kirkerblog 4.0

Absolute Auction (Failure)

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:22:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, on the first pleasantly cool day of the season, I put my car's top down and went for a drive to the north side of Lake Travis. I hadn't been out there in years, or at least not since moving back to Austin three years ago, so I was curious to see what had changed. For those of you not familiar with the area surrounding the lake: the south shore, where I grew up, has gotten pretty densely populated with upscale subdivisions and whatnot, and assuming there's not much traffic, you can make it to downtown Austin in 25 minutes. Austin's high-tech corridor along Loop 360 is even closer. As such, the area can support high-end development, and a number of the newly developed lakeside areas have housing prices well into the seven-figure range.

The north shore, however, is out in the freakin' sticks. You have to drive all the way around the lake to get to the towns of Lago Vista and Jonestown. In little traffic that's at least an hour. In rush hour, from downtown, it'd be about two. As such, most of the area has remained undeveloped; most of the housing consists of trailers sitting next to rusted out cars, and basically it's the kind of area where people go to disappear from the world. (Think meth labs.) But then we had this kooky thing called a "speculative bubble," and some real estate folks thought they could turn the most bassackwards part of the sticks into a luxury resort.

During my drive along the shore, I passed a bend and stumbled across what may be the most ridiculous architectural folly I've seen to date: an ultramodern lakefront condo complex that looks like it was airlifted straight from Venice Beach. Construction was clearly finished, but even the quickest of drives-by revealed that nearly all of the units were vacant. I figured it'd be a matter of months before they'd be liquidated at auction. I was right.

Today I stumbled across a blog describing the auction results, which weren't reported in any of the local media. I've witnessed some epic auction failures in my time, but this one seems to top them all. A formerly-$700,000 unit sells for $300,000, and that's the BEST result of the day? And it's bad enough that the auction company not only had to stop the auction, but apparently put in a ringer to buy 60% of the units that by law had to sell under absolute terms? Ooof.

"Trust me."

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:16:00 +0000

One of the most frustrating parts of my business -- or, I imagine, most businesses -- is dealing with unusually high-maintenance customers. And I think I met my match today.

I have in my possession a most decidedly period early '70s Edward Wormley flamestitch sofa. Although this is not at all the type of thing I'm normally interested in, I made an exception for several reasons: Stephani recommended it (and she's familiar with certain microcosmic vintage collector groups that I am not); the couch is in absurdly perfect condition considering it's original fabric and from the early '70s; and basic nostalgia: my parents literally had the exact same couch when I was a toddler, and my dad's sister took it as a hand-me-down and had it for at least another 15 years afterwards.

It is of course necessary for those of us in the vintage field to be able to establish the provenance (a.k.a. the history) of each item we purchase. If it's been bought from one of the major auction houses, that's generally easy: they authenticate anything coming up on the block, and their authentication methods are rarely, if ever, off. I even just pulled two chairs from a LA Modern auction because they'd been previously authenticated as genuine elsewhere, but LA Modern was unable to do so themselves. For modern vintage, authentication usually involves comparing a design and its fabric (if original, and if it has fabric at all) with that in the original manufacturer's catalog at the time. There are, obviously, exceptions if a piece is something like an Evans or Nakashima one-off.

The problem in all this is when a client asks for proof of authentication, in the absence of original production labels (which original buyers often removed). That's totally fine, but it has its limits. In the case of the flamestitch sofa, I think I hit them. The fabric on that thing is about as unique as it gets. While some more popular mid-century styles have been copied, I've not once heard of anyone trying to copy the plush, etched velour seen on flamestitch, a very specific design that has a small but devoted online fan base. To my potential buyer, in addition to taking multiple additional photos of the sofa, I measured the height of the legs -- this being a particularly involved buyer, she already knew that they came in two heights -- and also checked to see if the cushion was T-shaped (a subgenre I was admittedly previously unfamiliar with - a T-cushion wraps slightly around the sides on each end and is generally a single piece). Anyway, my sofa has all of this and fits the buyers' criteria perfectly.

The problem came down to proof. The prospective buyer asked for a copy of the original purchase receipt. I'm sorry, but in my field that is SIMPLY NOT DONE. Besides revealing tricks of the trade, it's also frankly an insult for the dealer: a buyer doesn't believe a number of perfectly reasonable rationales, and now requires literal truth. There comes a point at any stage of vintage sales that you simply have to demand the maxim of "Trust me." In the case of the flamestitch sofa, I've established myself as a dealer, noted that the sofa is in absurdly mint condition, and pointed out that I'm confident in its provenance that I'd provide a refund if it turned out the couch was fake. But it's not, which I already know, and furthermore the likelihood of someone faking that exact fabric and style are slim to none.

I don't know yet whether the buyer will accept my offer. I'm just lamenting that we got this far to begin with.

The Champ Gets Up Off the Mat

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:23:00 +0000

After last month's somewhat mixed results at the Wright and Rago fall sales, I was wondering whether last week's spectacular Sotheby's contemporary art sale would represent a comeback for furniture and design as well. The answer, based on the results of Saturday's Phillips de Pury Design sale, appears to be "yes." As a reminder, Phillips' Design sale last fall basically crashed and burned, with 44% of lots remaining unsold, even ones by the usually reliably blue-chip Jean Prouve and Charlotte Perriand.

This year's auction started out pretty slowly, with most lots selling for under the low estimate (note that sale prices listed on Phillips' site include the 25% buyer's premium) or not selling at all. But then click to page 2: it's like a freakin' rocket took off! Prouve came roaring back with a table estimated for $7K-$9K selling for $26K (before buyer's premium). A remarkably basic Prouve office chair sold for $25K, well over the high estimate. And on it went from there: a handful of lots went unsold, but most that did sell sold for either the upper end of the estimate range or well beyond it. The sale also featured the return of my favorite auction highlight, the batshit-crazy-priced bidding-war item. Then came another. And another. And although it wasn't last in the show, I was saving it for last here: a pair of Royere goat hair chairs that sold for nearly half a mil (including premium).

Total sales for the day: $3.6 million, versus $2.2 million in last December's Design sale and $2.1 million this past June. With all due respect to LL Cool J, I call that a comeback.

Moving

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Kirk Gallery may be closed, as of 5pm Sunday, in bricks-and-mortar format, but it lives on in cyberspace -- and I've moved on much more quickly than expected. Today I found out that I've been approved to start selling vintage on Bond & Bowery. Those of you familiar with Manhattan probably know that it's an intersection (one that happens to be four blocks from my old apartment there), but it's also an international online marketplace for good modern vintage. It's one of several competitors that have popped up the past couple of years to compete with the field's 100-pound gorilla, 1stdibs.com, but at a far lower cost to dealers and with a much less rigid management structure. 1stdibs requires that their own photographers shoot each piece featured on their site, for instance -- a key reason they can only feature dealers from a couple dozen cities throughout the world -- and also that all dealers maintain a storefront, even though some of the best antiques & vintage dealers only sell privately. Although 1stdibs is finally covering Austin as of a couple of months ago, I already knew I'd be closing my gallery's physical location when I heard the news, so even if I wanted to cough up their stiff fees, an application would have been moot.

