 Well, welcome here. We are again. It's the last Wednesday in July. It's I'm sorry in June Let me not get ahead. Whoo It's the last Wednesday in June. We're here makers at the hall As I have discovered I like to say we're in one of the best rooms in Portland the library here We have here tonight. Oh Oh My name I'm a member of this group of the the main charitable mechanics association. I've been working with the program committee, which has been wonderful This ongoing series it is every last Wednesday of the month We have two new ones coming up. July's is going to be a makers mix We're hoping that makers of all stripes and persuasions will come along converse with each other seeing who each other is So that's going to be a neat event In August we're going to have a panel discussion the last Wednesday in July is almost or in August is almost into September So it's going to be right around Labor Day So we'll have a conversation about unions and guilds and associations that kind of thing, which I think will be interesting The series as a whole is supported generously by the Warren Memorial Foundation So we're very grateful for that and this evening the reason y'all are here is to Is to hear Doug Green talk Doug Green of Doug of Green Furniture Designs and Green Design Furniture Goodness gracious Thankfully he is going to do the talking about his own story and life And he and I will catch up at the end will chat chat I know I've got a couple questions for Doug already Parcalating in my mind and we'll be sure and leave time for there to be questions from from you I'm sure questions if they're not they're already they will come up during the talk and then don't forget at the end There is cake So who can resist will be here a little bit after that still today to chat with each other. So Doug. Okay Good evening. Thank you for coming out. I'm Doug Green and I see some familiar faces here today, which is great and But I just I wasn't really sure about what the interest of the group was going to be so I'm going to try to do a Ready-fire aim kind of talk tonight where I'll you know, I'm going to go very quickly through the history of how I got to this moment and and then but if you find that I'm you know, if you want to if you want to stop me and You know ask me to go a little bit deeper into a certain area. We can I can do that I'm happy to be interrupted Or we can come around at the end and talk more about topics that you want That that that I will be sailing by pretty quickly. Okay, and so thank you for coming out I hope it's a little warm We'll you know, just take your clothes off if you Okay, you're right Okay So also I love this organization. I was involved a couple of year and a half ago I guess I started a process where they were looking at how to project This organization to its into its second hundred years because last year was it last year was the second with 200 year anniversary of Being in Portland. So it's a it's really has a remarkable history and I think going forward It's a very interesting time because you know, it's like there's it's been this great resurgence of people making things and the commonality of that Would find a beautiful spot to get together in this place and so I think that's where we're headed here So without further ado, I ended up in Maine I went to college here in Brunswick a small liberal arts school And I was a liberal artist back in and I graduated in 1977 my college sweetheart is sitting in the back there okay, and so which is very nice and My first job out of college was because I was so qualified to do nothing was as a preschool teacher and While teaching three to five year olds for over a period of about two years I started making things for fun and I've my first tools were a dremel table saw that was on the coffee table in the living room and So every night I'd be there'd be this terrible dremel and grinding sounds coming out of the living room and so as things go I Got bigger tools. I actually went to friends shops to To borrow tools and to make things bigger and bigger so that that's one of the first You know, so the the scale of things got bigger and bigger. That's a blanket chest, which I think you still have that's right and This was my first commission Harvest table Which I think it took me a couple maybe two or three weeks to make with with zero tools But I made like 20 times the amount I would have made being a preschool teacher at the same time So I quickly ditched preschool teaching and rented a little space and I tried to find an apprenticeship and To learn more and it was really hard. It was like I had no experience so I did the most logical thing was start my own business and So I opened up a little shop I rented some space in the back of somebody else's shop and I put myself through an Apprenticeship and I just built a series of pieces and escalating difficulties and went and visited people and read books and it was kind of a self-imposed very quick education and After a couple years. I was making pieces like that that table there that first shop was in top some main and After about two or three years doing that I got a visit from Tom Moser who was looking for a cabinet maker For his shop which back then was about 12 years old I think or may I was on 10 or 12 years old and so I became one of five cabinet makers there where we were still making stuff by hand that was a very 18th century shop in a way and we were doing shaker furniture and One of the things that after about six months the manager of the shop came to me and said he couldn't understand it because I was the greenest guy there and But I had become the most efficient guy I was I was producing more furniture than anybody else and it turns out I have this natural inclination to try to figure out how to not waste time and so I and so I'm kind of a Process guy if like I have a stack of dishes. I'm going to try to figure out the fastest way You know