11 minute read
MONEYWISE
from RS - March 2016
THE CURATOR
MARIAM NAFICY
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Founder of Minted
SAN FRANCISCO
After leaving a banking career to co-launch (and later sell) the now defunct cosmetics retail site Eve.com, Naficy, a married mother of two, switched gears again in 2009 to create an online stationeryboutique with a crowdsourcing concept: Minted holds challenges to select the designs that itwill sell. Artists give one another feedback before the voting, and the process has spawned a collaborativecommunity. Minted’s inventory has grown to include framed prints, fabrics, and home accessories.
Q. What sparked your interest in design? A. My mom’s side of the family is very artistic, and mydad was an economist for the United Nations, so I grew up moving around the world every year or so. Being exposed to varied architecture and art gave me an appreciation for aesthetics.
Q. How did you decide to sell paper goods? A. I saw that bloggers were emerging from the crowd on the Internet by producing great content, and I thought perhaps there were hidden pockets of talent elsewhere, like in product design, and I could help those designers rise. I also wanted to build a retail company where the merchandise is always fresh and completely right, and I knew I could produce two-dimensional designs more easily than 3-D ones, like clothing. We can turn patterns and images into stationery or art prints relatively fast. The crowdsourcing success was a surprise, though. At first we were selling mostly established stationery brands, but the competition is what took off.
Q. It must be rewarding to help thousands of designers find success. A. We have so many stories of people with pretty uncreative day jobs— plumbers, accountants, lawyers—winning our competitions. They never had a platform like this to have their design work validated. The best part is the pay-it-forward spirit of the community. The designers know if they help someone else, it’s very likely they’ll get help in the future. It’s more of a “co-opetition” than a competitive situation.
Q. What’s a typical day like for you? A. I put my kids on the bus at 7:30—they’re 8 and 12—and some days I’ll squeeze in a run or a workout after. I get to the office by 9, and most nights I’m home by 6:30 for dinner with the family. But usually two nights a week I’ll have to be late and miss it. After the kids are asleep, around 9, I’m back online, and I work almost all the way up until I go to bed.
Q. You get to see design trends bubble up on the site. Do those influence your personal style? A. Trend spotting is one of the most fascinating parts of my job, and I do like to change things up in my house often. But the palette—mustard, rose, black, and cream— stays consistent, as does my style, global and a little bohemian. I like to pair inexpensive pieces with pricier ones: a framed swatch of fabric from a small town I visited in Turkey alongside fine art, for example. A high-low mix keeps things from feeling too fussy.
Q. Are Minted’s headquarters unfussy, too? A. I’ve always wondered why an office has to have a corporate look. If people are spending a fair amount of time there, why can’t it feel as comfortable as a home? I love warm neutrals and lots of texture and letting the raw essence of a material show through. Our floors are made of unfinished wood that was used for outdoor scaffolding. It has a beautiful wear and tear to it. Our space is flexible. We created places where you can sit, lie down, lean back, or stand to work. We have a cappuccino bar and a stash of healthy snacks—I come from a family who love a full fridge!—and every Thursday we get everyone together for a catered lunch. When your goal is to have people from all departments collaborate, it helps to give them a chance to sit and eat together.
THE DISCOVERER
GRACE BONNEY
Founder of Design*Sponge
ULSTER COUNTY, NEWYORK
When Bonney started a home-decor and DIY blog more than 10years ago, itwas meant to be a stepping stone to landing an editorial job at a home magazine. But her site quickly garnered a loyal following (10,000 readers a day in the first six months!), so she stuckwith it.Today she shares beautifully styled house tours and inspiring makeover projects with more than 1million readers every day.A follow-up to her first book, Design*Sponge at Home, is due out this fall. In the Company of Women is a collection of profiles of inspiringwomen in creative fields.
Q. When did your decorating obsession begin? A. In college. I would religiously watch Trading Spaces after all my classes and then go and build furniture for my dorm room and my friends’ rooms.
Q. After you started the blog, when did you realize that it was a hit? A. The first time I was able to afford to hire writers, about four years in. Blogs can be very solitary, even though they connect you to other people, so this was a turning point. Then, in 2011, when my book came out, it became clear that what I thought was a step toward something else was actually the full-time dream job I never knew could happen.
Q. How do you continuously find inspiring designers and artists to feature? A. I am the queen of delving into people’s Instagram feeds and Tumblr pages. I am forever following one link down a rabbit hole of artists, galleries, or makers.
Q. It’s easier now than a decade ago. A. Yes, but now that there’s so much out there on the Internet, the challenge is, how do you find things in places where other people aren’t looking? Everyone knows that Instagram is an incredible resource, so how do you dig deeper?
Q. Have you figured that out? A. One of my secret weapons is the exhibitor list at trade and craft fairs. You
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GRACE BONNEY
look up those artists on Instagram to see who their friends and followers are, then check out those artists’ blogs and links. I could spend an entire day searching through four people’s archives and links just to find an undiscovered artist.
