I am a consultant thinker, merchant & creative strategist with a track record as an entrepreneur and brand builder. Over the years I have done a great deal of thinking about experiences, brands & people; and what it takes to engage and create desire.
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Museum | 2012
Occupying a mere 8m2 and located in what was once a freight elevator of a former Broadway paper warehouse fronting the back alley between Franklin & White Streets in New York City, sits Museum … boasting artifacts, objects and curiosities gathered from assorted collections around the world.
Fully equipped with ornate molding, cascading velvet lined shelves and recessed lighting, the space intends to show respect for the everyday, and displays the often overlooked beauty of real life. There is always beauty and magic in the plebeian.
The context of an object can give it its value. Each item on display is accompanied by the story of its origin and how it ended up in the Museum.
It houses objects have been collected over the past 10 years from cities around the world by super smart Alexander Kalman (son of Tibor) and his collaborators and co-curators. The are artifacts. They are items lost and found in the cracks and corners of cultures around the world.
The permanent collection of objects includes the shoe that was thrown at George W. Bush in 2008 while he was in Baghdad, Iraq at the Minister’s Palace, artist Van Neistat’s air conditioner vent, the intercom from Joe Junior’s Restaurant which was open from 1975 to 2008, through which over 3,000 cheese burgers were ordered on an average day, and other miscellaneous international objects. The museum’s current exhibition features other paraphernalia, such as a fancy Russian shot glass from a five star Moscow hotel which becomes a brothel at night and international toothpastes from Tucker Viemeister’s 20 year long collection (previously featured on this website HERE) … to name a few.
Each item is numbered. You can either look up the number in a little leaflet they were selling for $1, or you can phone a free-phone number and type in the article reference thereby getting to hear the explanation behind it. Alex tells me that he often sees people peering through the window late at night punching numbers into their phones to hear the stories behind the treasure on view.
I had a lot to do with Tibor Kalman when he was alive. His wife Maira is also a gifted artist and thinker. And now Alexander their son is showing off those genes and talent with some really delightful work.
Museum rotates its collection every few months, is open to the public, and is free of charge.
Museum
Cortlandt Alley
Between Franklin St & White St
New York City, NY 10013
info@mmuseumm.com
Live in Bondi “Where Life is Better”
So reckoned this ad promoting the Bondi Tram Service from way back when.
Do you agree?
General Thinking: Balance & Wisdom | 2011
Great is never black nor white, but rather an elusive shade of grey.
The key to success is more often than not the striking of a fine balance between:
+ Leadership & Arrogance
+ Global & Local
+ Designed & Undesigned
+ Flexible & Confusing
+ Honest & Strategic
+ Elite & Egalitarian
+ Systemic & Customised
+ Controlling & Collaborative
That balance requires judgement and a good deal of wisdom.
If you’ve got it … back yourself, and use it :)
Lonelyville & Travelling Hopefully | 2001
I remember feeling optimistic.
It was late July 2001 in the middle of the North American summer. I was sitting with Melanie, Lola & Roman on the ferry that connects the town of Bayshore with the beachside communities of Fire Island just east of New York. We were heading to a tiny but special place called Lonelyville. Until recently we had actually owned a house within this idyllic beachside community; the first piece of real property that Melanie and I had ever managed to own together. But soon after buying it, and for various reasons, we decided to shift our lives and the young family back to Sydney; so we needed to sell the house in Lonelyville in order to fund the move back home.
We’d been living in the US for almost 4 years, mostly in New York City, but prior to that in Silicon Valley. I had been working as a consultant Brand Strategist, a gun for hire “guru” working mostly with Internet-related businesses. That was my day job. In parallel to this I had been endeavouring to relaunch the REMO General Store online. Despite a unique vision, my ongoing (very considerable) efforts to revive the venture, and a large number of high-powered advisors & supporters, REMO was still in the hibernation that it had entered upon its untimely demise (for financial and administrative reasons) back in 1996. For more years than I care to recall I had been pitching venture capitalists, corporations and wealthy individual investors with my vision for a next generation webcentric REMO General Store: smart and profitable … but to no avail. The business was too quirky, the timing was never good. The rejections were countless. However, a meeting taken in California with the founders of Cafepress.com just a few days before had gently fanned my eternal REMO flame by revealing a way that might enable us to get a website selling T Shirts transactional for a small capital outlay.
