Jules Pieri

Real Deal Road Trip No. 7: The Luggage Center

January 29, 2010 by julespieri

The Luggage Center, Burlingame, CA

Vintage exterior sign, The Luggage Center, Burlingame, CA

There’s nothing like going to a specialty shop that has a rich assortment of quality products, that takes risks on new brands and models, and really knows their stuff. I was lucky enough to go into two such places, both for luggage, in the last two weeks.

Interior, The Luggage Center, Burlingame CA

The first was The Luggage Center in the sweet little shopping district of Burlingame, CA. I took photos of two of the more colorful offerings in the shop because I knew they’d pop in this blog. I was delighted to see The Luggage Center carrying a laptop bag from a Grommet supplier, Cocoon.

Cocoon Laptop bag

And I had to smile at this colorful rolling case from Heys (Britto Collection). You’d never confuse it with someone else’s. Unless it gets wildly popular, which it could. It’s surprisingly lightweight and was well-constructed.

When I got home from my trip to California, I decided to finally do something about my damaged Tumi bag. The zipper on an exterior pocket has been broken for years. I got in touch with the company, who pointed me to a local dealer to handle the repair. I absolutely love to fix and refurbish broken stuff: shoes, luggage, and I enjoy making repairs on just about anything in my house except 1) aftershocks of teenage wasteland/carelessness and 2) socks. About ten years ago I decided I had “made it” when I stopped darning socks (and had too many sons to keep up.)

Anyway, it was great to show up at the shop and have the woman behind the counter efficiently take my bag and details and tell me they would have it fixed in about a week. Yay! I loved that she was recording repair orders by hand so I asked if I could take a picture. You can see her suspicion in her eyes, but she let me take in nonetheless.I believe in supporting these businesses. Specialty retailers are the lifeblood of innovative products, they create texture and fabric in our towns and cities, and they create jobs for people who have a passion for their specialty. And they are steadily getting killed.

A friend of mine owns one of the finest kitchen gear stores in his city. It enjoys both a great location and a terrific reputation. However, he tells me his second-generation business that used to support his family has dwindled to a trickle of last-minute-purchase low-ticket gadgets. He said, “People used to buy the whole range of cooking gear from us. I can’t remember the last time I sold a set of All-Clad pans. People come in to check them out but then they go price shop to buy online.”

I’ve written about the cost of discount culture before. Bottom line: if we think low prices on everything are our birthright, then we should be prepared to inherit the rest: a landscape of soulless chain stories and Wal-Marts. What can we do? We can make a huge difference if we move even just 10% of our purchases off-line, and away from the big box, to these little-guy shops. They need us very badly. It might cost slightly more but the cost of not supporting these businesses is even higher to each of us.

Posted in American culture, Design | Tagged Burlingame, Cocoon, The Leather Center, Tumi | 2 Comments »

One “citizen” feels the pressure

January 24, 2010 by julespieri

We have a cast of “frequent flier” people who regularly submit Grommet ideas. They matter a lot to us and we pay close attention to their thoughts. One man who previously suggested two successful Grommets, recently had a third idea rejected. We really like this guy’s enthusiasm and his great ideas. However, this third one was for a single-purpose device and we just didn’t see its use justifying its own existence. And we didn’t think it would fly with our audience either. (It was a small portable device to allow you to see Wikipedia information at your fingertips, without a computer. It might have good educational environment uses–just less compelling for the home.)

He was a bit chagrined by the turn down. He recently told me,

I’m now testing out a new product I really like. It’s something in the “green cleaning” device area. But I am being SO much more careful. I hadn’t really given the last idea a thorough vetting. Now I want to be sure this one is worth a serious look before I suggest it. It’s kind of an ego thing.

(I can surely relate. The Discovery Team does not hesitate to reject my weaker ideas too!)

While I sure as heck do not want to discourage this man’s future stream of suggestions, I appreciate his concern for serving up quality products that really deliver on their story. He’s graduating to some kind of “uber” Citizen Commerce participant. I need to come up with a name for THAT kind of person, now.

Posted in Citizen Commerce | 1 Comment »

Grommet Good Explodes

January 17, 2010 by julespieri

I recently posted the happy news about raising $20K for Containers to Clinics. We have exciting progress to report on three other wonderful philanthropies spotlighted by Grommet:

Wine to Water in Haiti

Wine to Water is delighted with its donations from Daily Grommet folks, and is actively fundraising to help with the Haitian relief effort. This, before the horrific earthquake, was our Christmas 2009 story. Doc Henley reported that our community responded strongly—topping $5,000 in donations over the normally quiet holiday weekend. He wrote to convey his enthusiastic thanks for your help in creating economical and sustainable clean water sources in needy third world communities. Now, with the earthquake, Wine to Water ’s work in Haiti is all the more urgent. Please consider donating. (Thanks again to Steve Curran for telling us about Wine to Water.)

