Tuesday, July 29, 2008
My iPhone quest is complete. My friend Mark hooked me up over the weekend with a slot in the Apple Store queue, with a reserved 16GB black model waiting for me at the end. I spent several hours Sunday afternoon in line at Barton Creek -- even with a guaranteed "Willy Wonka ticket" slot, the store can only process three iPhone applications at a time, and each takes 10-15 minutes to set up -- but Mark was there with me, so the wait was worthwhile. Yes, the iPhone lives up to the hype. The 3G version is blazing fast, both for Web and e-mail/application downloads. Btw Mark is one of the hardest-core PC aficionados I know -- he's been a tech geek literally since elementary school in the early '80s, and he spent much of the early part of his professional career at Dell -- but he's become an Apple convert practically overnight.
The particularly observant among you may have noticed that my listed e-mail address to your right has changed; kirkgallery.com is, as of today, officially active. The full site won't be ready for another month or so, but our teaser site is up and running, for those curious. The chandelier featured in the background is the centerpiece of the main floor's retail space; the multicolored shades are made out of polyurethane, so it's much lighter than it looks, and Kirk is the exclusive U.S. retailer of the line, made by a French company called BOBdesign. You will probably also see it in our first print ad, scheduled to run in the fall issue of Austin Monthly Home.
The particularly observant among you may have noticed that my listed e-mail address to your right has changed; kirkgallery.com is, as of today, officially active. The full site won't be ready for another month or so, but our teaser site is up and running, for those curious. The chandelier featured in the background is the centerpiece of the main floor's retail space; the multicolored shades are made out of polyurethane, so it's much lighter than it looks, and Kirk is the exclusive U.S. retailer of the line, made by a French company called BOBdesign. You will probably also see it in our first print ad, scheduled to run in the fall issue of Austin Monthly Home.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Still don't have an iPhone, but I had the opportunity to see the store space tonight for the first time in its evening guise. Wow. The cabinets and front tile aren't finished, and the chandelier centering the space isn't up, but I saw the front glass and doors for the first time in their unobscured glory -- I picked a set of fairly elaborate door handles, and my selection turned out to be a good one -- as well as what the space looks like illuminated in its full set of fluorescents. I think we're gonna need to turn the fluorescents off at night -- aside from conserving power, we need the focus to be on the chandelier and rear backdrop -- but the lighting turned out much better than I expected, as I'm not normally a fan of fluorescent-lighting heat and color levels.
We also have what I think is the coolest bathroom in Austin ... which, since I'd had a few drinks with friends earlier in the evening, I gave a test run tonight, since the plumbing's functional. Tracey helped me pick out this incredible tile from a company called Hakatai, and we installed a locked glass cabinet in there that will house, for starters at least, this absurdly camp and fabulous set of John Waters-designed porcelain plates. The designs on them can best be described as "Barbie on crack." My only worry is that some drunk asshole will try to make off with them during one of our late-night events.
The awning's finished as well, and I'm going to take a look at it tomorrow. I know just from seeing the skeleton a few weeks ago that the fucker is going to be huge. I hope it won't be *too* huge, but that'll be impossible to gauge until it's installed on-site.
We also have what I think is the coolest bathroom in Austin ... which, since I'd had a few drinks with friends earlier in the evening, I gave a test run tonight, since the plumbing's functional. Tracey helped me pick out this incredible tile from a company called Hakatai, and we installed a locked glass cabinet in there that will house, for starters at least, this absurdly camp and fabulous set of John Waters-designed porcelain plates. The designs on them can best be described as "Barbie on crack." My only worry is that some drunk asshole will try to make off with them during one of our late-night events.
The awning's finished as well, and I'm going to take a look at it tomorrow. I know just from seeing the skeleton a few weeks ago that the fucker is going to be huge. I hope it won't be *too* huge, but that'll be impossible to gauge until it's installed on-site.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
It's a little hard to believe, but we're really almost there. All of our merchandise purchase orders (for the small, design-driven accessories) have been placed. All of the furniture we're launching with in need of repair or new fabric is either at the upholsterer or the wood refinisher. The store's construction is nearly complete, and we're having a final walkthrough on Friday with everyone involved in its design and construction -- me, Tracey, the architects, and the contractors -- to make sure everything's been installed correctly. The front awning/signage is going up next week.
