Hello Dallas!

June 17, 2008

Teroforma will make its Texas debut at the Dallas Total Home & Gift Show starting tomorrow (show runs from 18th-24th).

Our new friends Jeanette and Meg at William M Lamont have kindly included Teroforma as part of their collection and will be showing our full line in their permanent showroom - Suite 2400.

If you’re in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by.

More with less

May 21, 2008

Designers are a lot of things – intelligent, creative, thoughtful, and passionate – just to name a few. One trait that manages to turn the rustic, cobblestone streets of SoHo into a runway of modernity is their understanding that simple can be stunning. During the four-day-long International Contemporary Furniture Fair, showroom-lined Greene Street is filled with spectators there to see just that.

One great example is Matthew Hilton’s solid wood Light Table featured at De La Espada. Offering Amstel Light and a full demonstration, the crowd grew at their post-fair party while the good people at De La Espada showed eager guests just how long the table with only two legs perched at either end can become with its leaf inserted. Sleek and simple, its complex balancing act gives it a look of the future without overshadowing the raw beauty of the grain.

The ICFF itself is a bazaar of big names and emerging talent. We walked the Javits Center’s 145,000 square feet in search of inspiration and designers we felt could bring something new to the Teroforma table. While we’re still regaining our voices and resting our feet, we’re excited about the people we spoke with and are looking forward to new possibilities. With over 38 countries represented don’t be surprised if we end up adding places like Botswana or Japan to our already diverse map.

This is all wrong

May 09, 2008

Let me preface this rather long post by reassuring you of a few things: I believe in competition; I believe that generally fast and smart should get rewarded and that slow and dumb should not; I believe mostly in sinking or swimming; I believe in the marketplace and in the power of the individual to determine the fate of ideas when presented on a fair field of play.

But, even with all of that in mind, with the recent announcement that Nau - the world-friendly activewear brand - is closing its doors, it seems appropriate to share some thoughts on why sometimes market forces are wrong and why every once in a while, we must act to preserve strong ideas which are, temporarily, at risk of being overtaken by stronger forces.

Nau is a brand that started out of Portland, Oregon and really first rose to national attention at the end of last summer. They are a bunch of ex- Nike and Patagonia guys who were acting on the vision of a guy from Colorado who had an idea that businesses should set social considerations equal to those of shareholders and returns on investment. Going beyond the token 1% contribution of revenue to social causes (nothing against Patagonia and their saintly work with 1% for the Planet), Nau dedicated 5% of every sale to charities that their customers could select - almost $250K in their short life span. They used verifiably eco-friendly materials for all their designs and made the sourcing open to the rest of the industry (it’s usually a huge trade secret). They developed a new way of thinking about shops, where customers who decided to order from the shop for home delivery - thereby reducing emissions related to inventory jockeying - got a 10% discount (thanks BWJ!).

Say what you want about the design style, take a less active stance on what businesses must do to “do their share,” even shout at them for fiddling a bit with the way that people shop for apparel…

But when, on the same day, the newspaper tells us that the price of oil is going to reach $200/bl AND Exxon Mobil posts the second largest Q2 profit in its history AND a company that set out to do the right thing in a way that improves life and living for us all is folding because it can’t get some funding to keep the lights on through a recessionary period - IT MEANS THERE IS SOMETHING REALLY, REALLY WRONG!!!

So here’s an idea for the guys at Nau:

Set up a website called www.savenau.com - I just reserved it and you can have it for free.

Post a letter on the site indicating what it will take financially to keep things going for another 12 months - about 90 days after the election…

Offer a single special share in the company to customers, suppliers, vendors and utility providers who work with you - they contribute what they can.

They get to own a % in that share equal to their contribution so long as the sum gets you near the money you need.

Perhaps your investors will make up the rest knowing that so many people are behind you.

Good luck!

FYI - for a full obit, or for a reason to help them take up the challenge of surviving, check out this piece at Treehugger

At Home with Blomma

May 02, 2008

About a year ago, our good friends Nick and Jeanette decided to sell their home in Wilton, move to a house near the beach in Norwalk, CT and open a small shop that they could bike to every day.

Their store - Blomma Home & Garden - is proof that a beautiful life is always a simple life. Their carefully selected range of design objects for the home come from all over the world and center on subtle styling and high-quality craftsmanship. Things you want to use every day precisely because they help to create little moments of perfect luxury. So you can imagine our delight when, over a glass of wine late one afternoon a few weeks ago, Nick and Jeanette asked if we would be interested in adding some of Teroforma’s range to their wonderful collection. We jumped at the chance to work together with them!

So, into the late hours of last night (and into the small hours of this morning), Anna and I helped Nick and Jeanette remove, dust, replace and rearrange the store to make way for Teroforma. A bottle (or three) of champagne were popped to help smooth the process along. The highlight was when a guy from the restaurant across the way, who could see us working hard as his last customers were heading home, took pity on us and had 4 glasses of wine delivered by the waitress with the words “people achieve great things in small numbers.”

