Ep. 168: Founder Rob Forbes on Business Confidence and Advocating for Design

Ceramicist, author, entrepreneur, photographer and public speaker Rob Forbes is likely best known for founding Design Within Reach, but his accolades expand beyond this accomplishment. He grew up a son of Southern California academics and attended boarding schools in Northern California. His first professional life was as a ceramicist. After a year riddled with tragedy, he took a year off in pursuit of researching how to make design accessible - which lead to the founding of Design Within Reach. A wild (and unexpected) success, the next few years were a blur that instilled in Rob a confidence to continue to push the envelope and invest in change - including a variety of start ups, a micro-farm, and using the tools of design to create long-lasting impact. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. And today I’m talking to  Rob Forbes. Rob Forbes has been a professional ceramicist, author, business entrepreneur, photographer, and public speaker. He is best known as the Founder of Design Within Reach He also founded PUBLIC Bikes - and has been outspoken  advocate for modern design. Recently, In 2021 Rob founded Studio5050, an organization with a mission to mentor and assist small businesses owned and run by people of color. He’s based in northern california where he also operates a micro-farm. Here’s Rob…

Rob Forbes: Rob Forbes, live in San Francisco and I have a number of different areas that I work in that involve consulting and board work and writing, so it’s kind of a mixed bag and I have a little micro farm up in Healdsburg.

Amy: A micro farm, that’s going to be interesting to talk about, as well as your mixed bag. But before we get to that, let’s go all the way back to the farm you grew up on, which I understand was Pasadena and Laguna Beach area in California? Not really a farm. 

Rob: No, had a kind of a pets menagerie with my mom in South Pasadena and my dad lived in Altadena and also had a house down in Laguna Beach. So I kind of toggled between Pasadena and Laguna Beach. 

Amy: What can you tell me about your formative years.

Rob: I think probably my parents, my mom was an Irish feminist, literature teacher and used to force me to write poetry in the morning. But she came from a culture where arts were probably considered the highest achievement of mankind, this included literature, theatre and music and all that, but she very much loved the cultural expressions and the wide view of arts. And my dad was also a college prof and surrounded himself by a lot of colleagues who were in arts in the liberal areas. My dad had a kind of mid-century house in Altadena, it was kind of like the middle class, your typical middle class Southern California upbringing in the 50s and 60s. 

Amy: And what did your dad teach?

Rob: He was a professor of education, he wanted to be a journalist but at that time the college system was growing like mad and they just needed people who could basically help teach people to learn how to teach. And my mom was a literature professor in college. 

Amy: So it sounds like the arts were supported, also academia and maybe there was a divorce… is that why you were toggling back and forth between the two houses? 

Rob: Yeah, my parents divorced when I was a young age, like four, and I think that… both my folks kind of come from that really broad liberal arts program. They weren’t hardcore academics, but they just kind of believed that thinking and expressing yourself was a real important part of existence. 

Amy: Did you have siblings? 

Rob: I have one older brother. 

Amy: I never had a split household, but I’m always curious what that does when you have two distinct worlds that are interwoven, but separate, that you kind of toggle between?

Rob: I think, well it’s a long story behind it because as I said, my mom being a hardcore Irish feminist character and my dad being your even keeled, easy to get along with type of person and our household reflected that (laughs) character. I think when you’re a kid and you’re toggling between two different residences and two different environments and two different people who didn’t speak with each other, you receive things in a different way. You don’t really have a home-home, you’re kind of there, trying to figure it out in two different environments and two different influences. 

Amy: I usually ask about teenage years and if you felt like you needed to rebel and in this particular case I’m kind of interested in if you did rebel, did you rebel differently against different parents and have kind of a different need to individuate from each of them?

Rob: I don’t think so. But I was shipped off to a boarding school and we were just middle-class kids and no one went to boarding schools. But my mom kind of shipped us off and so I I hadn’t lived at home from the time I was 14, so by nature I didn’t have to rebel. I was trying to figure out my own life as an independent young teen and spent my summers living with friend’s parents down in Laguna and really conducting an independent life as a young person. 