Bond & Bowery's traffic is fairly hefty considering they have a fraction of 1stdibs's amount of dealers or merchandise, and it's used quite a bit in the trade and aficionados in the know who want something immediately and don't want to pay the outrageous prices 1stdibs dealers typically charge (you may remember my rant earlier this year about Todd Merrill, the country's biggest Paul Evans dealer). Our Web site has already gotten quite a bit of exposure, but this should provide it significantly more. I will be proceeding my only bona fide competitor in Austin vintage circles, Austin Modern, onto Bong & Bowery: owner Elle Greene opened a vintage store on Burnet five years ago but ended up closing it last year to go strictly virtual. I'd say my merchandise as a whole is a little more upscale than Elle's (she has quite a bit of stuff I'd classify as kitsch and a much lower percentage of pieces by specific designers, and unlike her I've never sold vintage accessories), but we certainly have quite a bit of overlap.

Anyway, we should have our first pieces up on Bond & Bowery by the end of the week.

"Final Clearance"

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:08:00 +0000

Wow. Nothing like the words "final clearance" to draw a horde! I sent out an e-mail to the gallery's customer list yesterday announcing a markdown of everything left on the floor to 50% off; I'm not exaggerating when I say our sales the past two days were better than the previous six weeks. It probably helped that Barkitecture was going on today, plus we had unseasonably gorgeous weather (sunny and mid-70s), but still. Really, though, there are some damn good deals, and I'm raising anything not sold back up to full price on Monday (for Web sales), but it's nice to clear out excess inventory and go out with a solid sales punch.

Into the Fall

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:22:00 +0000

Eleven days and counting. By the way, I appreciate all the sympathetic calls and e-mails I've received since my last blog post announcing the closure, but really, I'm fine! Nobody died here. Yes, it's unfortunate that a combination of a crappy economy and an implacable landlord is forcing the closure of my gallery, but any stress I had over it has subsided, and people don't need to be walking on pins and needles around me. At this point I'm mainly looking forward to it all being over.

That said, what isn't over is my business of investing in 20th-century design, and once again it's auction season and time to gauge a barometer of where the market's headed. Building on the fairly strong Treadway/Toomey and Rago sales last month, Wright had its biannual Modern Design sale yesterday, which falls in the middle between Mass Modern and Important Design in the continuum of 20th-century design importance. The results of the last Modern Design sale in March were, as a whole, dismal: Eames sold well (with a few notable exceptions, e.g. an Eames lounge chair set selling for an incredibly weak $2,500), but nearly everything else flopped spectacularly, with iconic examples of 20th-century design selling for the single lowest prices I've ever seen, at auctions large *or* small. A Hans Wegner Papa Bear chair -- signed, mint condition, classic black fabric -- sold for a mere $3,250, for instance, not including buyer's premium. (Just to give you an idea how bad that is, a similar one sold last week on eBay of all places for $6,600. The going dealer rate for a mint Papa is about $12,000.) A classic Saarinen Egg chair, also signed, sold for $2,000; while I've admittedly paid less than that for one myself, the one I bought was essentially destroyed and required a Six Million Dollar Man-style refurbishment.

This week's sale? Not only did Eames sell well, but nearly everything else (or at least everything made by well-known designers) sold extremely well. The two Papas on the block sold for $7,000 and $9,000 respectively. A weathered Egg sold for $4,000 -- still well below peak prices, but nevertheless double the sale price of last March. Eames lounge chair prices rebounded; the two on the block sold for $3,250 and $4,250 respectively. Edward Wormley sold remarkably well overall, and even Nakashima made a strong comeback after so many of his lots failed to sell (both at Wright and elsewhere) last spring. The only off-the-deep-end sale price I noticed was a Curtis Jere mirror selling for $8,000 (plus 25% buyer's premium); I've been more bullish on Jere than a lot of people, but even I think $8K for one of their pieces is absurd. What few people seemed to be buying were pieces from the more obscure designers at the sale, some of whom even I've never heard of. (Brazilian furniture may be gorgeous, but unless a given piece was designed by Niemeyer or Rodrigues, its odds on the block are dubious at best.)

On a final auction-related note, I was sad to see recently that one of my best "secret" vintage sources has at last been revealed to the general antiques-buying public. The auction house that lit the whole fuse in terms of my interest in the business was Tepper Galleries, which I found out about three years ago only because I briefly dated one of their auctioneers right before moving back to Austin. Their primary business is pre-20th-c. antiques, but occasionally they hold modern sales -- usually a handful of pieces within a larger antique sale, but occasionally stand-alone modern auctions -- and it was there where I scored my single most stellar deal to date: a pair of Andre Dubreuil Spine chair knockoffs. While they'd be worth an order of magnitude more if they were original, even knockoffs command a massive premiums, given the design complexity involved. 1stdibs currently has a pair of knockoffs listed at $9,500; I paid $80 for my pair. No, that's not a typo. Tepper is actually the oldest auction house in Manhattan, pre-dating even Sotheby's, Christie's and Doyle, but they have steadfastly resisting joining the 21st century and until recently had a Web site straight out of 1995. They didn't even *list* auction items online, let alone sell them there. Alas, they have at long last gotten a clue: their first online auction, hosted by LiveAuctioneers (which hosts Internet auctions for nearly every auction house in the country besides Sotheby's and Christie's, which have developed their own live-auction software), takes place tomorrow. What was formerly an insider secret few people outside of New York interior design circles knew about now has national, and even international, exposure.

Threes, Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:55:00 +0000

Yes, the rumors are true: I'm closing my gallery, at least in its present bricks-and-mortar incarnation. Last day of business will be October 18. You know that "threes" thing I alluded to a couple of blogs back? This is it: my third idea in a row that turned out to be ahead of its time -- and on top of that launched two weeks before the worst economic crisis in 75 years.

There's a simple reason I decided to shutter the place -- the economy sucks, and we don't have enough in-store sales to justify the overhead I'm paying to maintain a large storefront -- coupled with about a dozen much more complex matters, including my landlord's failure to offer me or any other 2nd St tenant any kind of realistic rent relief, as I alluded to both in a recent Statesman article as well as a guest editorial I wrote for the Austin Business Journal (unfortunately the final paragraph somehow got chopped off the online version). I'll elaborate more -- much more -- in the future on what's been going on for most of the past year, and what's going to end up happening as a result, but suffice it to say some much-needed change is already in the works.

Somewhat ironically, August turned out to be our best sales month to date, by a significant margin, and that was during what is typically one of the slowest furniture/home accessories sales months of the year, and without us running any ads or promoting any discounts the entire month. Still, it wasn't enough to justify keeping the business going -- at least in absence of the abatements AMLI should be providing, but isn't.