Still, there's plenty of work to be done, and plenty of decisions yet to be made. Here are three of the biggies:
1. Stephani and I have no desks. I've been wanting to do some sort of custom design there, but we haven't come up with a concept that's utilitarian and unique, and also inexpensive to fabricate. Worst-case, we can use the two desks in my vintage inventory, only problem being that they're diametric opposites in design (one's rosewood and formal, one's early Machine Age with tubular steel and glass panels). I came up with a cool desk chair concept, however: I found two vintage Eames Soft Pad chairs, and we're recovering them with one of Maharam's most bad-ass ultramodern fabrics.
2. As of yet we have no art. I have a full list of artists and photographers I'd like to work with, but barring me pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I think we may have to launch without this element in place. I also think I may have to hire a professional art consultant, since this is one area where Stephani and I both lack formal experience.
3. As of yet we also have no artistic backdrop for the rear wall. Tracey and I have both been adamant since day one that we need some sort of showstopper design on the huge wall (15 feet high, 20 feet wide) in the center-rear of the space; the problem has been coming up with something that's a) removable, since I will also need the space for exhibiting larger works of art I'm actually selling, and b) not insanely expensive, e.g. Tracey's initial idea of mounting a custom Kyle Bunting rug on it. (I can't even remember the quote we got for it, but it was well into the five-figure range.)
Anyway, assuming I have any luck on my thus-far-fruitless quest to buy an iPhone, I'll snap some pics on the Friday walkthrough.
Still, there's plenty of work to be done, and plenty of decisions yet to be made. Here are three of the biggies:
1. Stephani and I have no desks. I've been wanting to do some sort of custom design there, but we haven't come up with a concept that's utilitarian and unique, and also inexpensive to fabricate. Worst-case, we can use the two desks in my vintage inventory, only problem being that they're diametric opposites in design (one's rosewood and formal, one's early Machine Age with tubular steel and glass panels). I came up with a cool desk chair concept, however: I found two vintage Eames Soft Pad chairs, and we're recovering them with one of Maharam's most bad-ass ultramodern fabrics.
2. As of yet we have no art. I have a full list of artists and photographers I'd like to work with, but barring me pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I think we may have to launch without this element in place. I also think I may have to hire a professional art consultant, since this is one area where Stephani and I both lack formal experience.
3. As of yet we also have no artistic backdrop for the rear wall. Tracey and I have both been adamant since day one that we need some sort of showstopper design on the huge wall (15 feet high, 20 feet wide) in the center-rear of the space; the problem has been coming up with something that's a) removable, since I will also need the space for exhibiting larger works of art I'm actually selling, and b) not insanely expensive, e.g. Tracey's initial idea of mounting a custom Kyle Bunting rug on it. (I can't even remember the quote we got for it, but it was well into the five-figure range.)
Anyway, assuming I have any luck on my thus-far-fruitless quest to buy an iPhone, I'll snap some pics on the Friday walkthrough.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
I know gas has been in the $4-a-gallon range for a while now (and diesel's closer to $5), and that we're obviously heading into a serious recession, but it didn't really hit home until today: I got hit with a $1,300 bill for delivering little more than a coffee table from New York to Austin. (Also included were three plates, all average dining-size, and two lightweight wall sculptures, about 2' x 2' each. Those should have been negligible costs.)
I've used the same shipping company for delivering most of the store inventory I've bought over the past year, the name of which I'll refrain from mentioning here. Since I've had a de facto moratorium on purchasing additional vintage inventory in place for most of the year, if only because the store's launching five months later than planned and I have so much stuff sitting in storage already, it's been a while since I had to have anything shipped. I bought a handful of pieces at recent auctions in New York, Chicago and L.A., however, and since Stephani's now running the inventory-logistics part of the business, I had her get quotes and arrange the shipments.
