SPEAKERS

Sid Meadows,  Jonathan Johnson

Intro: 

Hey friend, and welcome back to the trend report. I'm Sid Meadows and I'm your host for today's conversation. I'm a business leader, a coach and a consultant and a long time student of the office furniture industry, and it is no secret that I am a huge fan and advocate for the small business. And I'm excited today to introduce you to a new small business and their CEO, as we talk about what it's like building a business and starting from scratch, how they're going about it, the importance of the product, and I'm really excited to welcome Jonathan Johnson with Forum Furniture to the episode today. So let's dive into this powerful conversation.

Sid:

Hey everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of the trend report. I'm glad you're joining me today for another installment of our CEO chat series and I'm excited to welcome today a new CEO in our industry, Jonathan Johnson. Hey, Jonathan, how are you today?

Jonathan:

Hi, I'm very well. Happy new year. How are you?

Sid:

Oh, I'm doing great. Thank you very much, and I'm glad that you're joining me today to share a little bit about who you are and what your company does. So why don't you kick us off there and give us a brief introduction to Jonathan?

Jonathan: 

My name is Jonathan Johnson. I'm super excited to be on this show today, and I am the CEO and founder of Forum Furniture Check us out, form-furniture.com and we are brand new, you know, which is very exciting and scary thing to say all at the same time, because I don't know, there's lots of brands who have rebranded or retooled or gone to market differently than they have in the past, but maybe you can enlighten me. I just can't think of any brand new brands in the last I don't know in our industry. And so it's a thrilling spot to be, and I've been in our industry in various sides of it for 20 years now, and I just I'm so excited to be at the helm of something that I'm very, very proud of.

Sid: 

Well, I want to talk about that for a minute and so, but before we do I want to go backwards just a little bit. And your foundation in our industry actually comes from the architectural side, right yeah?

Jonathan:

No, I went to Auburn University in Alabama, which is where I'm from. We're equal

Sid:

Roll tide. Sorry, I had to get that plug in there.

Jonathan:

Yeah, fair enough. I graduated from a five-year program there, a fabulous architecture program in you know however, many years ago, I'm not just gonna say and I have a degree also in interior architecture and environmental design from Auburn. So I was in school for a little longer than I intended, but at least six or seven years. So you know I'm not sure, I'm not sure I'm gonna be here, so, but I had three great degrees and lots and lots of fabulous experiences and a great foundation to build what turned into an incredible path today, and I can't wait to see where it leads.

Sid:

So, Jonathan, after architecture school, you went to work at an A&D firm in Alabama, but I'm really curious how did you go from being an architect and doing what you did there to into the furniture world? What was the path that led you into our side of the business? Did you miss the first project?

Jonathan:

Need?

Sid:

Okay, that's not the answer I had expected, by the way.

Jonathan:

Yeah, it was honestly, it was unintended. It was 2008, 2009, 2010,. And I had gotten I don't know six plus years or so practicing architecture, getting to work, building amazing projects with a company at the time called Jitina A Koch in Birmingham You're familiar, yep, and I really got to do everything design work to working with dealers and designers on interiors, to clients on architecture project management, designing, glazing systems, you name it. You remember those times? I mean it was apocalyptic. It was to me. I mean I was so young. I mean now we've gone through several different versions of that, but it was fabulous until the day it wasn't and you could see the writing on the wall. We went through four or five rounds of layoffs Interior designers lost their job, librarians, assistants, you name it and then, finally, we probably went from 100 people to 15 in a year, while other firms were just shutting their doors.

And I spent a year actively looking for work as my small little bank account dwindled. And I worked in architectural libraries I mean it was $10 an hour just cleaning out their libraries, organizing products. I went to every firm in Alabama almost giving presentations about my qualifications or what my prior firm type of work they did. I did everything I could possibly think of, and even working at Pottery Barn, which to this day I had kind of resigned. That might be my whole career for the rest of my life and I kind of was OK with it. After a year, like five weeks at Pottery Barn, felt like a gift, because when it was enjoyable it's just all I could get. And I was lucky enough to have so many friends in our industry who are reps, who worked as rep groups and manufacturers, and they always had their ear to the ground for all of us in our industry, but especially me, and that's where you realize how much relationships matter. I mean, without those relationships I don't know where I would be.

