PB: I know from our forum you have a very strong and loyal customer base. Your sample sales always go really well – they might even be a little nuts.
Ben: We definitely have loyal customers and we do our best to serve them. We do sell directly to our customers and we like that. I mean, what if there is a time we want to do something and the stores don’t like it? Well, our customers can still get it. We are able to reach out to everyone out there: fashion obsessed teenagers, professional women in their 30s, doctors, lawyers, college students. We ship to stay at home moms, and all over the country – even to places you would never think. There have even been times when we placed orders for 70 year old women and we hear about it from them!
PB: You also do wholesale? What do you say the ratio is between wholesale and direct sales?
Ben: 50:50. That is very different from other companies. We are working to grow our wholesale side. It doesn’t seem like this is the time or the climate to push that, but…
PB: Well it really could be! We see the trend that a lot of shoppers are going away from bags that are $1500 and up but looking for reasonable yet fashionable.
Ben: You are right – if you are looking to describe exactly what we offer it is that, a quality product, with a really good fashion component to it. Very user friendly, very versatile. We don’t want to be intimidating. You are going to feel good that you made the purchase because the bag is going to age gracefully, you are going to realize the handles are padded, every little detail will come at you and maybe you will make discoveries along the way.
PB: On Design*Sponge we saw your place. Is there a lot of inspiration that stems from there?
Ben: It goes both ways. At the beginning I helped to be a sounding board for her. She would look at me for certain things. Now what we have more staff, I don’t get so involved in that. The design of our department, everything Toni does can be seen. The art of designing an interior is the same as the art of designing a handbag or accessories. I think also our aesthetics mix and merge. A lot of the things we see, I find will be integrated in what Toni does. I took her to upstate New York to see a museum of Native American Art; we got the book. A lot of the stuff turned around and influenced the spring line.
PB: Did Toni mostly design everything?
Ben: Yes. It is a big open space, so it can actually be kind of difficult to design. We had a lot of furniture stuffed into our old place. She is an eBay addict and I love going to stores and finding stuff or even junk on the street. So we had crammed our little apartment. When we moved to our new place, it looked perfect. Before that move it looked like two pack rats living together.
PB: I read on your website that you are really into mechanical pencils. What is the fascination with mechanical pencils?
Ben: I just really like mechanical pencils. I love how they produce a nice, crisp line and I love the technology behind them. The idea that you can dump those little bits of lead into the pencil and it is guided to where it needs to be. But for me, I just like that they have a sharp predictable line. Toni likes them too!
PB: What kind of music do you listen to?
Ben: I’m more conventional. Toni on the other hand, she will listen to anything. Basically what happens is that she will download all this stuff from iTunes download it, play it and I will ask her what it is. Then I will secretly download it for myself. I am the kind of person that ends up listening to the same thing, over and over again. Toni is the kid of person who is listening to something new every week. She is always telling me about a cool new band she found. And then about 6 months later they will be on the cover of Blender. She is amazing when it comes to finding things in the world. It is so natural to her. She reads blogs, newsletters and finds everything. I mean, I do the same thing, but what she comes up with is so much different. She has a way to crystallize everything. We can both be listening to NPR in the morning and I am listening to it for the facts – what is going on, and what she gets out of it is what is going on in society.