Amy: Did you feel like you had to grow up fast?

Rob: If you’re a kid, you’re sort of just surviving, right? And you feel very proud [0.05.00] about that I think probably the independent nature of my mom being like a single woman in the 50s and 60s, which wasn’t so common back then, gave me the understanding that you can do a lot of stuff on your own. That sense of freedom. I didn’t really like going to boarding school and I was a super academic kid. I wasn’t the artist, I wasn’t the designer, I loved math and English and sports. 

I think that I probably established, when I went off to boarding school with a bunch of rich kids that came from different kinds of backgrounds, I worked really hard to excel in the different things that people normally hope their kids excel in, being good at school and sports. But I was very typical competitive kind of kid that way. 

Amy: Where was this boarding school?

Rob: This is in the Santa Ynez Valley, which is now a bucolic wine producing area, just up and back of Santa Barbara.

Amy: Okay, all right, so still West Coast, same time zone. 

Rob: I should say also, I went to this boys school and then, for different reasons, left in my senior year, I went to a co-ed boarding school up in San Francisco area that was a completely different experience. 

Amy: And up near San Francisco, so that’s from bucolic to cosmopolitan?

Rob: It was actually in Danville, but it’s back of the East Bay in a developing kind of area. But the most interesting thing about that was this was a school that was 50/50 boys and girls, 10% of the students were minorities from Oakland. Super liberal educated, creative bunch of people who you’re around. So it was like going from an almost military kind of boarding school into a place where, wow, it’s just an eclectic group of people who kind of shared my values as being a little bit of an odd kid and really enjoying or being interested in lots of different things. 

Amy: Okay, so how did you get from being good at math, English and sports to studying aesthetics and ceramics in college? 

Rob: I went to college at UC, Santa Cruz to study philosophy or literature, something, I don’t know what, you went to college to figure out what you were going to do. I just started making ceramics, just for fun, just for recreation. And then it turned out that I got pretty good at it and I was able to make my living… this was kind of counter-cultural years, like in the 70s and you could make your living as a weaver or a potter by going to different craft shows and selling stuff on weekends. 

Whereas my other friends who were more academic, during the summers, what do you do for a job? You work in a restaurant or get some construction job, but I was actually able to make my living selling my own work, which was totally amazing, it was really like a period of time that I don’t think exists so easily now. 

Amy: Agreed, was this also your entrepreneurial awakening?

Rob: Perhaps. I had the advantage; I took a year off and went to Europe and travelled around. It took me like seven years to get through college. And then worked for an artist, a ceramic artist in both France and England and so I was around people that ran their own ateliers and studios and I think that probably encouraged me to sort of hey, do what you want to do, where there was no sense that you’d be working in any type of formal business environment. 

Amy: So there’s independence, there’s a kind of appreciation for the craft, but also a real self-reliance on making it, selling it, making it your life and your ecosystem. What were the formative experiences from that time in your life that you still feel like are informing your life today?

Rob: I think this obsession with good form and getting stuff right and the economy associated with a very well done craft, I think high standards that people have and it is one of those, you know, 10,000 hours to be really good at that stuff. You really need to be disciplined, focused and take yourself quite seriously. When I started DWR years later and became an expert on chairs and people were… where did you develop an eye. And I kind of said, well, if you make ceramics and do that for 10 years and you get your nose that close to your product [0.10.00], you really develop an appreciation for the nuances and form and detail and how important all that stuff is in terms of creating something that’s actually good. 

Amy: Do you believe that in addition to developing your eye, it was also being a maker, well of course helped you appreciate other well made good form items, but was that one of the reasons why you felt like there was a direct connection between the design and the designer?

Rob: Absolutely. And working around the people that ran these ateliers, super opinionated, amazing (laughter), really amazing people -

Amy: Characters. 

Rob: Yeah, and if you’re a kid from Pasadena, it’s like oh my god, this is like partially super romantic, but then also partially super real. The other part of that, I think is, again, growing up in Southern California, over in Europe, living in France or England where the people that surround you really took things like cooking and gardening and appreciation of traditional architecture and history and all that. So you’re kind of in the old world. I think that deep dive into European values and appreciation has stuck with me throughout my life. 