And I was actively interviewing for a few rep roles and those were hard to come by and human scale was in need in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, which was the territory at the time of a rep, and I was lucky enough to get hired after months and months and months of interviewing. I wasn't really their on paper kind of person I don't think I'm anyone's on paper kind of person but at the time I remember making notes in a journal on pages of interview questions, anything they could possibly ask me. What would my response be? I worked so hard to get that job and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I mean 100%. At the time it felt maybe like it was temporary, or maybe it was just a paycheck, or I was just so grateful to have work in our industry. It was hard. You know my whole identity was wrapped. You talk to any architect You know half of their, if not 90% of their identity is wrapped up in that in a lot of ways

Sid:

Well, what I think is really important about what you just said is that one door closes a really difficult time in the world between 2008 and 2010, and what you experienced to a geotino was not different than what was happening around the US, right, but you had one door closed, you got focused on what do I do next and you took some interim stuff and said, hey, this is to get by. But you kept pushing and another door opened and, as you just said, that door that opened was one of the best things that ever happened to you, and that out of something bad comes something really good, because that experience has led you to where you sit today.

Jonathan:

Yeah, it's unbelievable. I couldn't have made it up and I, you know, even to this day I'm lucky enough to be on the board of the advisory board for the School of Interior Design, so I get to work with students, often at Auburn, no-transcript. My number one advice to him is nobody owes you anything. Don't go into the job market thinking you deserve work. You don't. You have to earn it. You have to prove yourself. You have to go get it. It's up to you to go do that. Then, hopefully, your relationships to help you get there, which is really the most important part of anyone's life or career, I think.

Sid: 

Well and I've said this many times before on the podcast and I think my listeners will agree with me and you've echoed it the people in our industry are really what make our industry so much fun and such a great thing to be part of is the people, the relationships you make and the connections you build To your point. The reps were looking out for you. They're sending you hey, here's this and here's that. It just goes to show, even though we are a small industry. It just goes to show how powerful it is to build authentic connections with people and not just surface-level connections.

Jonathan:

Well said. I mean that's authentic relationships with people. That is what matters the most for our whole lives.

Sid: 

I mean it just does I want to add to that. An authentic relationship does not mean that you have to talk to this person every other day or once a week, or even once a month. It means you built a relationship with them and you can go months without talking to them, and what's so great about that is when you pick up the phone after months, maybe even a year, it's literally like you just talked to each other the day before.

Jonathan: 

Isn't that the best? It is the best, it is the best. I am lucky to have that, but I still think it's rare to have that for real, for I don't know more than, say, five to eight people, 10 people Sometimes, your industry connections. They were even easier than say, your friends in your life, because you're in the same world, you have things to talk about, so you can pick up the phone and you know, when you talk to somebody who's a friend in the industry, you're there to talk about where each other's at in your life, but especially in your profession, and catch up it that way. Really, I tell everyone to your point. It's just the most important thing. It really is who you are as a person in that world is what matters your reputation, your ethics, your authenticity 100%.

Sid:

You spent time at HumanScale, learned a lot about the furniture side that you didn't know when you were working in the A&D firm. How did you get from HumanScale to founding foreign furniture? Well, I'm just kidding, he scratches his head.

Jonathan: 

I was at HumanScale for a decade and it was fabulous. I think you've talked to probably a number of people over the years from HumanScale. It looks like I'm sure you've got plenty of people on your network. Fabulous company, fabulous product. They're doing so many great things with product design sustainability and I had fabulous managers and people who really believed in me. It was such a professional education and a life education because I started as a remote sales rep in Alabama, probably grew that 3,000% in five years and did it with someone who was my manager at the time who really drove me to that. She was fabulous. I love her to this day still.

Because of that I was able to move to New York in a row to help manage and run our A&D program. Later to do that in LA as well for HumanScale. It was fabulous because not only did I get to work on that side in architecture and interior design, I got to sell and work with dealers and designers dealers of all types big small. You knew the market in Alabama. You knew the players. I had such a beautiful network that I actually miss every day. Still to this day, I miss it. There was so much comfort in those relationships.

Really, then, running A&D all over the country with it wasn't just me running that program, it was two other folks. It was wonderful. Then it was just 10 years later. It was kind of I could see that I got tired of talking about some of the same things every single day. As much as I loved the company and what we did, it was a decade. Talking about ergonomics is wonderful. It was such a great education, sustainability, all those things.

