Hasta La Ideas

Following now three full months of press about angry emails fired off to the whole company by disgruntled employees, staff layoffs and exits by principals, and lawsuit threats by their own subsidiaries, mega-architecture firm RMJM seems to still be having trouble. This despite a financial bailout issued last month to the tune of £8 million. The Scotsman reports that it still hasn’t been able to pay anyone at its office in Hong Kong and not for the whole of March either:

Gordon Hood, managing principal of the Hong Kong office, told staff: “I had hoped that my first e-mail to the studio would contain more positive news, and that, after the month of change and disruption that we have just experienced, management would be able to ensure that March salaries would be paid to all staff on time.

“However, despite a full-time effort, we’ve not been able to secure sufficient funds from our clients to allow us to do so.”

This office, you might recall, was the site of one of those aforementioned mass e-mails, and was also where the local government has threatened to pursue legal action, both in fines and jail time, against CEO Peter Morrison should the company’s employees there not be paid. RMJM told the Scotsman that they hope to be able to hand out paychecks again soon. Elsewhere, ground has just recently been broken in the construction of RMJM’s project to build the Caribbean’s largest resort.

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If you’re thinking of making a shoe and would like the soles to be highlighted in a shiny red, make sure you have a good lawyer first. The company and designer behind arguably the most famous red-soled shoe, Christian Louboutin, filed a suit late last week in New York against Yves Saint Laurent, claiming that the company has been selling a shoe from their spring 2011 collection that looks too similar to their own. Likely helping to back up their case, Loutoutin’s red soles have been registered with the US Patent Office since 1997 and officially trademarked three years ago. Reportedly the company began asking YSL to stop selling their “copy” as early as January. That apparently didn’t have any traction, so they’ve taken to the courts, asking for $1 million in damages and forcing their rival to stop selling their version. Should Louboutin win the case, we’d imagine their first priority will be to pay artist Jeff Koons, who will likely sue them for using balloon animal dogs in the main image currently running on their site.

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The flash sale market is about to get a new, design-minded player. Ready your credit cards for Fab.com, which promises “daily design for everyone” in the form of members-only online sales of everything from furniture and textiles to iPad cases and dog bowls—all at a discount of up to 70% off retail prices. Founded by serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg (socialmedian, Jobster), the New York-based company is staffing up and plans to hold its first sale in about six weeks. “We aim to make design approachable and affordable for people everywhere,” Goldberg tells us. In an increasingly crowded space where everything from knockoff Le Corbusier chairs (HauteLook) and Jon Kessler prints (Exhibition A) to Aurelie Tu‘s otherworldly felt creations for Crafted Systems (DesignStory) and Dwell pre-fab homes (Gilt Groupe) is just a click away, Fab.com is looking to offer its members more than merch. “We are building social features that enable people to share and discover design inspirations,” says Goldberg. As Fab.com prepares to open for business (and inspiration sharing), we asked him a few questions about the new site:

What were you doing before founding Fab.com?
The all new Fab.com is the fourth company I’ve founded in the past seven years. I’m very much a startup geek product guy. Most recently I ran a social news service called socialmedian which we sold in 2008, and then a gay-targeted social network, called fabulis. We bought the domain name fab.com while at fabulis and then relaunched the company as Fab.com with our design focus just a few weeks ago.

What are your launch plans?
We’ll be launching some features of Fab.com in the next few days actually. It’s all hush-hush right now, but this pre-launch feature set is mostly around design inspirations. We plan to launch the sales themselves a few weeks later.

What brands and items can we expect to see on the site?
Well, our product acquisition team comes from places such as Design Within Reach, Blu Dot, and the Conran Shop, so I’d expect to see those types of products. But we’re also planning on showcasing much much more than what you can find in those retail shops. The common theme to Fab.com will be great design, and great design exists across dozens of categories and various price points. It could be a pencil, or the chair you are sitting in, or a bookcase, or an iPad case, or a set of dog bowls.
continued…

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Following up on our post from last Thursday, reporting on a photo that was floating around Twitter, showing a new, unannounced logo for Home Depot appearing on self-checkout kiosk screens. We, like the rest of the world, weren’t sure if it was an accident, a form of focus testing, or some clever stealth marketing. Turns out the screens were just a bit ahead of the real roll-out and sure enough, it’s now been verified as the retailer’s new identity. They’ve announced it right up top on their site and the go-to source for all things identity, Brand New, has a handful of images showing the new logo in different, newly re-branded contexts (including their Nascar racer). With more than 2,000 stores worldwide, we have no idea how long it will take the company to completely switch over to the new look (even their own corporate site still has the old identity), but we’d assume it’ll be a big concerted effort over the next few months, so be on the lookout. Here’s Brand New’s verdict:

Overall, this is a fantastic evolution for Home Depot and even if it loses a little bit of that blue collar, hardworking, non-designed aesthetic in favor of a more “designed” approach, the new identity still says “Come everyone, and get your toilet, your ceiling fan, and your power tool that you will use one day and then stash in your garage!” Or something to that effect.

Embarrassing Update:We’re a little red faced that we were completely had by all of this. Thanks to a note from Daryl Lang at Breaking Copy, we’ve learned that the whole thing was an incredibly well executed April Fools hoax by Brand New (including the fake Home Depot site we linked to without even thinking it looked out of sorts). So yes, red faced, but also a little giddy in that we haven’t been taken in by an online prank like this in a long time, if ever. So bravos all around. Well played.

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This month marked the ongoing fallout of the Lawrence Salander gallery fiasco, wherein the man who was once considered the owner of the greatest art gallery in the world quickly became “the art world’s Bernie Madoff” and is now serving multiple years in prison. Recently, it was the director of the former gallery on trial, Leigh Morse, and one of the people who testified was actor Robert De Niro, brought up to discuss how Morse stole “$77,000 from the sale of two paintings from the estate of Robert De Niro Sr.” among many other things. While the New York Observer reports that her trial has been nothing of the angry circus that was Salander’s, the actor’s appearance on the stand was all the talk both inside and outside the courtroom. Here’s a bit:

Friday was Mr. De Niro’s show, and he knew it. He held his face in his hands, considered the questions, worked his jaw as he put forth his recollections. Asked by the prosecution to identify Ms. Morse, Mr. De Niro turned his right hand into a gun, thrust it at her and recoiled. Ms. Morse, a blond woman wearing a teal tunic and boots, hardly looked at him, though she was the only one in the room who wasn’t transfixed. His last words on the stand were an attempt to engage the defense lawyer without having been questioned: “I’m going to suggest …” The judge shook his head and signaled for him to stop. Mr. De Niro put up his hands as if to say “Whoops!” and smiled.

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