Amy: That makes sense. So we have some gaps to cover. You mentioned founding DWR and we’re going to get there, that was in 1999, but in the 70s you’re a potter and then it sounds like traveling around Europe and working with artists and ateliers, what are the main plot points between then and founding DWR?

Rob: I went back to graduate school and got an MFA in ceramics and then at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Philadelphia College of Art, that was like a four year period, as a practicing artist and a ceramics prof. And then I came to a point where I kind of went, I was living in Philadelphia and I was kind of hankering to get back to California. But I realized I was no longer as challenged by what I was doing and I just needed a change. I kind of thought, I don’t know, what do you do?

If you don’t have any particular skills, to be a lawyer or a doctor, a friend of mine had gone to business school and said, you might like that, you’re kind of good with numbers and you like solving problems. And so I was lucky to get into an MBA program at Stanford. So I went back to school, came back to the West Coast and then from there went and worked for different companies like Williams Sonoma, I got married and lived in London and did a big start-up for a large department store called Selfridges. 

Came back to the US, was working for the nature Company and Smith & Hawken, but I had kind of a mixed bag specialty retailing training. The one at Williams Sonoma was really super important to me, before I started DWR.

Amy: And what compelled you to found DWR? Which, for our listeners is an acronym for Design Within Reach, the direct to consumer furniture retailer that you founded, that aimed to make good and iconic design more accessible. And at the time, in 1999, that was both by utilizing the internet and as we just said, as we just said, by connecting the design to the actual designer behind it.That’s my little overview for our listeners so they know where we are. I’m wondering, at what point did you feel like, okay, I need to start a new business around this and I’m the guy to do it?

Rob: I’ve been working as like a VP of Marketing for these specialty retailing companies. And I was getting a little… whether I was bored or just recognized, nah, I don’t know, is this the life that I want to have? And then I had a year where everything went wrong. My dad’s wife died, another friend had died, I bought a house and the contractor went bankrupt, but it was one of those years when I said, you know, life is short, do something that you really care about. 

And so I took a full year off to research, I had this idea for making design accessible, making it simple. I’d been in Europe where everybody could go and buy design and in the US at that time you had to go through a design showroom and you had to be an architect or an interior designer. But I took a year off and really studied and became an expert in the modern chair and modern furniture. So I took a full year just recognizing that psychically I needed to do something that I really was passionate about. 

Amy: How did you build traction and at what point did you feel like I’m onto something and this is kind of going to work? [0.15.00]

Rob: Yeah, it was an amazing kind of crapshoot and like I say, I had to raise… because our business was, I’m going to select, I’m going to curate a bunch of furniture and we’re going to sell it directly and you’re having to buy inventory, right? So this means having to raise like a million and a half dollars just to have the stock to have, and I believe this idea of making stuff convenient and simple was really important. 

But I raised money for that, you produce a catalogue, it would be like creating a website today, we didn’t quite have websites yet. So you put all your money into the catalog that you send out, but it was really a crap shoot and I’m good at soliciting opinions from the outside and having my own ideas tested, but we launched the catalog just one day on Bastille Day in 1999.

And literally from that moment on it was a tiger by the tail for about five years. It just worked. We’d planned to do a million and a half bucks the first six months, we did six million. The next year we did 12 million, we did 20. I’d surrounded myself by some very talented people. We had the fastest internet, the fastest website and design that exists. We started publishing this newsletter. We had like 100,000 readers of this newsletter that I offered. 

Before the word ‘blog’ was around, this is like 10 years before Facebook and Twitter, it was really an innovative form of communication. I think we built a… all this stuff sounds kind of whoa, whatever, this goes on all the time. But back then we were kind of pioneers. 

Amy: Yeah, absolutely, and so pioneering this stuff and now you can see that not only did it work, but it’s also kind of laid the groundwork for how we market product today. So clearly you are onto something. I’m also wondering how that process changed you?