I got a call. It's just again your network, your relationships and how you leave those relationships behind. And someone from my network just picked up the phone one day and called me and that was blocks and that's also in Alabama. Funny enough, jutina ACOB, my original design firm, and Chris Jutina, who took on that firm after his dad retired because of 2008 to 2010, decided he never wanted to be in that position again. Instead of just saying, well, you know what we're going to pursue healthcare and education and commercial office design he said do you know what? Let's create something that is industry changing. I don't think I stayed with. I think they let me go at the end because I didn't see it. I literally was like let me practice architecture, let me practice. I don't know what you're talking about.

They went out and started a prefab modular manufacturing company that is now huge hundreds of millions, 700 people, more than a million square feet of manufacturing space. I couldn't believe. I went to go work for them again, and right before COVID I was doing that from LA. That's the most interesting, challenging, coolest thing. I was working on projects with Walmart Health and some temple programs for a major religious organization. It was so challenging and wonderful. That's really where I started thinking more about this. I've always wanted a furniture company. My thesis in interior design was a piece of commercial office furniture. When I got maybe bored or down in my career of 16 or 17 years, I would start designing furniture on the side and try and launch a little thing, which is near impossible when you're working the hours that I was working, but I tried. After learning more about supply chain and manufacturing on top of everything else, I just thought things can be done differently. We were working with some big furniture companies there that were awesome but struggling to meet our needs After so many years in this industry. It's all so complicated. It felt so layered and unnecessarily complex and political and sometimes negative. I just thought surely there's a better way.

I went out and started this. I didn't do it in a bubble. I wanted to make sure there was a reasonable business case. My ideas checked out whether that was through my dealer friends or my designer friends, my manufacturing acquaintances. Thank you so much, and I believe it does. You know, we founded form to be the foundational principles of simplicity, beauty and accessible pricing.

Sid: 

Hang on a second. Let's say that again. The foundation of it was beauty, simplicity and accessible pricing. Okay, I love the three. That's great pillars.

Jonathan: 

You know, like as a designer, I mean I have this beautiful Eames cheer I mean I love, and of course it's like right in the corner. I'm very proud of it because it cost a fortune and I was lucky enough to get a deal through some dealer friends. But you know, design is now more accessible than ever, but so is garbage, yeah.

And so for me it's as a designer, as a consumer, as a specifier, as a manufacturer I could never get what I wanted for the price I wanted to pay. And even when I sold products through human skill, it was always such a fight to show them the value in what we were producing, to win that job or to nail that sale. And I just felt like if I start something from scratch, surely without having to pull back layers and layers of decades of a company, then I could build something more nimble and agile and beautiful and cost effective and get product to the customers when they need it and not screw anybody over, including our dealers, who deserve to make good margins, their turnkey. You know they are kind of the crux of our industry because they have so much expertise among so many furniture brands and dealing with so many different elements, parties and people to achieve a good project.

Sid: 

And so I appreciate that because I'm a huge advocate for the dealer community and the rep community, but there's a couple of things there that I want to break down just for a minute. So you said there had to be a better way. You're going to figure out how to do a better way and you started form and you are only I mean, you're only a year old when you started it in 2022, right, yeah.

Jonathan: 

Yeah, july of 22.

Sid: 

It's over a year old.

Jonathan: 

When I say we, I mean I really at the time. I've got a great team now, but it was zero things. I mean it was nothing. It literally didn't no part of it existed.

Sid:

But what also is beautiful about this is you can build it the way you want to build it, with the products you want to build it, with the model you want to build, and you kind of said that a couple of different ways. And one of the things I really appreciate is nimble and agile, cost effective and, honestly, simplifying the process.

I believe our process is so overly complicated that it has room for modernization, so selfish plug here. In the February edition of Viewpoint Magazine the magazine was, which I write for Viewpoint Magazine I wrote an article about modernization. I was a whole. The magazine was all about modernization for the month of February and I wrote an article about things in our industry that should be modernized, and the sale cycle and the overly complicated process is one of the things that I highlighted that should be modernized. And you're echoing it and you're building a business around simplicity and design and quality and price. Yeah, yes, that's great.

