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

Grenade Oil Lamp by Piet Houtenbos

Your grenade oil lamp really put you on the map as a designer to watch. How did you come up with the design?

I designed them in 1997, in college, during my freshman year at RISD. The idea was to take something that exists and turn it into something else. I found these grenades in an army surpulus store, held one, and thought it was incredible. I never thought I would hold a grenade. It’s such a powerful object and it was such a weird experience to hold it.

After a few ideas I realized I should put a wick in it and make it an oil lamp.

When did you start selling them?

After I graduated, Dave from The Future Perfect emailed me out of the blue. I’d just posted some of my college work on Coroflot. He said, “I’ve seen your pieces, I’m opening a store, and I’d love to sell your work.” I told him that I had these grenade lamps that I could easily make. It was at the height of the Iraq war, so the timing was perfect.

It was a very lucky product for a young designer, because we struggle with the cost of everything. Young designer’s work is expensive because we don’t manufacture huge runs. It costs a lot of money to make something cheap.

Grenades are cast by the government, dirt cheap, and are made by the billion. Originally I just took the grenades, coated them in oil, and put a top on bottom on them. Then, around Christmas, I got the idea to plate them in gold and silver. Slowly but surely, because of the power of Dave’s store, people came, they saw it, they loved it, and it really built momentum. It was just timing, a great store, great guy and an interesting object.

Grenade Oil Lamp by Piet Houtenbos

What else were you doing when you got out of school?

After that I got a real job. I worked at Modernlink designing furniture. I think you should work as often as possible for someone else. You will learn tremendously from working for other people, and you get paid. I think it’s a mistake for somebody right out of college to try to just go for it on their own. It’s valiant, and a lot of hard work, but very difficult. My five years at Modernlink taught me more about what I like in design than almost all of college.

What made you leave?

After having a job at Modernlink for 4-5 years, I realized the design was slowing down there, and I needed to move on. Try my own work again. This mirror was the first thing that came out of it.

I had all this free time, no job, and I started going to the Met a lot. I was awestruck by the period rooms. One of the things I was drawn to most were the mirrors. A mirror is just a piece of glass, but the frames were crazy. They were status symbols. You would walk into a room, see it, and know where you were. I wanted to capture that. Not copying the style, but the presence.

Diamond Mirror by Piet Houtenbos

How are your mirrors made?

The glass is beveled to create the form. I thought it would be really simple to make, but actually it’s a nightmare of precision. I asked all these compaines if they could make it, they looked at the design and said it was impossible.

When you feed glass through line-beveling machines, the glass bends and warps. Wide bevels are really tough. You get uneven lines. If this piece is off by 1mm, the corresponding line will shoot in the wrong direction. The mirror company puts the design into their computer program and presses a button, if it says it can’t make it, then that’s it. I ended up finding a guy in the midwest who is 50 years old, has been doing it forever, who said he could do. This one guy in his shop is able to do what a huge mirror company that can’t.

The other challenge was hanging this piece. The way you hang mirrors with incredible frames is with a wire and hooks in in the frame! This mirror has no frame, so I came up with a magnetic system. You screw the plate onto the wall, and the mirror sticks.

I want to hang everything like that!

The reason it works for the mirror is because it’s flat and there is no torque.

Bandwheel by Piet Houtenbos

Beyond your personal design work, you work for Bumble and Bumble is well known. How does designing for a specific client differ from designing for yourself?

When you give a company something, no matter how cool it is, they don’t know where to fit it into their master plan. They also need perceived value – if it’s something too simple, people will say, “I could do that myself.”

I came up with the rubber band ball, and brought it to Bumble because they were the only company cool enough to pull it off. The idea was to embed a rubber bouncy ball in the center of a larger ball with orbits cut out of it. It was a delivery system for 100 rubber bands. A holder.

How would you describe your design philosophy?

I take a standard material, apply a lot of something to it, and turn it into a beautiful thing. For example – these shelves are made from floorboards, a cheap material that’s readily available. I sand a little from the top, for tactility, and a lot from the bottom, and create this form. The thin flat edge on the curve was inspired by the transition on the MacBook Air.