Q. Working from home, how do you structure your days? A. I wake up around 7 A.M., let our two dogs out, start coffee, and spend my morning making sure that all of the day’s posts are copyedited and ready to go. I do a very surface-level scan of e-mails to tackle any pressing ones. Around 9, I have breakfast with my wife [food writer Julia Turshen]. I spend the rest of the day writing or researching and try to close up shop around sevenish and focus on life outside the screen.
Q. How have you created an environment that’s inspiring and comfortable? A. We live in an old farmhouse in upstate New York with lots of natural light, my biggest requirement. So we keep it simple with a minimalist traditional vibe. We put our most treasured hand-medowns front and center. For example, our kitchen is built around our collection of blue-and-white china from our families. With the pets, low-maintenance is big. I love Dash & Albert rugs, since they hide wear and tear.
Q. Is there any aspect of the blog that you’ve struggled with? A. Early on, I realized I was a terrible interviewer. That part of the site wasn’t going well. To develop that skill, I signed on to host a series of 100 podcasts. I figured I would either sink or swim, and I was very much committed to swimming. The first episodes were really rocky, but I found my footing over two years. I had to let myself go through the stumbling and stuttering on air until I could finally interview well.
Q. Any other big lessons you’ve learned from running Design*Sponge? A. That it’s important to make sure all our readers can see themselves in our content. For a while, we weren’t doing a great job of that. It’s easy to find pretty homes of upwardly mobile people in large metropolitan areas, so we had plenty of those. But we weren’t representing people of color, people from the LGBT community, people who are differently abled. A huge focus for us now is to have all readers feel welcome.
THE VISIONARY
MICHELLE KOHANZO
Managing director for the Land of Nod
CHICAGO
A 17-yearveteran of the retail world,Michelle Kohanzo started at the Land of Nod as a customer-service representative. She now heads the children’sdecor company, overseeing operations, product development, and partnerships with other retailers and more than 200 independentartists.
Q. Where did your artsiness come from? A. My grandmother, who worked in textile manufacturing and was a quilter and a crafter. My brother and sister and I spent summers in Wisconsin with our grandparents, so she taught me how to sew at a very young age, and we were always creating something together. I’m still compulsively crafting in my free time.
Q. How do you use that craftiness in your job? A. I love working with my team and our artists to figure out how to turn their work into products. Their artistry gives our items a lot more soul. I’m always aware that if we were only designing products internally, the brand would feel much flatter. Q. How do you find the artists you work with? A. It changes, but lately I’ve been working closely with Etsy’s wholesale marketplace, a service that helps retailers discover designers. Along with Instagram, it’s a big source of artists. A lot of connections happen through my personal purchasing. One of our most prolific artists, Ashley Goldberg, started working with us because I bought a print from her for my home six years ago, and in the receipt e-mail she wrote she was a fan of the Land of Nod.
Q. How do product ideas come about? A. Partly from listening to what the customers are wanting. We get input through our call center and in our stores, and we publish my e-mail address pretty regularly on outgoing packages, so people are sending me comments all the time. Fashion is a big influence for us, too, so we’re very focused on what’s coming with each runway season. On top of that, our internal team is hugely creative. There’s just a constant churn of ideas and inspiring objects all around us. I’ll walk by someone’s desk and see a weird sculpture on it and think, What if we changed that to make it a ceiling light? Which artist could do that best?
Q. Whose style do you most admire? A. Actually, I would say my 17-year-old daughter Emily’s.Shehasthisreally bold, fearless look—I’d call it boho punk. She does her own styling and makeup and is my icon.
Q. You and your husband have three boys as well. How do you balance work and family time? A. I get home by 6:30, so I can have dinner with everyone and we get a chance to sit down and talk about our day. We also spend a lot of time on my bed watching TV or chatting. It’s kind of the meeting place. But I also make sleep a priority. I like to go to bed at 9 so I get a minimum of eight hours. I’m, like, the laziest CEO in the world. I don’t work out, but I do drink six cups of coffee a day. I’m pretty intense when I’m awake, and then I’m asleep. No in-between.
Q. When you’re at work, how do you foster a creative atmosphere? A. Four years ago, when I first became managing director, it was important to me that creativity was at the center of our culture and that everyone would participate in that. We relaxed some rules. We started holding more family-friendly and philanthropic events. We gave a mandate to take your birthday off. It’s hard and fast: You cannot be here. You have to get out and take care of yourself, so people do spa days or travel. We also have something called “Surprise and Delight,” where any team can throw a party for the office, from a happy hour to an Olympics tournament. Sometimes I’ll make pancakes for the whole office. We’ll get out the griddle and it’s like, “Breakfast!” Our job is to make kids happy, so in order to do that, we have to be happy, too.
MICHELLE KOHANZO
OVER
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