Rob: The first five years were like a blur. I guess it gave me this unbridled confidence that you can… that to trust your intuition, you know, and basically you’re out there selecting products and it’s actually work… (Laughs) even if you look at DWR right now, it’s like many of the products that we picked the first time are still there. So it was, I guess that sort of sense of wow, you’re actually good at this. And what I was good at was assembling really talented people and sort of being a conduit for this. 

It wasn’t my voice or anything, but back then, what we created at Design With Reach, we created these designer biographies and behind every product I said there was a person and what I identified their biographies… rather than it being like a lifestyle company, it was more like, here’s a collection of products that are made by people and behind every product there’s a person behind it. So I think that that very close personal connection with the designers themselves was a really important part of what we were doing in our educational underpinnings for the business. 

Amy: I would agree with that. I remember paying attention at the time, so 1999 I would have been an art student and that was a time when I was really aware of who was making what and what movie directors I liked and I also thought it was just so strange that we only knew a few names in design. We just knew Eames and Frank Gehry, and I was like, why are all these products out in the world and we don’t know who made them and nobody is really talking about it except for art students. 

Rob: It was really important, and I think meaningful for a design student, I was studying furniture design at the time, to see somebody recognizing the designer behind the design. So I really appreciate that and I think as humans, we do all kind of want that connection. 

Rob: Right. 

Amy: We want to know where stuff comes from and why it’s made and who is passionate about making it. (Laughs)

Rob: Yeah and I think there was a lot of that going on in probably the 50s and 60s and 70s. I think that the major forces in design in the US, if you take the two largest companies, which are Herman Miller and Knoll. They had really shifted to doing contract work. [0.20.00] It was about work stations and office and cubicles and they had moved away from the home. And they had taken their focus off of a lot of the great products and things that we ended up kind of resurrecting and bringing these things back because no one had really paid much attention to them before. And no one was citing the authors behind them. 

They might credit Florence Knoll and the people that were leading the businesses, but it wasn’t… the credit wasn’t really given to the designers.

Amy: Did you find that was important because you had a sense that the market would respond to it or because you just had a sense that it was important because you were yourself, a maker? 

Rob: I think a lot of that is true, but it’s also, when you’re writing copy, we worked really hard on making the copy accurate and truthful and it wasn’t like, here’s a beautiful sofa which will improve any living room. No, you would talk about the principles of the designer behind them and where their values came from. It was just trying to, like truth and marketing but just sort of a real honest description of what things were, rather than something that might be falsely romantic or excessive. Honoring the person behind it was super important. And also supplying a context for that because a lot of the people that you were sending these catalogues to and on the website, they wouldn’t know who Alvar Aalto was. They wouldn’t know who Mies van der Rohe was, or probably wouldn’t know that Eames and Noguchi’s, it was sort of like the educational part of this was super important. 

Amy: Since then you have founded Public Bikes as well and with both of those businesses in your repertoire and in your review mirror, I’m wondering what lessons you’ve taken with you that continue to inform your process and your passion?

Rob: Maybe humility (laughs) because - Well, I just mean that DWR was so recklessly successful, I wanted to start a small design business that I could make a living from and change my life in that direction, but it took off so much it was like, oh my god. Public Bikes, which I started because of my belief in… looking at enlightened urbanization movement and really interested in getting people to reduce their dependency on automobiles, stay connected to their communities. There was this huge movement all over in Europe in terms of enlightened city centers and all that and that was part of it. 

But it was really, again, to get people to think differently about the way that they lived and appreciate the things around them. And it was really hard. Public Bikes was eight years (laughs) struggling to make a business. Public Bikes is still around, we sold it and I love seeing the bikes around and stuff, but it was like, one super success, one other, mah, struggling just to get by. And out of that you recognize that there’s so much luck and timing and serendipity to the ventures that we start, particularly start-ups that you… you’re a little odd, in some ways, I could say it makes you just feel humble and lucky.