What I didn't realize -- because I didn't pay close enough attention to the quotes Stephani received -- is how much shipping costs have escalated just over the past year alone. To explain what I mean, a better case in point than today's shipment is another one due to arrive shortly from L.A. Last August I purchased two large chairs from a dealer in San Diego, roughly the same distance from Austin as L.A. Last week at the L.A. auction with the infamous Warhol snafu, I bought a rosewood desk and a four-top Nakashima dining table -- larger than the chairs, yes, but still only two pieces of furniture. The delivery quote for the two large chairs last year was $400 and a $60 fuel surcharge. This year? $650 for delivery and a whopping $230 fuel premium. (I think both increases are ridiculous. The price of fuel has doubled, not quadrupled, and there's no reasonable rationale for a 60% delivery-fee increase in less than a year when you're already charging a fuel surcharge.) Factoring in taxes and the crating charge (a miscommunication on my end: I didn't clarify that the table, already in bad condition, didn't need anything more than a blanket wrap) the total was nearly $1,300. Had I paid closer attention, I would've sought out additional shipping options on these and every other recent furniture purchase.
I am thus left with three unpalatable options: pass these expenses onto my customers in an already cautionary market; take a hit and allow the additional shipping expenses to eat into my own margins; or simply stop buying and shipping small lots individually. I haven't decided between option #1 and #2 for existing inventory, but I'm afraid option #3 is my only choice from this point on, unless the pieces in question can be shipped FedEx or UPS (both of which have size & weight limits) or are unusually special or unique, and purchasable for a reasonable amount of money. (Case in point: the Cubist-style mirror I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It's en route, and I suspect it's an original work by Neal Small; if so, it's worth upwards of $10,000. Even if it's a fake or its provenance can't be proven (the $50,000 mirror mentioned in my original blog post was both much larger than the one I bought, and a limited and signed edition, which raises its value substantially), a quality fake is worth around $5K. Either way, I will more than cover my margins even with the increased shipping expense.
The other geopolitical issue affecting my business is the continued weakness of the dollar versus the euro and pound. We're importing most of our design-driven accessories from Europe, and the weak dollar means we're paying out the wazoo for this stuff; unless another retailers have established a widely recognized retail price for a given piece, I have no choice but pass the increased prices onto our consumers and set our own rate based on the costs of acquiring and delivering the piece. (As another case in point as to the effect of the dollar's devaluation versus the euro: these are the chairs I bought a year ago for my home dining room (though in red, not slate). I bought them full retail at Moss, but the price I paid was less than half their current price.)
A depressing report about the state of the 20th-century design auction business also came out via Sotheby's today; here's the link. I knew Phillips and Wright had trouble selling some lots, but I didn't realize the extent to which it'd affect both the Christie's and Sotheby's stallwarts. I'm not sure why they didn't include Rago in these estimates -- either anti-New Jersey bias (commonplace in NYC) or embarrassment that they're kicking the likes of Sotheby's ass in average number of lots sold and levels above premium so many ideas are receiving -- but this oversupply issue is worrisome, if only because its inevitable result will be restricted supplies come the next round of auctions (and far fewer bargains to be had).
On the bright side, the fact that we're entering a recessionary period bodes well for one of our three principal lines, christened "Budget Bespoke," which I remain convinced will be of significant appeal to moderately well-off but also style-conscious consumers seeking custom-tailored furniture at a reasonable price point. As for the wealthy clientele we're targeting with our highest-end product, luckily most are immune to short-term market corrections, having divested their portfolio into interest-protected investment vehicles, and still have ample funds to spend at their leisure on items like advanced design and investment-grade modern.
I've used the same shipping company for delivering most of the store inventory I've bought over the past year, the name of which I'll refrain from mentioning here. Since I've had a de facto moratorium on purchasing additional vintage inventory in place for most of the year, if only because the store's launching five months later than planned and I have so much stuff sitting in storage already, it's been a while since I had to have anything shipped. I bought a handful of pieces at recent auctions in New York, Chicago and L.A., however, and since Stephani's now running the inventory-logistics part of the business, I had her get quotes and arrange the shipments.