Some people go on to slowly build shops, but I’m not into that. I think if you start amassing a wood shop, you’ll be making tables your whole life. I want to make all kinds of different stuff – granite bowls, beautiful mirrors, oil lamps, whatever.

Propellor Shelf by Piet Houtenbos

One of the reasons we started our blog was because it was so hard for us to transition from art school into trying to run a business. You went to art school – you know!

Going from college to the real world was awful. Awful. College was not even an approximation of the real world. It was not even 1% similar. And I’m not saying that my degree was a wasted effort, but nothing I did really prepared me.

We always say that graduating art school feels like landing face-down on the cement.

It’s like you were just academically roofied! You’re waking up from like a bad night out, and you’re thinking, what the hell just happened to me?

That might be the best analogy EVER. What led you to furniture design?

Looking back, it all makes sense. My mom was an antique store owner. I grew up around that – the decorative arts, in a really broad sense. And I was always building things, like tree forts. While the other kids had a one-story tree fort – I had to build a five-story tree fort. I had to outdo every other kid on the block. I made little trap-doors so you could climb up to the higher levels. And in high school I designed and built the sets for the school plays. Now, I can see that I was already on the path to being a furniture designer, I just didn’t know it.

Fife tripod lamp by MFD – spun brass shade, ebonized oak legs, & brass feet

Where did you study?

I went to RISD, and, like so many people, had no idea what I wanted to do. Growing up, I was exposed to a narrow view of what fine art is. Ceramics was exotic. So I went into RISD thinking, “If I’m going to go to art school, I guess I’m going to be a painter.”

And then the summer between freshman and sophomore year, I met this amazing woman named Megan. She was in furniture design. Her car literally broke down in front of my house. I was kind of handy, so I helped her jump-start her car. We got to talking, and she invited me over for dinner. I went into her apartment, and it was full of all this furniture she had made. I was so impressed!

“You mean furniture design is also an art? Artists make furniture? I thought furniture came from a factory or something! ” It’s incredible that I was so naive at that point of my life. I started calling the furniture department and begging them to let me in. The program was a great experience. There was a core group of us that really became “wood nerds.”

I love that term! Wood nerds!

Yeah, like, “Ooh, check out the finish on this surface!” Or, taking a human hair and trying to squeeze it between the joinery in a table. If you can’t get your hair in it, then you’re good. So I was one of the wood nerds.

Barrett writing desk by MFD – leather, bronze, and walnut

What did you do after school?

I came to New York. I’ve been here for six years. I can’t believe I’m saying that!

I got a job working for a hotel company, designing hotel interiors. Going from wearing shellac-encrusted jeans to dressing in a button-down shirt and tie every day and working in a cubicle was total culture shock. The people who I worked with were all branding experts, and that job was an immersion in how companies brand themselves. We were designing collections of furniture to go into different hotels, depending on where they were. For a coastal hotel, we would do a coastal scheme. That was so foreign to me. Now, it makes so much sense, but coming out of college I had no awareness of how the world organized itself.

So I did that for three years. Then I continued the brand education – I went to work for ducduc. And that was the total opposite extreme, because it was a startup company.

What was working for a startup like?

I showed up for work the first day and we didn’t have computers or seats to sit in. We literally took an open floorplan of a loft in SoHo, built walls, painted, set up desks. Man, you could not get a more complete crash course on how to start a business from the very beginning. And then once we were set up, we started prototyping furniture. We produced 5 lines of furniture, and it was basically just four of us. Because it was just us, we did everything. We designed the postcards, we designed the website, we designed the furniture. Everything you can possibly think of.

So when did you start Matthew Fairbank Design?

Sort of on the sidelines of all of that stuff, around 2005, I decided that I was going crazy being away from the shop. My sanity depended upon having more hands-on experiences. So I decided to look on Craigslist for people out there who were looking to share space. I met this guy who was a guitar maker, and we rented an illegal woodshop on the Lower East Side. I had that shop for a couple years. No ventilation, no light, no freight elevator… You had to carry everything. Imagine carrying a 4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood up a stairwell as narrow as a fire escape. One time I made a project and I had to cut it in half because it didn’t fit out the door.

Oh boy. That’s a design challenge in and of itself.

That’s an ongoing challenge – getting pieces into elevators and stairwells.