what the most methodical way of getting everything into the drainer so I can go You know watch television or something so So I'd started inventing new processes there and they're very primitive, but after six months, I was I was I wasn't making better furniture than the master craftsman But I was just not wasting time. I kind of had everything kind of lined up always and Somebody told me that what I was doing was called industrial design and I'd never heard of industrial design before and so I Started doing some research and it turns out industrial design was what I was born to do and So it's basically what's what's different between craft production and industrial design is craft production is when the producer is Or the artist is making the the product and he's kind of making it as he goes and that's kind of how the plan happens one at a time usually and An industrial design. It's about designing stuff. That's made in quantities by somebody else and so the The focus is on a lot of things that are That you have to spend time with when you're making tens of thousands of pieces of things So it's a it's very different than making one piece because when you're making one piece You're not concerned with how how long it takes to make it for example. And so when I'm making 10,000 pieces, then you're worried about You know efficiency profitability. You're worried about You know whether the ergonomics are good the concept is good so So I ended up after six months after that after a year. I left Mosier and oh I was going to show you some this is front Raymond Lowy Who was kind of the granddaddy of American industrial design? So he was he kind of came to America and in the 1930s He's born in France, but he basically was the guy who did a lot of recognizable design and took design from basically the primitive Method of design is that the engineers would kind of the guys, you know What design would kind of come out of a haphazard kind of process of the guys who made things and this was the guy Who actually started with a concept for a new idea for a locomotive a new look for a locomotive and so, you know and so the first one is total fantasy and The second one starts to get more definition and then it ends up being pretty close to what finally gets produced And so it's kind of a little just a sketch of what the industrial design process looks like He was responsible for consumer products. He did branding to a lot of famous brands for his Lucky Strike Pan Am Things like that are still around today And so I ended up leaving Maine I enrolled at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and went to the graduate program there and Where I started to to think like a designer and so it was a really great program for me because it was The the best thing I learned there was how to be patient with the process because as a craftsman I learned how To get into the shop and make something very efficiently When you're designing you have to live in your notebook for a very long time thinking about what it is and drawing it and making models and This the desire to kind of close in on an idea and get to get to work get to making it is antithetical to actually inventing something it's actually innovating because you know, it's the for every like 99% of the people have the first same idea and the designers the person that goes through a hundred hundreds of iterations of it and develops it and ask continues asking deeper problems and stuff so I had That was the biggest thing that happened to me in graduate school was learning how to live in that in that area of uncertainty for a long time So this is this, you know, basically projects went from Imagining a new kind of gas station delivery system to this was a three-position children's chair They never got manufactured but someday After I finished school I went I did work for a variety of design firms I was doing point-of-purchase design for you know, magic markers, which is basically presentation cases in stores and You know the look of pentels and then I went to work for a company that did architectural lighting and Also, they they did the and I became an architectural lighting designer Doing the design for large public buildings museums train stations churches Back then in the mid-80s. It was like mega cathedrals, you know the the big What do you call them those huge? Evangelical Mega churches, yeah Which had studio lighting Olympic-sized baptismal pools and things like that and so and then I quit and To go freelance and then I was hired to design a line of light fixtures, which were these were the most technical things I've ever done Which were all extruded aluminum to they were designed to throw light and in very specific patterns into big spaces And so those are still being produced today, which is a nice thing and on the side I got involved in theater an off-Broadway theater and had a lot of fun doing that. That was kind of my second job and so in the early 90s 1990 I started playing around with an idea to build a sofa for my apartment Because I hated all sofas. I saw commercially I just thought they were really stupid that they had fabric or leather in places where you never sat or touched and they Were heavy and getting them into a studio apartment in midtown Midtown Manhattan was almost impossible. So So I started imagining what would the simplest sofa I could I could do and so I went through months and months of sketching and and ended up stumbling on an idea of like well I can I can make a sofa that doesn't have any fasteners or glue to put it together I can just use sliding dovetail joints, which And so this is a sketchbook of like the first iteration of that design which was very interesting to me because it was a different way of putting something together So I came back to Maine and prototyped First pieces I did this is a this is the first piece that went together. It's four components Basically, it has a