Oom for Brayton International - 2005

Early in my industrial design career, I was fortunate to receive a pivotal opportunity when I shared my work with Cia Mooney, the Design Director at Brayton International, a Steelcase subsidiary based in North Carolina. At the time, Brayton was distributing a selection of Hans J. Wegner designs from PP Møbler, and I was thrilled to be even tangentially connected to such an iconic legacy.

Cia offered me the opportunity to propose concepts for a furniture solution for contract applications. After multiple rounds of exploration, I landed on an abstract idea of combining a rolling pouf with an organically shaped post sprouting from its backside and branching out in the form of a crescent-shaped coat hook. The concept was meant to be an object for a waiting area or lobby where the user could hang their coat while sitting down. When someone sat on the pouf, they literally had horns coming out of their head, which was my way of adding humor to this design. I suspect that most people who saw this for the first time were like, "WTF is this?" as the overall reaction was very much a love-or-hate-it kind of thing.

The best part of this story is that, despite investing over a year into the project, its production run was short-lived. Still, I’m genuinely grateful for the experience. I took a creative risk, brought something original into the market, and gained firsthand insight into the unpredictable nature of the commercial furniture industry.