Matter/Anti-Matter

Jonah Staw, co-founder and CEO of LittleMissMatched, heads-up a lifestyle brand that is based on "innovative and creative mixing and mismatching." LittleMissMatched launched in 2004 with a collection of mismatched socks sold in odd numbers to encourage girls of all ages to express themselves. The "nothing matches but anything goes" philosophy knocked people's socks off, and sales jumped from $5 million to $25 million in just three years. Today, the LittleMissMatched product line includes everything from socks, winterwear, and sleepwear to books, bedding, and furniture for mismatched mavens of all ages. LittleMissMatched products range in retail price from $5 to $1,200 and are available at specialty boutiques and department stores nationwide. The company recently announced $17.3 million in private equity funding, expanded distribution, a new flagship store in Manhattan, and a series of new products.

How do you define innovation?

Innovation is such a broad term. I was recently on a McKinsey panel discussing innovation, and we opened by going around the room. There were more than 25 chief strategy officers from major US corporations. The moderator asked what was the most innovative product, and 90% of the audience said the iPod. I said the Post-It Note. Why? It is so simple it's obvious. It has become a fixture on the physical American desktop. It is useful. It invented a new category...before there were note cards, stationary, thumb tacks and more. Now we have the Post-it. Innovations are simple, elegant solutions that make things better. Better doesn't necessarily mean more efficient...it could be more fun, easier to use, beautiful. You get the point.

What are the most important areas of innovation in your organization?

My company is 100% based on innovation. We created a company that was founded on the premise of selling three-packs of non-matching socks. Talk about a challenge -- we were completely changing the way people got dressed each morning. We set out to tell the world that it was okay to not match your socks and as such, you should buy them in a novel way. Our socks are uniquely paired to look great together. What we discovered is that our socks are something that are simply FUN. They are so fun that people what to tell their friends about them. Our customers lift their pant legs and say, "Hey check out my socks!," this is certainly innovation in the world of socks. Our challenge is to translate this innovation into other product categories so that our brand is cohesive. At LittleMissMatched we believe that simple product innovations make our success. People will talk about our products if we give them unique products that are easy to talk about. We have furniture that you can draw all over with a dry erase pen. Why have you ever done that before? We have bedding that flips and switches to make 192 combos in one bed set. For us, innovation is key to our long term success. The good news is that every product category in the world can be missmatchified.

What is your most successful innovation? How did you find it?

It depends on how we define success. I personally love our furniture. Maybe that is because I flew to China to help finalize its development. It was a brutally challenging trip so I am enamored with the end result. If we look at units sold, our socks win the award. If we look at dollars/SKU sold, then our bedding wins. Each of these innovations were found by breaking conventional norms to bring a true value proposition to our customer. Imagine a world where now one bed in a bag we sell gives you 192 combos when all of our competition only gives you one option. When we are at our best, we subvert the marketplace...in other words, we don't talk about thread count, we talk about combos. What this means is that we don't actually have competition. Why? Because of our version of innovation!

Which innovation "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?

I don't ever believe in failure. I believe in learnings. Our first sock package almost disintegrated in your hand, but it was a totally unique package...it failed functionally, but it led us to where we are now. We are only four years old as a company, so each step we take is a learning. Success never happens spontaneously. As they say, "practice makes perfect."

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

The kind of people who are innovation seekers are what I call "yes to no" people. They are the type that says, "Hey that is a really great idea, but I think it would be even better if..." They are expansive thinkers. They are not the type that says, "Nope, that idea won't work because xy or z." We have worked as hard as we can to hire "yes to no" people. We want everyone to have an open mind, but ultimately, we want them to be filters/curators at the right time so that they can make the hard decisions that will grow our business. If I can pass one lesson on, it is to hire "yes-to-no" people!

