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

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

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

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.

-tracy

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!

Enjoy!

-tracy

-Tracy