seat that slides in and then the back slides in the legs Underneath and then the seat slides back and locks it. So it's a pretty unfortunate looking object And but I wasn't worried that worried about aesthetics, I guess But this was the inspiration for what came afterwards which was Which was that there was this generation of machinery in Manufacturing that was just taking hold in factories, which was a computer controlled routing woodworking machines and This is a fairly advanced one back then it was it was a simpler Not as complicated as this. This is a five-axis CNC joiner or CNC router But so the machinery is out there in big factories big manufacturers had the machines But they were using them to drill holes for screws the same way that They had been building stuff before except just a little faster with these machines So I saw that as a huge opportunity Because it to me it seemed like it was it was like driving a Ferrari in First gear with the parking brake on you know and not realizing there was a fifth or sixth gear in it. So So the chair design led to a whole series of other Designs where I realized I can use these interlocking sliding joints To make pieces of furniture go together Without fasteners without glue and a massive amount of surface-to-surface joinery So and it also because it was a dry assembly It allowed the wood to move with the seasons without actually pulling on the structure So it was stronger than traditional furniture. It would never come apart You could park a truck on a table like this and it could also ship flat in a box Which has been one of the veins of existence of big manufacturers forever Which is when you make a table like that it gets that size very quickly in the process And then it has to go through your shop and then it has to go through your finishing room And then it has to go through your packing room or your warehouse and moving something like that Without damaging it is very hard getting it from your warehouse into a store and from the store into somebody's house Or it you know to the final destination is very hard And so this actually promised a way to do direct shipment of a piece of furniture like that by FedEx and two or three days and the assembly is so simple and I have an example of a customer who made Who made a little video for us of putting together So he's this is a a two drawer file cam a two drawer small file cabinet and So he's unpacked it from the box. They're graphic instructions and So so it's kind of you know a kea furniture You know a lot of ready-to-assemble furniture is it always it never looks as good as the picture on the box You know it's a disappointment And so this is a was a breakthrough in terms of that I could make solid wood really beautiful furniture That had all the efficiencies of ready-to-assemble furniture So and I also you know, so I the drawer also would ship flat and go together With sliding parts Eventually, so it really took all the air out of shipping and and making furniture okay, so My my as an industrial designer the way I make a living is by selling ideas I sell intellectual property So I got a really wonderful patent lawyer who lived in Warren, Maine Who is in his 80s? He was kind of in his? in his semi-retirement, but he came out to help me Apply for a patent so I could go out and try to sell the license to this joiner system because I thought this was a very big idea and in May of 1993 I introduced it at The International Contemporary Furniture show in New York City With the idea not of selling furniture, but of selling ideas and getting publicity so I could get entrance And so that I did actually were very successful Getting in the press and open it opened a lot of doors and I spent the next seven or eight months trying to convince Owners of big managed big big furniture companies that they needed to rent my design and they would have this totally new way of reaching their customers and Totally failed so I ended up I You know, I hit a point where I had to make a decision whether I was going to drop it and go back to New York and figure something out or Keep going so I decided well, I'll just start a little company. It'll be a laboratory I'll kind of do it in a microcosmic way And you know continue adding value to the idea and then I'll sell I'll sell the idea So I didn't want to buy a CNC router Because they cost about a quarter million dollars plus You know just the it would I was never interested in growing a big business I was really kind of focused on licensing so we had to figure out ways of Making the furniture without the technology that it was designed for so I Basically came up with an artisan approach to manufacturing Which Was basically using this the basic the principles except we didn't have automated machines. I had people pushing Pushing jigs and things through so So one of the things that I one of the breakthroughs is that The to make a 20 a 36 inch sliding dovetail You know usually dovetails are in drawers and they there is a French dovetail Traditionally which was a way to attach a tabletop to a base and they are cabinet makers hate them because they're very difficult Because you have this long friction joint and it's a it's a very difficult thing to get right and so so I had to figure out a way to take the The tolerances to make the dovetails fit in a way that was strong enough and tight enough that we could do it in a production setting and so I Designed a machine that would cut the male dovetails Very precisely and then we took this this machine, which is called an inverted pin router and Which basically the router is underneath the table There's a jig. I designed all these jigs for so every process. There was a different jig that was a guide So there's a pin that dropped down from the top and the jig was attached to the piece that was being cut And so it sucked down with the vacuum so The guide pin would clamp down the bit would come up