Otley chest of drawers by MFD – pickled oak cabinet & hand rubbed lacquer drawers

Can you describe what MFD does?

Well, from the time of the Lower East Side shop, I’ve been making furniture for other people. A homeowner comes to me and says, “I saw this coffee table but it’s not the right size. Can we do some things differently?”

I’m both a designer and a fabricator. 90% of what I’m asked to do, at this point, is other people’s designs. Maybe there will come a day when I say, “These are the pieces that I make. If you want to buy one of them, that’s great, and if not, you’re shopping at the wrong store.” Sure, that would be a lovely day. But for now, I’m billing myself as a custom fabricator who also designs his own collection of furniture.

At BKLYN Designs, the pieces I showed were suggestions for what I could do – but they could be any size, any shape, any color. It could be your own design. I really just wanted to show that I do a lot of materials. I specialize in lacquer, I specialize in solid wood joinery, I specialize in metals.

How did BKLYN Designs end up for you?

The show was great. For me, personally, it was kind of a benchmark. It really forced me to crack down and do all the official stuff for my business, like getting an EIN number. In addition to that, the feedback has been tremendous. From consumers, homeowners, and also design professionals – architects and interior designers. Although I’m finding that a lot of this feedback isn’t materializing into anything yet. Since it was my first time doing the show, I can’t gauge if it’s because of the economy, or because it just takes time and a lot of follow-up work, or because BKLYN Designs is a great PR show but not a great business-generating show. So it’s a lot of things that I’m trying to figure out.

Rhodes chaise lounge by MFD – saddle leather, bronze nail head, & pickled oak frame

It’s probably a combination of all of those. Although, in our experience, you have to do a ton of follow-up work after a show. Lots of emails and phone calls to actually hammer things down.

There’s one client that came out of the show, who I started doing two pieces of furniture with, and now she’s got about five more that she wants me to bid on for her. That’s incredible. Even if it’s just that one client, that’s worth it.

Right now I’m still working 3 days a week for my day job that I’ve had for the last 3 years. And then I’m MFD two days a week, plus weekends. I think the secret for me has been always being really transparent about what I’m doing. I’m not trying to appear bigger than I am.

Would you like to have your work produced by other people, or do you want to stay both the designer and the maker?

I think both! Do I outsource things? Of course. Do I do lathe turning? No. Do I do my own veneering and cutting joinery? Yes. I think I do more myself than a lot of designers do, and that gives me the advantage of quality control.

How did you get into design?

I graduated from the industrial design program at RISD, but that’s not really where the story starts. When I was a little kid I wanted to design toys, and then as I got older, I wanted to design bikes. But I never knew that was actually a career field. Then I found the University of Cincinnati’s ID program. There is a huge ID world in Cincinnati because of all the manufacturing.

I did the foundation year and one quarter there, and totally hated it. The problem was they were just making junk. Teaching how to turn out design, fast. I was the outsider there. I was totally psyched about having discovered ID, and yet totally bummed because it wasn’t quite right.

I also took some classes at Art Center. They really teach you skills. But once again, I was also the outsider. Day one, we learned how to draw a sphere. Day two we drew a shiny sphere. Day three we drew a shiny sphere on a mirror. Day four we were drawing a shiny sphere on a checkered mirror. By that point I asked, “Why are we drawing this on a checkered mirror?” And it was like everything stopped, the record scratched, fingers pointed, “You do not fit in!”

So finally, a couple of years later, after taking time off and making money and doing woodworking, I applied to RISD. I liked the school a lot. I think they do a good job of teaching how you can discover what design means to you, and teaching the different applications of creative thought.

Step Stools – Inspired by the simple versatility of American Shaker furniture, these nesting stools pull out to make a set of steps.

I think that’s what art school is best at – helping you discover your individual path and nurturing your vision.

Ideally it does.

After school, how did you transition into the “real world”of design?

When I graduated, one of my professors asked if I was looking for a job. He knew this guy John Davies, who designed chairs and furniture. He was looking for some help with actual design work – not just building. The only catch was that I would have to relocate to Brooklyn – which sounded great to me! I ended up working for him for a year pretty much full time. It was basically an apprenticeship where he taught me to draw full-scale, factory-ready drawings.

