Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Anticipating egg on my face, and apologizing in advance

August 29, 2010 by julespieri

Two weeks ago we had fully vetted a potential cooking tool Grommet and had it scheduled to run imminently.  We used the product multiple times.  We made the final video, wrote the story, negotiated the commercial terms.  I think we had done everything but shoot photography.  It was a “go”.  But then Katherine tripped on a negative review in a Dutch publication (the product is a European import).  She doesn’t read Dutch but she could read “trouble”.  She dug deeper, found enough to worry about, and Joanne cancelled the Grommet.

It caused all kinds of headaches for Joanne to make this decision.  Someone on her team had to face an upset product supplier.  Hours of lost work.  A messed up Grommet calendar.  A need to accelerate another Grommet.  Yet everyone knew it was the right thing to do.

But here’s the rub.  This will happen again, and we might miss the bad news and release the Grommet story.   The internet is our friend, we can find negative reviews in a nanosecond.  But if a product is new, or if the bad news is slow to surface on the Web, we could get “caught” by a disreputable new player or product.

I’m very pleased we are developing a new submission process which will openly publicize the ideas we are seeing.  What is now visible only to our team will live in a  public “Citizens’ Gallery”  on our site.    This change is going to be huge:  people will be able to get more welcome exposure for their submissions on the Grommet site, and that will also continue to raise the quality of them.

Here’s a first mockup…it’s undergoing revisions, but we want to share it anyway:

Bigger than that, to us, is that we will have a broader chance to hear multiple points of view on a product.  We will open up ways to comment on a Grommet idea.  By exposing our incoming submissions we will have a much better chance to learn about the possible Grommets from people who are committed to helping us maintain the quality and trust we have built, together, at Grommet.

But….for brand new products even this new Citizens’ Gallery is not enough.  Sometimes products fail after months of use.  Sometimes social entrepreneurs do not really give the share of revenue that they commit to at the beginning of their endeavor.  Sometimes they green-wash a product.  Sometimes the front-facing part of the company is professional but the service and operational ends are not.  We have so much experience in figuring this stuff out that we haven’t yet had a massive disappointment.  We don’t cut corners.  We have a nose for the truth, at every level.

But we will miss something important someday.   It’s just inevitable.  We are a small team.  We don’t pretend to be Consumer Reports or Underwriters Laboratory.  Our evaluation of a product, and the people and company behind it, is very holistic (more on this in a later blog post).  We will get duped or just make some errors.

For this, I will ask for all the input our community can give, once we start exposing our idea submissions.  But I am mainly, here and now, apologizing in advance.   When we get caught short we will move swiftly and powerfully to correct any errors.  It will be deeply upsetting to me and to the Grommet team, and our community.  So I am apologizing now.

Posted in Start-ups | 6 Comments »

Spiking the football, if I could

August 26, 2010 by julespieri

You know those guys who spike the football in the end zone and violently fist pump the air?  Making no secret of their elation?   And then you know those other players who casually cross the goal line, drop the ball, and walk away looking like it’s all in a day’s work?

I felt like the first type when I read a recent blog post about Daily Grommet.  I know I’m supposed to just raise an eyebrow and be some calm CEO sphinx in the face of press.  Press only goes so far when it comes to the real work of building a business.  But this one delighted me because the writer, Dan Sullivan , had a new level of insight for what we are creating.  I had to celebrate.  Here’s my favorite bit:

I read about an online service called Daily Grommet, which introduces new products to tens of thousands of visitors every day….Robert Metcalfe, who co-invented Ethernet, talked about how these new online businesses and marketplaces continually create increasing value. Metcalfe’s law states that “the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.”

What Mses. Pieri and Domeniconi have done is create an increasingly more valuable telecommunications marketing network that has built-in multipliers. Now that inventors of new products know about Daily Grommet, they will send their products to the site, hoping to be featured on each day’s “Daily Grommet.”

The multiplier here is that all of the research to keep the site going is provided by the potential sellers. As word spreads about the site – mainly through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter — the number of customers will continually grow. Day after day, week after week, the usefulness and value of Daily Grommet will grow almost automatically. This is a marvelously simple example of how, in the world of the microchip economy, things continually multiply in a way that was never possible before in human history.

So, heck yeah I am going to spike that football.  The day I walk by some good news calmly is the day I should probably hang up my shoulder pads.