and then it would push the The part through and we were able to figure out a way. I'll show you The secret we had those little pins that go down that fit in the slot if you make them smaller and small increments It makes the slot wider so we were able to get and so I had a bunch of these machine that were 5 1 thousandths of an inch in different so we were able to open Up those slots to get the perfect fit And we use different types of dovetails we use mated tapered dovetails and it's you know It's kind of technical it was we reached a and a Machining of wood that most woodworkers don't think is Possible, you know, they they kind of they don't get it Because they're used to tolerances that are 16th of 16th of an inch or 30 seconds of an inch So we're dealing in hundreds of an inch basically Another cool thing about What we were able to do In 95 I rented a space down on West commercial Street and the old match company building You know that old factory building painted different colors So I've been in there and it was a total mess when we went in it was $2.40 a square foot and so and so we're I've been in there ever since and I've done a lot of work on the space And it's a lot more than 240 cents a foot now But it enabled us to do a large volume of furniture in a very small amount of space because we didn't have work benches We had carts so piles of parts moved around the shop and we did You know a lot of work on creating the most efficient way of making the furniture this way and so this is like this is 10 sofas that are in the spray room so parts for 10 sofas and This was a big project out in California. We did have a lot of customers out in California so the first years the furniture was very kind of craftsman looking a little I love Japanese design so there's a little bit of that influence and After four or five years, it's like I realized I I got feedback from our customers that we That my stuff was very masculine and not feminine and that it was you know, it was very kind of you know heavy And there were no curves in anything that I did so So I set about to try to figure out a way to introduce curves into the pieces and make them lighter so Started using curving edges, but also figured out a way to make An illusion of the thickness of the piece of the top Tapering so it looks very narrow and then widens out which Was a nice little discovery That happens after spending, you know 100 hours figuring out, you know playing with rounded edges and having no success So this was a cool piece The largest piece we had done up to that point Which I've assembled that piece on the third floor of an 1800s brownstone in In Boston because I can take it up the stairs one piece one component at a time and put it together myself so there are things that you can do with this kind of furniture that and The other cool thing is that when the pieces put together the joinery is invisible You don't see it's not like a puzzle kit where you see tabs and slots and things like that and So then a third series got even more curvaceous. I started playing more without, you know putting curves into the outlines and playing with that and and all the while I was trying to license the patent and You know every every couple years I would make a foray down to High Point in North Carolina and meet with manufacturers and there are like That's a whole other discussion about why the industry was not interested in innovation But leave it to say that most of that industry has moved to China now in terms of manufacturing or died on the on the on the vine because they Cuz guys it's just private equity. It's like I can rant about that for a long time But they don't like to buy they don't like to Invest in overhead and so to pay a 5% royalty to up for a brilliant idea They won't do it because you know they've got this some jerk designer is going to be making a lot of money if they're successful so last I Started wanted to move away from the craftsman kind of thing and so I I also was looking at there's a new Blight coming our way from the Midwest of ash the emerald ash borer So we're going to ash trees are going to go the same way as just chestnut trees Went and so there's going to be a lot of ash lying around So I figured I got to try to figure out a way to make ash more acceptable as a fine furniture would so And also I wanted to do a more urban hip, you know, I wanted to get on the cover of dual magazine so And I also did this is another a short video This was the most modular piece. I did and this kind of shows it's kind of more an illustration of my way of thinking So the panels on the back are can be painted different colors, so you can switch them out But they're basically 10 components that make up this whole system but you can make you can make a bookcase that went on for 40 feet and They just they're stacking and self-locking and So I kind of I've been designing puzzles, you know in a way So that's a that's a massive piece of furniture that can And the biggest part is like that big so pretty cool So the anyway after 20 years I kind of burnt out we sold Probably about 10,000 pieces of furniture. I think my staff at one point got to I had 18 people working for me We had two retail stores. We had one in Portland and one in Freeport for a while I did five trade shows around the country every year and And we were selling a lot of furniture, but I was still waiting for somebody You know to take the ball and run with it because I was Because I never really thought that I was going to be doing all these different things other than designing Which is what I really love doing so So about five years ago. I decided I was time to Reverse direction. I've kind of accepted that I That the idea is still a great idea. I just wasn't lucky. I think my timing was not great In terms of the world wasn't ready for it. I still think that this is the way furniture is going to be made In probably 25 years somebody's