These drawings were mind crunchers to say the least. Getting everything to line up, doing top, front, and side views, takes a long of discipline. That was probably the main thing I learned from him – the nuances of form, and how that intersects with constructing the pieces. We would spend months on these drawings, print them out, pin then up, tweak little details by hand, and then take them back into the computer.

I think it was a good exercise in how to understand form and how to communicate it to someone else. Wrapping your head around the idea of communicating to someone in a factory who doesn’t necessarily speak the same language as you.

Broken Mirrors – Street refuse given new life. Found pieces of broken glass are inset into reclaimed heart pine.

That’s something a lot of designers don’t learn when they make everything themselves. If you have to communicate your idea to a fabricator, you have to design it more thoroughly – there’s no room to fudge things in the shop.

A lot of my friends from RISD never made the differentiation between discovering and understanding form, and communicating it. For me, there are different levels of communication. Renderings are about selling the concept. They’re about seducing people to work with you and getting them to believe in your idea. Many times people will look at your idea and say that it’s impossible to make. Well, the shittier your drawing, the more impossible it seems to people. This is the first phase of bringing people in.

Final fabrication drawings are about communicating every detail of the idea and getting it made correctly. If those drawings don’t have a certain level of beauty, you will end up with a very different mass-produced project. John Davies used to talk about “seducing the cabinetmaker” – this level of bringing people into the spirit of your design that actually changes the quality of work you get in the end.

Shelf Space – The result of an experimental collaboration with an aerospace machinery manufacturer, this shelf’s fluid form pushes the limits of wood engineering and advanced machining technology.

When did you make the jump to starting your own studio?

I worked for John for about a year, pretty much exclusively. I would spend eight hours on drawings, come back here, and work on my own projects. Eventually I stopped doing as many things for him, picked up other freelance work, and kept doing my own projects. I feel like I’ve freelanced for almost everyone in NY who produces furniture! I’ve worked for individuals, and big companies like Williams Sonoma and Martha Stewart.

I think it’s important to understand how a big design house works. I’ve been to factories all over China that these big companies work with. I think it’s a super important part of the process. A lot of the clients I work with now don’t want to send me to their factories because everything is on such a trimmed budget. It was important that I got that experience early on.

Where do you see your studio going?

I definitely see my practice getting bigger. I see myself working with more established companies, having the ability to push my creative explorations in more grandiose ways and being able to explore ideas on a large scale. I can picture myself working with the government on a NASA type scale. That’s my abstract vision.

What has been the hardest lesson to learn about turning this into a business?

For me it’s probably been the salesmanship aspect. Having to sell my products as objects is a really challenging thing. They are not objects to me; that is their base level of existence. When someone contacts me and immediately wants to discuss my work as these retail objects, and discuss the audience as consumers, it becomes hard. I don’t think of people as just consumers. That’s not my world. That’s what I’m working against.

Half Mirror – This project exposes the two most interesting parts of a mirror that are never seen: the ‘cross-section’ of the frame, and the glowing edge of the mirrored glass. A moment of decorative surrealism.

What’s your advice for making it as a designer?

Be prolific. At this point, I’ve been working in NY for eight years, and I’ve seen a few people come and go. Prolific designers are doing it because they love design. There are people who do a few things, and then spend all this time trying to find the perfect licensing deal, or position themselves properly in the market, and they are just losing time designing. You get better and better the more work you do.

My role models are Picasso and Philippe Starck, because they did so much. They touched so many things, for so long, and eventually reached a level where everything they touched became interesting.

I always talk with my dad about business strategy and marketing, and recently he quoted this woodworker who had made a very precious wooden object. He was selling it to some guy who said, “$2,000 for one week’s work?” And the woodworker said, “No, $2,000 for 30 years plus one week’s work.” That’s what being prolific is about. Everything keeps building on your prior experience, and you keep offering more.

Chippenchair – Look closely! Yes, that’s a spurting oil rig and the letter “W”

Bilge Lounge, made from reclaimed bourbon barrel staves and truck springs.

Could you talk a little about the Uhuru philosophy? It’s very rooted in our local culture.