I'm keeping the gallery's Web site going, however, and will continue to sell the majority of my merchandise online, as well as keep the 20th-century vintage thing going, both in private sales and at auction. The latter is actually recovering from its comatose state, as documented here over the past six months: Rago and Treadway/Toomey had surprisingly strong sales at the first auctions of the season about a week ago, and good work was once again selling at the high end of estimate ranges as well as beyond them. I'm certainly not declaring a permanent uptick yet, but all indicators are for the moment good.

I also have a couple of other things up my sleeve that have nothing whatsoever to do with retail or design, but more on that in a few months.

Threes, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:14:00 +0000

Sorry - got sidetracked and wrote Part 2 much later than planned. Anyway ... a few months after getting laid off from iluvcamp, I decided to go into business for myself. I've always been an inveterate traveler, along with the rest of my family, and I'd noticed there wasn't (at the time) any place to go, either online or off, for unadulterated, expert reviews of a given hotel -- with significant detail instead of the 100-150 words seen in an average print travel guide review, and containing actual photos of the facility instead of the marketing department-shot ones illustrating the places at their finest, not "warts and all." From that sprouted the business plan for a site I called Urban Passport. It started out in concept as a hybrid online/offline guide (which no one else was really doing at the time) -- the book version would drive traffic to the Web site, and vice-versa -- focusing on a given major city's hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, shopping, and pretty much everything besides its main tourist attractions; they were designed for frequent travelers who'd already seen the Buckingham Palaces and Eiffel Towers and now wanted the latest scoop on new boutique hotels, cool restaurants, and the best nightclubs. Since there were already a few nascent sites covering all of the above Stateside, I decided to focus on overseas destinations, and started with one with a low learning curve: London, where there's no language barrier and where I'd already lived for a spell during college.

I moved there for four months in 2001 to write the prototype in person, and I have to say it was one of the most memorable periods of my life to date. I was actually doing quite a bit of work, but said work involved staying in luxury hotels and reviewing as many as a half-dozen bars each night. (I took a journal with me to crib notes about each place; my notes inevitably got fuzzier and fuzzier as each night progressed.) Since I knew I'd get lonely all by myself, I rented a two-bedroom flat for the full four months in what was then a dodgy area of the East End, a half-block from an abandoned council estate, and invited numerous American friends -- as well as my mom -- to come visit, for periods ranging from a few days to three weeks. Some of the longer visits included side trips; my friend Robert and I flew to Ibiza for a long weekend, details of which would probably result in a visit from INTERPOL were I to describe them, and my mom & I went to both the Amalfi Coast in Italy as well as the tiny village between Rome & Naples where my greatgrandfather was born. (Two hints here: visiting the Amalfi Coast during the peak August season is a godawful idea unless one enjoys dodging jumbo buses on veritiginous, blind-curve-laden mountain roads designed for horse-drawn carts, and it's not a good idea to visit rural Italy and hope to communicate with the locals without knowing at least a little bit of Italian.)

Anyway, I returned from the trip 20 pounds heavier -- eating two large restaurant meals a day, coupled with going out drinking nearly every night, will do that do you -- but a veritable mount of copy written: reviews of about 80 hotels, 120 restaurants and 300+ bars, pubs & clubs. Six months' worth of copyediting and Web-development later, Urbanpassport.net launched just in time for SXSW Interactive '02. (It's a whole other tangent why I didn't initially land the Urbanpassport.com domain, but let's just say I acquired the de facto rights to it a few months after launch.) We held the launch party during Interactive at the Lucky Lounge; my dad flew in for the occasion, and we had around 1,000 attendees total. All in all, a good start.

The site got off to a good start as well. In case you were wondering where the site's revenue was generated: although each hotel review was completely unbiased, we had an affiliate relationship with IAN, a unit of Hotels.com; if someone reserved a given hotel through the site -- which, thanks to a then-newfangled Web technology called XML, we were able to do seamlessly on the site, even though all the data (and subsequent customer fulfillment) was handled by an affiliate of Hotels.com -- we received 50% of the agent's commission (8%-10% of a guest's total room expenditure, minus taxes). That figure could really add up if we're talking week-long trips with multiple rooms (one for the parents, one for the kids) at a five-star London hotel; I think my single biggest commission was nearly $500. Although the site was pulling some substantial revenue numbers pretty quickly, I also quickly realized two things: there wasn't any realistic revenue to be had from anything but hotel reviews, and the site had to expand said hotel reviews rapidly beyond London in order to reach a critical mass.

By that fall I'd made the decision to focus exclusively on hotel reviews (besides London - I maintained the existing city guide there), and I also decided to add a dozen more European cities, which I visited in a seven-week solo marathon, with all of a four-day break in the middle. Glamorous though it might sound to hop between international capitals, it actually kinda sucked; I switched hotels nearly every night, and I had to live out of a single mid-sized suitcase the whole time, one that had to fit clothes appropriate for temperatures ranging from the 80s (in Barcelona, where I started in mid-September) to sub-freezing (in Prague, where I ended in early November). After that I decided to write some reviews in three non-European test markets, just to see if the site's success could be replicated beyond the continent: random though they may seem, I picked Las Vegas, Vancouver and Hong Kong. In all three cases, each city had a critical mass of business travel but wasn't adequately covered hotel review-wise by any existing travel guides, online or off. I visited each destination and wrote about a dozen hotel reviews for each.

By 2003 I'd moved to New York both in hopes of launching the long-planned print counterpart to the guide, and also because I was still traveling back and forth to Europe frequently to keep the content up-to-date and also keep adding new hotels. I managed to find various European-based freelancers to write new/update existing content -- particularly for London, since I had kept its city-guide going and needed people to write up new restaurants, bars and clubs as they launched -- but finding reliable ones proved much more difficult than anticipated, particularly in countries where it was difficult to find fully bilingual native writers (the Czech Republic sticks out in my mind here). An additional problem was getting the site indexed in the free search listings on Google and the various search engines; the concept of "search-engine optimization" was still in its infancy then, and the original site hadn't been developed around it structurally, so we relied predominantly on paid Google and Yahoo! keyword ads to bring traffic to the site. This worked fine in 2002, when the price per click was as low as five cents, but after keyword advertising exploded in popularity a few years later, this proved harder and harder. (At one point prices hit SIXTY TIMES that amount for some hotels.)

Also by 2005 or so, the print world was starting to fully branch out online, and user-generated content sites were flourishing as well. Back when I started in 2001, Time Out -- which had magazines in London and New York, and travel guides for dozens of cities across the globe (still the best out there, in my opinion) -- had only the most basic of Web sites containing little of what they printed in both the magazine and the print travel guide series it spawned. Today nearly all Time Out content is online. TripAdvisor, funded in large part by Barry Diller's billions, usurped the vision I'd had for publishing "amateur" photos of a hotel to contrast with the professional marketing-department ones seen in brochures, and also allowed users to book hotel rooms through the site, albeit indirectly and through multiple online booking sites. Finally, in 2006, I threw in the towel on driving traffic via paid Google ads and launched Urban Passport 2.0, this time redesigning the site to be search engine-friendly (much to the detriment of its aesthetics) and even hiring someone who was supposedly one of the top SEO experts in the country to refine it. No dice: even the optimized site failed to cut through all the static and generate substantive traffic through free-search links. I finally decided to shutter it in 2007. (Somewhat ironically, my gallery site has avoided this fate; searches for a given furniture designer or accessory manufacturer often have us in the Google top ten, and I've sold a number of vintage pieces to out-of-town buyers this route.)

