Introducing ... Pirwi
Thursday, June 11, 2009
I can't believe I forgot to blog about it, but given that the press release is out and we just had a launch party tonight for it, I suppose it's way overdue to mention that the Mexican design collective I've kept under wraps the past few months is Pirwi, and we finally have our first shipment of their wares on the floor. (Regrettably, we don't have floor models of what may be their two coolest designs to date -- the Centipede bench and Drip table -- because both are brand-new additions to the product line introduced after we placed our initial floor-sample order.)
Pirwi hits the furniture trifecta: totally bad-ass design (and covering both moderately conservative and truly avant-garde looks), eco-friendly production processes, and arguably best of all, reasonable price points, starting at around $200 and topping out, with a solitary exception for a knitted chair requiring an insane amount of man hours to fabricate, at under $3,000.
I've seen most of the spectrum of modern design at this point, and I have yet to encounter a manufacturer that successfully accomplishes all three of these goals. We've had a tremendous response so far, and the next step with our PR agency is shooting for national coverage, since for the time being at least, Kirk has a North American exclusive on the brand. Both Pirwi's principles and I concur that Austin's a great place to launch the line, given both logistics (relative ease of transport since Mexico City's a day's drive) and Austin's large eco-conscious populace.
Next step: getting it up on our Web site. We have a basic home page graphic up now, but we eventually want to sell most of the line online -- a daunting task, given that each piece comes in five different veneer colors (and in some cases six) and many in multiple sizes, and I have to reconfigure our e-commerce engine to take all of that into account, as well as the fact that the larger pieces will require custom shipping that has to be specially arranged (and shipping prices even for the regular pieces will vary widely depending on size and shipping distance). That, however, is a problem to be contended with once my present weariness has subsided.
Pirwi hits the furniture trifecta: totally bad-ass design (and covering both moderately conservative and truly avant-garde looks), eco-friendly production processes, and arguably best of all, reasonable price points, starting at around $200 and topping out, with a solitary exception for a knitted chair requiring an insane amount of man hours to fabricate, at under $3,000.
I've seen most of the spectrum of modern design at this point, and I have yet to encounter a manufacturer that successfully accomplishes all three of these goals. We've had a tremendous response so far, and the next step with our PR agency is shooting for national coverage, since for the time being at least, Kirk has a North American exclusive on the brand. Both Pirwi's principles and I concur that Austin's a great place to launch the line, given both logistics (relative ease of transport since Mexico City's a day's drive) and Austin's large eco-conscious populace.
Next step: getting it up on our Web site. We have a basic home page graphic up now, but we eventually want to sell most of the line online -- a daunting task, given that each piece comes in five different veneer colors (and in some cases six) and many in multiple sizes, and I have to reconfigure our e-commerce engine to take all of that into account, as well as the fact that the larger pieces will require custom shipping that has to be specially arranged (and shipping prices even for the regular pieces will vary widely depending on size and shipping distance). That, however, is a problem to be contended with once my present weariness has subsided.