Goods that are mass-produced may include original design intentions, but it’s not as if they were made by the designer her/himself! Now I personally believe that the knock-off that I am talking about is a particularly accurate example, and in some cases knock-offs can miss the mark by quite a bit. (i.e. a knock-off of the Eames lounger I have seen, proportions way off, which makes the chair uncomfortable, also upholstered in vinyl.) What I am saying is the original is a piece of Art, and in the case of the Coconut chair I would be talking about the design sketches, detail plans, etc, and maybe prototypes or pieces that were produced in its first conception. After something is being made by the thousands, when talking about common consumer goods, AND IS MARKETED AS SUCH it is no longer fine art and becomes Design. Now the real difference between the Herman Miller Coconut chair and the knock-off is the quality of the material, and (lets face it) most importantly the name recognition of the designer and the manufacturer. Sorry, but I think that is as far as the common consumer goes, (which might even be a stretch). So 3,500 for a Herman Miller or 750 for a fake.

I won’t buy the fake one because I am crazy about this thing and if I had the fake, it would look the same but I would know it wasn’t and it would just sit in my living room and remind me of how sad it is that I can’t own a real Herman Miller George Nelson Coconut chair.

Personally I think it is great that practically the same exact chair can be offered to regular people. When I was a kid growing up in the 80’s everyone had La-Z-Boys, (which is probably all they were looking for anyway) Imagine if “design classics” would have been offered at a price and place that would be accessible to middle class people of that era. It would have changed my life. I might have grown up in a technicolor wonderland instead of a sea of burgundy mohair and gross floral print.

As Designers we have to protect ourselves the best we can from being copied, if it is our design we deserve to be paid when its used. If it is copied unfortunately usually there is not much we can do. But if it means better options are available to more people, I’m ok with that.

It’s not about VALUES. I cannot ever afford many of the designed objects I lust after. I. will. never. be. able. to. afford. them. That doesn’t say anything about my values or what kind of person I am.

I could save and save and save and be able to buy that beautiful $1000 bedspread, perhaps, but I’d rather spend that money on my family and my future. And I don’t see the fact changing that if Crate and Barrel for example, has a similar item for $100, people will buy it. It doesn’t make them bad people for not buying something out of their reach – in fact, I find it pretty responsible NOT to overindulge in products that aren’t really in your price range. Maybe one piece, every now and then. But not over and over again.

I’m afraid that nothing will change in this regard with the design world. Oh well!

Well put and not so very grossly over-generalized either.
We struggle with all the issues you’ve mentioned… cost of American labor, quality of the labor (althought we’ve been really lucky on this point), fear of seeing your work knocked off. I could go on and on.
I like your point about Ted selling not only and candle stick, but craftmanship, ideas, and originality. I think those things are becoming divorced from the objects in people’s minds.
You guys make really beautiful lighting that seems very reasonable to me in terms of cost.
I had a chance to check it out at the last ICFF.
Oh, I really like antler stuff. Maybe it’s all the deer up here in Columbia County, NY.

-corbett

Airplane guy, you make some nice points but honestly they really don’t apply to all designers, we’re not all designing in aluminum and rivets!
Most of the posts on here indicate to me that you all don’t know jack sh*t about manufacturing and taking a design to market. And a year ago I didn’t either.
I’m the first to admit it.
It is horribly painful and difficult. And expensive.
We’ve risked everything we had getting our line to market. If it wasn’t for a sugar-daddy client on another job funding everything (and me and the Mrs and bambina and cats all eating rice and beans 3 times day!) we never would have been able to launch our glass lighting. I don’t know how most designers do it. We’ve been blessed with good press and VERY loyal customers who do appreciate the work. Some have money to blow, for others you can tell the purchase is painful, but they value it. That means a lot to me.