Jonathan: 

Yeah, when I can't wait to read that article because I think there's a lot of ways to do it. But what I've also found is there's some things, you know, I'd love to change everything tomorrow, but as a new company you can't. And what I even in the beginning felt like was something that would be simple and elegant as a process or an approach would actually complicate it further for people in our industry because of how used they are to working in certain ways or accustomed to, you know, discounting methodologies or list pricing structures, or you know, like I didn't want list prices, you know. And then it's like a month later I'm like, well, that's stupid, I can't. I can't seem to like really get out from under a list price with a discount structure, because then I can't get on a state contract and then I'll really get out.

So, like, I think for me it's it's going to be incremental and, you know, if we can get people to see who we are and what we're trying to do both designers and dealers and customers and future employees and partners I think they'll see it, you know, and we can use that momentum to be in shifting and modernizing to your point. It's time. I don't, I can't tell you what it looks like exactly. I don't think any of us can, but it's time. You know and I think Totally agree with that, it is time. It's time and the other part for me I'm lucky to have gone through different phases of my own life in 20 years, of all these different parts of my career, but I also just wanted a company that was a little more authentic, less layered and political, more transparent and real and lighthearted, and I don't mean in a way like we're going bowling tomorrow night. I think for me it's let's go do the work and feel really proud of ourselves and do the right things for people and try and create scenarios where nobody feels like they got the short end of the stick in our processes and then cash our check and go live our lives and be with our families and then Feel really good about waking up and doing it again. And that's going to be hard. You know, as you grow and scale, that's going to be harder and harder and I just there's a lot of Bloat in our industry and a little bit of nonsense that I'm Really really happy To to just identify and hopefully be different than For better.

Sid:

You just what you what? In my opinion, what you just described, jonathan, was Building a true partnership with your dealers, with your reps, with their end users. Building a true partnership where everybody wins, because that's in the day. That's what it's about. It's not about you beating the dealer up till they make no money or them beating you up till you make no money. It's about working together for the collective good, and that only comes when you build a true, authentic partnership, and that is so important to propel businesses forward.

Jonathan:

Yes and it's. It's, I think, what we all want. You know, we don't know how, always, especially if we're a part of a big company or a big organization, and you know there's always somebody who feels like, like, especially a bid situation let's call it bid situation you know there's always someone who feels like they lose. Designers are not excluded from that equation. You know they get swapped out or somebody doesn't tell them that they switched something out and they show up on the project and they're disappointed to see there's a totally different chair at the desk or you know whatever. And you know same thing with dealers and main lines. I mean often they'll get the job and then main lines start dictating the terms you know and then start creating these direct relationships with the customer and try to manhandle their distribution model and their dealers. And you know, for me I've heard even on your prior interviews you know, like the race to the bottom, it's exhausting.

Sid: 

Yes, it is. Say that again because somebody can always make it cheaper. Somebody can always make it cheaper.

Jonathan: 

Somebody can always fly down to the customer and create a different relationship or draw up a different contract or say something sparkly, you know, I mean it's just yeah, it's exhausting and it's a very competitive landscape you know, and 100%.

Sid: 

So, jonathan, highlight the products. Like you have a very limited product offering at the moment, so what are the basic categories where your products fall into?

Jonathan: 

Well, right now, what we've launched and introduced that you'll see on the website is a tight collection of go to foundational workplace products. So, uh, sit, stand workstations, work tops, task and and conference seating, storage solutions, a simple line of storage solutions and monitor arms, and you know we'll be rounding that out over the course of the next two years. I mean, there's clearly a gap in what we're seeing now is almost half of the specification, which is going to be multi-purpose occasional lounge.

I'm working on designs for that right now. What's really amazing for me is, you know, it's been such a gift because not only am I learning so much but being able to exercise so much of my mind in our product offering. You know, it's not just the product offering, it's every color, it's every color name, it's every logo, photograph, copy. I wrote all the copy myself, with the help of others, Of course. You know I worked with an incredible marketing team who still works with me, Grant Collaborative and you know they were on the show, by the way.

Sid: 

Yes, yes, they were on the show.

Jonathan:

yeah, yeah, last year. They've been fabulous partners. They really I can't express how wonderful they've been to work with because it's they see me and they hear me and they know what I'm trying to do and they respond accordingly and I think you know, the product is beautiful. But what I'm really striving to do is strip away complication and as an architectural designer I'm not a licensed architect, but as a designer, you know,

I think simplicity in design and that can be a process, that can be a conversation, that can be a product, design or a website Simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve as a designer and that's why so many people don't do it, don't have it and can't achieve it because it's really, really difficult. And that's what I hope you see in our website and with our product offering in.

