Maurice Blanks ’83 is the co-founder and COO of Blu Dot, the furniture design and manufacturing company based in Minneapolis. The Williams College grad took some time to answer questions from the Cate Business Club.
My cofounders and I were frustrated consumers. We were ten years out of college and furnishing our first apartments and we wanted modern design. But modern furniture then was either really high-end and expensive or it was very cheap, like IKEA. There was nothing in the middle. We all came from art and design backgrounds (I was an architect), and our naïveté allowed us to have the confidence to tackle that challenge for us and for our future customers.
I would say that we look to the market. During product development, we always evaluate the options and choose the most sustainable option, unless it tips the retail price out of our customers’ reach. In some cases, we think a more sustainable choice is just the right thing and we take a little less margin on the product. We did that when we switched a lot of products that were chrome-plated to making them with stainless steel because of the environmental impact. The good news is that being efficient – with materials, processes, packaging – is good for the environment. And efficiency is in our DNA. We always try to do more with less.
Other than Foundation Arts and Ceramics (which I crushed, by the way), I wasn’t really engaged in design or the arts at Cate. But Cate impacted me in some more foundational ways that certainly helped me get to where I am. My work ethic was really shaped at Cate. And half of what you need to get through architecture school is a strong work ethic. I also learned a lot about collaboration and community. And design is a very collaborative discipline. It takes a broad cross-functional team to get something from an idea to a building or a product. You have to know how to work productively and positively with people.
I think it’s important to be able to balance the micro and the macro. You need to have long-term, big-picture goals in your life, but it takes a lot of day-to-day work to reach those goals. The analogy I use is building a cathedral. You have an ambitious vision of a beautiful cathedral, but it takes days and days of laying bricks to build that cathedral. It’s important that you value and love spending your days laying bricks.
Technology impacts everything we do, from design and 3D rendering to prototyping to computer-controlled machining. But I would say that the internet and social media have had the biggest impact on the way we execute our mission. Our voice, and our message about design, is so much louder and wide-reaching today than it was 20 years ago. I’m excited to see where augmented reality and virtual reality take us
The increasing willingness of customers to buy furniture online is a huge opportunity for us. It opens our market up from the seven cities where we have stores to the entire country. So, we are always investing in our website and online marketing. The real arms race, and head-scratching, right now in online furniture sales is fulfillment. How do we best deliver the product to the customer? Delivering a sofa is really expensive. Is free delivery sustainable? Unlike diapers, does someone really need a sofa delivered same-day? Who is going to ultimately pay for “free” shipping? What’s the environmental impact of free shipping and free returns? These are very interesting questions and interesting times.