It was then with a little amusement, coupled with a little bitterness, that I read a New York Times article six weeks ago featuring a company that had replicated my concept of detailed, professional hotel reviews to an extent that it almost sounded plagiarized from my 2001 Urban Passport business plan -- except the new Oyster.com had the deep pockets of Bain Capital behind it. (As a reminder, it's the private-equity firm spun off from Bain Consulting by Mitt Romney and others.) Granted, Oyster's reviews and photo albums are considerably more extensive than mine were, arguably to the point of excess -- does one really need to see 85 freakin' shots of a single hotel's pool?? -- but the premise is remarkably similar.

So: good idea imploded by poor execution and inadequate funding ... just like iluvcamp. Btw I think I'm gonna put Part 3 on ice for a little while, since speaking of hotels this week has brought two rather interesting turns of events as far as Austin hotels go: someone's planning a boutique hotel for West 6th, and to my surprise, the new W is in trouble. I knew its condos had been delayed, but I had no idea construction might grind to a halt unless Stratus can find someone willing to lend them $180 million. (Btw I remain skeptical about this supposed boutique hotel going up on Sixth. The lack of a specific address is bad enough, but I also checked the city's permit site to see if any building plans had been submitted for approval; no new hotel or mixed-use projects on Sixth have been submitted for consideration in the past year, and the city's permitting process -- particularly for a mixed-use project in a core downtown neighborhood -- is laborious, to put it mildly. That said, it has Bunkhouse -- the management group that oversees the San Jose and Saint Cecilia -- behind it, so it can't be total fiction.)

Threes, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:39:00 +0000

I gotta say: this summer is proving to be one of the most yin-yang periods I can recall experiencing in my adult life. Really incredible highs -- becoming an uncle, launching Pirwi, subsequently landing a Product of the Day mention on Dwell's home page, etc. -- matched with really incredible lows, most of which I'd just assume not get into here. One, I will admit, was my first serious car wreck in over a decade; no one was hurt, thank God, but my car's still in the shop and will require in all six weeks of repair time (the body shop's backlogged, but OTOH it's the best in town), and the car that hit me (a late '90s Civic) was totaled. And it was mostly my fault, too: I was turning left across two lanes of traffic into a parking lot; two large trucks exiting simultaneously distracted me and made me hit the brakes; and as a result I miscalculated how fast the Civic was coming towards me in the opposite direction. Visibility was only a slight issue: this happened at the top of an incline, but mid-afternoon in bright sunlight, and I ended up getting hit broadside on the passenger side. I'm amazed my car ended up comparatively unscathed -- no airbags deployed, no windows broken -- whereas the Civic crumpled like an accordion (with both front airbags set off and the windshield shattered), never mind that it's actually larger than my car. Score one for Teutonic engineering, I suppose.

I have threes on the mind tonight; bear with me, as I'm in an odd mood. Many conversations I've had lately have included some mention of the phenomenon of celebrities dying in threes ... which through convoluted logic got me thinking about the fact that I've now worked for three companies in a row -- two of which I founded -- that had very good ideas that were essentially ahead of their time.

The first company was the one I didn't start: it had an admittedly stupid name, iluvcamp, but a great concept, as well as a Rhodes Scholar for a CEO. I don't know if any of you readers went to summer camp as a kid, but for people who did, it seems to almost invariably be one of their most cherished childhood memories. I didn't go to camp myself, admittedly, but my dad did for many years and even went back to work as a counselor as he hit the tail end of high school. When I was a kid he even made us go on a lengthy road trip up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula (Dad grew up in suburban Detroit since my grandfather was a designer at Ford) to check out the camp itself, though by then it had been shuttered for 15 years or more. Point being, I get it, the fervent devotion kids have to camp, and iluvcamp's owners -- who also owned two camps here in Texas, including one of its most popular ones, Camp Champions -- came up with the brilliantly simple concept of bringing summer camps into the digital age. A part of the camp experience not always known is the fact that while some parents are happy to have a break from their kids, others miss them terribly and hate the fact that they're missing out on the seminal experiences they're having there -- and kids can be away at camp for up to eight weeks at a stretch. iluvcamp's business model had several different elements, but the principal one was a site (or, more specifically, a customizable application) called "campparent." The company created a custom software application that would allow camps to take digital photos of the kids and auto-upload them to a server, where they would automatically be sorted out and posted on the camp's own Web site. (For privacy purposes, all of the sites were encrypted and password-protected, and only parents with kids at a specific camp could see that camp's photos.) Although I know the idea of uploading photos to a Web site seems like kid's play today, thanks to Flickr & Google & the like, as well as ubiquitous high-speed home Internet access, but keep in mind this was back in the year 2000; digital photography had yet to hit the mainstream then, and most home Internet users still used dial-up analog modems.

The company had a multiple-revenue-stream model, which I learned from my previous employer -- Hoover's Online, one of the very few Internet content companies to successfully survive the Web 1.0 bust (they went public in '99, made a profit every quarter even after the bust, ended up being bought by Dun & Bradstreet four years later for just under $120 million, and today generate annual revenue figures nearly as high as D&B's purchase price) -- was critical to success in the Internet sphere. (I'd previously interviewed at a number of companies that I learned clearly via the interviews had no realistic business model whatsoever -- the most infamous being drkoop.com, one of the biggest dot-com failures of all. Shocking though it seems in hindsight, a company that had generated less than $50,000 in revenue in 1998 went public the next year and at one point had a market capitalization of over $1 billion. Their only current and future revenue source, as I figured out during my interview, was banner ads, and I realized immediately after exiting their lavish, Aeron chair-filled class-A office space that they were toast; no amount of banner ad sales on a niche Web site could possibly cover that level of overhead. I was right: that billion-dollar company was liquidated for under $200,000 two years later.) Anyway, iluvcamp planned to not only secure sponsorships and partnerships with advertisers and vendors selling the many products kids have to take to camp -- that was my job, incidentally, working as their Director of Sponsorship Development and helping their non-techie ad sales team explain to potential clients the nuts and bolts behind the curtain and what kinds of custom marketing solutions we could provide -- but also, most importantly, sell prints of the shots taken. Again, this seems almost anachronistic today, when people post photos on Facebook & Google instead of getting them printed on paper, but back then there was still a booming business in "event photos." Any of you go on ski trips back then? Remember the ski area-licensed photographers at the top of the mountain, who'd sell you a keepsake photo with a brilliant mountain backdrop that you could pick up, already framed, at the end of the day for a "mere" $20? That was the crux of the concept, which to its credit worked, at least for iluvcamp's first summer.

