Alison Zingaro: Why was the collaboration with Target a good fit for MIO?
Isaac Salm: What is at the heart of MIO is affordable, accessible, sustainable design. Target is about accessible design, and what they were really missing was the sustainable aspect. I think it was a natural fit for MIO and Target to work together.
Jaime Salm: Target obviously focuses on affordability and how design fits into everybody’s lives. I think we see design in the same way, except we don’t just say ‘Oh, that is beautiful or well designed. ’ We think a good design is sustainable by default. So with regard to Target, sustainability was the only change that was needed in the equation. It was a natural fit.
AZ: Your collection features a great mix of items, from gardening trowels to solar lights to a fully functioning worm composter. What guided your choice of products and decision to branch out from interiors to outdoor living?
IS: We were looking at Target’s existing product categories and tried to identify an area where we could have the greatest impact. That’s how we came up with the areas we wanted to attack. Then, after a conversation with Target, we narrowed it down to gardening. Also, for us it was an opportunity to do something out of the ordinary. Gardening products are a little bit different from anything we’ve done in the past. I think it was great that we had a chance to step out into a new realm and look at design in a different way.
AZ: The Target collection includes products made from recycled and recyclable materials and from the very beginning of your company, materials have played a big part in what makes MIO’s products sustainable. How do materials function into your overall design philosophy?
JS: Yes, from the beginning I think we’ve always focused on three areas: materials, processes and behavior. And we’ve really looked at how these three areas interact with each other. I’ve always had an interest in materials, processes and manufacturing. To think of a design without any constraints is really not very productive. A lot of people just say, “This is what I want it to look like. ” And I say, “Where does that come from? Where is the constraint? What is the origin of these things? ” The origin is materials. The origin is processes or is in behaviors. I think you have to find an origin for everything, and everything is grounded in that reality. That’s how I see materials and process. I get excited about it all the time. And from the point of view of sustainability, we started with very simple materials and I think the types of things we’re looking at has grown and expanded. But I think materials and processes are always going to be at the heart of what we do. As a designer, they are central to everything we’ve done.
AZ: MIO uses mainly local manufacturers to make your products, which helps cut down on excess shipping and makes for a more efficient, streamlined production process. But has it been an effective business strategy? Has it limited you in any way?
IS: From a business standpoint it is extremely efficient. The relationships that we’ve been able to establish with our manufacturers – we’re almost on a first name bases with all of the owners of the companies. From an inventory standpoint, again, it’s great, because we don’t have to deal with long lead times or overstock items. We’ve been able to establish our relationship with our vendors so that our time to market is extremely low. If we were to manufacture something abroad, just in transit time we could be talking 30 to 45 days – not counting the manufacturing time. Over here we can turn items around within a week. And you also have to look at what the minimums are. If you’re going to run a production in a company that’s very, very large [overseas], what are the minimums? A company over here might be much more nimble, much more willing and interested in innovative ideas. Over there, they just want us to order 20 million. Here, they’re like, “I’ll make 1 million or 100,000 or 1,000. ” They’ll make them and they’ll focus on the engineering. They want to add value, and that’s very important. The designer says, “Here is what I want. ” And these companies come back, and say, ‘”What about this? ” So they’re adding to the conversation, and that’s even better. It adds to the product design process, and in the end you have a better product.
AZ: And if you’re manufacturing close to home, you can go onto the factory floor and see your products being made, which cuts down on production errors and other holdups that would be expensive and time consuming if you were working with a manufacturer 2 or 3,000 miles away.
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Isaac and Jaime Salm of MIO
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IS: From a business standpoint, from a development cost standpoint, what we’re saving is tremendous. It’s literally us jumping into a car - except we don’t have a car, we use Philly CarShare – so, we rent our car, we go on a 15, 20-minute drive, and we’re at the site. And we’re like “Change this, make that. ” All of those things, not only the time to market, but obviously the cost involved in the production and development is a tremendous savings.
AZ: I am intrigued by the different levels of interaction that exist between your products and the customer - like in the NomadWall System, for instance, and the Bendant and Trask Lamps. All of these products, through their assembly and modularity, ask something of the user. They require the customer to contribute their own sense of creativity to mold or shape the product.
JS: Before, I didn’t think that had a name, but it does have a name – it’s called “customerization, ” which is basically the customer taking a product after it has been manufactured and really making it their own. You know, it’s not a customization option, where you say, “I want my seat covers in orange. ” It’s more like, “Here are the seat covers and, by the way, you can now transform them somehow. ” So it’s this power that we are giving to customers at the end. We started it very simply. The first product that had that kind of aspect was the [PaperForms] wallpaper, where you could rotate the tiles and paint the tiles, install them temporarily or install them like wall art. It had all of these options built in to it. We didn’t realize it at the time, but I guess in the beginning that was such a powerful thing. Obviously, people want to make things their own. They want to feel that they own it. They want to co-design with you, and so you want to give them these tools that are well designed, well thought-out, simple –
IS: And sustainable.
