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By Michele Caniato
On November 30th, 2011, more than 1100 designers, architects and interior design devotees and press gathered at the Waldorf Astoria for a glittering night of celebration of the industry’s best talent. Along with fellow honorees, David Kleinberg, Nada Andric and Patricia Urquiola, George M. Beylerian, founder of Material ConneXion was inducted into Interior Design magazine’s Hall of Fame. It was a memorable evening for George and his family, and a terrific celebration of a life that has been as varied as it is eclectic. As Cindy Allen, editor of Interior Design magazine, told the audience, his passion for design has informed his whole career, which has had so many incarnations over the years. Inveterate salesman, importer, retailer extraordinaire, creative director, author, collector, exhibit designer, manufacturer, serial entrepreneur – there’s hardly a hat George hasn’t worn (and he likes hats!). He managed to transform his passions for art, beauty and style, into a fascinating and successful life built around the business of design. An inveterate collector, perhaps it was only natural that George would see an opportunity to bring together the world’s most innovative materials and create a thriving business (and an invaluable resource), the Material ConneXion library, out of it.
On the night of this Hall of Fame celebration, with characteristic humor and self-deprecating wit, he entertained the enthusiastic crowd of industry professionals with off-the-cuff stories of his eclectic life, his inspiration, his belief in resilience, hard work and his accidentally extraordinary life that intertwined a flair for design trends with an intuitive sense of business. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, here’s a look at the life and career of George M. Beylerian, a man who was not only my business mentor, but who was like a second father to when I first came to this country and he welcomed me into his personal and professional life.
“Take a seat”, were the first words I heard from George having arrived in New York. As I would come to appreciate, George has a thing for chairs. In fact he has a significant collection of miniature chairs in addition to having built a business or two around seating. A lifelong connoisseur of design, he began to import and sell Italian furniture in the 1960s. Having recently graduated with a BA in architecture, I wanted to learn about business in the USA and George (who had first met me as a baby with my family) now offered me a seat at the table, literally and figuratively. In 1997, he offered me a unique opportunity to come work with him on his vision for a materials library and together we launched Material ConneXion with backing from Steelcase. With his unique eye, his extensive business experience, his passion for style, and his knowledge of the marketplace, George had seen the democratization of design and growing consumer awareness of style trends beginning to impact product development and environments. But designers could spend hours trying to source materials and manufacturers often weren’t set up to provide samples and the kind of information needed to turn ideas and concepts into reality. For every idea, there had to be a material solution–and George knew he could provide the answers.
A serial entrepreneur, he has a unique ability to spot trends. George grew up in Egypt and when I first worked with him he often regaled me with stories of his Armenian father, who taught him the art of the deal as he helped out at his family’s stylish architectural hardware store in Cairo. Even as a very young man, George had an unusual appreciation for the arts and often spent hours perusing the Egyptian antiquities museum, wandering the local souks or attending more artistic and cultural events than the average teenager took interest in. Having graduated from New York University in 1961, he got into the architectural hardware business he knew so well, and quickly counted the likes of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Raymond Loewy and Associates among his many clients. But George’s restless curiosity and stylistic ambitions soon left him bored with the mundane nature of selling such everyday wares. His love of cutting edge design led him to open a home furnishing and accessories boutique called Scarabaeus (in a reference to his Egyptian childhood) in mid-town Manhattan’s design district in 1964. It was a hit with professionals and customers alike, and was probably one of the earliest of examples of the type of curated retail so popular today, with his personal passions and interests informing the ever-changing offerings and object d’art on display.
Intellectually curious and obsessive about merchandising and artful displays, George began to realize that there was a real opportunity in wholesale and soon began to manufacture designer products himself. He became known for his international design sensibility and before long, had an early shop-in-shop in Bloomingdale’s called Casa Idea, which sold high-end Brionvega stereos alongside affordably chic Colombo chairs. The mix of high-low style was innovative at the time and inspiring to American customers who were hungry for more modern décor options, and who were heavily influenced by European design trends of the era. Around the same time he began importing and wholesaling Italian furniture through his own showroom, which was ultimately how two design aficionados, one from Cairo, the other from Milan, would meet.
In 1987, Steelcase acquired George’s business and installed him as creative director of the Steelcase Design Partnership, organizing exhibitions at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York and the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. He was also vice president of marketing and for the next ten years George was a vibrant creative force in the company. One of the exhibits he organized was called “Mondo Materialis” for which he had a number of designers (Matteo Thun, Laurinda Spear, Bernardo Fort-Brescia, Richard Meier, among them) submit panels of collages of innovative finishes and textures. This proved to be the kernel of the idea that ultimately became Material ConneXion. In 1997, Steelcase provided the backing and the space to establish the library that has grown today to a global resource of more than 6,500 commercially available, innovative and sustainable materials. While George would be the first to admit that he is no scientist himself and prefers to focus on the design aspect, he was savvy enough to realize the increasing importance of sustainability and the technical elements and applications of different materials and processes. With a team of experts and PhD scientists around the world, Material ConneXion provides extensive consulting services to manufacturers, architects, developers, designers and packagers around the world. In addition, our offices in New York, Milan, Cologne, Seoul, Daegu, Beijing, Istanbul and Shanghai provide on-site library access to designers around the world. Our globally accessible online database is a much-used resource by members who can self-navigate through the archives and research material solutions and source suppliers. Thousands of student members and academic partners are expanding the sharing of knowledge of materials and processes for the next generation of innovators and designers.
Working alongside George for the last fifteen years, growing the business to where it is today has been an extraordinary experience. By turns inspiring, demanding, generous, visionary, impatient, humorous, and sometimes a taskmaster extraordinaire, there are few people in business who combine his extraordinary creativity and business sense. We are proud to have together built a business that caught the eye of another entrepreneur, Adam Sandow, who bought Material ConneXion and our sister company, Culture & Commerce in May 2011. Under the umbrella of the Sandow Group, Material ConneXion continues to expand, and now as president of the company, I am proud to continue to build the legacy that George started. While he claims to be “trying” to retire, he not only commutes from his beautiful home in Connecticut to our office several days a week, but regularly globetrots as an ambassador for Material ConneXion, meeting potential partners and seeking inspiration for the next big idea.
I feel very fortunate to have met George when I did – our shared belief in the power of design and the importance of innovative materials, has built a business we can all be proud of today. Material ConneXion, and our sister company, Culture & Commerce (which represents leading designers) is impacting environments, product development and design around the world, creating more sustainable solutions for companies and driving innovation in a way that fifteen years ago we could hardly have envisioned. George richly deserved to join the illustrious ranks of Interior Design magazine’s Hall of Fame and we join Cindy Allen and all the team at Interior Design magazine in congratulating him (and his fellow honorees) on this great honor. Bravo George! – M.C.
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