Hasta La Ideas

Here in Part 6 of the Hellman-Chang story we wrap up their history. When the recession began a few years ago, Dan and Eric were running a fledgling firm out of a co-op; they not only weathered the storm but grew through it, emerging with a nationwide showroom presence, a global client base of high-end clients and their own production facility, which they’re currently planning to double in size.

In the next and final entry we’ll look at Hellman-Chang’s design work and company philosophy, but before we can get there we’ll see the final steps Dan and Eric needed to take to get to where they are today.

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So it’s 2008, you’re now in the A. Rudin showrooms, and sales are starting to pick up.
Dan: Orders started coming in from all around the country. We started to grow tremendously.

What types of customers were you getting?
Eric: Once you’re in the showrooms we were in, you’re set in a position where it’s high end residential and high end hospitality. Our first order at the New York showroom was from the Rockwell Group for the Setai Hotel, the new one out in San Diego.

Dan: The Rockwell Group is known as the pinnacle of interior design/architecture firms, they do a lot of boutique hotels.

Eric: And they designed the Oscars, you know? So the Rockwell Group being the first Hellman-Chang client at the showroom was like, “Whoa, that’s great.”

Dan: It was really good for building that credibility with A. Rudin, and they were very happy with us from early on.

Got it. And what else starts happening for you guys in 2008?
Eric: Because we were doing so well the showroom requested we expand our presence, so we did a refresh. At our second ICFF we introduced some new pieces and did a new booklet, going from 32 pages to 64 pages, so we had about double the size of our line.

Dan: The sales were going well enough that we hired three full-time furniture builders and made more product. After the ICFF that year—where we got more press—and the showrooms’ request for more furniture for the showroom floor, we roughly doubled our presence in size, going from eight pieces to maybe fifteen or twenty.

So that expansion you guys had hungered for upon first seeing the showrooms was starting to happen.
Eric: Right. We were starting to expand within the showrooms, to eventually move up to being their number two line by the end of the year.

I imagine at this point you guys are no longer producing everything from a 5×10 spot in the co-op?
Dan: We were still in the co-op but had expanded.

Eric: In the co-op there was initially ten or twelve artisans and craftsman, of which we were one small unit. And as people would leave, we would take their space. Then somebody else would leave and we’d scoop up their space too. So we started out in 50 square feet, and by the time we were done there we had 1,000 square feet of bench space.

Given that your production was starting to ramp up, was that enough room?
Eric: It was tough. We were all building together and taking phone calls at the same time from designers, so I’d be on the phone trying to quote prices and there would be a saw going off right next me. It wasn’t the most professional environment.

Dan: We were on top of each other. We just kept on growing, and while we’re on the phone or writing emails, routers are creating saw dust ten feet away. But we still didn’t have the resources yet to start our own studio.

Eric: And we could tell the other tenants were getting really annoyed with us.

Dan: Yeah, we were hogging the machines.

Eric: We eventually decided to open up this studio that we’re in now [Ed: The interview took place in Hellman-Chang’s 8,000-square-foot facility, which will shortly double in size, more on that later] and that was very much based on needing to control our own space and have more room to be able to spread out. And we wanted to delineate the different spaces, office space, bench space, machine room space.

But before we could do that—back in 2008, despite us growing so much, that was also right when the market crashed. That was an…interesting experience. There was this sense of doom and gloom all over the industry, showroom salespeople were freaking out, interior designers were freaking out.

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Yesterday I tried going through my cell phone bill to check some usage stats and isolate costs, a completely maddening experience made unnecesarily slow through poor design. Whomever “designed” AT&T’s billing statements was apparently tasked with flummoxing the customer at all costs. Any page you click through has several dozen if not hundreds of clickable options, most of them completely irrelevant, making the four or five things you’d like to see on your bill just about impossible to find. The language is vague, the usage of color seemingly arbitrary, the sizes of various elements in no way corresponds to their importance, and the layout is nonsensical.

Column Five—perhaps a twist on the “Fifth Column” trope?—is a California-based infographics, PR and strategy firm that put out the following informational video, simply titled “The Value of Data Visualization”:

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In Part 4 we saw Hellman-Chang attract the interest of A. Rudin, a well-established, fourth-generation family-run showroom and furniture line serving interior designers and architects. Now Dan Hellman and Eric Chang have to step up and find the cash, time and manpower to fulfill an order far beyond what they’ve been able to produce thus far.

