Here in Part 6 of the Hellman-Chang story we wrap up their history. When the recession began a few years ago, Dan and Eric were running a fledgling firm out of a co-op; they not only weathered the storm but grew through it, emerging with a nationwide showroom presence, a global client base of high-end clients and their own production facility, which they're currently planning to double in size.
In the next and final entry we'll look at Hellman-Chang's design work and company philosophy, but before we can get there we'll see the final steps Dan and Eric needed to take to get to where they are today.
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So it's 2008, you're now in the A. Rudin showrooms, and sales are starting to pick up.
Dan: Orders started coming in from all around the country. We started to grow tremendously.
What types of customers were you getting?
Eric: Once you're in the showrooms we were in, you're set in a position where it's high end residential and high end hospitality. Our first order at the New York showroom was from the Rockwell Group for the Setai Hotel, the new one out in San Diego.
Dan: The Rockwell Group is known as the pinnacle of interior design/architecture firms, they do a lot of boutique hotels.
Eric: And they designed the Oscars, you know? So the Rockwell Group being the first Hellman-Chang client at the showroom was like, "Whoa, that's great."
Dan: It was really good for building that credibility with A. Rudin, and they were very happy with us from early on.
Got it. And what else starts happening for you guys in 2008?
Eric: Because we were doing so well the showroom requested we expand our presence, so we did a refresh. At our second ICFF we introduced some new pieces and did a new booklet, going from 32 pages to 64 pages, so we had about double the size of our line.
Dan: The sales were going well enough that we hired three full-time furniture builders and made more product. After the ICFF that year—where we got more press—and the showrooms' request for more furniture for the showroom floor, we roughly doubled our presence in size, going from eight pieces to maybe fifteen or twenty.
So that expansion you guys had hungered for upon first seeing the showrooms was starting to happen.
Eric: Right. We were starting to expand within the showrooms, to eventually move up to being their number two line by the end of the year.
I imagine at this point you guys are no longer producing everything from a 5x10 spot in the co-op?
Dan: We were still in the co-op but had expanded.
Eric: In the co-op there was initially ten or twelve artisans and craftsman, of which we were one small unit. And as people would leave, we would take their space. Then somebody else would leave and we'd scoop up their space too. So we started out in 50 square feet, and by the time we were done there we had 1,000 square feet of bench space.
Given that your production was starting to ramp up, was that enough room?
Eric: It was tough. We were all building together and taking phone calls at the same time from designers, so I'd be on the phone trying to quote prices and there would be a saw going off right next me. It wasn't the most professional environment.
Dan: We were on top of each other. We just kept on growing, and while we're on the phone or writing emails, routers are creating saw dust ten feet away. But we still didn't have the resources yet to start our own studio.
Eric: And we could tell the other tenants were getting really annoyed with us.
Dan: Yeah, we were hogging the machines.
Eric: We eventually decided to open up this studio that we're in now [Ed: The interview took place in Hellman-Chang's 8,000-square-foot facility, which will shortly double in size, more on that later] and that was very much based on needing to control our own space and have more room to be able to spread out. And we wanted to delineate the different spaces, office space, bench space, machine room space.
But before we could do that—back in 2008, despite us growing so much, that was also right when the market crashed. That was an...interesting experience. There was this sense of doom and gloom all over the industry, showroom salespeople were freaking out, interior designers were freaking out.
(more...)