You know, one example of that, two examples, five examples, two examples Okay, two examples, one example Two, two, two. Two examples of that is if you look at our height adjustable table product, new heights, our table base, you know it's a commodity, it just is. It's a commodity product. You know. There's no other way of saying it. Other manufacturers are differentiating themselves by options, alternatives, selections, variations. Here's 10 different motors with different decibels. Here's different stages. You know different handsets, like different legs. What up 90% of your jobs and 90% of your designers. In my estimation, based on research, knowledge and tenure, they don't know about that, they don't care about it, and it's a lot of noise.

You know. It's not that I can't do it, because we have amazing vendor relationships and manufacturing capacity, but it may not ever show up on our line. Can I do benching? Can I do? You know three legs and L shapes? Sure, you know. Can I do different colors? Sure, will it always show up in my catalog? No, I sourced everything, designed everything to be the best version of what the majority of people are using, the most competitive, the best specifications, the cleanest line, and we did it. I did it in a way that said what does the customer want? What do they want to pay for it? What does the dealer want in their margin? What do I need to be successful and I'm going to go out and design that so that I start from the end game and work back, and if I can't find or design something that fits that, then it's not in the line.

Sid: 

So there are a couple of things. I'm on your website and I'm, as you're, talking about the table. I'm looking at the table. I'm looking at the table and I appreciate the fact that you said it's a commodity, everybody's got one. But you went to the end and looked back and I think what I appreciated a couple of things I appreciate. You kept it simple, right. You got one table comes in a couple of different colors with a couple of different work surface tops, right, and the specification is very clear about what it is. You kept it simple, which I love. I think simplicity that takes away the complexity of our industry and 25 different finishes and blah, blah, blah. We can talk hours about that.

But I also think that you're doing something that a lot of people shy away from, which is you're putting your list price on the website. A lot of people shy away from saying what the Well it's. On the website, it says list price. Oh, I mean like really people are shying away. Yeah, people it's. I don't know why it is. It's just this whole thing about putting pricing on your website, but you got it front and center and you're not trying to sell e-commerce, you're not trying to take an order there. I don't see a cart or anything that I can do. But so if you're trying to sell like e-commerce, then, yeah, people will put their pricing up there, but if you go and look, you'll have a hard time finding pricing. If it's there, it's certainly not front and center, and that's transparency, and I think our industry needs more transparency.

Jonathan: 

Well, and it's simplicity and it's user experience, which I think, especially on the internet, on web pages, et cetera people are people. Manufacturers are Behind the curve on that. There's some websites that do it well, but there are many, many, many that do it really poorly. My goal is to be two clicks away from almost every bit of information you can find. I didn't even want to launch this company without having every resource available.

Sid: 

I want to pause for a second.Two clicks away We'll see if everybody can hear that.

Jonathan:

Is it three clicks?

Sid: 

No, but I hope everybody heard that right Two clicks away from all the information that you need. Because so many times I talk about this. Other podcasters talk about this, people in our industry talk about it. Digital first is really important. We have to meet our specifiers where they are, and that doesn't mean they're in the library looking through catalogs. They're on the internet searching for things, and the more complex, the more clicks, the more likelihood you have to drive them to somebody else's website because you've made it so complicated for them to find what they want. Jonathan, congrats to you. I love that. Two clicks away.

Jonathan:

Thank you. I mean, like you go into any manufacturers, here's a thousand-page catalog just for one desking system. I mean it's just, it's outlandish To your point. It's funny, I don't know, outside of a materials sample kit which we just finished, which, by the way, of all the things I've done, that was the most challenging, if you can believe that shockingly, but you know, I think. I hadn't even. Yeah, I think it occurred to me to put a catalog in a physical library. Good, good, that's good.

