Sometimes big changes in direction can hinge on a single thought or a casual comment. There was a pivotal moment when Minneapolis's hip, funny, contemporary furniture design company Blu Dot might never have existed--or have become a bridal registry.

One of the company's founders, John Christakos, was a graduate student trying to win a scholarship at Northwestern University. He was applying for an annual cash award given to an outstanding student entrepreneur. Christakos was granted an interview with the Chicago restaurant and real estate magnate whose name was on the prize, He asked Christakos what sort of business he wanted to start.

"I mentioned an idea I had for a universal bridal registry network," says Christakos, "making purchasing wedding gifts easy. He looked at me quizzically and said, 'Are you into bridal stuff?'  I said, 'No not really. I love building things, like sculpture or furniture.' To which he replied, 'Just pick what you love. Work hard and do it better than others. You'll succeed.'"

"That was an epiphany," says Christakos, "that it was really that simple."

Christakos got the scholarship, and four years later he and partners Maurice Blanks and Charlie Lazor launched their furniture company.

Something Affordable and Fun

It seems their inspiration was at least one part necessity.  

"We were at a stage in our lives where we were throwing out our dorm furniture and buying our first homes and getting married and buying our first real furniture," Christakos recalls. "We were frustrated consumers. Everything we could afford we didn't like, and everything we liked, we couldn't afford."

The furniture they decided to make has drawn praise for its fresh design, innovative packaging, and cheeky sense of humor. There's a sofa bed called "The One Night Stand," a floating box shelving unit called "Chicago Eight," and a coffee table (or is it an ottoman?) named "Blockoid,"  Hard to say, though it's clear that "Blockoid" is intended as an aggressively geometric sidekick to "Couchoid," a sleek-looking sofa that could easily be one of the seating options in the foyer of an alien spacecraft. "Guaranteed to be more aerodynamic than your old couch", says the sales pitch.  

And then there's the item that is simply called "Real Good Chair." It's a metal chair with an angled shape that folds along perforations to create a futuristic-looking bucket.   

The company dubs the stores that sell Blu Dot around the country "Dot Spots," and one of the most notable is an all-Blu Dot showroom in New York's SoHo. Tara Larson is the buyer for the Minneapolis furniture store Roam, which is Blu Dot's only Twin Cities Dot Spot. It is no surprise that she's a fan.     

"It's a very nice, clean-lined furniture that fits in a lot of different-style spaces," says Larson. "Even if you're not really modern it can still be in a bungalow, or a small condo, a big house--it can fit in a lot of different situations.  Very flexible."

Cheeky Trend-o-phobia

But don't expect the company to march in lock step with the latest trends when it comes to colors, materials, and design. The Blu Dot color palate is, according to Christakos, "idiosyncratic," running both hot (reds) and ultra-cool (pale blue, white).  

As for materials, Maurice Blanks says "I don't think we ever sit down to design a product and think 'Brass is the next hot thing, let's do something with brass.' We've always had a design philosophy that was rooted in ideas about furniture being simple and obvious and not trying to be too fancy or too over-designed. We stick to that design philosophy and it leads us down a path that's not really trendy."  

The path Blu Dot follows is one that passes through the contemporary furniture hot spots on the east and west coasts, but is firmly based in the unglamorous heartland. Which is another unusual strength, to hear the founders tell it.  

"I think it's a real benefit, being here," says Christakos. "Minneapolis�is known for design. Some great architecture in this city, and great graphic designers, great ad agencies, so there's a lot of things going on related to design, but maybe not so much in furniture. There's no looking over your shoulder as to what are the other guys are doing. You kind of get to do your own thing, unfettered by any unnecessary distractions."

The name has a tangential Minneapolis connection too, inspired by the artist who, at that time, was still "formerly known as Prince," having changed his name to a symbol.  

"We thought that was cool," says Christakos. "Someone threw out 'like a blue dot.' Our graphic designer dropped the e when designing the logo so he could have three letters over three letters."

The Art of Good Design

The Blu Dot philosophy has led to artistic success.  Among the museums that have displayed the company's creations is the Tweed Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Museum director Ken Bloom noticed the display featuring a Real Good Chair was drawing an unusual amount of attention from engineering and design students.  

"I think the object was pretty seductive," Bloom recalls. "Everybody wanted to try to sit in it, which was, of course, to us, a terrible idea. The museum part of me goes "Oh my God," but the educational part of me says "good."

What could be both seductive and educational about a chair? It might be the look or the construction or the packaging.  Or it could be the way it was developed, using a comprehensive start-to-finish approach that Maurice Blanks says is unusual in the furniture world.  

"We're trying to design a product from the beginning that pays attention to how it's made, how it's finished, how it's packaged, how it's shipped, how it's assembled. We oversee all the production of everything."

Being overseers of everything, the Blu Dot guys have a built-in reality check on their creations, in that they are the ones who have to solve the problem if they invent a table that's overly expensive or hard to construct or awkward to ship.  

"I think constraints are good," Chistakos says.  "Constraints often are painful in the design process, but I think more often than not, they lead to stronger work in the end."

Giving Away the Store

One area where the Blu Dot founders have been willing to surrender some control is in the marketing of their work, and that has led to another artistic success. The Minneapolis ad agency mono (which The Line profiled in December) developed an on-the-street and online "experiment"--a bit of reality-based storytelling that called for giving away 25 of Blu Dot's "Real Good Chairs" by abandoning them on New York City sidewalks. Through camera-crew surveillance and GPS tracking, some of the chairs were followed to their new homes, where their surprised owners were interviewed.  

"It was great," says Blanks.  "It was more successful than we ever imagined."

And a fitting reflection of the casual, fun-loving style of the company's designer-founders.  
 
"We all felt that our industry takes itself a little too seriously, the "celebrity designer' mentality," says Christakos.  "After all, we are into making coffee tables and sofas, it's not like we're designing medical devices, where we really should be heroes. Our brand has always been about poking fun�taking our work seriously but not ourselves."

For many years, Dale Connelly was the co-host of Minnesota Public Radio's Morning Show. As the Resident Tourist, he shares with The Line readers some of his favorite Twin Cities things, places, and people.


Photos, top to bottom:

Maurice Blanks and Tom Christakos of Blu Dot

The company's Minneapolis HQ

The highly foldable "Real Good Chair"

Tongue-in-cheek trophy in the Blu Dot building

All photos by Bill Kelley