Everglades Club

John Kaywell is truly one of a kind. I’ve known John for nearly 15 years but when I first met him, his life was quite different. He was single,  living in Valley Village, California and working in Glendale as a heavy-weight “broker to the stars” at Smith Barney. He also swung a mean Stratocaster guitar, playing everything from Clapton to Cole Porter. 10 years, 3000 miles, a wife, an adorable son, AND what seems like a lifetime later, “Jake” as his friends affectionately call him, hung up his traders hat and donned a painters smock. Today he lives in Palm Beach, Florida, paints full time, STILL swings a mean “ax” and is preparing his coming out party as an extraordinary artist. For all his natural talent, John is an assiduous student of his craft: a sponge absorbing whatever tidbits those in the know may impart. We’re lucky at Soicher Marin to welcome John into our family of artists. Look for his prints at this coming High Point Market in April. Prices for original paintings are available upon request.

Sailboat

Everglades Club Detail

A1A, Palm Beach

Everglades Island

A few weeks ago I attended a conference in Tampa and the Keynote speaker, a thirty-something, way too young and wonky executive from a large software company stood behind his podium. Behind him was his first PowerPoint slide. In large bold type the heading read: “Profiting in the New Normal”. He went on to expound on the new realities and how we should all adjust our marketing, sales techniques, new pricing models etc. to suit a New America. Excuse me sonny, but last time I checked this is still AMERICA: the most prosperous and productive economy in the World 14.1 Trillion Dollars! Our nearest competitor, Japan has 1/3 our GDP. China and Germany combined don’t total 1/2 our GDP? New Normal? I don’t agree.

In 30 years working at this company, I’ve witnessed and survived three previous recessions: one in the early 1980’s, one in the early 1990’s one in the early 2000’s and now this one. Spot a trend here? They all have one thing in common: they are ugly, fear-making, destructive to the careless and instructive to those who are listening. They also come to an end, people go back to work, industry rebounds (better than before), birds chirp, couples marry, kids are born and, after a time, we forget they ever occurred. When I was a young man just starting out in business I had never seen or experienced one of these. It was nasty and scary. I tried laying that “new normal” line on my father who at the time was my boss. He called me an idiot. He said “Son, this will pass. There is no time where people will not want things or want to better themselves. Everything is temporary”. He was right. He and his wisdom passed in 2006…everything is temporary.

There is an entire generation of young and talented people who joined the ranks of working folks during the most prosperous decade in our history. They only knew one direction on the Bell Curve: straight up. I would tell them the same thing my father told me: We enter these things hard, we adjust and cut and taper and reform our business so we can stay in the game. We become BETTER executives and merchants as a result! The exit is nuanced and at times, almost imperceptible, but the transition to normalcy, real normalcy does happen. Before you know it, this recession, Great or otherwise, is history. In the words of Winston Chruchill: “Never give up, never surrender”...[to the new normal]. We do not accept it. We will not capitulate. –EM

Five days and 1000 pictures later…

One day off from the official opening and we’re in the last of the set up! Here are a few shots from the preceding week. Tomorrow, will post the finished showroom shots. Enjoy.

It’s been a long summer and we’re ready for Fall. The High Point collection is complete: over 500 framed works of art are on their way to our new showroom at the C&D building. Our new SM2 brand receives great reviews from our soft launch last week and plans are in works for our Tweet Up during the upcoming High Point Market. So what’s next? A let up? Not quite.

Slogging through this economy is no small task, but one thing we’ve learned is that there are people on the sidelines waiting for a “reason” to jump back in and build inventory. Given some imagination in content and most of all value, they will reward us with orders. Evidence of this is in so many stories recounted to me last week by our reps in the field when presenting Sm2 for the first time. Our customer told them that indeed, SoicherMarin is seeing the future in its proper shape: a fresh approach with GREAT pricing. We didn’t invent this concept, though making the shift in thinking required some internal soul searching and a degree of invention. How do we create a new brand based on our core design sensibilities, have it look completely fresh and different, build it in America, distribute it through our traditional channels, and oh yeah, sell it for half our normal wholesale? That took months of concept meetings and back and forth debate as well as honest self critique. The exercise as a whole was cathartic for our team and brought out the best in them.

Given ownership of a concept allowed kids in design to stretch their talent. Handing our operations team the challenge to manufacture SM2 in the U.S. and  do it profitably created a framework for new Lean Manufacturing systems we otherwise may not have adopted for years. Asking our sales team to view SM2 as an adjunct (not a replacement) of the SoicherMarin brand took a leap of faith on their part as they had to adapt their own selling techniques to present both lines side by side and not diminish either. For me, I had to take my own leap of faith and trust the young eyes that were creating the line under my direction. Saying nothing, sometimes is the best edit one can make.

-em

I thought it would be fun to show you the process of how I work.

As you all know I love to collage to make inspiration books and I don’t think I ever posted these pictures, but here I am hard at work (in my living room). I have an accordian file of all my inspiring images and I have them grouped by size and mood and I pull them all out and try to create inspiring collages to get my brain moving when it stalls out.

 I was probably drinking coffee and watching some version of Real Houswives while working on these. To see the final images go here.

I thought I would do some collages for myself with some of the scrap sample prints we had laying around just for fun and they turned out pretty cool so I brought them in and scanned them and next thing you know they are framed and on their way to High Point!! It is exciting when that happens!

Here are the pieces framed and cataloged, I hope you all get to see them in person in High Point at our new showroom in the C&D Building.

There is a lot going on here at Soicher Marin, we’ve got some tricks up our sleeves for SM2 (yes we are still developing, it never ends) and big changes happening in general. We will be sharing it all soon and you guys are going to love it! So for now, while I am off working on the next big project (we have a new licenced collection coming out with a HOT HOT HOT designer) please enjoy these pictures of SM2 as it keeps pumping out from the factory. My favorite thing about working here is actually seeing the things I have stared at on my computer for hours and hours on end actually get printed and framed, that is when it becomes real, and there is a lot of that happening around here right now. I’m giddy with excitement to look through the stacks of art all around the office!

-tracy

When Ed is away, who does he leave in charge of the place? Daisy of course! She had a busy week in the office.

Starting the day off…

Lots of Important Meetings…

Crunching the Numbers

Designing the line

Checking out a sculpture, yep this will do.

Rewarding hard workers, it is important to show you care!

It’s been a long day…I think I need a vacation!

Ok, so as you all probably know, we are busy working on SM2 for the upcoming fall High Point Market. We are now in the process of printing and framing the samples that will go to the showroom. I wanted to share some of those pieces with you as we get them framed. This is just the beginning of a huge line that I think you all will LOVE when you see it in person. I wish I had a bigger house to hang it all in! I am so excited and am trying to figure out which pieces I want for myself ,  it is such a hard decision!!! This is the first round that have come out of the factory many, many  more to come!

Enjoy!

-tracy

We have been super busy around here getting the SM2 line ready for the OctoberHigh Point Market. I know it might seem a little early, but we still have a lot to do! We have to finalize all the sizing, make sure all categories are covered, create test prints, start framing, enter everything in the database, price, catalog, build a website, re-work weak ideas, and finally decide what makes the cut for High Point and what doesn’t. Now all of that wouldn’t be a problem if it was the only thing going on, but thankfully we are really busy with projects and orders on top of that so we are all running around trying to get everything done and consuming lots of coffee (well at least I am). Luckily we have a great team around here and I get a lot of help from my fav digital ladies Allison and Amanda !!(they did most of the stuff you see below)Woo Hoo!! So lets get to the good stuff…here are some more SM2 previews. I hope you all enjoy!!!

-Tracy