We’re delighted to add another great store to our growing list of friends around the country. Even moreso that they are friends who believe in the same things we do. And as for the guy across the street, we agree, but suspect that when it comes to living a life of simple luxuries, the number of people ready to join us isn’t that small.

Great minds…

April 24, 2008

Patagonia launched the Footprint Chronicles back in October but has just recently added some new products. Basically, the site shows you the origin of 10 of their products and gives an indication of the ecological impact of their sourcing. It’s really well done and very much worth the time exploring it in full, so check it out!

Our own approach is somewhat similar but, maybe because we’re a lot smaller, we’ve been able to show you where every single one of our 300 objects come from and who they’re designed and manufactured by. Not so much because of the ecological impact (although that consideration is part of everything we make), but just because we feel like knowing the story behind what you own means you end up appreciating it even more.

Don’t get us wrong, it’s not a race or a contest (although our map is obviously much more appealing and I believe they may have tried to save money with their puny map pins…). Straight up, the peeps at Patagonia are a bit god-like to us in terms of what they do and how they do it. Let My People Go Surfing is required reading around here. If we could some day be half as effective in terms of leaving things better than we found them, we would think that was just fine.

Just a little poke in the ribs from a much smaller distant cousin because there’s nothing like a little friendly competition and, even if it were a race, they can’t say they don’t have the shoes for it!

Hudson Home Just Joined the Table!

April 24, 2008

Bill Poole is a great guy. Not only does he run a fantastic modern furniture store in the Crossroads Arts District in KC called Hudson Home, he likes to shake hands with the people he does business with. On a recent trip to New York, Bill made the trek out to see us in person. We spent a whole Saturday with him talking design, responsible sourcing, architecture and ticking through Teroforma’s range of objects.

We are happy to say that Bill decided to do more than just swing by for a visit. Hudson Home now carries a select range of dinnerware, glassware and linens from Teroforma. You can check out his store at www.hudsonhomeonline.com or, if you’re in the neighborhood, perhaps just stop by after one of the area’s cool First Friday’s gallery walks that take place each month. And if you see Bill, make sure to shake hands.

Happy Earth Day

April 22, 2008

We take the responsibility of being “makers” very seriously. Our focus on quality craftsmanship means that a lot of the waste inherent in higher-volume production can be eliminated. That said, our manufacturing partners focus on constant improvement in their craft and in the way it effects their employees, the community and the wider world.

Our linens are a perfect example. We work with Linas Nordic in Panevezys, Lithuania, a member of the Masters of Linen Guild and a recipient of certifications from both OEKO-Tex and ISO for ecologically-responsible production and socially-responsible management.

Their commitment to excellence is part of their philosophy and a real part of the work they do. Linen is an amazing material. Highly absorbent, linen will withstand and actually improve with use and cleaning while holding its shape. It also takes far less active cultivation than cotton, thus minimizing the amount of fertilizer required to return an adequate yield, and produces a number of useful by-products in the refining process - linseed oil and pulp (actually used in the making of US dollars) to name a few.

Poetically, as if to call attention to its practical and metaphorical beauty, the flax plant blooms only one day a year. In case you missed it, we hope our Spring/Summer linens do a good job of capturing the essence.

Friday Is the New Saturday

April 17, 2008

We’ve always thought of Friday as the Saturday of the work week. You know that meeting you have on Monday? Well, you can pretend like you’re going to prep everything today and that your boss won’t have any “sudden ideas.” Or you can just admit that it’s all going to happen on Sunday like it always does.

The way we see it, Sunday gets stolen from you unless you start the weekend today! So kick back and relax! We’ve been busy working on new and clever ways to keep your eyes glued to the monitor so that people passing by will see you transfixed by your commitment to your “work.”

The newest feature in our webstore allows you to share whatever you’ve put on your table with a friend. Just click your favorite wine glass or put together a fab set of colored linens and hit the Share Your Table button. It will generate a link that you can paste into an email or an IM. When your friend clicks on it at their end, an exact copy of your table pops up in front of them. So, whether you’re going in on a present and want to trade ideas or you’re proposing fab design concepts to a client or dropping a not-so-subtle hint to your partner, we’ve got you covered.

Todo El Mundo

April 11, 2008

We have gotten a number of requests for international shipping since our launch last month. In fact, when we switched on our web analytics a few weeks ago, we were astounded to see that our site had been viewed by people in 1,345 cities in 77 countries around the world.

After some fairly long hours and a lot of phone calls, we’ve figured out a way to ship to you wherever you happen to be. It’s tough. Most companies won’t do it because of the hassle. But, given the fact that our designers and artisans are themselves from about 14 different countries (at last count), it seemed only sensible to extend the same approach to people who want to be customers.

