inspires you: People inspire me. All different types of people inspire me. Really. That’s a cheesy answer, but I think that’s sort of our company - which is a furniture company that gets it inspiration from how people use our products, and I think all types of people, whether they’re the people making our products, or the people using our product are what really drives how we design and think about what we’re creating, how it’s used, and the lifespan of how it’s used as well.
example: From the people who make it, and the background, we work with industries that are legacy industries in the Detroit area and the Great Lakes Region. Steel manufacturing that's been around for 100 years. And those are the people behind it and who make it. But for the people who use it, we make products that are a framework that require your input, so it is very much about allowing it to fit into anybody’s lifestyle. That makes it exciting because it’s designed so it’s not a piece of furniture that’s put in isolation or just stared at, but it’s a piece that you’re allowing to be part of your life and you’re involved with and part of the process of making it.
superpower: My superpower is being able to think in systems and be able to think about big ideas, whether they’re designing a product, how that fits into an urban lifestyle. I have a pretty big interest in cities and how people live in cities. But, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the huge scale of the city, but about how products fit into people’s lives. How they’re moving. Are they throwing them away are they keeping them. And how that works within the people making and manufacturing in that city. So, in one word that superpower, if they were to make a motion picture out of it, would be systems thinking.
parental advice: I don’t know if it was advice, but more like passed on. Youngstown, OH is a very blue collar industry city around steel. Everybody in my family worked in the steel mills, that’s where my parents met. And that sort of background of industry and work ethic is very apparent and relevant in all the work that I do, that we do as a company. And I think that is what compels me most sometimes to do this type of work. One thing that wasn’t so much said, but reflected.