Posted in Entrepreneurs, Start-ups | Tagged | 1 Comment »

Claire goes 0 to 60 on video

August 12, 2010 by julespieri

I was so delighted to see this final (for now) video from our recently departed intern Claire Lorman. She’s headed back to Savannah College of Art and Design for her Junior Year. Claire wrote a heartwarming departing blog post and this video was like another form of greeting card for me.

I just loved seeing her learn and blossom and really contribute in her summer stay at the Grommet. I think of my own son who also just finished his summer internship and hope he endeared himself as much to his employer (early stage investor Harrison Metal) as Claire did with us.

Posted in Start-ups | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

What it is REALLY like to get your picture in The New York Times

August 9, 2010 by julespieri

First off let me state clearly that we were over-the-moon-happy with Amy Wallace’s feature story on Daily Grommet in The New York Times Sunday Business section yesterday.  Here’s a picture of me holding it.

Yes, I am wearing 20-year-old overalls.

This is our first “big” national story and we were lucky to be in the hands of such a skilled journalist.

But here’s my former fantasy (held since childhood) about what it would be like to get my picture taken for an important article:

  • I’d get a good night’s sleep before the photo session.  And I would be serene and composed, having deferred all difficult tasks to another day.
  • I would make sure my hair looked good.
  • I’d carefully plan my wardrobe to be flattering and, surely, project the right image.

Here is what really happened.  We had one hour’s notice of the photo shoot. I’ve been traveling non stop and we realized we HAD to do it on a rare day in the office. The NYT pulled a photographer out of the hat very quickly to accommodate.

Joanne and I each had a brief 10 second panic.  Not just for the surprise.  More that we were in no state to be photographed.  And that is not vanity talking…

It was a 95 degree high humidity day in Boston and we had spent most of it shooting video.  That is tiring in itself, but the hardest part is we have to turn off the air conditioning in the office to avoid the blowing sounds.  It’s a challenging day for all of us because of that.  (No heat in the winter either, but that is not as uncomfortable.)

Joanne and I were stained, rumpled, sweaty messes.  Whatever hairdo or makeup we had sported in the morning had been long wiped out.  We each  made a quick plan to buzz home and put on something clean.  I said, “I’m coming back in a white t-shirt and a black vest.”  She said, “No!  That’s my go-to outfit for pictures.” Clearly we’ve been working together too closely.

I thought about fighting back.  But I then realized I could make no such impressive claim to having a “a go-to outfit.”  So I stuck with the wrinkled (never ironed it in the AM anyway) linen print dress I had on.  (Julia reassured me it was “very Grommet.”)  I did go home to slap on some makeup…but the reality of that photo is we were still dripping with sweat and anything but fresh.

Jodi Hilton took this for the New York Times. She was lovely and talented.

When the actual article came out (online first) I was afraid to look (not so much for the photo but for any stray bonehead quotes I had provided).    We knew it would hit at 3PM on Saturday and I cowardly stayed down on the dock in Maine while my family and a bunch of friends from Dublin and Detroit  were up in the camp hitting “refresh refresh refresh” on the NYT site.  When the article finally appeared, 19-year-old Julie (who won Miss Trinity College Dublin this year) used her finest elocution skills to read the article to all assembled.  Then, my “toughest critic” son showed up on the dock sporting an iPad and a big smile.  I knew I was in the clear.

Amy had spared me from myself, this time.

My hair does look sweaty, though.

Posted in Entrepreneurs | 17 Comments »

Time Magazine says this is “Jules Pieri Unfiltered”

August 2, 2010 by julespieri

Time Magazine made a big commitment to Detroit in opening a bureau in the Motor City focussed on innovation and revival.  They asked me to post to their Detroit blog, following my fascinating visit to this weekend’s Maker Faire Detroit.  Here’s an excerpt from the post, which they call “Unfiltered:  Jules Pieri on Looking Back at the Faire and Detroit.”

“In traveling around Detroit for various Maker Faire events, my GPS seemed to think it was still in Boston. It kept avoiding highways (did it not realize Detroit is highway heaven?) and directing me onto surface streets. The one time I did not mind the GPS confusion was when the surface streets took me by the west-side neighborhood where I grew up. I’d been meaning to stop by that tidy grid of modest postwar brick bungalows.

Growing up, everyone on my street earned a living making or fixing things. The sights and sounds of manufacturing punctuated our days and nights: bone-rattling roars of the freight train line, the constant throbbing of a massive Detroit Diesel Allison plant just past the railroad. My nostalgia turned to analysis during my 72-hour visit, especially because I met many Detroiters who convinced me that the city’s competitive advantages were just below the surface.”

