Six Pixels of Separation

Every year I receive at least a half dozen books as Christmas gifts from members of my family.

Of this year's titles one that really caught my eye was "Six Pixels of Separation" by Mitch Joel.



The premise of Joel's book is that in today's digital world everyone is connected to everyone else through websites, blogs, social networks etc. This means that there are now a variety of digital channels and free publishing tools available online to promote yourself, your personal brand and your small business.

The jacket summary of this book really caught my attention because in many ways I have already been living out this reality with my own business.

I first began using the Internet back in the mid 1990s when access involved AOL accounts and dial-up connections that got terminated with every incoming telephone call. In digital terms those days were the proverbial Stone Age.

By 1998 we were working with Kristina Nagy and Denis Dube of K10 Studios to create our first website at www.wiggersfurniture.com

At that stage I had very low expectations of what a website could offer as a sales and marketing tool. At best I figured it would be a helpful to demonstrate credibility, besides showing product images along with specifications and background information on the company. "Real" sales, I believed, could only happen through "mortar and brick" showrooms that were dedicated to selling my work to discriminating consumers via interior designers and architects.

By late 2000 (exactly 10 years ago today) we were busier than we'd ever been. Most of our sales were high quality custom furniture pieces sold through to-the-trade showrooms located in major urban centers across the United States. For all intents and purposes the Internet had zero bearing on any sales we made that year. But even then the paradigm was rapidly changing.

For one thing the recent collapse of the dot com bubble was already starting to manifest as a decline in new orders. This situation would be exacerbated later in the following year with the fallout from the 9/11 attacks. Cheap imports from offshore were also starting to flood the market, and although we didn't compete directly with this product it was having a domino effect by pushing the lower end guys into the middle of the market which, in turn, compelled the middle end guys to target the higher end.

By 2006 the overall sales to my traditional customer base had diminished radically. In a discussion with Monroe Sherman of Carriage House, one of my oldest clients, I was told that I needed to shift my thinking if I wanted to stay in business. At the time we were making private label OEM pieces for Monroe's Sherman-Designs collection, and he pointed out that because of globalization I was now competing with cheaper vendors from South America and South-East Asia. In effect, I was told that if I wanted to compete I'd have to effectively slash prices even if it meant lowering my quality standards by moving work offshore. This was not something I was prepared to do.

It was at this point Monroe suggested I read the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

The premise of Friedman's book is that because of globalization and computerization supply chains have gotten shorter, with the result being that the world is now smaller and more competitive than ever before.

My reply was "Yes, I've read the book. Have you?"

Perplexed, Monroe said "Of course I've read it. Why do you ask?"

I pointed out that he was only interpreting Friedman's book from his own vantage point, namely that in this new era of globalization and digital communication that he alone would be the beneficiary of using digital tools such as the Internet to find newer and better opportunities.

To illustrate my point I told him "As flat as you see the world from your side of the planet, it's just as flat going the other way. Yes, you'll be able to find cheaper sources of supply thanks to this new paradigm, but the rest of the world won't be sitting still as you do so. Your customers will be looking for better opportunities and better quality too, as will your current and previous vendors. The world is changing and getting smaller for everyone, not just you."

In hindsight this contention appears to be playing itself out. Where in 2000 I could attribute 0% of my sales directly to activity on the Internet, in 2010 more than 50% of my business has been generated as a result of this digital realm. Thanks to Google, websites and blogs I am finding ever more people using the Internet to find exactly what they want in the way of high quality custom furniture.

As far as I'm concerned Mitch Joel is spot on with what he contends in "Six Pixels of Separation", and one of my New Year's resolutions will be to implement suggestions from his book to make 2011 even better.

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The Journey Continues (Pt. 12) - Ramping Up Again

Having experienced the severity of the economic recession of the early 1990s I had surprisingly mixed feelings about the surge of new work coming in from places like Brueton. Although one part of me was thankful to be busy once more, there was another part of me that dreaded the thought of ramping back up to warp speed again.

When we were at our busiest in the 1980s I was constantly working long hours, including evenings and weekends. This made it difficult to do simple things, such as spend time with my young family. Although it was tough to decelerate the business as orders dried up, it was also a welcome relief in some ways because I was simply burned out.

During these down times I began to sketch out all kinds of ideas of furniture concepts I wanted to have made. This became a surprisingly enjoyable exercise and it had an almost meditative quality for me. Deep down I loved the creativity of it all - conceiving ideas; sketching them out; then figuring out how to go about making them into reality. The latter part was easy because the science of making was something I had down to a fine art already - after years of taking other people's ideas and transforming them into finished product.

The first prototype I ended up taking from sketchbook to bench was a Biedermeier style desk - very similar to the Rainforest Desk shown below.
An old bundle of Myrtle Burl veneer that had been stored away for years was used to make the inset of the top, while offcuts of Macassar Ebony were utilized to make the apron, legs and plinths. Not long after the desk was completed I was fortunate to have it sold - to an author who was looking for an inspiration place where he could write his books.

The success and sale of this first piece - especially one that was wholly of my own creation - actually inspired me to consider scaling my shop down even smaller, to focus exclusively on making and selling my own designs. This fantasy, however, was short-lived because the economic reality of the situation had its own facts and figures.

For one thing I was now the father of 3 young children, and as much as it might be righteous and honourable to pursue the path of the starving artist - also starving one's family in the process was not a viable option.

In addition, despite how cool I thought my furniture pieces were, the marketplace as a whole was not sharing my enthusiasm. Aside from the initial desk sale, three consecutive years of displaying at IIDEX did virtually nothing to stimulate any interest in my designs although, to be fair, the recession going on at the time wasn't conducive for sales either.

Around 1992 or 1993 there was also a Call for Entry for furniture designs to be submitted for an upcoming book entitled "Conservation by Design". This was a collaborative effort by W.A.R.P. (Woodworkers' Alliance for Rainforest Protection) and the furniture design program at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) to select tangible examples of sustainable furniture designs. I was thrilled beyond belief at this opportunity to be published, and felt certain that my Rainforest Desk would be one of the pieces selected.

Sadly, of the 76 furniture makers accepted for publication, I wasn't one of them.

About a year later there was another Call for Entry - and another rejection - once again from RISD. This time it was my "Tower of Power" that bit the proverbial dust.


It was shortly after we started ramping up with Brueton that I had a lengthy discussion with J. Wade Beam on what my business focus should be. Wade advised me to abandon my efforts to develop my own pieces and focus, instead, on being an OEM supplier to companies like Brueton. At the time this seemed like sage advice, for a couple of reasons.

First, given the rejections I was getting it seemed obvious that my furniture pieces weren't resonating with the more knowledgeable design academics of the world. Second, thanks to the recession there was now a seismic shift under way in the way in which companies had their pieces made. Making things in-house was now falling out of vogue as more and more designers began to outsource rather than invest in their own production. (Of course, taken to its extreme this ultimately led to the almost complete offshoring of production that we now see today).

As the 1990s wore on our base of OEM clients expanded to include not only Brueton but also Vladimir Kagan, Rick Shaver, Monroe Sherman (Sherman Designs), and Lee Weitzman. To keep up with the growing influx of work we were soon compelled to expand the size of our staff.

Although I was never keen on having large numbers of people working for me, in many ways I had little choice if I was going to keep my customers happy.

But it was only after I hired a "Jesus woodworker" that I decided to go CNC.

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