gonna some curator somewhere is gonna say, you know There's a really nutty guy in Maine who was making furniture this way for for a while. So I'm So I think there's I've been shrinking my business. It's still going green design furniture is still online. We don't have a store I have a showroom That's by appointment in a little studio in the back of the nine stones building on Union Wharf Which has a really nice view down the water. We're still in the shop Which is now kind of a co-op. I have four different businesses that are renting corners of the space a former employee of mine is now in charge of Making my furniture on commission. So So I'm spending more time designing and the first thing I kind of Got hooked on was I've been learning how to carve in a style of Japanese Netsuke have you ever hear the book the hair with the amber eyes, you know So there's this I have I brought a Netsuke. It's a Japanese art form that Probably started in the 17th century. There's a little knob on the end of a A little purse that would go under on a string under a sash on a kimono and and so then this little carved piece would keep the The purse from dropping out it would hang over the top, but it kind of became the Rolex watch of its time and So there was this unbelievably wonderful Sculptures, and I think I saw it in the Boston Museum of Fine Art the first time I ever saw it I think I was 21 years old they BFA had a case of these and they were just this magical Sculptures that were tiny But probably the most as beautiful and as expressive As any Michelangelo Sculpture so I Think about it I Never thought of myself as an artist. I'm I and I think and one of the discussions is about the difference between art and design but lately I've been I've been sitting in a in a dish at a salvage dentist chair Teaching myself how to carve very small Objects with the idea that there's actually some crossover in terms of technology because I think people that are learning how to make stuff today Are going right to 3d printing they're they're working on computers And so they will never have the kind of tactile sense of what it what a piece of wood feels like or you know How does how to make something because the computer is not it's a fantastic thing? But it's their limitations. I think and so I think being able to draw being able to To make things and then translate it into computers very I think there's an opportunity there Which is pretty much what I did with the furniture So I've done some traveling in Japan and I visited a bunch of carvers The coolest one was this guy who wasn't doing small carvings. He was doing very very large carvings He's like a master temple Buddha Carver and So I brought some samples of things, but this is These are some early pieces I made they're they're about that big Finally carved. I'm using jeweler's tools a Little weird basket and the kind of thing that with not knowing at all what I'm doing I'm probably Stumbling on to figuring stuff out that if I had taken a class I there nobody would have ever let me do this So it's a it's this I look at this now, and I can't believe that this is one of the early pieces I made I think it's ridiculous very complex Okay, so that's how are we doing time wise Okay, so I can I can pause there Because I can you know I have other slides That are talking about design and getting more into nitty gritty, but I think that would be this is a good place to stop Okay, yeah, it's fabulous. I did bring a couple of show-and-tell things Great, we can get things going both directions if you like, okay, I I Can't I can't get that now But has anybody else seen that collection of Netsuke in the in that museum? It's extraordinary that I've only visited that museum that museum a couple of times and so one of the things I'm working on right now is in Japan I met a few Knife-makers like seventh-eighth generation Knife-makers who had who's great great great grandparents were making samurai swords and so it occurred to me that there's no carving on American called cutlery, so I'm thinking no, maybe there's some kind of crossover there to do some decorative stuff So I've been I got I've got some pieces some parts from a Japanese manufacturer and I've been playing around with Different ways that I could do kind of do some carvings that would then work with With with manufacturing small things. It's like and I think there's I think there's something that's caught me That's that little carving That's basswood and and this is an early sketchbook so just Looking at this is kind of interesting because it gives you an idea of what the thought process is around making stuff Okay Great. Well, thanks Doug. Okay. Yeah, and I've been trying to think like hearing you speak I feel like a few things we keep Circling back through And I feel like if I've been hearing you right I hear there's obviously people there's you or a craftsman There's some person involved and there are ideas involved and then there's machinery at some point and It seems like in your experience The that cycle has gone various ways. So hearing you talk about Carving Netsuke here at the end. You're really interested in that the person interacting directly with the Item and then maybe machinery will come in later. Who knows? Whereas your your path to furniture seems like it was the other way There was this great opportunity offered or suggested by computer-aided Routers that allowed you to think. Oh, wow Using this tool we could do this great thing have this great idea But then you brought that back down to people Mm-hmm and put people in the middle of of making something that computers have suggested to you So I just think that's really interesting. I feel like it's interesting. This is part of our moment is how do we interact with machinery where's the where's the fruitful moment where where ideas are coming to life rather than Us missing out on a tactile experience that would