D: Our big concern is with sustainability, and building local. It’s what we’re known for. We’re interested in finding out what goes on in this area, and then finding reusable waste products. For the past 3 years, we’ve been finding new types of products that we can use. It started with scrap wood. Bill, one of the founders, had worked for a couple of shops beforehand, so we started out collecting from them. Then we reached out to some bigger companies. The challenge is to try to find a material that won’t run out.

What other upcycled materials are you using?

D: Jason, the other founder, is from Kentucky, and so he’d always wanted to do something with bourbon barrels. The key to upcycling is taking a waste material and making it into something that’s really nice. With our Küpe line, you can still see it’s a barrel, but it’s also taken very far out of that context. Bill was actually just out at a place looking at old beams, which is a material we’re starting to use a lot of.

Beam Coffee Table

B: Yeah, some of the beams are made of yellow hard pine, original growth, which is from when the forests were really dense in the Northeast. It was over-logged and it’s hard to find these days. The growth rings are super tight, because the trees were all fighting for light. It’s a really, really nice material.

D: We found a beam on the street one time, and that’s how it all started. And then we had to find a source for that again, because we obviously couldn’t just count on taking stuff off the street.

Can you tell us about any new projects?

B: We’re doing some chairs that we’re going to launch at Brooklyn Designs in May. It’s an interesting story. There’s a place called “Build It Green” in Long Island City. It’s an architectural salvage place, and they have everything from tubs, refrigerators, doors, chairs… We bought sixteen of these chair parts, basically the back of a chair including the back legs. They were from a chair factory in Long Island City that went out of business. We’re building a front part to the chairs that’s going to be more modern.

How did Uhuru start?

B: Jason and I basically started with $1,000 in our pocket. Our friend’s dad, who used to have a cabinet shop, gave us a bunch of tools. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without that. Below where I was living, this girl needed to sublet her extra space out. We told her we needed somewhere to set up all our tools, and she said OK. I don’t know how she dealt with it, though. We were in there grinding metal in the middle of the night! Jason was still working at an interior design firm, so we worked on our own stuff whenever we could, all kinds of odd hours.

Chime Mirror, made from reclaimed bourbon barrels.

D: As it started growing, and they had a little bit more money, they did Brooklyn Designs. That’s when they really launched their product. I started working here right after that. At that point, there were four of us, only three full-time, and it was still pretty slow. I could see the progression after that summer. It was probably a six-month time period where you really started seeing stuff from the show starting to sell.

B: Originally our work was just custom stuff for interior designers. Brooklyn Designs really pushed us to get our own work together. We signed up for it, had our projects that we’d designed along the way, and then sort of filled that out and turned it into our first line.

Bill Hilgendorf and Jason Horvath

Were you under the name Uhuru already?

B: Yeah, we were. That was from the beginning. Our vision was always there, it just took a while to actually come up with a line of furniture. But every year, that show has been a great push for us to come out with new stuff. That’s usually when we launch stuff, in May, between Brooklyn Designs and ICFF and all the other events that go on.

Do you guys sell through showrooms?

B: We do. There’s a place in TriBeCa that we sell through, called Room. And we also have a showroom in LA. While it’s good to be able to say that we have these showrooms that represent us, it’s easier in terms of pricing for us to sell directly. Wholesale pricing is hard, especially for high-end pieces which people aren’t going to buy ten of. Selling through the trade has been the best for us, through architects and interior designers.

How do your customers find you?

D: People find us on blogs. Magazines. Sometimes you have to go out and try to sell yourself, as well. But most of it’s just been word-of-mouth and through publications. One of the nice things about doing shows is that interior designers come out from lots of different places.

How have you learned the business side, coming out of art school?

B: The year after I graduated from RISD, I worked for the guy who was just starting out for himself. I was his first employee ever. That was like a crash course in business. I got a real sense, from watching him, of how to deal with clients and where to get materials. And I did an internship, the summer of my junior year, for this guy who did custom furniture. I learned a lot from him; he was a one-man operation.

Stoolen, made from local scrap wood, optional bicycle rim.

D: You kind of learn a lot as you go on. You talk to people that are in the business.

B: I’ve been teaching myself QuickBooks; that’s been huge. I don’t know how I survived without it. And American Express! Big time help. The 30-day loan. In most of the work we do, we’ll get a deposit, but we don’t get a large amount of money until the end. Other than that… The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce has actually been pretty cool. They have seminars all the time, dealing with different topics like employees and health insurance.