JS: Yes, and sustainable, so that they can transform that in the way that fits their life. The more you do that, the more they love the product. It is a developing relationship. As the line has progressed, we’ve been more and more engaged by that and more and more involved with that, and with trying to figure out ways in which customers can participate and decide. Right now we’re in a big push to try and go even further to see how they are going to be able to help us with design directions, to figure out a way for there to be more participation, so that people really feel that they own this - not just that they bought it and like it – but that there’s a little piece of them in the product. It’s a creative process. People like to be engaged in that way.
AZ: Who are MIO’s customers?
JS: I think that in the beginning we were designers for young people, but at the end of the day, the people who are buying our products, whether they’re for the home or for the office, it’s a very different crowd. It’s a lot of women, I would say 30s and 40s, who want to have beautiful homes and decorate and kind of participate in that process.
IS: I think as time has passed, our customer base has started to embrace many more people, not just women in their 30s and 40s who are modern and design-driven, but a lot of do-it-yourselfers, a lot of crafts-inclined people. It’s this phenomenon, which to an extent started with The Home Depot and which has come all the way to the Martha Stewarts of the world and to Home and Garden TV, where the customers have been taught how to do things. They just don’t need the bare bone tools, but…almost a canvas. MIO Products give the consumer a canvas where they can really express themselves through a product. We end up engaging the customer in that sense. It’s very interesting. We’ve been learning throughout time. We’re constantly learning and developing, trying to open up a discussion with all of our customers.
JS: Everything is an experiment, in a way, because you are learning from your customers. They’re learning from you and they’re changing things and they’re like, ‘Wow – we want to use it on the ceiling…’
AZ: Do people send you photos of your products to show you how they’ve adapted them to fit their environments?
JS: Yes. Actually, on our new site, which we’re launching before ICFF [the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York], we’ll have videos of people posting how they’re using our products. We constantly receive “fan” photographs. It’s like “Wow – look what I did. ” And we’re like “Wow – look how much time that took. ” They really put in quite a bit of time. They design their décor around a MIO product, around the Bendant Lamp, around a wall of Paper- Forms. So it’s just incredible.
Trask Lamp
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AZ: As brothers, you grew up in Colombia and then came here for college - Jaime, to attend the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and Isaac, the University of Miami, where you studied finance and economics. Has growing up in Colombia influenced how you operate your business?
IS: Yes.
JS: Yes, big time. In Colombia, not being a first-world country or a developed country (eventually, maybe, but not yet), you have to be very resourceful. When you live in a country where there are some needs that still need to be met, you see how people move, how people react, both as consumers and by hearing business owners talk. Often times, they just have to make do with what they have. So I think having been brought up in Colombia has given us a lot of resourcefulness that’s been useful for MIO from a business standpoint.
IS: You have to have a can-do approach. You have to be flexible. You have to be adaptable. You have to learn quickly from situations and I think that’s what you pick up. You live in a country where things change very quickly, and things change very quickly in business and in design as well. One day one thing is what people are looking at, and then the next day they’re looking at something completely different. I think that you have to have an open mind about it. Nothing is set in stone. This is true for business, design and for Colombia.
AZ: On MIO’s website is says that “Isaac is the numbers guy and Jamie is the design guy. ” Are your roles within the company that clear cut, or do you find that your jobs overlap, and that you influence each other in ways you wouldn’t have expected?
IS: The roles are very clear [but] at the beginning they were even more so. [Jaime] was doing design and I didn’t meddle with it. And I did the business and he didn’t meddle with it. But as time has gone by, we have learned to work together. Obviously it is one thing to be siblings, and another thing to be business partners. I’ve started to understand a little bit about what he’s going after, and he’s [come to] understand me. I think, and Jaime could speak to it, the business constraints are becoming-
JS: Design constraints as well.
IS: So the roles are still, they’re very well defined, but now we’re starting to learn how to feed off each other.
JS: There’s overlap, but that overlap is a natural overlap of design and business. I think a lot of people have this idea about business and design as two separate things. In some instances, they are one in the same. And the more you approach it in that kind of holistic way, the better things are going to be at the end.
AZ: What’s on the horizon for MIO? How do you see the company growing in the next few years?
IS: I think our path will be linked to what we’re doing with our website. Like I was saying, we have built a model around MIO and we’re trying to figure out the ways in which that model can change not only through e-commerce, but also through how sustainable products are purchased and how they’re developed. These are very interesting times. Actually, I’m excited about it. You know there are obviously a lot of issues to solve and a lot of challenges, whether they’re economic or whether they’re social. But I think these are the most exciting times because you can really test things out. You can really push people’s buttons and do things they probably would not expect or wouldn’t have done maybe two or three years ago. So I think these times of crisis are definitely, as they say, also times of opportunities.
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