enrich our abilities No, so I'd love to hear I'm curious to hear you say say more about your thinking about that about people and machines in our current moment well my originally I kind of I Had a reaction to seeing things people who are making things and rejecting technology and saying I'm you know machines are bad machines make things worse and So I'm just going to keep using my hand chisels to knock out hand dovetails And that's it's very nostalgic and it's great if your wife has a trust fund But it's very hard to get paid For your time when you're doing something that's a total Field luxury thing for you to do but it's to the customer. It's not you're not really giving them greater value by doing a hand dovetail drawer I think and So we're you know some people some people might dig that but it's not to me that is An indulgence when there's technology available where you can make a beautiful dovetail drawer With a router. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm playing with the mic And so So I you know and there's this whole world of furniture making that is called studio furniture where people go to programs at RISD or You know Rochester and learn how to make incredibly beautiful Well-crafted pieces of art their sculpture, you know So a dining table that cost twenty five thousand dollars that took some guys, you know six months to make out of it some exotic wood and But And so the amount of time you spent crafting it was probably much much longer than the time he spent thinking about What it was going to look like or how he was going to make it because he only had to make it once if he had to and so Anyway, it just it just when there's machinery out there that can do a better job than the human hand. I don't see why Why you shouldn't avail yourself of that of technology but that's and that's a different thing, right? If I'm hearing you right, that's a different thing then then this Natsuki moment, right? Well, I'm you know, I'm You know the same way that I was a craftsman making furniture that led me to this new technology I feel like I have to Until I really learn how to make things at this tiny scale And to do patterns or whatever So I'm in the fulminating Part right now where I'm just learning and so I can and at some point it's going to get into my sensibility that You know, I don't know. I mean I it's kind of like it's something is pulling me to do this And I think it may lead me to what the next thing is the next realization But the only way that happens is if you're sitting in the chair for for a thousand hours And you know you have to be available because those things I'm not a genius. I'm really not it's like, you know people who kind of Who go right to a solution? are Are amazing and I'm I'm just not one of those I I spent a long time Trying to figure stuff out and it's a it's a long process. You can look in that book and it's like you can see I'm I'm chewing over an idea for pages and pages and drawing it and then I'll let it go and I'll come back to it again and and so it's So I'm I basically have learned to trust that I'm I'm gotta swim through these unknown uncharted water and Which is another leitmotif I feel like in your in your trajectory is this alternation between efficiency and comfort with uncertainty or Stumbling along. I feel like you use phrases like that about certain moments or this that take taking the X thousand hours to Scritch away figure it out draw it over and over again And then there's this moment where something is wicked efficient. Yeah And so that I think those two things are often viewed as Opposite like when we need to somehow erase the uncertainty so we can have only efficiency Yeah, but it seems like we need both. Yeah, you need a moment to be uncertain Inefficient if you will but inefficiency is the most efficient way to learn something, right? Yeah Well, I wouldn't call if it's it's interesting that you look at the design process as being inefficient and because in a in a corporate setting There's always a constant tension between the design People who are doing design and the corporate people and the marketing people who like why can't you do this on a schedule? Why can't you invent the next big thing? it's Because they they don't really understand that that it's a it's kind of a a It's I don't know I Magical is not the word because because it's a grinding hard Commitment to being able to live with a question. Yeah, and actually the first part is trying to figure out what the problem is Right, you know the question. Yeah, what's the question and then once you figure that out then you can start working on a solution but usually Most of your first attempts are realizing that you're asking the wrong question or that you you don't know what the problem is and so I Love design and I I don't think it's like if you ask a group of people like do you know the names of any industrial designers? It's like Johnny Ivy Johnny Ivy who's running the design at Apple right now is an industrial designer Steve Jobs was not an adjustment. I'm sorry Yeah, I've Yeah, Evan Blaney who I was hoping he'd be here, but John I'd say I'd say yeah, it was like one of the things that was frustrating was that I attracted I mean one of the reasons why I started this business in Maine instead of New York City was one because I could afford to do it Here I couldn't do it in New York. The other was that there was this incredible Kind of spirit of Young people that wanted to come learn how to how to do really cool stuff and make stuff and so So I was constantly hiring really great talented people who had very little experience spending two years training them and then they would leave and go start their own business or you know Do do something else? But that was kind of Which was very frustrating because that when you're training them They're not really being productive and then just at the point where they're they're gonna