Sid: 

I think it's an important thing. There are other resources out there for you. I've got some of those people coming on the show later this year, but there are certainly other resources out there for you to be discovered and for people to find your binder and to find your literature. And, honestly, at the end of the day, the days of printed literature is literally waning. I went in December. I took a couple of weeks traveling and had my you know, the Thinkspace Lookbook with me and we're doing design presentations and dealer presentations and all this kind of stuff, and not a single person kept one. They were like oh no, no, we don't need it. If it's on the website, that's great. If we need it, we'll call you. We were going to go, we'll go to your website first. I'm just like wow. I mean really, because I come from the days of when the reps used to come in every week and update the go to the library and pull out their binder and put stuff in, and you would steal it the next day and have to call them to bring you more and you know. So it's great to actually be able to leverage digital tools to help our companies grow right, help our businesses grow.

Jonathan: 

Yeah, no, that's great. I think everybody is probably finding something similar and you know, I think you know space on a shelf is more and more irrelevant, you know, if not completely irrelevant, outside of finishes, and you know you can't get away from that as you know it's. No 100%, you know designers they need that.

Sid:

So you said your box was the most challenging thing that you did. Why was it so challenging? You're smiling. Why was it so challenging?

Jonathan:

I'm still like, I'm still you know.

Sid: 

See it in the background If you're watching on YouTube. Jonathan just pointed to it in the background.

Jonathan:

There it is. You know, I think as a small new company, you know, we don't necessarily have the full volume of work that somebody who's in this industry wants to do. Now I have met with some amazing people who do this and only this cut swatches. So swatches, male samples, put boxes together. But you're talking, you know I don't want to cut a swatch unless I'm cutting 10,000 of them, you know. And I don't want to put together a box unless I'm putting a thousand of them together. And you know, to me it's it really was it's still not done. I mean, I was.

I've been working on this box for eight months, you know, with not just myself, but I got my stash cart that I designed myself, designed, prototyped, shipped, manufactured, selected, sitting in a warehouse in less time than it's taken me to put this sample box together. And luckily Jamie on my team, who used to work with me at HumanSkill is, is running with things like that in the background. But I, you know, my God, talk about feeling archaic. I, you know, I just there's some of the things I. Pulling the curtain back has been so thrilling because it all seems so easy. And then you hit a wall, like with I don't know a box and you're like what is this?

Sid:

So, Jonathan, they just remember something somebody told me many years ago that just stuck in my brain. That has never left. Done is better than perfect, 100%.

Jonathan: 

This box is my no means perfect.

Sid: 

Okay, get it done already. Right, get it done. So, john, I got a couple more questions for you, then we'll wrap up. You're doing something else that I think is really important and I really appreciate. You've created an advisory board. So tell me about that advisory board and kind of how you went about selecting, because you're also very front and forward with it. It's on your website. Meet the people who are advising us, so, and I love that. So tell us about the advisory board.

Jonathan: 

Oh, thanks for asking. There's such a key piece of me being able to do this and for six months, eight months, I was really by myself plugging away with, of course, feedback from others and this board, I don't know. Two months in, I just was like I need some people to rely on that I trust, who represent different parts of the industry to help me make these decisions to choose fabrics, to talk about pricing and competitive pricing, to determine what's more comfortable, to advise me on marketing, et cetera aesthetic you know, and I, what a gift it's been.

And so we have four advisory board members, many of which I've known for many years, starting with Anna Ruth Gatlin, who is my dear friend from Auburn. She's actually a PhD in interior design and a key part of really my whole life. She's a dear friend, but she's also an expert, sure, and that makes her incredibly valuable to me because she knows who I am. I used to call on her when I was a new rep and she was a new designer in the facilities department and has been really instrumental in helping me getting involved with the students at Auburn, which I love doing, and she gives me a very practical input but also helps me understand where education and interior design is headed, what students are looking for as they get into the market, but also as a friend, sure. You know she tells me when I'm being crazy. You know we all like that and I think that's been so valuable.

And then my friend, tina Brennan, who worked with me here in New York in the marketing team at Human Scale, running it for some time with Bob King, and she was the first person I called for marketing. She's at Interior Design Magazine in Metropolis here in the city and she's a great friend too, but she has so much expertise. Last night we actually had a board call to launch 2024 and she was so helpful in looking at my socials, which I know nothing about. You know, luckily, with the right phone call, contact and credit card, you can do anything in an internet connection. But luckily, you know, I've gotten great feedback from how we approach that to what kind of design awards we might want to look into for, like the Stash series, for example,

don Papas, who I met here in New York when I was working with the A&D team here, and she is a true furniture expert. She's been at a number of the big firms in the city Perkins and Will Gensler, tpg. She puts packages together all day, every day. She knows everything about furniture you could possibly ever want, every detail. She sends me links of things that she thinks are the next thing that are getting lots of specs. She's advising me specifically on that fill color price all the things that she sees every day. It is a rare art in professional tenure to have someone who has that much expertise in furniture specification, and its younger generations aren't exposed to it. I hope there's more like her out there who are bringing up people in that art of working with furniture at that level, because not many people are really doing that.