Amy: So you have these successful, although arduous endeavors that you’ve participated in, that you were passionate about, that you were also on the forefront of cultural movements with both of them. And it sounds like you realized there’s a lot of things that are outside of your control, serendipity, things like that. And so now here you are looking at the world, does it make you reticent to start again, knowing how arduous it can be? Does it help you to identify when the serendipitous things are coming together and then pounce and make your move? Does it help you appreciate the concert of things that have to come together and when it’s your turn, to sort of step in and participate in that concert?

Rob: If we go back 30 years [0.25.00] when I was involved in upscale, especially the retailing and DWR and all that. We really learned how to market stuff in the US. The problem that I was trying to solve, the it’s hard getting access to stuff. Now everybody has access to everything and the world doesn’t really need another chair, if you’re a designer designing a new chair, it’s a good idea. But it became really one of… at this point in my life, sort of saying, what can you do, what need can we fill that hasn’t been met yet?

And this is if you’re a retailer, going huh, I don’t know what material objects we really need. That’s if you jumped on technology and that’s leading up to things being smarter and faster and all that stuff. But it’s probably me kind of thinking, what capabilities do I have where if I apply the highest and best use to my mind and my experience, can actually help improve the world that we live in? And I don’t say that a philanthropist, it’s just simply, what problems can we solve now that aren’t about a designer lifestyle? 

It’s really sort of thinking, the world is confusing and messed up in many ways, politically, environmentally (laughs) and socially and all that. So it’s how can we use the disciplines and the tools and the community that we built to do something of purpose? And that also happens to you when you get a little older, it’s like, what can I do now that has some meaning? 

Amy: That sort of leads the way to what you’re doing now. Can you talk to me about the Studio 50/50 project that you founded in 2021?

Rob: Yeah, in the middle of the pandemic and with the George Floyd murder and the Black Lives Matter movement, I was profoundly affected by that. And at different times in my life, when I’ve been stuck about what should I do, I have a pretty good community of people whose ideas I respect and will answer emails and I just published for my studio Forbes website a confessional. What does an older, white guy that knows a bit about design and raising money, anybody got any ideas how I can apply myself to helping solving this social problem. 

And I got a lot of feedback and within a few weeks had identified through friends and colleagues six small businesses around the country that we could support. And I hired a PA and started just going at it, just essentially getting to know and mentor small businesses run by people of color around the country. So there’s a sneaker boutique in Columbus and one in Detroit and a cosmetic stylist in LA, different eclectic businesses where we sort of got engaged and meeting weekly or bi-weekly on Zoom. Zoom technology was around, so you can get to know people at great distances quite effortlessly and personally. 

The clients, that came to us kind of quickly and we’ve been working on that for this last, for the last year. And we’re at this point right now of saying, it’s still very much a work in progress. I recognized certain areas where we add a lot of value and also recognized for me, it probably needs to be shifted to a stronger design focus, just so the experiences that I have, can be more realized. But it was sort of like… it’s like launching any start-up, you don’t know where it’s going. (Laughs) And you have to kind of fumble around and change direction at different times in order to make it sustainable. 

Amy: Can you give me a sense of what the organization looks like currently? You mentioned you’ve got a handful of businesses, owned and run by people of color, and it sounds like a handful of volunteers that you’re working with and you’re shifting it towards more of a design focus. What kind of assistance are you offering and what are those exchanges like and are you sensing that it’s having an impact and are you able to scale? Where’s it growing? 

Rob: Both yes and no. It’s complex. Meaning that some of the clients that we work for, things have been great and small businesses run by people that are retailers, so I kind of get that stuff. But for the businesses where I don’t have experience, a lot of the… these are really super small businesses, mom and pop groups. I have weaknesses in the areas of logistics and systems and how to make businesses really efficient. I’m more a marketing, storytelling kind of guy. 

So right now we’re sort of looking at kind of casting out a net [0.30.00] to field some people that more fall into that category, just where our experiences can apply. We’re not exactly sure, let’s take a breather now and do some, collect information from friends, talk to more people, do some more interviews and sort of think, how can we really make this. Because it’s difficult, what I’ve learned also is that I’m not so adept at running organizations that involve a lot of management. We have like 10 volunteers that work for us, but the logistics and complications behind that are serious, it means hiring somebody who can actually do that, so I can work more on the creative ends rather than the logistic ends.  