start being able to make stuff Efficiently is when they tell you they're gonna leave and it's kind of heartbreaking. Yes. Yes. Yeah Yeah See The a lot it's interesting this a lot of the the women that went to work They came to work for me ended up in other fields But doing really interesting things as well. I'm not sure if any stayed with craft Is Anybody using your idea that you've patented in a limited Shop somewhere with the dump tails and things like that, you know, it took me like three years to figure out the engineering to do this and so It would the patent is Expired at the end of this year So it's 20 feet. No, it's it's a utility. It's a process pattern And so if it is I kind of feel like it's time for me to let go No, and if it gets, you know, I am there's there's some opportunities for me to teach people how to do this You know now that it's public domain I still people are gonna pull out their hair trying to figure it out And I've been doing it pretty successfully for a long time So I know a lot of a lot of secrets to make this work It's it's to make something it's one of the things I loved about this idea is it's very simple It's actually when you see the pieces going together. You're going well. Yeah, what's what's the big deal? To make something that simple is really hard It's really hard to get it You know to make furniture that has no hardware To make it fit so it just you know, so it's just right every time No, no, we buy you know It's interesting because I've had a couple of manufacturers Overseas that they literally copied and pasted my catalog and we're selling pieces I got a call one day from a customer mind said I just don't want your pieces at pure one You know and I went down and there's this piece paid out of some jungle wood Very poorly. They didn't use the joinery. They they Took the look of the piece and so we were able to stop that actually we had when somebody when a customer calls and Confuses your piece somebody else's piece for yours. It's called trade dress when they've appropriated Misappropriated your look that's something you can defend in court And so most of the knockoffs of my stuff were were not the joinery system, you know And they were the look of the pieces and so which is kind of funny because I never really saw myself as a stylist, you know, most of my designs were You know, I didn't in Furniture American furniture companies that come out with a new line of furniture every six months they do they do a show in High Point, North Carolina and They've got to come out with the next thing is French Provincial or Eskimo or you know, whatever the next thing is And it's ridiculous because it's it took me there. You know, I broke I broke my career into three phases And that was 20 years worth of work and probably there. I know 200 designs. Maybe I came up with and I was But it wasn't like every six months We did I did a catalog every four years and I brought actually there are some catalogs on the table there Which is the last catalog I will ever print. There's still I saw thousands of copies So don't yeah, don't don't feel bashful Okay, are there other questions from you guys Is there not any way that you can convince the people that I key it and make a better quality product I try I try, you know, and I thought it's crap. Yeah. Oh, it's terrible And you know, I'm the my pitch to you to our chaos You're making stuff that is landfill It's just that it spends four or five years as furniture, you know as a prop Before you see it on the sidewalk because people because all those fasteners you can't get them apart And so you see them broken down on the sidewalk and I said if you made it without any fasteners It could all go into the same You know container or you can make it so you're not designing it for disassembly You're not it's actually it's got a much longer life in landfill than it does as a functional object So they should be designing it for that and so I tried I tried with LL bean, you know, and I kept running into the same problem where they Companies like pottery barn LL bean live love the idea, but they didn't want to manufacture it They're not manufacturers they buy from vendors and I didn't want to be a vendor To pottery barn because I knew that you know if I build my company up to make massive amounts of furniture Then in ten years they would be saying well, there's a company in China that can do it for $50 less and you know And what are you going to do about it? And they would drop you like a hot rock which happened to a bunch of friends of mine And so I didn't want to be I wanted to get the royalty I wanted to get that that little percentage of everything that got sold and so I Have a lot of fun And you know, I think running a business was that's a whole other art form About how do you manage a business? How do you manage people? And so it was challenging for a lot of the time because it was basically Design is solving problems and so is business. It's constant, you know Marketing is like this is how do you market high-end furniture that? Does the same thing that a K it does because it's basically I created something. That's totally diversion to diversion ideas What there's a word for that a paradox Well, it comes out in the phrase that you use that you use on your website because it's Manufactured, but it's artisan and so putting those two things together is pretty Mind-bending it's me. Well, that was kind of because I I never wanted to own The you know the quarter million dollar machines because once you own those machines I have to be running at least 12 or 13 hours a day and then it's like then I mean I was I was not getting much sleep having a retail store and so anyway, it's a That that would have been that would have changed the whole you know And it could have been one of those stupid mistakes that I made along the way If I had done it early on I might be in a completely different place right now