In your opinion what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

We are a small company with a short history. Our historical benchmarks are not relevant yet because we are rapidly growing. I think the biggest barriers are companies that say they want to be innovative but they don't truly plan for innovation. They look at their historical benchmarks instead of forward at the possibilities. At the McKinsey panel I described earlier, a chief strategy officer from a Fortune 500 company said, "20% of our new products are now required to be driven by innovation." I asked, "Is the company setting aside 20% of your time to develop innovation?" Of course the answer was no. Innovation doesn't just happen. Organizations must understand that they must change culturally and structurally to enable innovative thinking. Ultimately, I believe the executive office suite must also be populated by innovative thinkers or innovation doesn't have a chance of success.

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation and what do you think makes them successful?

I admire everyone trying to think differently. There are so many people innovating there isn't just one person to name. I think ultimately innovators are successful because of their passion for success. Remember Steve Jobs failed his first time at Apple and was fired by the board. A good idea isn't the key to success. It is execution, timing, market conditions and a whole lot more.

What innovation are you still waiting for?

If I had a list, I would be working on those innovations instead of what I am doing at LittleMissMatched! With all seriousness, I am very focused on building a brand based on creativity and innovation. I believe our brand has a broad enough foundation to explore the world!

In a recent article, Wallpaper magazine describes Global Nomadic Expatriates, or GNEs, as a new breed of "career expats" who move from country to country for short-term professional gigs, "with no particular loyalty to a home nation."

The magazine cites a Mercer study covering 232 multi-national corporations, stating that the numbers of GNEs have increased by more than a third in recent years and now outnumber traditional expats (who return home) and long-term expats (who finally settle in their new place).

For GNEs, home is where they're going to, not where they're coming from. They move on for the sake of moving on, always on the hunt for the better opportunity, the richer cultural fabric, the more exotic and adventurous experience. The immersion is temporary but the network grows exponentially (through the strength of weak ties). The other significant allure of the GNE lifestyle is that expats are usually welcomed into a city's cultural elite far more easily than natives, enjoying the foreigner bonus

And yet:

"The unhappiest people I know these days," writes Pico Iyer in The Global Soul, "are often the ones in motion, encouraged to search for a utopia outside themselves."

After reading and talking so much recently about the concept of "democratic exclusivity" (first coined by Ed Cotton on the Influx Insights blog and then promoted by the relentless Piers Fawkes), I was delighted to finally experience it myself when I was strolling the streets of Paris last week. I spent a day (a micro-vacation!) in the not-so-touristy 6th district around Metro Vavin in Montparnasse (in fact, I rarely left it, which was a much more satisfying experience than zig-zagging from the left to the right bank all the time as I used to) and discovered "Le Timbre," (French for "the stamp"), a true micro-restaurant in the size of, yep, a stamp. Literally squeezed into a hole-in-the-wall, this place has a total of 12 tables and 24 tightly packed seats, and one is forced by proximity to engage accidental dining partners.

Space is not the only thing that's micro about "Le Stamp:" The fixed price menu is very limited with only two or three choices of every course. The chef is from Manchester, UK, but the food is French and excellent. Reservations are competitive but democratic: As with the Momofuku Ko restaurant in New York, status doesn't matter for landing one of the few tables; everyone can make a reservation, even on short notice. Nonetheless, the dining experience is exclusive -- the night I was there, the waiting line of people exceeded the number of guests still working on their meals, which struck me as a very obvious manifestation of "artificial scarcity." Blend scarcity and timing and you create buzz and intrigue, writes Ed Cotton. Oui!

Philippe Starck had an epiphany, after all these years: "Everything I have designed is absolutely unnecessary," the French star designer admitted in a recent interview with the German weekly DIE ZEIT. I had the dubious pleasure of hanging out in the Starck-designed Volar club in Shanghai last weekend, and my initial reaction to his statement was: yeah, right! I've never really liked his pompose celebrity design. But then I read his quote again in the context of the whole interview and realized: he is right, actually. In fact, his thoughts are so poignant and humbling that it is worth reprinting them in full length here (below is an excellent translation from the German original, courtesy of the mademoiselle-a blog).

Naturally, designers (and the watchdogs of 'design thinking' in particular) cried foul and tried to reconcile Starck's design nihilism with their own beliefs. David Armano and Bruce Nussbaum, for example, refer to the democratization of design.

