point where I could start doing it professionally a few years later.

What drove you to start your own firm?

There was never a plan, but if you look back at my entire adult life, I’ve always worked for myself in one capacity or another. After Japan, I went to grad school at SCI-Arc, but decided there wasn’t enough autonomy in architecture, and decided to drop out. I was already paying rent by making client furniture in the Sci-Arc metal shop.

One classmate, a good friend of mine, hired me to make some furniture, and then one of my instructors hired me. Slowly but surely, I moved from the school’s metal shop to my garage, and from my garage into a proper shop; the whole process always being a means to make my own pieces. After 7 years of doing mostly other people’s fabrication, I decided to make a clean break and move to New York to concentrate on my own designs. Now 8 years after that move, we have this furniture company up and running.

What’s your take on the difference between LA and NY’s design scenes?

I think that New York is much more geared towards design in general. It’s a better place if you want to get exposure doing furniture design. This is partly because of the trade shows like ICFF, and partly because there’s more of a clientele in New York that will purchase high-end pieces. The downside to NY is that it’s really expensive to manufacture here.

How did you get your first clients?

I was really doing the same thing a lot of other people do. When I was first starting out in Iowa, I would go into show rooms at the Chicago Merchandise Mart, and show them drawings. They’d say ok, I want to see this one made, but it didn’t really ever end up being very fruitful. Occasionally I would get private clients through word of mouth – they were mostly architects.

At the point we’re at today, we’ve evolved into an internet retailer as well as a manufacturer. The bread and butter of our business is in internet sales – mostly the small items. We find the accessories we’ve made do the best with this model. If it’s something we can easily UPS, people will buy it without having to see it in person. The really big ticket items we’ll sell occasionally over the internet, but not very often.

Do you sell through showrooms, then?

We have one in the city called Suite NY. They’re relatively new, on Madison and 59th in midtown. We got in with them about a year go, and they’re starting to sell some of our bigger items – the work that we don’t really sell over the internet.

What kind of customers does your work attract?

The only people I can really asses are those we come into personal contact with, or meet at trade shows, and they tend to run the gamut, from the young to the old, to people with grand residences and people who have small apartments. We also have many trade clients that specify our products on their projects.

Ellen LaVeyra (Media Director): The demographic that a particular magazine attracts is really interesting. Our door knocker and spice rack were in House Beautiful, and we got tons of phone calls because elderly people were buying it. We could tell over the phone that they were not people used to buying over the internet – they didn’t have email addresses, they were people used to buying things over the phone.

What advice do you have for creative entrepreneurs?

You have to be very persistent. Do what you really want to do, because you will be spending all of your time doing it and you need to keep motivated. Hire good people to do the things you don’t do well, especially for the business side. Artists and designers tend to work from an emotional perspective. It’s good to have a rationalist in your midst to keep the brackets on your dreaming.

Did you find that it was hard starting a business in the US, after doing business in Europe?

I think it’s easier in the US. People are much more open for doing business. It’s a bigger country; you have 300 million potential clients. That helps. Holland has 17 million people. And if you want to do all of Europe, you first have to learn Spanish for the Spanish market, French for the French market… It’s way harder, actually.

Right now I’m talking to Kikkerland, which is a big design company, in my opinion. And in the Netherlands, people have never heard of them. It’s amazing. And if they sell something, they sell a million a year. Find a company who does that in the Netherlands! It’s impossible.

[Kikkerland booth design, ICFF 2008]

You intitally studied architecture in school. How has that helped you, and why did you switch into product design?

I always wanted to do product design. The schooling system is a little bit different in the Netherlands. When I was 16 or 17 I had to choose a focus, and I wanted to do industrial design. I wanted to go to the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the best in the Netherlands. But at that time, they were getting so many requests that they picked the best of the best. I made the first round, but in the second round they said “You’re good, wait another two years and then come back, you’re too young.”