And when Dan and Eric head out to visit the flagship Los Angeles showroom, they’re in for a Rudin awakening.

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A. Rudin is a discriminating showroom. What do you think they saw in Hellman-Chang, versus others, that made them say “Let’s go with these guys?”
Eric: I think they were sold on the brand. They were sold on Dan and myself after sitting down with us and seeing two young creative guys that were enthusiastic and fresh to the market. I think we were able to sell them really well on what we were about as a company that made them think that it was good opportunity for them to jump on it.

They’re also more of a transitional showroom, whereas we’re more contemporary and they felt it would be a good fit, both for their new New York showroom and to help round out their brand a little more, too. We’re at a little more of a higher price point than most of their product line. So we were also bringing a lot to the table for them, I think. All in all it’s a really good mutual relationship in that respect.

And now they’d placed this relatively massive order with you. How do you guys tackle this, and what were some of the problems that you had to deal with?
Eric: In the furniture industry, at least within the United States, it’s industry standard that the designer/manufacturer—in this case, Hellman-Chang—produces and ships all of those pieces at our own expense. So the showroom didn’t order 32 pieces and give us a big check; instead it was “We want these pieces in three months, and then we’ll start selling from that.” So it was a huge upfront cost for us to start that off, just tens of thousands of dollars.

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If you happen to find what you believe is a real piece of art made by Andy Warhol in your attic’s crawl space or at some flea market, you’re now going to have a bit more difficult of a time trying to get it authenticated. Though that might not be such a bad thing. The board of directors of the Andy Warhold Foundation for the Visual Arts have announced that they have voted to dissolve the Andy Warhol Authentication Board, the 16 year-old group of six members who would meet three times per year to evaluate pieces, deeming them real or fake. Over the years, the group had found itself fighting off a number of controversies, most recently over their stamping “denied” on the back of work they’d found to not be authentic, allegedly to help drive up the cost of real Warhols, and larger scandal last year when it was revealed that a Brillo Box sculpture the organization had authenticated was made three years after the artist’s death. But now that will all be in the past, as last week was the final date one could request a review. Here’s a bit from the announcement:

The Foundation’s decision to dissolve the Authentication Board was informed by a strategic review of the Foundation’s core programs and reflects the Foundation’s intent to maximize its grant-making and other charitable activities in support of the visual arts.

The Directors further expressed their gratitude and appreciation for the exemplary work and expertise provided by members of the Authentication Board over the past 16 years. The Authentication Board will honor all requests for review received prior to October 19, 2011; but will no longer accept requests for review after that date.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I truly hope that Steve Jobs is in heaven. In many ways, he certainly deserves it. For tech fans, I don’t think anyone has brought more joy to the world than Mr. Jobs and his Apple Computer colleagues. However, he ruined my life.

I’m an industrial designer who has been working since 2002. For people who measure time by Apple products, that’s right when the 2nd generation iPod was launched. As a designer, you might think that I would be inspired by Apple. Maybe even in awe of their awesome design might. I am, but they’ve also made my job so much harder. Unfortunately, I don’t mean in terms of raising the standard of design.

Talk to any design consultant in the world and they will all have a story about the client(s) who walked in the door and said, “I want to make the iPod/iPhone/iPad of my industry.” The first time they heard this, their eyes widened. Their pulse quickened. Finally, could clients have come to realize how industrial design adds real value to their products? Could 100 years of design history finally lead to this? Would we actually be left to concentrate on the core design abilities, like creativity and form development instead of fighting clients to let us actually give their customers what they wanted?

“Yeah, I want my widget just like an iPod. Well, in plastic because we have six injection presses in the factory. Oh, and the finish has to be matte, because we don’t have time to adjust the mold to eject quality glossy parts. Oh, and we need huge draft on the parts and huge part lines, because, again, we don’t have time or budget to work out high tolerances. Other than that though, just like an iPod.”

So, no, the design world didn’t change. A new golden age didn’t begin. In fact, I think it was retarded. Remember the gay ’90s? When Rubbermaid was on the cover of Business Week as an example of a brave American company letting designers find new market opportunities? When a struggling Iomega company listened to designers to create the Zip drive? Herman-Miller had the guts to launch the radical Aeron chair? Business has really started to listen to designers. Then Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

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