I understand the comment about expensive design being a “class issue” but I have to disagree.
Good design is (or should be) original. It is made in small quantities. It is not backed by huge manufacturing budgets, expensive machinery, marketing departments.
IT IS EXPENSIVE.
In my opinion it IS worth it.
But every person has to draw that line for themself.
I love Ted’s work (even though I’m bored stiff with antlers) but I personally won’t pay $900 for some candlesticks. Doesn’t mean that someone who would or could isn’t justified to. The world needs more wealthy people to support designers so we can eventually get our products made in larger quantities. I’m the first to say that I can’t even afford my own light fixtures.
People balk at our prices, but have no clue about how hard or expensive it is to do anything in America. It sucks.
Our mission when we first started to do glass and porcelain products was to do everything local if possible, at least keep it in the US. That has proved almost impossible. (here comes the controversial part…) America is fast becoming an information society. Fuel is expensive. Americans are (gasp!) lazy. We can’t even get bids from American factories and producers. The margins aren’t good enough for them, the quantities aren’t high enough. They can’t be bothered to return emails or phone calls. Quantities of 1000+ get ignored. How is a young designer with a fledgling product supposed to fork over money for 100 pieces of anything let alone 1000?
And don’t even get me started on the quality.
For the time being we are using a fabulous team of local people. But finding that team and assembling it took 2 years. And the cost of doing manufacturing locally is enough to put a company out of business fast. We decided to do our porcelain overseas so it WOULD be affordable.
It won’t be $10 pieces like West Elm or CB2 but it won’t be $900 like Ted’s. But then Ted has earned his reputation and he is selling not only craftsmanship but ideas and originality and that is worth something.

I didn’t think too much about trotting down to Target or Crate and Barrel a few years ago, but now that I’m involved in the design community and I make my living from it, I find the West Elmification of America really depressing. Their corporate headquarters and first retail store is a 2 minute walk from our design studio in DUMBO. I can go in there and point at half a dozen objects and name the designers that were blatantly ripped off.
Thomas Paul, Jonathan Adler, Roost (ironically)…and now on Target.com you can see that they’ve ripped off KleinReid’s lamp, in addition to Home Depot.
We got an offer recently from one of our producers overseas to sell one of our designs where the prototype was “accidentally” seen in their factory by a large unnamed catalog company. They liked the design and wanted to use it. After we politely turned down the 5 cent per piece royalty, we shortly saw a very similar piece show up on their website. I won’t mention any names but their initials are CB, you do the math.

We all want design to be accessible and affordable.
But I’m willing to go without a few things so I can afford my KleinReid lamp.
Whoever said it is about VALUES early in this post is right on the money.

There is also the very disturbing reality of the simple math of it all. Wholesale is the only way to get design to the masses. Getting to the point of wholesaling our products has been a trial by fire — not for lack of interest, we have stores beating down our door to carry our products. The only problem is we can’t afford to let them. Our entire pricing model is based on a very alchemical formula involving 3 variables: 1) What will the market bear 2) what are our base costs 3) what do we need to make off of the quantity that we think we can sell to put rice and beans on the table and start a paltry college savings plan for the baby.
If our cost is $2, then we have to sell it to a retailer for $4. They in turn sell it for $8. Sound great right? No problem except for East Palm and Lock Stocking Barrell are selling it for $3 and marketing the hell out of it. The quality is crap, but people won’t know that from looking at the photo on the website.

I hope I didn’t offend anyone with my gross over-generalizations, I feel very passionate about all of this. I was hoping not to write a long rant and rave, hope you all aren’t bored to tears…

jeremy

To Ryan, I do not mean repetitive patterns. Each person undergoes their own thinking process, and this is innate. It grows stronger and more complex with more experience. And that’s when you know you do have an original, innate thinking process: the patterns change, yet there is still that x factor which keeps rearing its head, whether you’re designing, or writing, or having a conversation. It has less to do with a style and more to do with a certain character. And, trite but true, experience does build character, and originality is almost synonymous with character, no? But I agree with you: originality does happen with experimentation. In my head, experimentation is you seeking new experiences and challenges.