What I didn't realize -- because I didn't pay close enough attention to the quotes Stephani received -- is how much shipping costs have escalated just over the past year alone. To explain what I mean, a better case in point than today's shipment is another one due to arrive shortly from L.A. Last August I purchased two large chairs from a dealer in San Diego, roughly the same distance from Austin as L.A. Last week at the L.A. auction with the infamous Warhol snafu, I bought a rosewood desk and a four-top Nakashima dining table -- larger than the chairs, yes, but still only two pieces of furniture. The delivery quote for the two large chairs last year was $400 and a $60 fuel surcharge. This year? $650 for delivery and a whopping $230 fuel premium. (I think both increases are ridiculous. The price of fuel has doubled, not quadrupled, and there's no reasonable rationale for a 60% delivery-fee increase in less than a year when you're already charging a fuel surcharge.) Factoring in taxes and the crating charge (a miscommunication on my end: I didn't clarify that the table, already in bad condition, didn't need anything more than a blanket wrap) the total was nearly $1,300. Had I paid closer attention, I would've sought out additional shipping options on these and every other recent furniture purchase.
I am thus left with three unpalatable options: pass these expenses onto my customers in an already cautionary market; take a hit and allow the additional shipping expenses to eat into my own margins; or simply stop buying and shipping small lots individually. I haven't decided between option #1 and #2 for existing inventory, but I'm afraid option #3 is my only choice from this point on, unless the pieces in question can be shipped FedEx or UPS (both of which have size & weight limits) or are unusually special or unique, and purchasable for a reasonable amount of money. (Case in point: the Cubist-style mirror I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It's en route, and I suspect it's an original work by Neal Small; if so, it's worth upwards of $10,000. Even if it's a fake or its provenance can't be proven (the $50,000 mirror mentioned in my original blog post was both much larger than the one I bought, and a limited and signed edition, which raises its value substantially), a quality fake is worth around $5K. Either way, I will more than cover my margins even with the increased shipping expense.
The other geopolitical issue affecting my business is the continued weakness of the dollar versus the euro and pound. We're importing most of our design-driven accessories from Europe, and the weak dollar means we're paying out the wazoo for this stuff; unless another retailers have established a widely recognized retail price for a given piece, I have no choice but pass the increased prices onto our consumers and set our own rate based on the costs of acquiring and delivering the piece. (As another case in point as to the effect of the dollar's devaluation versus the euro: these are the chairs I bought a year ago for my home dining room (though in red, not slate). I bought them full retail at Moss, but the price I paid was less than half their current price.)
A depressing report about the state of the 20th-century design auction business also came out via Sotheby's today; here's the link. I knew Phillips and Wright had trouble selling some lots, but I didn't realize the extent to which it'd affect both the Christie's and Sotheby's stallwarts. I'm not sure why they didn't include Rago in these estimates -- either anti-New Jersey bias (commonplace in NYC) or embarrassment that they're kicking the likes of Sotheby's ass in average number of lots sold and levels above premium so many ideas are receiving -- but this oversupply issue is worrisome, if only because its inevitable result will be restricted supplies come the next round of auctions (and far fewer bargains to be had).
On the bright side, the fact that we're entering a recessionary period bodes well for one of our three principal lines, christened "Budget Bespoke," which I remain convinced will be of significant appeal to moderately well-off but also style-conscious consumers seeking custom-tailored furniture at a reasonable price point. As for the wealthy clientele we're targeting with our highest-end product, luckily most are immune to short-term market corrections, having divested their portfolio into interest-protected investment vehicles, and still have ample funds to spend at their leisure on items like advanced design and investment-grade modern.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Happy Fourth of July. Besides last weekend's Warhol-bidding disaster, which I still feel terrible about while at the same time accepting wasn't my fault, I had a pretty good week. On Wednesday I met with a bunch of folks at Arthouse, including their executive director, Sue Glaze. Sue, as it turns out, is a major aficionado of 20th-century decorative arts (and I felt a little embarrassed upon mentioning the names of some of the furniture designers we're carrying, e.g. Jean Prouve and Charlotte Perriand, only to discover that Sue knows as much or possibly more about their repertoires than I do), and I was very glad to discover her enthusiasm for my gallery's overall concept. Arthouse is a nonprofit arts organization, but since their mission is promoting contemporary art in Austin (and Texas) in general, I wanted to gauge whether there were any areas where we could combine forces. As it so happens, right now they're staging their annual New American Talent exhibition, and one of the primary artists they're featuring is one I'd already had my eye on following a viewing of his work a few months back at one of the SCOPE fairs. I haven't contacted him yet, but I think his work would be a great fit in my place.