So I felt optimistic.
Not only do I remember feeling optimistic, but I also remember coming to the realisation that this feeling of optimism was probably more important than whatever was going to happen. A feeling of optimism about the future (which thankfully Melanie shared) was delivering us a very high quality of life in the present. The outcomes of our endeavours were actually irrelevant to the quality of the lives we were living!
A few days later I spoke about this personal epiphany over the phone with a great friend and long time REMO supporter in LA who rewarded me with this sage quote from Robert Louis Stevenson:
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
I’ve tried to live life with this in mind ever since.
Photobooth & Process | 1989
Many, many of our CustOMERs from the Darlinghurst REMO General Store days had their photos taken in our old black & white photobooth. Kids had their growing up documented. Lovers had their love celebrated. And then there was a memorable year when our good friend Russell Cheek took on the role of REMO Santa … thereby authorising him to don red acrylic garb and get up close and personal in a sweaty photobooth with hundreds of unsuspecting REMO shoppers. Russell, was that the best week of your life? Be honest.
The photobooth also played a starring role in our 1989 Christmas card. That card, entitled The “Human Face of Retailing”, was enclosed within a 16 page REMO Catalogue and sent out to around 4,000 mailing list CustOMERs. (We can still recall the marathon in-store fold fest!) The card in question spelt out the word “REMO” and involved lots of REMO people holding or using their favourite products. A green and a red push pin in place of the silver at the top of the card gave the requisite nod to festive season. Pretty.
BUT … the card represented much more than just that. For those who took the time to think about it, the card also communicated a collaborative spirit and a deep sense of fun. With less than a second between each vertical frame moving down each of the 6 strips, just think about what must have been involved in this exercise. Mayhem.
The postcard was more a celebration of PROCESS than the representation of a finished design. The communication of process is always appealing and is a great inclusion in the toolkit for brands that have come to understand the power of authenticity and honesty in their customer communications.
Finding EOLO | 2010
This is a story of ancestry, persistence … and a happy reunion.
My father (pictured at the back with the pipe) built a classic 60’ wooden sailboat in the 1940’s and raced her in and around Sydney during the 40’s & 50’s. She was named EOLO after the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily (Dad’s birth place and home up until 1928). The Aeolian islands were, in turn, named after Aeolus the God of the wind.
EOLO was a star in her day, winning many ocean races and placing overall 3rd in the 1947 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Dad loved that boat, and indeed my parents spent their honeymoon on it in and around Pittwater in 1949. (Mum was fine with that until some of the crew joined to help out with the sailing.)
Although too young to have any of my own memories of EOLO … I was very aware of the pride of place that it took in my family’s history. I’d seen all of the photos and old movies. All very Adventures in Paradise and romantic. I became smitten. Indeed, we named our daughter Eola (although she is universally known as “Lola”); our son Roman’s second name is Eolo; my family company name is EOLO; and I’ve schlepped the original wooden tiller from EOLO with me from living room to living room all over the world, as a tangible memory of my father who died in 1986.
EOLO was sold by Dad some time in the 60’s to “an American.” That’s all I knew. Often I wondered what had become of her. Every few years I would Google her name … with no results. Then, one day in late 2010 I was at a wedding, and I was telling this story to the guy sitting next to me. He reminded me that it was bad luck to change the name of a vessel, and that therefore EOLO would eventually turn up. That night I tried again … and lo and behold, there she was living in San Diego and for sale. I made contact with the current owners Frank & Cindi Valli and we traded some great stories about our shared connection with this magical sail boat. Frank and Cindi have lived on her for over 20 years, raising a family to boot. Frank is actually a shipwright … so she’s in fabulous condition.