Well, sort of. Okay, this post is already much longer than intended, but suffice it to say iluvcamp's model had several flaws, one of them being that rural summer camps nine years ago had no feasible form of high-speed Internet access -- satellite connections were still in their infancy, and despite their myriad technical problems cost an arm and a leg -- and in order to be printed on standard film paper, the shots taken by counselors had to be uploaded at the highest possible resolution, meaning it could take a veritable eon for dozens or hundreds of full-res shots to upload over a 56K connection. Another problem was the company founders' disastrously poor choice for a chief technology officer, one who had a sterling resume running a large technology division but zero actual experience working in an Internet-related field. He went with a custom software app for powering this whole enterprise instead of working within the parameters of an off-the-shelf program, but somehow missed the part in the contract with the developers where the company would require a $125,000 monthly "consulting fee" for maintaining the customized database. Oh, and the software guys had the license on the code, so it couldn't be used at all minus their involvement. (Btw this was a tech company that considered itself so upper-echelon elite that it literally offered a brand-new $200,000 Ferrari as an incentive to anyone who could recruit a mere handful of programmers who actually got hired; basically they only hired types who had MIT Ph.D.'s in six fields and had already cured several forms of cancer.)

By the following year the founders realized the insanity of their error, the CTO & software had been unceremoniously dumped, and the switch had been made to Vignette's off-the-shelf database software, but by then it was too late: after frittering away about $2 million of their $7 million in startup funding on the failed software system, and having failed to secure the follow-up funding planned for expansion (it being 2001 and well into the dot-com bust by this point, capital for content-focused Web companies had essentially evaporated), they had the horrible but unavoidable circumstance of having to tell the hundreds of camps they'd successfully signed on as customers that they'd be going out of business right before summer camp season began.

Lesson learned? Even the smartest, savviest people make ill-advised business decisions when entering fields in which they have no prior experience and when relying on the advice on supposed experts who turn out to be full of shit, mistakes that are always ultimately exposed but most brilliantly so during the midst of an economic downturn. As it turns out, this lesson has proven unfortunately apocryphal.

Okay, this is long and it is quite late, so I'll follow up with Part 2 tomorrow or Saturday...

Another Tragic Loss

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:42:00 +0000

No, this one has nothing to do with business. I'm talking about Michael Jackson.

I can't defend -- or, really, comprehend -- much of what he's done starting around 20 years ago. The numerous plastic surgeries ... the skin bleaching ... the incredibly sketchy relationships with young boys which very well may have been sexual ... all of that. It's been obvious for a very long time that Michael sustained a deep level of trauma at an early age, and while I'm not going to armchair-psychologize, his attempt to morph his physical body into a figure most closely resembling an anorexic Caucasian woman is a pretty much indisputable sign of deep internal self-hatred.

Rather, I'd like to remember Michael at his prime. I have friends ranging in age from 20 to 60+, and in conversations the past few days with the younger end of that spectrum -- who weren't yet alive when Jackson fever reached its apex -- it's hard to explain the phenomenon, much like I can't rationally process "Beatle mania" because it happened so long before I was born. Still, I'm happy to admit that the first concert I ever saw as a young boy was The Jacksons at Texas Stadium in 1984, and I vividly recall the hysteria that accompanied every aspect of it, including the unprecedented requirement of purchasing a minimum of four tickets at $30 each. Although today such a figure seems laughable -- the best seats at a Stones show are at least ten times that -- it was highly controversial at the time, and Michael received significant negative publicity over the fact that his ardent lower-income fans couldn't afford such an outlay. If I recall correctly, they ended up loosening the four-ticket-minimum restriction, but tickets were still in such demand that a lottery system was in place to obtain them, so we considered ourselves privileged when we landed seats for the Dallas show -- never mind that our designated seats were at the opposite end of the stadium as the stage, and it was impossible to see them perform minus the Jumbotrons erected for the event.

Though ostensibly a "Jackson Five reunion," everyone knew that it was all about Michael, and his solo hits took precedence. Still, the air in the stadium that night was electric in a way I haven't seen since, and when the crowd burst into hysterics once Michael busted out the moonwalk during "Billie Jean," I could for the first time understand what all the Beatlemania fuss two decades earlier was about.

A Tragic Loss

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:31:00 +0000

I've given away some tricks of the vintage trade in my recent blogs, but by no means all. All the auction houses I've recently analyzed the results of -- the best on the block -- are the best places to sell pieces, good economy or bad, but the best places to buy are the off-the-radar auction houses you probably wouldn't know about unless someone in the business told you about them. Which, actually, is how I got into this whole auction game to begin with: someone I dated shortly before leaving New York worked at one of said auction houses, which is where I found my best auction score to date: a pair of Andre Dubreuil-style Spine chairs for $80. (For comparison's sake, a set of four similar knockoffs is currently for sale on 1stdibs for $7,800.)

I'm not naming names, of course, but there's a 20th-century auction going on today at one of said regional houses ... and I just royally screwed up by not registering for it in advance, since it's not one I've done business with previously. As a result, I had to witness an original, mint-condition Eames rosewood lounge & ottoman of early '60s-vintage -- which even at Wright's otherwise dismal sale earlier this month sold for $4,250, above the high estimate (note that the stated price on Wright's Web site includes the 25% buyer's premium) -- go for a pittance price of $500. Although I've sworn from day one that there are two vintage items I would never sell at the gallery, because I think they've been done to death by interior designers -- the aforementioned Eames lounge chair and the iconic Barcelona chair & chaise -- a $500 purchase price could convince me otherwise.

I'm generally avoiding vintage right now because the market's so unpredictable, but at the same time I've seen first-hand that well-priced vintage flies out the door; our big sale last month yielded our largest monthly in-store sales figures to date. Pieces by Adrian Pearsall in particular proved immensely popular, and I will be pouncing on anything else of his I find at auction in the future (though there's slim pickings in the summer - most are held in the spring and fall, and there were no Pearsall pieces on the block at today's sale).

Introducing ... Pirwi

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:04:00 +0000

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.

Auction #4: LA Modern

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:30:00 +0000

The results are in, and I called this one wrong, too. You know how I said the first sale of the auction generally sets the tone for the whole thing? In this sale, my Kagan chair -- estimated at $5,000-$7,000 -- sold for about 30% below the low estimate, at $3,600 (which, to be fair, is significantly more than I paid for it originally). That proved to be the overwhelmingly predominant theme behind this sale: nearly everything sold and had multiple bidders, but at prices with few exceptions (I'd say 90% fall into this category) 30%-40% below the low estimates. Thankfully two of the exceptions were the two priciest pieces I had on the block, both of which sold for their high estimates, so on the whole I personally did quite well.