D: For me, learning how to run a business has kind of been one of the fun parts.

B: As long as it doesn’t destroy you! But I have no regrets, even though it’s been incredibly difficult, and there’s 80-hour, 90-hour weeks, and craziness, it’s definitely worth it. I’d much rather be doing this than anything else.

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.

You have experience both manufacturing your own products and working with companies who manufacture your designs. What are the differences between the two?

When I started making stuff myself, I thought, “I’m not going to do this forever. Eventually I’m going to have my clean studio with white walls and design on my computer all day.” But once I got near that, I didn’t want it anymore. It’s boring. The experience is much more satisfying when I make the work myself. It feels very real.

Product development for other companies takes forever, and the royalties are 2-3 years out. You’ve either got to be really attached to that product, or have cranked out the drawings in three days. My problem is that it’s hard for me to be that cavalier and hands-off about my products. I work primarily with Areaware and Kikkerland. The more concept-based ideas usually go to Kikkerland, and the more hands-on signature-style pieces go to Areaware. I have a different relationship with each company.

The Areaware/Kikkerland items are very inspiring for me. When I sit down with a simple idea or concept, commit to it, draw it, and make a prototype, so much happens in the process that I end up with a really nice product with a lot of depth. It’s the follow-through on all those random ideas that matters.

I look to the future of the studio, and I think there is so much potential. Every time I think we’re getting near the ceiling, I’ll realize, actually we could make furniture. Or we could make wooden-toys, or flashlights, or ashtrays. You have to stay in there and keep your mind open. It’s a bummer to think, “I’ve been doing lighting for 12 years so I’ll just keep doing what’s selling.”

Could you describe your design philosophy?

It’s really hands on. The shop versus the computer. Now, after having done this for awhile, I see lots of renderings, from student work to design companies launching new products. I miss that there are rarely any fingerprints apparent in the process. So many great decisions get made in the period between turning a rendering into an actual object. I’m much more interested in the development process and the visceral instincts one brings to making things for humans.

For a furniture design we did for Pucci, I was initially trying to be very clinical. But eventually I just got some foam, cut a block that looked about the right size, and shaped it until I got it where I wanted it. I think it was successful because it has a real breath to it, which wouldn’t have happened if it had come right out of a computer. After having worked with a lot of materials, I have a good idea of what a 16-gauge piece of steel will do, or how long half-inch tubing can be with natural deflection. Metal is the material I’m most comfortable with, because it’s so elastic, forgiving, and expansive.

We saw online that you studied painting at RISD. What led to your interest in product design?

I was doing a lot of sculpture and mixed media work at RISD. I came to New York ready to be an artist, but initially I just worked a lot of odd jobs to make ends meet. I ended up working for Ted Muehling. I still can’t believe I stumbled into that job. His level of commitment to his vision was just so intense. There was one day when we were sanding glass vases that he had blown; they weren’t perfect enough, so we were back at the shop sink with diamond grit sandpaper to get them completely smooth.

Basically, Ted changed my point of view. Because his designs are still art, he is not a typical designer. He is that perfect mix of sculptor, artisan, craftsman, and designer; all the things I wanted in my own work. Home objects seemed like a good angle for me to take, because to make jewelry would be too close to what Ted was doing. Furniture was too large for my studio, but lighting was sort of just right. I made ten desks lamps to get the ball rolling and Troy in Soho picked them up right away. That was sort of a transitional moment. Art at the time was feeling so subjective, and design and lighting seemed like a good path to take.

Now my main business is lighting, and that business allows me to do my more unusual projects. I think, in the end, small product-design studios in the U.S. need to be entrepreneurs and participate primarily in the high-end market. Ikea and Crate & Barrel already have the low-end covered. The mainstream U.S. buyer isn’t always ready to spend the extra money for quality design. I ended up going to Ralph Pucci with my lighting. Pucci elevated the whole thing, both product and brand. It wasn’t a stretch for them to ask $10,000 for a chandelier. The work found a home there, because Pucci already had an audience of high-end customers.