I got to see for myself early the following year. I was in Long Beach for the TED Conference, and I was once again telling this story to some dear friends over dinner in LA. Their reaction: “You have go and see her. San Diego is only a 3 hour drive from here. We’ll take you there tomorrow!”
I spent a great afternoon on EOLO at that marina in San Diego talking and drinking with people who felt like family. All because of a thing.
Some things are so meaningful that they transcend their thingness and become much more than the sum of their molecules.
Storytelling rules and some times we can use things to connect us to what really matters … and that’s the people who are associated with those things.
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Recently EOLO was accepted onto the Australian Register of Historic Vessels. You can read all about her by word searching for EOLO HERE.
Finally, in a true sign of the times, EOLO even has her own Facebook page … set up by Frank & Cindi. Go ahead and like her HERE.
Sydney Opera House | 2012
When I was the Brand Strategist for the Greater Sydney Partnership I was asked to think about appropriate symbols for the brand “Sydney.” It did a bit of Google Image searching (repeated HERE) and it didn’t take long to have my intuition and assumption confirmed that the Sydney Opera House is overwhelmingly ensconced as that current symbol. Other images come up e.g. the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Centrepoint Tower, Bondi Beach, etc. … but they play a minor role in the collective global psyche.
The Sydney Opera House is not just an iconic representation of Sydney. It is also a benchmark of modern architecture and one of the 20th Century’s most distinctive buildings. And indeed it was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007.
And yet, at nearly 30 years old, you’d hardly call the Sydney Opera House a product of modern Australia.
So what’s going on here? Its continued adoption as a symbol for modern Sydney and de facto modern Australia can be interpreted in one of two ways:
1. Harsh. The retention of the Sydney Opera House as a symbol for Sydney speaks of a society that is bereft of innovation and fresh ideas. Bring on the new symbol!
2. Kind. The Sydney Opera House manifests the enduring spirit of a city and a society that is modern and bold. Middle age will not blunt what continues to be true.
What do you think?
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Photo: Matthew Field, July 2005
Tucker, Toothpaste & Smile | 1995
You never know where inspiration is going to come from. Keep a look out for it everywhere.
My friend Tucker Viemeister refers to himself as the world’s Last Industrial Designer.
Tucker’s bathroom in New York boasts a FABULOUS global toothpaste collection. It’s a genius idea that is truly something to behold. (Yes, I know that “genius” is an overused word. Even so, I choose to use it here.)
A wall of toothpaste tubes sourced during his travels … all functional, all easily removed and replaced, such that you can choose to brush your teeth with something different everyday.
It’s a delightful and inspiring idea.
Do you have something in your home that makes you SMILE every time you see it?
Incredible sunny winter Sunday morning at the Bondi Icebergs Pool.
It was a generally sparkling weekend all round. For an hour or so on the day before this we were all entertained by a couple of large humpback whales frollicking in the bay. There’s nothing quite like a whale sighting (and there are several throughout the winter) to bring people together in shared experience. Saturday was no different, with strangers chatting with one another as people looked on from all 5 levels of the Bondi Icebergs.
Dreaming & Winning | 2012
The ability of champion athletes to be able to imagine their victories with some lucidity is well documented. (That’s French for: “Take my word for it, as I’m not going to be citing any research here.” )
Imagining victory is a life skill that most of us are born with, but which the vast majority of us lose. It’s an age thing. Virtually every child (e.g. Remo circa 1973 at left) imagines him or herself scoring the winning try/goal or hitting the winning run. The stats are not great. Usually only one person gets the opportunity to be that hero; BUT it’s human nature for us to imagine ourselves to be that person …
… UNTIL those dreams get knocked out of us by the harsh realities of life and circumstance.
Not too many grown ups retain that desire to be the winning hero. We are too busy imagining failure … which is a pity.
However, for some of us failure is simply to be regarded as delayed success. It’s a better way to travel. More hope. Less angst.
The bottom line is this:
Imagining victory is the key to getting it. You may still lose (in fact it’s likely ), but you definitely won’t win if you’re not able to imagine that you can.
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P.S: I really hope I didn’t just spend 250 words paraphrasing:
“You gotta be in it to win it.”