Grey2K USA—got greyhound racing banned in Massachusetts. Grey 2K USA is an educational organization that concerns itself with greyhound rescue. They told their story on Grommet in 2008. One of their political advocacy efforts was to organize a citizen vote to ban greyhound racing in Massachusetts, and they succeeded in 2009. As of January 1, 2010 there are no live greyhound races in the state. Grey2K USA continues on, as greyhound racing endures in other states and countries, and there are many dogs needing to be rescued. (Thanks to Paula Hyde for bringing Grey2K USA to our attention.)

Sustainable Schools International moves forward steadily with school creation. This was a December 2008 story, about creating Cambodian schools that, once created, can be maintained via local economic initiatives. One of the new challenges coming their way is that the Cambodian government recently doubled average class sizes to 90 (yes you read that right). SSI is working hard to fund additional teachers to aid the poorly paid souls who are struggling to teach a classroom of almost 100 children.

I think is is really cool that SSI reached out recently to Daily Grommet community members Jill and Andy McMahon, and they gave us a direct update:

We were immediately drawn to the Sustainable Schools International Charity when it was featured on Daily Grommet. Having visited Cambodia earlier in the year we were impressed by the poverty and resilience of the people. We decided to make monthly contributions and have found that the information sent to us regarding the budget, how it is spent, projected expenditures/ projects for the upcoming year and evidence of the support of the local villages has given us a good indication of the leadership and quality of the organization.

We were happy to have one of the volunteers Elly Goodman seek us out while she and her husband were visiting Boston to attend a micro financing meeting, not to ask for more money but instead to answer any questions we might have about the organization, face to face.

Two students at an SSI school in Cambodia

Thanks to everyone in our community who is help us to amplify “good” in the world in so many wonderful ways.

Posted in American culture, Citizen Commerce | Tagged Doc Henley, Grey2K USA, Jill and Andy McMahon, Paula Blanchard, Steve Curran, Sustainable Schools International, Wine to Water | Leave a Comment »

Procter & Gamble taking matters into its own hands

January 15, 2010 by julespieri

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Procter & Gamble is launching an online learning lab store to feature new products.

Procter & Gamble Co. plans to launch an online store that will sell key brands, aiming to study consumer buying habits as it counters moves by traditional retailers, which have reduced the variety of brands they carry.

Amen. Procter and Gamble has a world-class product development organization capable of deep and broad innovation. BUT they hit a huge wall. Namely a big box wall. WalMart and Target’s business models do not support variety. The big box guys want to buy a limited selection of top selling mainstream items CHEAP. They won’t even take risks with P & G products, much less small and medium size businesses.

I saw this dangerous retail bottleneck when I worked at Playskool. In my two year tenure, our number of products went from about 350 to somewhere under 200. Why? Specialty toy shops were dying, and we had only four powerful customers dictating our entire product line: WalMart, KMart, Target, and Toys R Us. They aren’t in business to care about toys that support different development needs of toddlers. They don’t care that Playskool had a rich and talented product development staff capable of real innovation, and broad expert manufacturing capacity to support product variety. They just wanted big sellers.

Who won? WalMart. KMart. Target. Toys R Us. Who lost? Babies and toddlers. And Playskool employees who had to focus on the big mainstream products and drop the newer innovative products. And all of us.

I’m glad Procter & Gamble is taking matters in their own hands, in their version of “Citizen Commerce.“

Posted in American culture, Citizen Commerce | Tagged Playskool, Procter & Gamble | 2 Comments »

Citizen…commerce?

January 13, 2010 by julespieri

Credit: Oso

Sometimes when you are really close to something, like a startup, it is hard to give it a succinct “handle.” You know, something simple like…”BookSwim is Netflix for books.” Or, “We are Inbound Marketing experts: HubSpot.” I’ve struggled with finding a simple description of Daily Grommet. I shouldn’t admit that…I’m rarely tongue-tied. But this BIG little task has felled me. For a long time.

However, just yesterday–within our first five minutes of meeting each other–a smart person gave me a sharp term to describe Daily Grommet. Like I said, I’ve been struggling for 18 months to find the perfect two words. But this man, with the benefit of a little distance and perspective said, “Daily Grommet is…. Citizen Commerce.”

(I’d been weighing “Democratization of Commerce” over the New Year….but I like his words better.)

My new favorite person had just had his first exposure to our community, and site, and products, and he said, “We’ve all heard of citizen journalism, where “regular people” report and analyze the news—they almost deconstruct traditional media–via blogs, Digg, tweets etc. Daily Grommet is doing that for products. You are creating a way for “regular people” to form a marketplace, by helping you find the Grommets. And then your products also comes from “regular people”–who actually deliver their compelling stories about creating the products, from the heart. And then regular people decide what gets shared, supported, and bought. Citizen Commerce”

This insightful description (paraphrased above—hopefully accurately) came from Erik Rasmussen, of Safeguard Scientific. Thanks Erik. I’m giving you full credit before I start adopting this term as our own.