Still, there were some definite bargains to be had. Mid-century doesn't sell particularly well on the West Coast -- which has "moved on," at least in interior design circles, to '60s/'70s/Hollywood Regency -- so this Knoll credenza would've likely fetched double the price at Wright, where mid-century still has a large audience. Someone got a damn good deal on these Calatrava chairs, which rarely show up at auction. Someone also got a steal on these Kjaerholm chairs, which sell new for $4,500 each. A Falkenstein sculpture selling for barely 1/3rd the low estimate is simply an embarrassment ... though there were plenty of worse ones, including this, this, this, this and most of all this & this & this (textbook cases for insisting on reserve prices). A Nelson tray table was the solitary bidding-war inciter yesterday, in an auction with 550+ lots. Not good. These Rodrigues chairs -- which I've never liked, personally -- were routinely selling in the $10,000 vicinity only a couple of years ago. Lord, even Warhol flopped!

Still, the auction wasn't a total flop. The sole Prouve lot on the block went for well above the high estimate. Kuramata remains as popular as ever. Both Giacometti chandeliers on the block sold within estimate range, albeit near the low end. Most of the Walter Lamb lots sold within estimate range, and one lot did especially well.

Oh, and I left out one auction on my earlier list: Bonhams on Thursday.

Auction #3: Phillips de Pury

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:41:00 +0000

Huh. I called this one wrong: the results are in, and this was a pretty damn successful sale. They even managed to sell the most expensive Nakashima table I've seen in eons within auction range, albeit at the bottom of it. (Once again, listed sale prices include buyer's premium. At Phillips it's 25% up to $50,000, and 20% for the portion over that.) Still, some pricey lots didn't sell, and the cover-model star of the show went for well under the low estimate (and its twin, also up on the block, didn't sell at all). I was right about the estimate on the Wilson Breakfast Chair being too high -- we'll see if the one at Sotheby's sells next week -- as well as the general lack of interest in the likes of six-figure Marc Newson tables.

The best part about attending auctions live in person -- which I admittedly haven't done lately -- is watching when a completely inexplicable bidding war breaks out (invariably between A-type men who can't stand losing), and this relatively small sale of 128 lots had three: a pair of Joe Colombo chairs; an innocent-looking 10-inch glass vase that sold for $100K+, including premium; and an ampersand teapot, of all things.

Auction #2: Christie's

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Mostly a flop, though not as bad as Wright's. The Giacometti didn't sell. Neither did the Argente cabinet. Most lots sold, but many went for well below the low estimate. There were a few home runs -- a number of similar Wright window sets went for double the high estimate; an Adnet desk set sold rather well; a Nakashima desk went for a healthy premium; to my surprise, a piece of design art sold for a huge premium; and someone apparently really wanted a copper turtle topiary -- but overall it was a disappointment, which doesn't bode well for today's Phillips sale (also taking place in Manhattan, home of scores of decimated Wall Streeters and destitute Madoff victims).

Baby #2

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:30:00 +0000

Forgot to mention: my second nephew's name is Finley Peter. (No, the Kirks have no Irish blood; they just liked the names. "Kirk" is old Scottish for "church," actually. And Peter was my grandfather's name, by the way.)

Auction #1: Wright

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:07:00 +0000

The results are in, and it looks like I handicapped this one accurately. Front-loading the sale with design art was indeed a bad idea: only 21 of the 38 lots sold, and only 9 of those 21 sold within or above estimate range. (Note: listed prices include Wright's 25% buyer's premium. The hammer price for this Marc Newson lamp, for instance, was $5,000, the low estimate.)

Tons of great stuff went unsold. I mean, come on: not even a prototype Womb chair managed to sell? Even many of the Eames lots, usually swarmed upon, yielded no bids. That said, the auction wasn't a total disaster. Evans continues to sell well -- and, in some cases, extraordinarily well. I also pointed out as soon as I got the catalog that the estimate on this Ox chair was absurdly low; I was proven correct. (Brown leather mid-century classics proved popular in general. Note to self: reupholster Egg chair in well-aged leather prior to sale.)

Okay, okay, so I was wrong on one major prediction: the Maloof chair only sold for $20,000, well below the low estimate. Did people miss his obit in the Times?

Uncle Kirker / Auction Fakes

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:22:00 +0000

First, the big news: I'm an uncle! My brother's twin boys were born today, one 6 lb 10 oz (and named Colin McLain - the middle name was his wife's dad's name) and the other 6 lb 14 oz (name still TBD). Their first pic's already up on my Facebook, if you're one of my friends on it; since my brother's not really into the online thing and only got his first cell phone a couple of years ago, I don't know if he'd want me to post their photo in a totally public forum like a blog (access to my Facebook profile is limited to friends and some work associates), but e-mail me if you're not on Facebook and want to see the tots.

More on auctions, which I posted about a few days ago: it still never ceases to surprise me how many people have been duped into thinking a line of Paul Evans sculpted-bronze knockoffs is the real deal. This list includes myself: I bought a full dinette set early on in my gallery-buying spree that was listed by the smallish auction house in question as "Paul Evans." Not "Paul Evans-attributed," or even "in the manner of Paul Evans," but "Paul Evans." They were wrong: the set was part of one of two lines of Evans fakes, derived from his sculpted-bronze line, that hit the market for a couple of years in the early '70s. In hindsight -- and having learned much more about Evans' work as time has gone by -- I see now how clearly they're fakes, but I made a rookie error in trusting that an auction house would have verified the provenance of all pieces on the block. In reality, only the largest auction houses guarantee provenance, as I learned the hard way a second time as well. I'd feel worse about it had I not purchased the full set for a song (and have it listed for sale for a fraction of what 1stdibs dealers selling the stuff have it priced at).

Last fall I made a non-rookie error and got duped on a pair of fake Marco Zanuso Lady chairs from another small-time auctioneer. Had I been more familiar with the design, I would've noticed the deviances in the legs (real Ladys mostly had steel or aluminum legs; these had thin brass ones) and heft (real Ladys are heavy; these are feather-light), but everything else this particular auctioneer had on hand was legit, so I assume the Ladys were as well. Wrong. They're still good-looking chairs, mind you, and were recently reupholstered in a nice Knoll beige textile, but I bought them on the cost basis of them being legitimate Ladys, and now have to take a loss selling them as fakes.

Anyway, today I received a flyer from one of the smaller auction houses I work with, where the best deals are invariably had, and what do I see? The exact same fake-Evans dinette set presently sitting on my gallery floor (at a 2/3rd markdown from our original price), but listed in the flyer as original Evans, along with several accompanying pieces. The rest of their gear looks legit (and believe me, I've now learned how to spot a fake, in most cases, from a mile away), but I felt compelled to e-mail to tell them that their Evans stuff was not actually Evans and that they're only going to damage their reputation by advertising it as such. I also do this periodically when I see similar fake Evans pieces come up for sale on eBay, which I monitor on the incredibly unlikely chance a good Evans piece comes up for sale there. (In the year and a half I've been looking, this has happened exactly once -- not counting auction listings from Rago and Wright that are no longer listed on eBay.)