BTW I think I could get a lot more unfiltered than this post… but it’s quite true they ran my piece unedited, which was very kind of Time’s editors.

Here are some photos that did not make it into the Time piece:

This is my childhood home.  I snapped this furtively with my Droid early Saturday morning so it’s a lousy photo.  I really did not want to attract attention with my big camera.  My mom moved out a few years ago and I don’t know any of the current neighbors.  It’s not exactly a totally safe place to be walking around alone provoking people.
My brother pulled some real Smokey and the Bandit moves to get me to the venue for this talk.  My plane was late, the GPS acted up, and we hit a blocked road occupied by a film crew.  I think this was vital evidence of Detroit’s new creative class, smack in the middle of what looked like great car hijack territory.  Nonplussed, my bro just took his vehicle over grass and sidewalks, driving responsibly slowly past the gaping looks of the filmmakers.
This is Jim Bronersky of Op-Yop.  I tell a snapshot of his history in the Time piece.  As he says, his company is a classic “Detroit story.”  I’d like to return to that story again.  One factoid he told me is that the Maker Faire was particularly well-timed, in that the Michigan State Fair, the oldest such fair in the country, was cancelled this year due to budget cuts.
These are some of the original injection molds.  Wow.  Jim gave me one of the actual vintage Op-Yops too.   It’s mesmerizing and relaxing, as an activity.
Here is the “manifesto” from Bryce Moore and his company Context Furniture.  He’s singing my song.   Or, I am singing his.
This is the kind of hands-on workshop one finds all over the Maker Faire.  One of the big goals of the event is to share what you  know with other “Makers” and with the public.  Sweet.
I wish I’d taken even more photos.  Between trying to find my speaking venues, dealing with the usual AV challenges, talking to Makers, and the lovely distractions of my adorable nephew who came along for some of the time, I was running from pillar to post.   I can’t wait to do it again, at the next Maker Faire Detroit.

Posted in American culture, Citizen Commerce | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

My (funnier) twin separated at birth

July 21, 2010 by julespieri

Self portrait by Kalman on right.

Illustrator, designer and artist Maira Kalman has long been a heroine of mine.  If you have kids you might recognize her children’s books like Max Makes a Million.

If you read the New Yorker, you already know her covers.

If you are up on your industrial design history, you know she founded M & Co. with her late husband Tibor, and they created these watches:

And these paperweights:

The San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum is exhibiting the first-ever show (of thirty years) of her work. Because of that, and because the man in the cafe just gave me a free Coke, this is my new favorite museum.  I have been trying for a week to get here, taunted by the brightly colored !!Maira Kalman Exhibit!! banners flapping from virtually every lamp post in downtown San Francisco.  When my Bay Area trip got unexpectedly extended a day, I made a beeline over the museum, even catching the once-weekly docent tour of the Kalman work.

I knew I loved her but I was getting positively creeped out at the oddities and affections we share:

  • We have both created a piece of art from onion rings.
  • She says, “The best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is on foot.”
  • We both collect string, rubber bands, old boxes, and she collects ladders, which I would if I had that kind of space.
  • She says she finds 500 things to draw or write about on a simple walk.  So do I.  And let me tell you I am pretty frustrated not to be her and to get paid to actually do it.
  • She irons sheets.  (OK I admit it.  I used to do that when I had time.)
  • She loves Abraham Lincoln, stationery stores, Saul Steinberg, Ludwig Bemelmans (Madeleine books) and Gertrude Stein.
  • She loves being an entrepreneur and once ran a store called Milton that changed every day.  THAT CHANGED EVERY DAY.  I did not even know that.

OK, admittedly this is a list that many designers would share, so perhaps we are not uniquely soul mates.  But I wrote this in her guest book anyway:

Maira,

You are my (funnier, more creative) twin separated at birth.

Except I have neater handwriting.  I changed it when I turned 40.  I had to.

The ligatures were killing me.

jules @ dailygrommet . com

I deliberately left my email as my signature.  I hope she contacts me and offers to work together.  Stranger things have happened to me.