I like it SO much better than “social commerce” by the way. Social commerce always sounds like a whole lot of blah-blah-blah talking. Talking is important, but I don’t want to just help people talk about products and their stories. I want to give them a way to DECIDE and SHAPE and AFFECT which stories SHOULD be discovered.

It’s about time, no?

Posted in Citizen Commerce, Start-ups | Tagged BookSwim, Democratization of Commerce, Erik Rasmussen, Hubspot, Safeguard Scientific | 6 Comments »

Driveway markers and third world healthcare–odd but compatible bedfellows

January 3, 2010 by julespieri

On Christmas Eve we told the story of Containers to Clinics. It’s a non-profit group that converts disused shipping containers into full-fledged health clinics for needy populations. Its founder Elizabeth Sheehan has a deep professional background in international emergency medicine, and she was struck by the frequent proximity of abandoned shipping containers and underserved populations. Voila….her brainchild was born.

Elizabeth Sheehan, in the field

When she researched this story, our team member Sara recruited a friend of Daily Grommet to help. That friend ended up offering to match donations up to $10,000 for C2C. Lo and behold, the Daily Grommet community came through quickly and strongly, and Containers to Clinics now has over $20,0000 in fresh funding, in a matter of only five days. (It could take six months of planning for a fundraising event to raise this–so fun that we could use our site to do it with no drain on Containers to Clinics’ precious resources.) This is enough money to staff two clinics with five people for a year!

I get so excited about these events. A cynical businessperson might ask why. After all, there is no commercial benefit to Daily Grommet. You could argue it is a very expensive thing for us to do…to “give up” days of sales for a non-profit’s benefit. But we just don’t see it that way. We are human beings who want to amplify good in the world. Yes, our main mission is to do that through supporting interesting companies with inventive products. But we get to invent our world, and it does not need to be black and white. It seems totally normal to me to tell a story about some innovative snowplow-fighting driveway markers on Monday, and Containers to Clinics on Thursday.

My own experience is that Daily Grommet “regulars” are not a bit confused by these Grommet days. They like them. Obviously. They liked this one to the tune of $20,000! Yippee! What a wonderful close to 2009.

Posted in Cultural anthropology | Tagged Containers to Clinics, Elizabeth Sheehan | 1 Comment »

Real Deal Road Trip No. 6: Michelle Willey / Finnish products trunk show

December 22, 2009 by julespieri

Michelle Willey (classic ideas for modern living)

Boston, MA

I had a birthday recently. On the way to a celebratory event, I invoked “birthday girl privileges” and requested a detour. I wanted to see a special trunk show of Finnish products on a temporary display at Michelle Willey, a shop I really like in Boston.

I was drooling over the rich materials, bold forms, and reassuring Finnish simplicity. All of the products I saw are new to the US and barely distributed. I especially appreciated speaking with Timo Utter, who is single-handedly importing these products from a tight selection of high quality family-owned enterprises.

Michelle Willey shop at 8 Union Park Street, Boston

Michelle Willey, herself. What a great eye this woman has.

Whimsical laser cut trees and ornaments, made from Finland's abundant hardwoods

Wonderful thick wool items from a mother/daughter team; placemats, coasters, table runners

This line is designed in Finland and fabricated in Italy from recycled leather scraps. I loved the hardware and practical details, and especially appreciated the suede-like touch

Timo Utter, from Helsinki, and me. In front of Timo's trunk show.

Some people wax poetic in bookstores, for others it is music stores. I love those too, but for me a truly absorbing experience is to encounter products that have a perfect blend of form, function, material, and fabrication. The Finns are so superb at that.

Posted in Design | Tagged Finnish design, Michelle Willey, Timo Utter | Leave a Comment »

Live TV makes video seem like a piece of cake.

December 14, 2009 by julespieri

Today. Monday AM. 8:45 segment on NECN…on “Gifts to Match Any Budget.” I hadn’t done any live TV since I lived in Ireland. It’s a lot harder than video. Every word out of your mouth has the potential to be a major screw up. We just edit those out in video.

But our CMO Jeanne had me well prepared, and the host, Karen Swensen made it a pleasure.

Karen Swensen, of NECN

The only real glitch was after the show. Jeanne and I had been gone for ten minutes when Karen Swensen called,

Hi Jules. This is Karen Swensen from NECN. Do you happen to still have our mike on your belt?

Oh I am such a pro. NOT.

Posted in Start-ups | Tagged Karen Swensen, NECN | 3 Comments »

Real Deal No. 6: Port of Seattle

December 10, 2009 by julespieri

I grew up next to an active freight train line and a humming automotive plant. I like seeing freight cars rolling, and hearing the buzz of a factory. Similarly I enjoy seeing an active commercial port. It makes me imagine the food stuffs, or new shoes, or construction materials inside. Things someone grew, or designed, or manufactured. I took a few shots of an expansive view of the Seattle port from an office tower a couple days ago. I’d love to learn more about just what goods flow through the Seattle port, if anyone can comment here.