Then Jesse Hill from Hill Design Studio, who used to work at Herman Miller doing industrial design and product design. He's been fabulous, giving me great critiques on products, giving me industry insight from an industrial design perspective, introducing me to contacts in Michigan, fort Xinguple, who can help me navigate the waters. They've just been. I couldn't have done it without them. Emotionally and really giving me feedback, advice, input and support. They are all beautiful, wonderful people and they're fun and they're incredibly talented professionals. It really is a gift.

Sid: 

I appreciate that detailed explanation of that. I think you highlighted something that I think it is important is that we all need help, we all need advice, we all need mentors, if you will. We need people to help us make decisions Honestly in today's world. There is no reason that anybody should have to walk a path alone. There are so many resources out there, including people, and kudos to you, man, for doing it finding those right people for your organization and then telling the world that this is what you're doing. You have industry experts helping guide the direction of your organization. That's absolutely fantastic.

Jonathan: 

I didn't want to do anything in a bubble. I have strong opinions and sometimes that's great and sometimes that can trip you up a little, but if you have people you trust, it really is key. I think everyone in some way. I listened to another one of your podcast. Mentorship is so important and they're mentoring me In. The only way we can be successful to do something different is relying on what people think should be done differently, not just what I think should be done differently. That idea has changed just in the last year and a half from where I started to where I am. It will change again and again. One thing that I learned at Blocks continuous improvement is really important and encouraged, whether that's as an individual growing. I'm a different person today than I was a year ago. Even For a company or a product, it's just always going to be better the next time and better still. That's how you build not only a brand or product line. It's how you build a career and a life.

Sid: 

Jonathan, I wanted to say thank you for being here today and for sharing your incredible story. I also want to thank you for demonstrating something that I think is very important, that is, courage. You're demonstrating to us the courage that's necessary to build something from the ground up, to lean into your passion, but to also do it differently and realize that just because our industry says this is the way things have to be done or should be done doesn't actually mean that's the way they should be done. Kudos to you for having the courage to push forward and do and come out with beautiful products that everybody needs, as you call them, the foundation. You're blazing a new trail, creating a new path, and I'm certainly glad that you're part of our industry and that you're doing that and showing others what's possible. Congrats to you, man I'm excited for you.

Jonathan: 

I always cheered up on that one. I cheer up once on almost every call, regardless whether it's positive or just complete frustration. I'm grateful for that. I think some days it doesn't feel like courage. Other days it feels like I might be the bravest person in the world. But it's furniture and I'm a furniture lover. I love design and I love this industry and I love having conversations with you and people like you in our industry. When you get down to it, I think everybody feels a similar way. It's just how do you make change? What I tell everybody now is right now, I want something that feels really fresh, but I want it to feel familiar. I think anything more than that to be the brand I want this to be in 10 years.

That's where you start, because you can't make change like that. It won't work, and not in this industry, because it's still, at the end of the day, we're manufacturing furniture. It's not like we're a technology company per se. I think thank you for saying I appreciate it. I appreciate you giving a voice to all these different angles and people in our industry, because it's fascinating to listen to and learn from and hopefully this will have value for somebody else out there too.

Sid: 

I'm sure that it will. It's been a pleasure, Jonathan, to have you. We're going to drop your website address down into the show notes for everybody to go check out all your products. If you guys are looking for cool new foundational type products, or maybe you're a rep looking for a line to represent, please feel free to reach out to Jonathan. Jonathan, if our community wants to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Jonathan:

Email is absolutely the best way and then visit our website. As you said, I think we're starting off small. If you like the line, you like what you see, you want to specify it, you want to distribute it, just let us know. I'd love to have a conversation.

Sid: 

All of that will be down in the show notes, including the email. Jonathan, thank you again for being here today. Thank you Really appreciate you, and to all of you joining us today. Go out there and make today great. We'll see you again soon. Take care everyone.