All of our lamps are made in the USA. The one thing I had made in China turned out so badly I never did it again. I bought 10,000 sockets and they were all bad. After that I decided to stay with American manufacturers, and keep the lights at a price point where we can do that. It’s definitely luxurious, but it makes for a better product.

Did you always know you wanted to be high design? Is that the route your first lamps took?

I suppose it wasn’t supposed to be. It was really based on Ted’s business model: making it for yourself, making things you like, and working out sculptural problems through functional objects. In hindsight, it was crazy. In the beginning, I really made no money on it. Granted, it was just me in a studio with some tools, so there wasn’t much overhead and I was covering my expenses. But I would charge $250 for a lamp that took me four days to make.

Then again, I did it as an experiment. I was trying out lighting and production as a business idea. New York is great in the sense that if one or two people find you and like what you do, then they will start to spread the word. So it just slowly happened that over five or six years, the business grew. I did the ICFF. I was out there, I promoted myself, but I didn’t really have a game plan. It was more just based on what the market would bear.

How did trade shows help you?

I had to step out and present myself. I couldn’t just hide away in my studio and make things. I started showing right when the furniture market was becoming interesting. People here woke up and saw what was going on in Milan. I did ICFF consistently for four or five years, and the business grew naturally.

The London design show, 100% Design, was one of the last shows I was in. I went to London in ‘98 or ‘99, and the work there was just so much better. The energy level was higher; everyone was excited about it. That was the moment when I knew I was totally committed to design. I also realized that I wasn’t just dealing with NYC, I was dealing with the world. I didn’t want to make only lamps, but rather figure out how I fit into the whole system of design and how I could contribute to the conversation.

You also started Butter, a product design studio, with Lindsey Adelman. How does that fit into the picture?

Lindsay
was working with me in 1999, when we designed Lunette. It was a sewn fiberglass-paper flat-packing lampshade. We started Butter because Lunette felt like a good product that needed a good company to hold it. I still make Lunette, and I would love to get it out again because I feel like it never got to the larger market. Butter lasted for 5 years, but I had a kid, and she had a kid, and the momentum never really got going. It’s a shame, because everyone really appreciated it. People liked the idea of this little friendly company that made nice products in the USA.

Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs that you’d like to leave us with?

Perseverance, patience and commitment. There are a lot of people who are talented, believe in themselves for a year or two, and then get distracted. New York’s a great place to be. I don’t think I would have had nearly the success I have anywhere else. It has an organic quality which is very rare, and it’s so business oriented. You meet someone, find out what they do, and try to think of someone you think they should know. But you have to be open to it. I don’t know if it’s a karma thing, or a personal thing, but if you don’t open your eyes to the possibilities then things won’t flourish the way they should.

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.

I discovered the Fuck Off Sarah Palin T-shirt just as my terror at having Palin as a VP was peaking. I thought, if anything captures the zeitgeist right now, it’s this. I wanted to know who was behind it. Kim Berlin is a creative director who decided to get political after she became supremely pissed at the Palin campaign. Go get a shirt or a button for yourself, and let the conversations begin. Proceeds will be donated to Planned Parenthood in Palin’s name.

What led to the first shirt?

When Sarah Palin’s Vice Presidential candidacy was announced, I got really angry. Not necessarily that she accepted the nomination, but how so many people seemed to be so fooled by her. I thought, “What the hell? This woman, who nobody’s ever heard of, who has absolutely zero credentials, could be our next VP? She’s not presidential material by any stretch of the imagination.” You have to think of someone in terms of being presidential material when they’re a vice president. And let’s face it, McCain is no spring chicken.

Late one of the nights of the convention, I had to take a taxi from the train station back to my home in north Jersey. Making conversation, the cab driver said, “So, how about that Sarah Palin!” I remained quiet as I wasn’t quite sure which way he was going to go. And then he remarked, “Did you see how she was just stroking the head of her child? Wow. That lady’s unbelievable!” He was completely enamored with her. A person from right in my own backyard. I couldn’t believe it. And I thought, “That’s it.”

I’m a creative director by trade, so at work the next morning I quickly whipped up the simplest slug of type I could. I didn’t feel this woman was worthy of any clever copywriting or a well thought-out design. I simply took my message, printed it out on heat transfer paper and took it home. I had a sample t-shirt left over from a client pitch that just happened to be this great organic cotton. So I made one for myself. And that was it. I washed it once and wore it out the next day.

