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June 6, 2010
Lowell tells how to get it done when it comes to office spaces
Author and TV star Christopher Lowell is partnering with Office Depot to offer a flexible and stylish approach to organizing workspaces.
The approach goes beyond offices, as he has zeroed in on the trend of 24/7 workers who want to listen to living room conversations instead of being isolated in another room.
Lowell lives in Santa Fe, N.M., but his Christopher Lowell Enterprises is based in the Los Angeles area. He was born in Alaska, but his design business grew from a stint in the theater business in New York City.
The Business Journal caught up with Lowell during his recent visit to the Boca Raton headquarters of Office Depot (NSYE: ODP).
Can you describe the scope of Christopher Lowell Enterprises?
One of the things we always say is “if it’s under your roof, we’ll get to it eventually.” We began in television it the early 1990s. Martha Stewart had just debuted. I flagged the young, emerging working woman in the early ’90s and became her champion very early.
One of the things we needed to do, because time was such an important issue – even more than budget – was to pre-coordinate everything. Everything you buy under the Christopher Lowell brand, no matter where, what retailer you buy it from, completely mixes and matches, so you can’t make a mistake. We thought it was very important to have that successful experience at home. Everything coordinates to a very specific color palette. You can order the paint online.
We have always been a big proponent that “mass market” doesn’t have to be a dirty word. As the years kind of progressed, Martha Stewart really had the respect of her audience. We really have the affection of our audience.
We have our own in-house advertising agency and in-house production company. To date, we have aired about 1,000 hours of lifestyle television. We are on our sixth series.
[A company official in 2006 estimated sales of Lowell’s merchandise at $300 million a year, but Lowell declined to provide current figures. His business manager said more than a $1 billion of Lowell-branded products have been sold.]
How did you react to being portrayed in a “Saturday Night Live” skit?We loved it. We knew we had arrived in the American lexicon.
How have you weathered the recession?We were very blessed. We downsized before anybody did. We saw trends already happening. I was beginning to write my sixth book, “The Seven Layers of Organization.” I thought Americans were drowning in clutter and people were between generations. It was really about redefining themselves. In the course of doing that, we redefined our company ourselves.
We had a trailblazing Web site and were offering a very dense site when nobody was spending money there. My next venture, “Ask Christopher,” is full blown, just like we do for television, but for Web only. We want to be the clearinghouse for all the best things on the Web.
So many personalities have created relationships with other chains. What are your thoughts on such collections, and how big an impression do they have on the average consumer?
There are very few who do the work themselves. All the R&D starts in house. Everything that goes out to the American public is touched and decided by me. All of the platforms have to be consistent. Everything we put into the market has to be luxurious enough for her, but tailored enough for him.
We were the first to draw men into the decorating process in the 1990s. It was very controversial.
Women told us what they thought about men and what they thought about their relationships. By the time we came to national television, we were really the arbiter of the relationship between the two of them.
The guys are sweating the decorating details in their spaces more than the women. We are always thinking about the guy and the girl.
Your biography indicates you had an early design career in theater. How has that influenced your design philosophies?
Tremendously. When you are designing in the American theater, with the budgets and union laws, it is a far, far more rigorous background in design than any interior designer has to go for. And when that curtain opens, before any actor appears, if there isn’t a round of applause, you haven’t done your job. Then you have to break it down and move it across the country.
When did you first get interested in office furniture design?When we really realized, every time we did makeovers, that we didn’t have anything to choose from, we said this shouldn’t be so hard. We were the first to introduce the bin concept on television.
At that time, people weren’t manufacturing them, so we were teaching viewers how to make them.
We introduced standalone bins with Office Depot about seven years ago, and they did very well.
How did you first hook up with Office Depot?
We came to them and we said it’s interesting that the majority of people writing the orders for purchasing are women, and there’s not a lot of representation for women in the stores.
How did you come up with the three concepts for the current lines?
A lot of them came from the work we did in boutique hotels. People would say “I want that.” About a year ago, we put out the APB [all points bulleting], asking: “How are you working today?”
Another feature across all of them is our bin program. Unsightly conventional file cabinets are going away. The style of business is as important as the business you are doing there.
What price points for customers were you looking to hit?
The opening package without the bins is $300. That’s unheard of. Especially for stuff that is that sturdy. What we tried to do is make sure it’s not only a price point people can afford, but that it conforms to heavy-duty business standards.
What might be considered a nice splurge item?
The bins that we do. They are designed to fit our cubbies, but they will fit anybody’s cubbies.
If somebody is basically happy with their office, what are some of the accessories that can help spruce things up – especially if someone doesn’t want to spend a lot?One of the greatest trends is people are turning off the overhead lights, and lamps provide great intimacy. Lamps used to be really expensive. Now, because of global sourcing, there is a lot of variety.
Can you talk about why the collections are finished on all sides?
The reality of it – especially in small business, if you think of it as several people working in the same room – is the most valuable space is the uninterrupted walls. That’s where you have to put your Xerox machine and coffee stations. So you build up from the center of the room. A lot of people didn’t like the closed office at home. Now, they want to be on their laptops in their living room, or the open kitchen concept. Our bookshelves are finished on all sides so you can use them as room dividers.
Source: South Florida Business Journal