You seem pretty content though. Maybe it's okay to be where you are. I yeah I mean it was you know, there's there's letting go is really hard. I didn't you know, there's this I Have this image of Wiley Coyote You know where he's gone off over the edge of the cliff, but he doesn't realize it So I think that was like the last the last four or five years of my you know Having all these people in the stores and all this stuff I was running around and and I had gone way past my time, but I didn't know how to stop You know, I just had to carry it forward. So It was painful gosh, yes You can find a bunch of it's in the Arabica coffee shop on commercial Street now because when I closed my showroom They were just opening their new store. So I said hey you want you want to borrow some furniture. So Yeah, thank you. It's very sweet Any question about the early time when you were starting up in Portland came before one start up What things helped you along your way and what things got in your way starting up a business like yours here? great employees helped me and also Employees became the hardest part of running the business, you know managing people and And so yeah, I mean there were people that made huge contributions and helped me You know, there was a point where the company was like five or six years old Where I completely had to change the manufacturing model We I had based this model on I was looking at one thing which is how How many hours does it take to make this dining table? And so we were we were making this dining table And it took like 12 hours to make it from start to finishing ready ready to ship And so so for five years we tried to figure out well, how do we get the time down? So we ended up figuring out we could do make 12 tables at a time Even though we'd only sold two or three We could box, you know take the seven that we hadn't made put it in a shelf And then when somebody ordered it we could sell it as fast as we could and So we got the time down to like six hours per table, and it looked great Except that after a couple years I had a quarter million dollars in inventory sitting on shelves And and I was losing money because we were spending time making furniture that we hadn't sold and so we had to learn a method of Moving individual pieces very quickly through the shop Which scared the hell out of all the craftsmen in the shop and Because they thought you know for them it was like you know it was a whole different type of Organizational way to make the furniture and so that took really great people To help me fight the people that were resisting change In my own organization Yeah, well we we did advertise yeah, we did advertising Nationally in the New York Times Sunday New York Times magazine and New Yorker magazine and and we were always experimenting with architectural digest and different types of home furnishing magazines, but really we built the database by By people responding to our ads and then when we did trade shows in different parts of the country We would call them and say look we're going to be here. What do you want us to bring and so So it I think over half the historically over half of our furniture went to the west coast or west of the Mason Dixon line and and then and probably You know two-thirds of that went to north and California and the Pacific Northwest Which is very popular in that part of the world and not not a big market in Maine But so now we're basically I am the guy answering the phone Sorry and And I do all the customer contact which is much smaller group. I stopped advertising I basically am making myself more difficult to get to and Once in a while, I will send out an email or I'll post something on the company Facebook page But I'm in a way. I'm kind of I don't I'm not I've Got myself a custom the idea that there's gonna be another chapter after this which means that I'm ready to let go And so I'm not sure how long I'm gonna keep doing this. I'm actually working on a Think I may have found somebody Who can make my furniture another former employee who's in a much better Who's in a whose business is growing really nicely and so that might be a better Relationship for me then and the one I have now and or you know, it's like and but I'm trying to think it's like Do I want to get pulled back in? Or should I just let it go and you know, it's very self-indulgent. I'm kind of spoiled because I like I am I'm much happier. I'm much more creative when I'm happy, you know Yeah, and and I found that all the stress And and you know, it was like with the economy and and all the money migrating to the one percenters You know, it's like our business. We used to have school teachers who bought the furniture, you know And they'd have to save for it, but man, it's like after 2000 After 2001 actually and it was before September 11 Something was up and it was like, you know So we had fewer people buying for it buying bigger orders of furniture, you know So we were selling for the same amount of furniture But it was like you had to work much harder because those people were harder to find and and not as I don't know. It was just a different mindset and so Yeah, so and we were this is the thing about I the furniture that was designed to be sold in pottery barn It was actually a way to mass-produce High quality furniture because there's so much goddamn ugly furniture made being man mass-produced now And so this would be a way to get reasonably priced furniture into Into people's hands that that would be durable would be heirloom quality that you could pass down for generations Easily repairable. I mean it was like it was it was not the furniture that I'm selling now I'm selling $5,000 dining tables And I think it's awful, but when you're making things one at a time in an artisan shop It's very expensive. And so if I had the same table could be made by for pottery barn to sell for $1,800 Thank you so much. Oh, it's pleasure