Amy: It sounds to me like you’re still cultivating it, you’re iterating and course correcting and adapting as you go and sort of figuring out what this needs to be and how you can serve it, but also where you need to fill in for your, complement your strengths with things that you’re not as strong at. This sounds a little bit like the place you get in the process where it’s a lot more like tailoring and the results are maybe not as immediate and so how do you sort of keep yourself sustained and motivated through this stage of growth?

Rob: It’s a work in progress and we’re really in this, let’s rethink this period. That’s a part of what I do because I also, manage this little micro farm up in Healdsburg, because I enjoy writing, because I’ve always got a design project going on, I’ve got a lot of different things going on. And I’ve taken that one off of the front burner to the rear burner to sort of say, okay, let’s figure out what our next steps will be and then start, whether we’re raising money or recruiting people, but just shift the mission to something that we believe is more sustainable and where we can be the absolute best at it. When you change careers and when you try doing something that’s new, it’s hard, you know? It’s really like a new venture and my commitment and my belief that in order to move this all forward and stuff like that, I think we in design have to kind of shift from the lifestyle stuff to something that actually is contributing to improvements in our cultural world and our economical world and our societal world.

Amy: Without a doubt.

Rob: But when you go into new areas, it’s a little daunting, underneath is the fact that by building these relationships with these people, there’s optimism in our goofy world I suppose the advantage of having done one/two/three start-ups before is that you recognize, okay, try some stuff, if it’s working, if not, put it on the rear burner, go and gather information and come back at it with a new sense of purpose and intelligence. 

Amy: So in terms of finding that purpose and intelligence, I want to sort of ask about your creative process. You’ve talked a bit about the micro farm and after talking to you, I see you as somebody who not only appreciates form and aesthetics, but you’re clearly a storyteller and a marketer person, as you’ve said. It sounds to me like you’re kind of a systems thinker as well and a problem solver. And you’ve built start-ups from the ground up, so you’re kind of [0.35.00] a grower of platforms. Can you draw direct parallels between what you’re doing at the micro farm and food systems and how you look at the ecosystems and your creative process?

Rob: I’m not sure if I can… if it’s as lofty as that. 

Amy: Okay, okay, bring it back down to earth (laughs). 

Rob: Well, I mean, I call it a ‘micro farm’ because it’s an acre and a half, it’s not a garden and Miriam, who manages the farm, does all the work. We raise vegetables there and fruits and we supply restaurants in Healdsburg and also in San Francisco, but she really does the work. I’m there supplying soil and light and water and resources (laughs) but she really does that. 

My involvement, I’ve always been pretty deep in, studied a little horticulture as an undergraduate, by working at Williams Sonoma, maybe a third of my friends are in the culinary arts, they’re chefs, people that run restaurants. So it’s more, probably a survival tactic of how do you do something where you love what you do and you’re good at it. But I think recognizing that, how a small farm can be a legitimate part of the ecosystem of farm to table and all that, it’s really a good assignment and we really learn a lot about that stuff. If you haven’t been a farmer, understanding how complex the stuff, how stuff changes seasonally and the risks and rewards of all that kind of stuff. 

But, it’s less, I suppose, strategic than something that you enjoy doing that has value. And I’m an okay problem solver. I’m not so much on logistics and the details and the systems and technology behind that. But I like reducing complex problems and making them simple, right? Or let’s say assisting Miriam in figuring out what are the things that we’re growing really make sense and how to differentiate that stuff. And some of the things that you just learned being a purveyor of chairs or bikes or anything else. (laughs)

Amy: So what is it that you love about the micro farm? If somebody else is in the soil doing all the work, as you said, what is it about it that you love?

Rob: I think the connection to nature? I cook a lot and -

Amy: Okay. 

Rob: When you’ve got your own fresh herbs that you’re using instead of dry herbs and just the ways in which you adapt what you’re cooking to what you have right around you, I don’t know, all that stuff is just fun. I entertain a fair amount and really enjoy doing that and having chefs and people come by who can go out into the garden and pick things and cook them up. It’s more, I suppose, just a way of living that I enjoy, that helps me stay connected with my community and the people that I really like. 