Armano: "No, design isn't dead, especially the really good design that adds value to our lives. But the notion of design's gatekeepers may need some additional thought as more of us begin to act like 'professionals' and take on the sacred role of design."

And Nussbaum: "Design is wonderfully alive and well -- and evolving fast. The tools and methods that were once the exclusive province of a handful of designers are now in the hands of millions of people who are shaping their own experiences on Facebook and MySpace, much less on the cell phones. This democratization of design, the open-sourcing of design is driving much of the field. Apple is pretty good at controlling the design of its products, but it too is giving in and opening up the design of applications to the iPhone platform. I think the meta-trend is all of this is IDENTITY. It's the next Big Thing after Experience and Emotion."

Hmmm... this to me sounds like C is the next big thing after A and B, but hey, better a lukewarm notion of the future of design than no future at all, right? We get the message, anyway: Starck is wrong because "really good" design -- in star(c)k contrast to "consumer excess" design, and defined as design by everybody for everybody, serving a good cause and solving a real human problem -- is not dead, cannot be dead (because that would really mean the end of design, of human power, and all hope).

Here's what Starck had to say:

ZEIT: Monsieur Starck, you have designed everything, from toothbrush to spaceship. What do humans really need?

Philippe Starck: The ability to love. Love is the most wonderful invention of mankind. And then, one needs intelligence. Mankind, as opposed to animals, has managed to create a civilization based on intelligence. For this reason, no human can afford to not work on their intelligence. And humour, humour is important.

ZEIT: And you can't think of something material?

P.S.: We don't need anything material. It is more important to develop one's own ethic, and to stick to these rules. There is nothing else one would have to worry about.

ZEIT: You can't be serious. Isn't there so much else one needs in order to survive?

P.S.: If you want to talk about objects: one certainly needs something to light a fire.

ZEIT: Can you think of anything else?

P.S.: A pillow maybe, and a good mattress.

ZEIT: So why, then, have you become an industrial designer in the first place?

P.S.: That is an interesting question. And I haven't found an answer to it for myself yet. Look, I have designed so many things without ever really being interested in them. Maybe all these years were necessary for me to ultimately recognize that we, after all, don't need anything. We always have too much.

ZEIT: So all the things you have created -- unnecessary?

P.S.: Everything I have created is absolutely unnecessary. Design, structurally seen, is absolutely void of usefulness. A useful profession would be to be an astronomer, a biologist or something of that kind. Design really is nothing. I have tried to install my designs with a sense of meaning and energy, and even when I tried to give my best it was still in vain.

ZEIT: So this is the balance you strike of all your creating?

P.S.: Those people with more intelligence than me would have gotten to this point much earlier. Perhaps I wasn't smart enough and had to learn it the hard way. Ever from the beginning I had the feeling that ultimatively, product design was useless. It is because of this that I have tried to change this job into something else; into something that's more political, more rebellious, more subversive. So maybe the most important thing that I have created is not a new object, but a new definition for the word "designer."

ZEIT: You said that we are undergoing a transition towards Postmaterialism. What does this mean?

P.S.: Society is pursuing a strategy of dematerialization: it is more and more about intelligence and less about material. Take a computer, for example. In the beginning, computers were big as a house. Now there are computers in the size of only a credit card. In ten years from now they are going to be in our bodies - bionics. In fifty years from now, the concept of computers will have dematerialized itself.

ZEIT: So what else would designers create then?

P.S.: There won't be any designers. The designer of the future will be the personal coach, the fitness trainer, the nutritionist. That's all.

ZEIT: You have often stated that it was your goal to destroy design. How far have you gotten with that?

P.S.: It is accomplished! When I started out, design objects were but beautiful objects. No one could afford to buy them; design stood for elitism, but elitism is vulgar. The sole elegance lies in multiplication.

ZEIT: Please explain this.

P.S.: If one is fortunate enough to have a good idea, one has the obligation to share this idea with others. That is how democracy works. When I started to design, a good chair would cost about $1,000. Should a family that needs six chairs and a table have to pay $10,000, just to be able to have dinner? What an obscene thought. Four years ago, I designed a chair that would cost less than ten dollars. If you just strike three zeros off the price you change the whole concept of a product.