As of today, Teroforma is happy to say that no matter where you are, no matter what language you speak, what currency you keep, which timezone you’re in, we can ship to you.

Welcome to the table!

Back Home

April 10, 2008

The shot above is of our booth at the Boston Gift Show (and of Paul girding up for another day of retail battle).

All in all, the Gift Show was…interesting.

We fit right in next to the guy selling wooden parrots and signs for the Pirate Baaarrr (get it?).

We did manage to have a couple of chats with some really great people at some really great shops in Boston and will hopefully have news for you soon on where you can stop in to see our stuff in the flesh when you are next in town.

FYI - bypassing Fenway on opening day on your way out of Boston is not a great idea.

Booth 515

April 01, 2008

Teroforma is setting off to exhibit at its first trade show. We will be in booth 515 at the Boston Gift Show between Thursday and next Tuesday.

Unfortunately, it’s trade only.

So sneak in. Come see us. Say hello.

We mocked up our booth in the warehouse today. I know we’re biased, but we thought it looked pretty good! We’re excited, so what we lack in polish we’ll make up for in enthusiasm.

We’ll put up a few posts about our adventure - not least being a report on what looks like the worst hotel in Boston. Aahhh, the rich rewards of success…

Our Spring/Summer 2008 Catalog

March 30, 2008

Just a quick post after a few hectic post-launch weeks to let you know that our Spring/Summer 2008 Catalog will be available next week. It will give you a great overview of the product range with loads of hi-res images and stories about our artisans and designers. Use it together with the web store to get the best of both worlds or simply pick up the phone (+1 877 899 1190) and talk to one of us about any orders you have in mind. If you would like to receive a pdf copy via email, just drop us a line at ask@teroforma.com. We aren’t doing a print version just yet (it’s kind of wasteful and cramming another unwanted catalog into your mailbox is not really our approach to customer service). But if we get enough requests, we’ll do a small run for those who ask.

Unsung Hero

March 07, 2008

Karen Day is a writer.

One who has an intense curiosity about the world and an insatiable desire to know more about it. She has lived all over the place - from Hawaii to Tuscany. She has visited 94 cities in 11 countries and recently mentioned that she hoped for more travel “asap.” Her approach to the world around her is seasoned with the confidence that comes only from having been blindly sure about things at one time and then finding reason to breakdown and rebuild those absolutes. It was this kind of maturity that immediately attracted us to Karen.

Before writing anything - and by that I mean all of the content on our website and some stuff you haven’t seen yet - she asked if she might spend some time getting to know our designers and artisans. Not one at a time, but all of them. Before writing a word. “It’s not the fastest way to do it, but it’s the right one,” she said.

“Teroforma is the hub but it connects to people all around the world trying to do something worth doing and even if they are not all in the same place, their objects will speak as a whole. I need to understand the parts to present the whole.”

And so, through a series of interviews, Karen got to know all of Teroforma’s design and artisan partners. She labored over getting the nuance right – and all the time in the changing dynamics of the website and the constraints it presents.

Creativity needs inspiration and constant motion. Karen has passed through and now back out of the Teroforma orbit - other projects beckon and perhaps she will now have some time to put the finishing touches on a book she is writing at the moment.

We can’t wait for our next project with Karen, but in the mean time, wanted to make sure we gave credit where it’s due.

Really almost there…

February 28, 2008

Did you know that the average American processes 3,000 discrete marketing messages every day?

That’s more messages in one month than our grandparents would have processed in a lifetime.

And as a new company, we have wrestled with the questions - do you need to advertise? Do people listen to advertising anymore? Do they believe the message even if they manage to pick it out from all the others?

The picture above is part of our answer. Paul (our COO) and Alex from FedEx are loading up our launch announcement packs to some of the top design, lifestyle and decor magazines in the US. Our idea is that by having a story to tell - for that matter loads of stories about our designers and artisans - we can hopefully save the cost of lots of meaningless advertising and, as a result, keep it out of the price of our products.

Sounds good on paper. We’ll see.

Up Close with Maria Lintott

February 28, 2008

Maria Lintott is as cute and polished as her name may imply. What she isn’t though, is typical of what that might mean if taken at face value. Her interest in details (probably what keeps her looking so well put-together) allows her to design patterns that are simultaneously intricate and simple.

In order to design a composition that is rational yet complex, Maria constantly studies the way details connect in all aspects - from wandering around street markets, noticing how the intense color of the tangerines plays against the wooden cart they sit in, to spending an hour examining the structure of a leaf and all its stems. Maria so closely observes what she is interested in that she is able to step back and recreate what she saw in a simple manner without losing the complexity of it all.

Through photography and sketching, Maria is able to capture images that exemplify how she sees the world. They also provide her with a tangible way to experiment with pattern, beginning with cutting templates from the silhouettes of her sketches and then loading them up with color. Then, by applying pressure, she transfers the pattern to the page, creating subtle variations in the color and depth of the design.

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