Amy: When we look at our food systems now, we’re so disconnected from our food, but we’re also maybe not even using our food systems in the way that you are. I’m kind of interested in the way that you’ve felt, you could take what you’re interested in and then build it into something that then supports a life you’re interested in living. And that may seem really obvious, but it’s kind of not so obvious to a lot of people. So I wonder if you can break that down, maybe distil that down into something really simple? 

Rob: I’m a very lucky person that can live in San Francisco and also have a second home that’s a micro farm. So it’s not an example of how other people can live. I think we forget that the world that we live in, everybody and their brother now is a foodie right? But this is all really recent. I mean in the early 90s in the Bay area, there were only a handful of restaurants that were doing farm to table stuff. And the way in which restaurants and the food suppliers are changed, we are a huge leader in the organic food movement in California. 

It’s been a big deal and participating in that, you know, super changing kind of environment [0.40.00], this is like the early days of figuring out how we can make agriculture that’s not industrial sustainable? So I feel like I’m part of that group of people that are working to make it happen - And I’m lucky enough to be in the middle of it on both sides, without professing to having any great knowledge. I mean the friends of mine, people that really run highly productive farms, that’s a whole different business, I mean getting that stuff to the market and employing staffs of people and dealing with all the complexity with nature (laughs) and seasonality of stuff. There’s a reason why Warren Buffet was always saying, I never invested in agriculture, because it’s difficult. It’s not like industrial design where if you produce something, get it right, you can scale it up really quickly. Stuff changes and when you think about the changing environment that we have in Northern California with the fires and global warming, I mean all this stuff, it’s like wow, this is very much a moving target. 

Amy: Thinking about what you just said and all of the variables and things that you have to consider in terms of just growing food and getting it out to people, what does it teach us about the distribution of resources in the built world in terms of… you’re sort of doing a little bit of the same with Studio 50/50, I’m really interested in figuring out sustainable restaurant business with a new model that is not like the old world of high level fine dining right? The system that exists now really benefits scale, you know? And if you’re small scale, how do you make that work? I’m not sure, but some of the new concepts that deal with a much more simplified menu or the prefix stuff, or instead of a menu that’s got a million different things, how do we maintain a small amount of inventory and fewer staff, but make it really efficient and clever and smart and attractive to people? 

I think there’s… maybe a sense of economy in that and also supporting groups that are controlling their whole supply chain, but on a level that’s kind of affordable to a larger group of people. Like I have zero interest in… Michelin star restaurants, those things are humming along with their own vibe, but trying to figure out how we deliver quality stuff to a broader group of people is a really interesting challenge and those things kind of excite me. 

If somebody came along with, here’s a concept to do that, I would be all in figuring out how to support them and how to develop the stuff and how we scale it because you’re doing something that benefits the local community, right? And it doesn’t involve some of the complexities of shipping stuff all across the country and all the packaging and complexity, all that stuff. But I haven’t got there yet and I think a lot of us are trying to figure that out. 

Amy: Yeah, how do you templatize something that works in a hyper local setting that you can then sort of repurpose and tailor to other hyper local settings. 

Rob: I still feel very much like a student in most things that I’m doing. I’m still learning a lot of stuff and probably have more questions than answers and in our complex world, and I think the last, I don’t know, five or six years, the different stuff that’s been thrown at us culturally and politically and environmentally (laughs), leaves us all kind of saying, okay, let’s put our heads together and figure out how to do something that’s really something that’s different that has meaning. 

Amy: I mean it’s all this fast-moving change-change-change-change, that kind of stuff. Also part of that is working on the other side of the equation, which is what is sustainable and what has quality and what is meaningful on a touch and feel and sensory basis. So you mentioned that you’re probably more of a student than an expert in a lot of ways. Is that by choice? Obviously we’re in a time where a lot of us have a lot of learning to do, but have you always been kind of pulling yourself into areas where you’re not the expert so that you can be on a learning curve, is that your comfort zone? 