Posted in Design, Entrepreneurs | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

Grommets in the Wild

July 20, 2010 by julespieri

I’m writing this from the window of a Peet’s in downtown San Francisco.  I have been here for a week of quasi-vacation.  Any entrepreneur knows what I mean when I say “quasi”.  I did more Grommet stuff in my “spare” vacation time (i.e. while the family was sleeping or otherwise entertained) than I’d like to admit.  But when you love what you do….and are in a hurry to do a lot…you do what it takes.  And the whole family enjoyed shooting video of a really special upcoming Grommet my own son discovered while living in SF.

A highlight of any of my travels is seeing Grommets we discovered months ago starting to get retail distribution.  I snapped a few shots, all in the fabulous Ferry Building.  It’s a spot any foodie visitors to the Bay Area certainly know.  I can also highly recommend the North Berkeley Gourmet Ghetto tours for that same crowd.)

In front of Ferry Building, San Francisco

Anyway, here are my shots of the Grommets spreading their wings:

My son with a Spencer Peterman Bowl

This shop had a very nice range of Spencer Peterman’s bowls made of spaulted maple, displayed very prominently on the edge of the pedestrian concourse.  Go Spencer!  His bowls take an amazing amount of patience…he basically curates very particular wood specimens from fallen and aged trees.

The Gardener is one of my favorite Ferry Building shops, so I was not surprised to see they are featuring the Lunch Bots line.  A very smart choice, see below.

Finally, this family business which is a combo kitchen store, farmer’s market and deli had a couple of Grommets tucked in the displays.  Innovative kitchen tools from Joseph Joseph (see a broader range here) , and a wine tote from Built.

People sometimes ask why I would tell them about “bricks and mortar” places to buy Grommets–and effectively give away sales.  It’s because specialty retail is the lifeblood of young companies and innovation.  I am delighted to send those shops as many customers as I can.  I don’t want a world where every transaction is over the internet.  The reality is most Grommets can’t be found outside of major urban centers or a region close to their “homes”.  So while e-commerce plays a key role in telling meaningful product stories, there is room for everyone to support these kinds of companies.

I’m looking forward to the day when Anthony, Jeanne and I get to realize our vision of a Grommet mobile app that helps you find “Grommets in the Wild”.  I want to give people a way to take photos and help us map them all across the world.  How cool would that be?  You could geo-locate a really talented independent retailer, in a town you never visited,  just by finding a concentration of Grommets.  Oh to have more time and people to make this happen tomorrow!

Posted in Entrepreneurs, Food porn | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

My Rambler surprised me

July 12, 2010 by julespieri

My family is driving two used cars.  One is a ten-year-old “Grandpa Car” that was purchased because it is reported to be the safest vehicle for teenage drivers.  You will never see a picture of it in this blog, as the mere sight of it depresses me.

The other, the ’64 Rambler, is my daily driver.  It is very cool, but it can be disconcerting to drive.  When I am behind the wheel, strangers on the street frequently wave, point, and gesture–enthusiastically.  Since I am always thinking about something other than my car, I am usually startled by the cheerful public response.

The Rambler has two features I adore.  First, it has these tough little antennae that scrape loudly and “boing” when you are grazing too close to a hard surface, like a curb.  It’s a refreshingly low-tech and durable solution to an enduring problem.

Second, I am charmed by the “Vibratone” rear speaker system.  When you turn it on, your radio sounds are projected through two back seat speakers that are literally vibrating.  The echo-ey sound is supposed to make you feel like you are in a live concert venue.  Not exactly.  It just makes me laugh.

But I found a new aspect of the car that charmed me yesterday.  Under the dash is a swiveling chrome tissue box.  I call it my “windshield defrost system” because it works better than the blower.

But what surprised me this weekend?  Well, I have to admit that I have never looked inside the tissue box myself…but I was watching my husband fill it yesterday.  And was so delighted to see that the tissues get placed inside this hand-crafted wooden box whose lining is an exact match to the seat upholstery!

Now those were the days…when a car was a car and someone fussed over the hidden rectangle of fabric in my tissue box.  And to think the Rambler was a real budget car, in its heyday.  (It still is inexpensive today…they call it the “orphan car” because so few people collect them.  You can get one for a song.)

If you are really into this, you can see me driving my car in this video.

Posted in American culture, Design | Tagged | 16 Comments »

Hat Trick: Three articles that were powerful enough to distract me from jumping in the lake on a hot holiday weekend

July 6, 2010 by julespieri

I did an enormous amount of lake-side book and magazine reading over the holiday weekend.  Below are the three articles that stood the “24-hours-later-and-I-still-remember-them” test of time.  All worth a read or a quick scan:

How social networking triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical in our brains.