It was a really interesting experience introducing the shirt to the world. I started out feeling very proud of it… but some people were giving me the stink eye, a little bit. I don’t think they knew exactly what it meant, as the developments were so new at that point. But when you’re dropping the F-bomb smack-dab in the middle of your chest, in the ‘burbs no less, you’re bound to get some sort of reaction. So as I went along that morning, I kind of buttoned up my cardigan a little bit. But then I got to work and people said, “What, are you kidding? Wear it open!” So I did.

I went out and about, and I couldn’t even believe the response. People were into it. It was very cool. I even kind of relished the odd dirty look. That’s what this is for, after all; I want to open up the dialogue. I want people to talk about this.

Right now you’re wearing the pin, which I love. I think it’s a modern update to the traditional stars-and-stripes, red-and-blue political pins.

I feel at one point in time, the red, white, and blue may have stood for something, and that something was hopeful. But the connotations have changed. All the propaganda surrounding the race has been bastardized into this… I keep calling it a vaudeville show. I feel like it’s a freakin’ vaudeville show. All the manufactured drama colors the public’s opinion and overshadows the facts.

When did you set up the website?

I have a Facebook friend who told me one of his colleagues wanted a shirt. I told him, “Oh, it’s only an iron-on.” But she wanted one anyway. So I made one for her and sent it over. She said she would love to know if i had a site so she could blog about it. At that point I said to myself, “Oh, crap, if people want to blog about this I have to have someplace for their readers to go.” That’s when I decided to set up the website. While I’ve designed tons for my clients, it’s the first I’ve ever actually done, hands-on myself. I probably shouldn’t admit that! I know I didn’t create it the right way… I was communicating with my cousin who’s a programmer and he wanted to do the whole thing properly, using CSS, tracking hits and the whole shebang. And I thought, yeah, that would be great, but I just want this up, I want it now, I want it to look exactly as I want it to, and I want to be able to do it myself. So I quickly made it in Dreamweaver, and it was done. It was up within a week of her announcing her candidacy.

I’m not out there promoting it at all; maybe the odd email to folks I already know. It’s really getting around just by word-of-mouth alone. Luckily, Refinery29 covered it, and that’s actually how it’s gotten the most exposure.

Have you gotten any hate mail?

No. Not a single thing. I was hoping for some! That would have been great. I’d like to hear both sides. No, the only thing I saw that was negative were some comments on a few blogs. One was, “Where would you wear this? I couldn’t wear it in front of my children.” OK, totally understood. That’s responsible. And then there was a comment recently about the grammar. But that’s really all.

I think my favorite part of the whole thing might be that a percentage of the sales are going to be donated to Planned Parenthood in Sarah’s name. Could you talk a little about that?

I’m really glad about that too. It’s not a unique idea; there are all these emails circulating about ways one can challenge Sarah Palin’s position. One of the emails I received suggested to make donations in her name, because she’s not a supporter and she’ll receive a thank-you note for each donation made in her name. And I thought that was perfect. I don’t want to support a candidate’s campaign specifically, because that isn’t going to do any “real” good. They have plenty of money. But if I contribute to a cause that I believe in, that’s actually making a difference.

Truth be told, I’m not a political person in any way, shape, or form. But I have never cared about a cause the way I care about this one. What pisses me off is that so many of our fellow citizens so fooled by her. And people remark, “Well, if the Republicans win this year, then it’s our fault for being stupid, so shame on us.” Which I think is true. But, man, how disappointing would that be?

After the success of this project, do you have any other ideas coming down the pipeline?

People keep asking me that. Officially, I’m going to say no. This is my one-hit-wonder. I don’t even know if I’m going to leave the site up after the election. I’m definitely going to run out of merchandise… I’m just printing to meet demand. I’m not making lots. Hopefully the message becomes irrelevant really fast and this becomes a non-issue!

Yes, ideally this whole thing is dead by November.

Yeah. It’s been a little stressful because I want to make everybody happy and get them their stuff as soon as possible, which means I have to turn everything around really, really fast. It has a limited life-span. Literally one more month, and then it’s all over.