To sum it up much more succinctly: caveat emptor.

If It's June It Must Be...

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Fri, 29 May 2009 22:09:00 +0000

...20th-century auction time. Here are my thoughts on the sales transpiring over the first two weeks:

Christie's, June 2
A small sale, like many others this season, and mostly irrelevant to my particular area of expertise -- I know very little about Tiffany lamps, for instance -- and as with a number of other auctions this season, Giacometti is the star of the show. This sale is frankly on the boring side, not to mention predictable (few of these artists *don't* do well at auction, at least for their rarest work, which all of this certainly is); I'll hazard a guess 90%+ will go for auction estimate or possibly above. Can't decide if my personal fave is the Corbusier/Perriand storage unit or the Niemeyer chaise, though as usual I have a weakness for Evans Argente.

Wright, June 2
This one gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach. As I've said in the past, Richard Wright is one of my personal heroes, and he pretty much singlehandedly created the 20th-century auction market. But he's taking the exact opposite strategy as Phillips does below: he's starting with the design-art lots, which sold like absolute crap in the December sales, then moving into the reliable French, Italian and American sellers, and I have to question whether that makes sense (to see why, read my remarks about the LA Modern sale below). Still, he has one ace in the hole: the only Maloof rocker in any of this season's sales. Mr. Maloof passed away this week, so his already-rare rockers are now permanently limited in quantity. I'd wouldn't be shocked if bidding went through the roof on this one.

Phillips de Pury, June 3
Starts out with some reliable Corbusier, Perriand, Jouve, Prouve and -- of course -- Giacometti before going off the freakin' deep end with design art. Some of the estimates are way too high, particularly for Evans and Nakashima, but overall this is by far my favorite of the bunch. Still, it has problems. $22,000-$28,000 for a Robert Wilson Breakfast Chair when Sotheby's has an identical one from the same series at $15,000-$20,000? While I love the Campana brothers, they haven't been fairing so well at auction, so I'm not sure this lovely chair will sell. And then there's the Arad chaise, star of the show. Can the market support a $150K chair that's not a one-off? Oh, wait: they're actually trying to sell two of the five. At the same show. And plenty more Wilson & Campana brothers, not to mention Maarten Bass and Zaha Hadid. All I have to say is: ballsy.

LA Modern, June 7
I have to partially plead the Fifth here, since I'm selling a few of my own pieces at this sale that proved too rich for Austin tastes ... including the very first lot, which some of you may recognize (along with some others that I won't divulge). While it's an honor to be bestowed pole position, it's also a potential invitation to disaster if the item doesn't sell within estimate range (at least) or, worse, not at all, thus setting the tone (most likely disastrous) for the entire auction. I had wanted to attend this sale in person, to gauge the feel of the audience (and see if phone, Internet or in-person bidders were predominating), but unfortunately I have the weekend shift at the gallery for the moment and no one on my team could cover for me, so I have to pass. I'm bullish on this sale for several reasons. First, their last one in December did well even at one of the worst points of the recession, and in one of the states hardest hit by the real estate collapse. There are simply a lot of rich people in L.A. who don't mind paying large sums of cash for objects of desire. Also, unlike New York, L.A. has been much more buffered from the Wall Street collapse and Madoff scandal that decimated the pockets of many a Manhattanite (and which I maintain is the reason Rago's last sale was such a bust). They also have a nice and large selection of mid-century standards, but at the same time aren't afraid to include five spectacular Giacometti pieces (see lots 282-286). A few of my associates are skeptical about how this auction will fare, given my misjudgment of the recent Rago sale; we'll soon see if my bullishness is merited.

Sotheby's, June 12
Not quite as ballsy as the Phillips sale, but certainly more interesting than the Christie's sale, owing to the inclusion of several design art pieces (along with the Tiffany and French designers who are invariably safe buys). Shiro Kuramata's getting an increasing amount of attention these days, but $150,000-$200,000 for a chair issued in an edition of 56? $250,000-$350,000 for an admittedly very cool Gehry bench? (this one's one-of-a-kind, at least) Color me skeptical.

Prepping for a Magazine Shoot

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:16:00 +0000

So: a certain magazine that shall remain nameless for now is thinking about featuring my house in an upcoming issue. Based on the skills of my awesome interior designer, Tracey Overbeck Stead, as well as the fact that I own one of the higher-profile design galleries in town, they're assuming my pad is pretty cool. Pardon the momentary immodesty, but ... well, it is, but that's because I'm a total design geek. Nevertheless, I'm feeling like a contestant on "Top Design" right now, and I have to admit it'd be an ego blow if they decided to pass on featuring the place.

There's also the small problem of my place presently looking like it was just attacked by a Tasmanian devil. Reams of paper -- auction catalogs and receipts, tax info, magazine tearsheets, credit card bills I haven't shredded because my shredder broke two months ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it, etc. -- litter the majority of my office floor. Nearly the entirety of my ten-foot-long kitchen island is covered in similar detritus. My guest bedroom is chock full of random crap that I don't have room for elsewhere, given that I have no garage and my attic's already on the full side. I will be spending most of the evening and tomorrow morning figuring out where the hell to put all this stuff, since my cleaning lady's coming tomorrow at 2pm and needs to do the heavy cleaning of these various spaces.

xoxo - you know you love me

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:25:00 +0000

Although I like to think of my friends as an intellectual bunch, I managed to get into an argument last night about "Gossip Girl." Several of my friends who attended Texas universities and have never lived in New York doubted the veracity of the show's depiction of the lives of the children of New York's elite. While, yes, some parts of the show are ridiculous -- no one wears clothes likes that; none of the kids attend school while simultaneously running a billion-dollar corporation; the Upper East Side isn't *that* lily-white; and there's no freakin' way a starving-artist gallery owner could afford a huge loft right next to the Williamsburg Bridge -- you'd be amazed at how much of it isn't too far from the truth.

Apocryphal tale: I went to the University of Virginia, one of the schools of choice for Upper East Siders whose grades aren't quite good enough for the Ivys (a group that, unfortunately, included myself). First-years are required to live on grounds (and at U.Va., one does not use the words "freshman" and "campus" as descriptors), so I got to know quite a few of these kids in our communal dorms; I think it's safe to say they comprised a majority of the university's out-of-state contingent, which under Virginia law is 33%. One girl in my dorm grew up in Manhattan, attended the infamous Miss Porter's School, and - being a New York City girl - didn't have a car. After concluding she needed one, she went to the town's Saab dealership and charged a brand-new Saab convertible on her AmEx Platinum card. To this day I remain shocked at how nonchalantly all of this took place, though that's actually nothing compared to the time I attended a party at a Princeton eating club ... but that involves details far too sordid for discussion on a public blog.

ICFF Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:21:00 +0000

Now that I've taken in the whole shebang, I can perhaps provide some more perspective on the show.