If you only read a tiny bit, read the “Experiment No. 3…In Which I Learn to Love by Tweeting Madly.”  The subject of the article is “Dr. Love”, Paul Zak, a Professor at Claremont Graduate University who popularized “neuroeconomics”.  Turns out Tweeting causes a spike in oxytocin levels (the love/trust chemical).  Two choice quotes from the article by Adam L. Penenberg:

“Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for,” Zak says. “E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection.”

And

“One day, a company might be better off asking not what its margins are, but what its trust factor is,” says Brian Singh, founder of Zinc Research, a social media and marketing research firm in Calgary, Alberta. Singh has begun framing the formation of connections via social networking as a form of “digital oxytocin.” The idea is that if businesses wish to thrive in our interconnected world, where consumers’ opinions spread at the speed of light, they must act as a trusted friend: create quality products, market them honestly, emphasize customer care.

How to Make an American Job Before It’s Too Late, by Andy Grove of Intel.

Andy makes a compelling case that startups (in the current model of low capital investment)  don’t really create a meaningful number of jobs and that manufacturing companies do.  He builds his case carefully so I do him a disservice by quoting just a bit.  But I thought this was a great framing of his point of view:

The story comes to mind of an engineer who was to be executed by guillotine. The guillotine was stuck, and custom required that if the blade didn’t drop, the condemned man was set free. Before this could happen, the engineer pointed with excitement to a rusty pulley, and told the executioner to apply some oil there. Off went his head.

We got to our current state as a consequence of many of us taking actions focused on our own companies’ next milestones. An example: Five years ago, a friend joined a large VC firm as a partner. His responsibility was to make sure that all the startups they funded had a “China strategy,” meaning a plan to move what jobs they could to China. He was going around with an oil can, applying drops to the guillotine in case it was stuck. We should put away our oil cans. VCs should have a partner in charge of every startup’s “U.S. strategy.”

Growing up in Detroit, much of what Andy says resonates with me.  But I find my knowledge-worker and coastal-centric friends who didn’t grow up around people who make things undervalue the technology and invention advances that are created by those environments.  Andy does a better job explaining it than I could.

Finally, I liked:

Zilch:  Get What You Want for Nothing.  How to Profit by Behaving like a Not-for-Profit by Nancy Lublin in Fast Company.  Nancy is a great storyteller and I particularly like her  introductory and closing stories in this article.  The simple, powerful narratives transfer very easily to any company.

Posted in American culture, Social networking, Start-ups | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

Rob Walker strikes again…Where do gadgets really come from?

June 28, 2010 by julespieri

Sam Panthaky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Image

Rob Walker writes the “Consumed” column in the Sunday NYT magazine.  Partly in response to the terrible string of suicides at the Foxconn facility in China, he explored the issue of “knowing” exactly where the stuff we buy comes from, in an article called Open Secrets.  He’s acknowledging the fact that when something goes wrong (like the pet food recall, or YouTube video phenom of the slumbering Comcast repairman) the transparency culture and social media tools are quick to surface these blunders.

But Rob is highlighting the 99% cases in which we buy something, and nothing goes “wrong” but we have no idea where it came from, who made it, or how.  He argues that this precise information would be even more compelling to people than aggregate scores of “goodness”:

“I suspect it’s the specificity that matters; knowing something about a particular laptop or pair of sneakers or pet food resonates with consumers more than an aggregate score or a big-picture summary. Imagine an open-source effort emerging to make that brand/production relationship much less opaque than it is. I don’t expect that most consumers would actually turn every impulse buy into a research project, but I bet it would change the way brands scrutinize their supply chains if they knew that every thing we buy was really, truly transparent.”

This article hit me at just the right time as we’ve been evaluating a Grommet submission which does reveal exactly this kind of information.  In my mind having precise supply chain information (factories used, location of each, people employed, component materials information) elevated the product (which is wonderful, but not revolutionary on its own) to a different category.    To “here’s a company raising the bar for everyone else.”

Rob wrote an update to the NYT article on his Murketing blog.  It is worth checking out…turns out there is some progress being made on this issue.

These are the original images from the NYT article…I hope it is kosher to share them….nice work.   I will pull them right down if I am crossing a line.

Posted in Citizen Commerce | 7 Comments »

Older Posts »