Sue also mentioned that next year the Blanton will be featuring an exhibition called "Birth of the Cool" that debuted at the Orange County Museum of Art last fall, and suggested that we could time a furniture event to coincide with it. Part of its focus is on the furniture designers that emerged in California during the '50s and '60s, and while I have no intention of selling vintage versions of, say, the Eames stuff you can easily get a reissue of at DWR, I would be more than happy to offer their one-off prototypes, which I've seen at a few auctions, or rarer designs that were never produced en masse by Herman Miller and the like. The Blanton's exhibition doesn't start until February, so Stephani and I still have ample time to source product that could run in a concurrent store display.
Speaking of the store, it's nearing completion. Construction should be done next week, and we're now scheduled to get our certificate of occupancy on the 16th (five days later than planned due to some last-minute confusion on whether or not we needed to have a fire-alarm pull station next to the front door, of all things). We're supposed to open our doors 15 days following the CO-issuance date, but Stephani and I don't yet know whether that's feasible. We still have A LOT to do before then, including basics like buying (or fabricating) display cases for small items and jewelry, but at this point I think we've both accepted that we may not have certain parts of our product mix (the art, in particular) in place until after launch. Which is fine, because August is a slow retail month regardless, and we're not starting our full-court press in the media and doing the formal launch party until early September, plus we're not expecting business to seriously pick up until October. We're hosting this year's Barkitecture event, which Stephani originally launched a couple of years back when she was still at Design Within Reach, and given the amount of media coverage it generates and its number of attendees, I assume it'll give us a healthy bump on the awareness scale, particularly among the local architecture and design aficionados we're targeting as one of our key markets.
Sue also mentioned that next year the Blanton will be featuring an exhibition called "Birth of the Cool" that debuted at the Orange County Museum of Art last fall, and suggested that we could time a furniture event to coincide with it. Part of its focus is on the furniture designers that emerged in California during the '50s and '60s, and while I have no intention of selling vintage versions of, say, the Eames stuff you can easily get a reissue of at DWR, I would be more than happy to offer their one-off prototypes, which I've seen at a few auctions, or rarer designs that were never produced en masse by Herman Miller and the like. The Blanton's exhibition doesn't start until February, so Stephani and I still have ample time to source product that could run in a concurrent store display.
Speaking of the store, it's nearing completion. Construction should be done next week, and we're now scheduled to get our certificate of occupancy on the 16th (five days later than planned due to some last-minute confusion on whether or not we needed to have a fire-alarm pull station next to the front door, of all things). We're supposed to open our doors 15 days following the CO-issuance date, but Stephani and I don't yet know whether that's feasible. We still have A LOT to do before then, including basics like buying (or fabricating) display cases for small items and jewelry, but at this point I think we've both accepted that we may not have certain parts of our product mix (the art, in particular) in place until after launch. Which is fine, because August is a slow retail month regardless, and we're not starting our full-court press in the media and doing the formal launch party until early September, plus we're not expecting business to seriously pick up until October. We're hosting this year's Barkitecture event, which Stephani originally launched a couple of years back when she was still at Design Within Reach, and given the amount of media coverage it generates and its number of attendees, I assume it'll give us a healthy bump on the awareness scale, particularly among the local architecture and design aficionados we're targeting as one of our key markets.