A number of stalwarts from previous years weren't there, as was much discussed. (There was plenty of empty stall space in the back.) Obviously this was due to the economy. The high-end European lines were still, for the most part, present, but their booths were, well, kind of ghostly in attendance.

What I was glad to see this year -- a change from years past -- was an emphasis on up-and-coming American design, specifically that coming from the country's top college design programs. RISD and Pratt get top honors there, and I will hopefully be carrying several of the pieces I saw (but since they're one-offs without a traditional manufacturer, who knows how that will go - it will depend on whether the students have the interest and acumen to produce them absent help from a major manufacturer), and I also appreciated what was pretty much a blatant plea from a panel of accredited ICFF panelists to put a dozen or so excellent prototypes by promising young designers into production. (I will certainly buy at least three if this comes to fruition.) Much of the young-designer stuff at ICFF is prototype, so cool though it may be, it won't ever make it to the public at large unless a major manufacturer picks up the line, since these young craftspeople largely lack the facilities to handle mass production on their own.

I was also glad to see more American design in general. One continual problem we've dealt with since day one is the exorbitant cost of importing just about anything from Europe, which for the time being is where we source most of our accessories. A few companies have their act together here -- muuto gets much kudos for making the process so simple, but maybe that's just the Danish way -- but for the most part it's been hellaciously expensive, time-consuming, and margin-eating.

I did, however, snag one coup: a lamp I've been eyeing since 2006. Yes, three years is a very long time -- and this is a lamp cool enough to have landed on the pages of Wallpaper* even before it was officially for sale, and in the design world there are few higher honors -- but it's taken that long to get an investor on board to produce it en masse, and also in three sizes and six colors. Since they're on an eight-week minimum lead time, and since no U.S. stores yet carry the brand, I bought the floor model (and hand-carted it back to Austin, a hellish experience I'd rather not revisit), and will thus have the only physical example of the lamp in North America for at least two months. It'll be making a nice "surprise" appearance at the launch we're planning for a certain new Mexican design collective's line in June. Hopefully it won't steal the show!

ICFF Day #1

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:10:00 +0000

...or, technically, day #2, since my plane didn't arrive till after the first day's festivities closed. This year seems ... off. Much less floor traffic than last year. I've overheard vendors complaining about making only a solitary sale on the floor when in past years past numerous POs would have already been placed. Guess everyone's playing it safe, as I am. (I never order anything straight off the floor.)

That said, I'm ordering some accessories immediately. One of our biggest weaknesses is lighting, and we can get some amazing LED-based task lights from a San Francisco-based firm for ... well, let's just say wholesale, and that it's cheap. (I like them so much that I'm ordering two for my bedroom, soon to be scouted for a potential magazine shoot.) Then there's the of Italian lighting designer whose work I love, but who hasn't figured out the U.S. shipping hurdle yet. I offered to help hook him up with our Established shipper who imports from the UK (the Italian in question basis his operations there), and I'd unquestionally like to be his first U.S. dealer.

I've seen some amazing accessories I'd love to add to inventory this year, but really: it all boils down to cold hard benjamins. I have to play it somewhat safe and base orders on what we know, from experience will sell, and also order taking our cash flow into account, but I will say ICFF has already been invaluable in terms of sourcing design that's either American-made or readily shippable from American warehouses, which has been one of our biggest stumbling blocks to date. Shipping anything from Europe is almost invariably exorbitant as well as time-consuming, so we've been trying to source American craft for quite some time now.

Arthouse Recap

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Sat, 16 May 2009 03:37:00 +0000

Tonight was the Arthouse 5x7 fundraiser, and while not the literal social event of the season -- I think those kudos go to the Art Ball or Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards -- it certainly attracted possibly the most diverse variety of the town's glitterati of any event of the year. Where else would you see the likes of Julie Thornton, avant-garde art patron extraordinaire (and one of Arthouse's Queen Bees, which I mean in the most complimentary sense), **** ******* (very low-profile but highly influential arts patron), and everyone from drag queens to bohemian artists to the Austin Chronicle's infamous Stephen Moser, who made some unfortunate front-page headlines recently, and subsequently scared the crap out of everybody by disappearing entirely this past week for several days straight, but then turned up the past couple of nights looking as fabulous as always? Needless to say, just about every single arts, fashion and gossip journalist I know was there, too, furiously scribbling notes and taking shots of all the boldface names in the crowd. In all, it was a fantastic event and it's one of my annual Austin faves -- and, apparently, not affected by the recession in the least (this was easily the most crowded one I've been to yet).

I am off for ICFF in NYC tomorrow, intermixed with various social and professional meetings, lunches and dinners. I doubt my jampacked schedule will leave me much time for blogging, but I'll have a full report -- with photos, of course -- upon my return.

Vintage Indecision

noreply@blogger.com (kirker) — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:50:00 +0000

You know, I remain torn on how to proceed regarding vintage furniture. It's clear that there's not a sizable market, in Austin and in the current economy, for the high-end stuff, even priced at 20% below NYC and L.A. comps. That said, we have a few designers who've sold like wildfire during our sale, and I know where to source their stuff for a reasonable amount of money going forth, so why not continue to carry them? (We also have a few high-net-worth types seeking very specific iconic pieces, ranging from Wegner Papa Bears to Platner dining tables, and we will of course continue to source those.) We're certainly not making a killing on them, but we're eeking out at least some profit. Our cash flow at present has to be devoted primarily to adding new stuff to the floor, however, so I'm still mostly going to have to put vintage on hold -- with only a few exceptions. (I am still kicking myself for not buying a Thonet chair I could've bought for $100 that is up for auction at a prestigious auction house next month with an estimate of $2,000-$3,000.)

I remain upbeat about our change in direction, particularly now that I fully grasp the scope of the impact of the Mexican design collective's line. There's plenty of eco-friendly furniture out there; God knows there's plenty of cheap junk out there; and there's a lot of attractive pieces out there, but no one yet has mastered the formula of combining all three. Two of the three, sure: you can find ample eco-friendly wood chairs if you don't mind spending three grand a pop, but no one's yet done affordable eco-friendly, and this is the niche in which I think we will shine. My awesome PR rep Elaine has a full-tilt-boogie launch plan already in action, and we're trying to get one of the country's most prominent design mags (I can't say their name just yet, but safe to say you know it) to sponsor the event, so we'll see. I already know we'll have saturation coverage within Austin: newspaper, every local TV station, every local glossy & shelter mag, all the major local design bloggers, etc., but I want to take this sucker national. I'll be in NYC next week for ICFF, so Elaine is seeing if she can set up any last-minute meet-and-greets with anyone in New York media circles who might want to use it for a story angle. ("Dwell," the most obvious prospect, is based out of San Francisco, but since I'm heading to L.A. next month for an auction, a S.F. detour wouldn't be much of a big deal. I certainly wouldn't mind meeting with the folks at, say, "Met Home" or "Elle Decor" about it while in NYC, though.)