ZEIT: And yet you recently designed that motor yacht for a Russian millionaire?

P.S.: Exactly this is part of my Robin-Hood concept. I do use such projects like a lab. It allows me to try out new technologies and render them useful for the mass market. For this particular yacht, I developed a hull that wouldn't cause bow washes at 20 knots. I applied this concept to a solar boat, which in turn could be the prototype for a Venetian vaporetto.

ZEIT: And you don't want to stop designing?

P.S.: I do want to, for sure. I am definitely going to stop designing in two years. I will be doing something else instead, I don't know for sure. But I know that it will be a new way of expression; a weapon that will be faster, mightier and lighter than design. Design is really a terrible way to express oneself.

ZEIT: So you will only be switching the job.

P.S.: Exactly. I have been a producer of materiality. I do feel ashamed for this. What I want to be instead now is a producer of concepts. This will be much more useful.

ZEIT: Is there any object that you like, then?

P.S.: No.

Isn't it interesting how trends are made? "One of the things I like about trends is that they seem so easy -- Blue is the color of 2008! GenY likes health food!" observes Stacey Gillar. Coupling the disparate ("Chic Trash"), pushing an already extreme concept to the extreme ("Radical Transparency"), or simply announcing the advent of something "new" ("Nouvelle Vague," "Nouveau Niche," etc.) are some of the flourishing categories. Or you simply repackage an old concept.

"RenGen," short for Renaissance Generation and the title of Patricia Martin's, well, trend-setting new book, falls under the latter. It is the latest in a long series of attempts to aggregate individuals into a cohesive stratum that is bigger than the sum of its members -- initially, based on socio-economic characteristics (Baby Boomer), and then increasingly also on attitudinal and behavioral traits (Generation X, Generation Y, Generation C).

The idea of the original historic renaissance, from which Martin derives her RenGen, has survived many trends. Reviving the philosophical impetus from ancient Greek philosophy, it believed that, per Wikipedia's definition, "it was possible to acquire a universal learning in order to develop one's potential, covering both the arts and the sciences." When someone is called a Renaissance Man today, it is meant that "he does not just have broad interests or a superficial knowledge of several fields, but better that his knowledge is rather profound, and often that he also has proficiency or accomplishments in (at least some of) these fields, and in some cases even at a level comparable to the proficiency or the accomplishments of an expert."

The RenGen, according to Martin's definition, is "a cultural movement created by the confluence of art, education, entertainment, and business." While the language is different, this still sounds strikingly similar to Da Vinci's generation. But wait, one thing is different with the new RenGen: "A powerful new player is at its center: the cultural consumer." Aha! That reminds one of Richard Florida's Creative Class or Tyler Brule's Monocle Magazine, both of which are built on the assumption that the human need for culture, defying all swan songs of cultural pessimism, ranks high in Maslow's pyramid, and that today's Renaissance Man is a multi-disciplinary multi-tasker who embraces several disciplines, ideas, and ideologies -- and can afford it. Confluence follows affluence. Culture, in a Renaissance kind of way, is the opposite of Stephen Colbert's "truthiness;" it is the insight that any possible human expression will find its form, and that the values of religion, technology, commerce, and politics can be moderated by a truth-seeking collective identity. Cultural consumerism, in contrast, means that any possible human expression can become a product, and that the values of religion, technology, commerce, and politics can be consumed by a fun-seeking collective identity. The renaissance was a movement of like-minded individuals with shared values; the RenGen is a cohort of consumers with an affinity for similar purchases.

The trick with books like "RenGen" is that they create a vessel for a desired collective identity rather than examining it. They do so by addressing the aspirational ego of the reader: Who doesn't want to be a Renaissance Man or Woman? You enjoy reading the book because it articulates an unarticulated desire and provides a convenient frame for the irreconcilable contradictions of modern life. On the surface, the charm of the homo universalis lies in its very universal character: You're not really good at anything? No problem, then be a cultural consumer, ahem, sorry, Renaissance Man. Or, if that doesn't work, just be a member of the RenGen!