Then suddenly I had to do something else. I was always good with math and physics and I’m pretty analytical, too, and I liked the creative part, so I was hoping that architecture would kind of bring that together. I learned a lot there. It helped me get a job as a retail designer for this Dutch store, a little bit similar to Target. A cross-breed between Target and Home Depot, a big chain in the Netherlands. Based on my experience from architecture I could work there, which I did for two years full time, and then I started Design Academy part time. Eventually I had to choose; I was doing half study and half work. So I decided to focus on Design Academy full time.

[Rough Collection for GOODS]

And after you finished at Eindhoven you started your first studio?

When I studied there, my friend Maarten Baptist and I always helped each other out. Once school was over, we had a big black hole, what to do now. I had the company I was a retail designer for as a client, and I had a little bit of money and I could get my own studio. But then you’re there alone. And I was like, OK, what now? So that’s when I asked him to join me, and we set up WATdesign. The idea was we do our own stuff, and we do stuff together, and we use the best of each other. We had one corporate identity, one phone line, and slowly we got projects as WATdesign.

When and why did you come to the US?

2 years ago. Basically for Alissia. I met her in Milan. But she was in New York, and I was in the Netherlands, and you want to be together at a certain point! What to do then? She was considering coming back to the Netherlands; she grew up there and has a lot of friends there. But I felt I was born in Eindhoven, I went to school in Eindhoven, I had my company in Eindhoven… I was ready for a change.

The first idea was that we would have WATdesign in Europe, and then I would start WATdesign in the US and we would help each other out. We already had Kikkerland as a client when we were in the Netherlands. And we were working with Umbra. So we thought it might work even better this way. But the distance made it hard to communicate. So I ended up starting my own studio here.

[Treehooked]

How do you and Alissia collaborate?

The first project when I came to New York was with Alissia. I was looking to get going and start some momentum, so I said, “Let’s just launch a product.” So we designed a coat hook together. It was easy to produce, so we started doing it ourselves. We did production with a little help from Wabnitz Editions. She does a lot of Dutch brands, and was willing to do distribution for us.

That actually went pretty well. But then you’re suddenly being a business man and not designing anymore. You have to solve all sorts of problems and it’s a whole different world. The business part is fun sometimes too, but you’re a designer and you want to design.

How do you get back to your creative place once you’ve started to get that deep into the business end?

Don’t produce yourself. Don’t sell yourself. I found a company in the Netherlands who does a lot of coat hooks, who specializes in it. I contacted them about our design and they were happy to take it into their collection. So we get a good percentage of royalties, and they’re stuck with the trouble, retailers and all that!

[clock ZER00:00]

You’ve worked with most of the major distributors. How did that happen?

I did my best! The funny thing is, when you start, you think, “I want to work for them and them, but they’re not waiting for my designs.” Actually they are waiting for your designs. They want the best possible stuff. Just contact them; that’s what I do. Right now I’m working on some new things for Areaware. I talk to Artecnica, and whenever I get something nice they are open for it.

I work with Kikkerland a lot. They’re working on about 10 products of mine right now. It started with them producing a little clock I designed, and then he asked me to scout for them. So I show him new products every quarter, either things I’ve designed myself or things I find at shows, etc.

Your booth design for Kikkerland at ICFF last year was one of my favorite things in the whole show. Are you planning on doing more exhibit design?

I still love architecture and interiors. It’s hard to get an interior project. Designing a product, you can manufacture it yourself. For an interior you really have to have a client. The exhibition stuff is one route to go, but there’s not a lot of money for those booths. And for the booths you have to use union workers, which doesn’t help in terms of coming up with something really creative. They’re expensive and they can’t always do what you want.

What advice do you have for someone starting their own studio?

Don’t hesitate to contact every client who you think you could work for. If you have something cool, they’re open for it. I did a design for Kikkerland based upon the hanging tree-air-fresheners in cars. It was based on that form, but we found out it was trademarked, so Kikkerland dropped it. I just contacted the people at the air-freshener company about it on a whim, and they were like, “It’s an awesome product! Let’s do it!” They want to license it, and the project is back on again. Just go for it.

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.

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.