Rob: think it’s maybe my curiosity. You really have to be nuts to try to do a start-up where you don’t have expertise in the area, you know? You’ve got to sell people on an idea and you haven’t really done it before and so I’ve always been game enough to try to do that,… I don’t of think of myself as being as wildly creative guys, because I’m willing to take risks and try things that haven’t been done and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t work. But it’s really, probably my DNA is more a willingness to go places that I haven’t been because I find it super interesting. 

Amy: Yes! So what haven’t I asked that you want to talk about?

Rob: I’m still figuring stuff out. Like I say, when I have more questions than answers, that’s probably true. One of the… let’s say for example, I’m on the board of the Noguchi Foundation and it’s one of the few boards, I’ve been on it because I don’t like committee meetings and all this, but I’m really helpful in that group because we’re figuring out how to really improve and assist and expand, [** 0.48.29] lighting segment and applying the skills that I have in retail towards really kind of creating greater awareness for super important artists that I think deserves more recognition and all that.

But I can apply my skillsets to an organization and do stuff tactically, that makes me happy. I’m assisting the museum in Healdsburg on a whole new program to establish this identity and become like a state-wide destination culturally. Those things really give me a lot of pleasure and I sort of feel like my skill set can apply itself to these, institutions, these groups that have, that just need, that can benefit by a greater exposure.

Amy: It’s really important when you feel like all of the expertise you’ve accumulated, all of the lived experience you have to offer and all of the curiosity and interest you have can be channeled towards something that you believe in and will outlive you and your energy is being utilized in a worthwhile way. 

Rob: Right. 

Amy: As opposed to be squandered. That’s sometimes hard for us to recognize at what point, what we have is something of value (laughs). 

Rob: Right. 

Amy: Especially if you’re a lifelong student, because you can always kind of [0.50.00] think of yourself as a novice if everything is new and you’re learning it. So at some point you have to recognize, hey wait, this life of being a lifelong learner means I have learned a lot of stuff and other people can use this and I want to go participate in those collaborative environments where what I’ve done is now going to yield positive results in some other way. 

Rob: Maybe a micro example of that, if you read the last… I like to write; I think about that and I’m a slow writer but I enjoy that process. But I wrote a little article about visiting this restaurant in Mexico City a little over a month and a half ago and it’s on my Studio Forbes website. But it’s an example of walking into a restaurant, being by myself and looking around at the design and the whole meaning of this restaurant and how that is perceived through the lens of design and fluid and all that. 

But just a lot of people… that’s really good, that’s what you do well, but this is something that’s really giving credit to the people behind the restaurant, the designer behind it and all that stuff. It’s something where I can be a proponent or be a positive force, looking at a restaurant through a unique or design focused lens. 

Amy: You’re sort of an advocate. 

Rob: An advocate, there we go, there’s a good word, right. 

Amy: (Laughs) All right, well just to wrap this up, can you share something personal with me, it can be something, a hidden talent, something people don’t know about you or even just your favorite thing to do, to anchor yourself every day?

Rob: Oh, favorite thing to do, anchoring, there are two specific things. One are long walks with my dog, just that sort of meditative… I mean I have a little yoga practice and meditation practice to keep my mind from [** 0.51.57]. But long walks with my dog and then I cook, I prepare food every day and that’s a love and an activity and a therapy and something that takes me to a place that’s super, both relaxing and smart and experimental and all that. But that’s really, I suppose my dog and my connection with food and my friends that participate in the kitchen (laughs) and eating activities, are at the top of that list. 

Amy: Well that sounds like a rich life, thank you for sharing your story with me. 

Rob: Well, thanks, I appreciate what you guys are doing and I like the fact that at Clever you guys focus on a broad range of designers and you look at design from a broad point of view, so I think that’s terrific. 

Amy: Thank you for listening! To see images of Rob and his work and read the show notes, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - you can find us @cleverpodcast. You can find me, @amydevers. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is part of the Airwave Media. podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows. They curate the best of them, so you don’t have to.

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Many thanks to this episode’s sponsor:

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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