The Art of Everyday Innovation w/ Paul Rowan | Ep 396

Summary

The Futur Podcast with Chris Do

Episode 396: The Art of Everyday Innovation w/ Paul Rowan
Aired: November 8, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Chris Do sits down with Paul Rowan, co-founder of the globally recognized design company Umbra, to explore the art of everyday innovation and the journey from humble beginnings to iconic design. Rowan dives deep into how curiosity, resilience, and a passion for practical, beautiful objects fueled Umbra’s rise, and shares insights on creativity, entrepreneurship, failure, mentorship, and the evolving role of design in the age of AI. The conversation is candid and personal, offering both practical wisdom and inspiration to designers, innovators, and anyone chasing creative change.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Paul Rowan’s Background and the Origin of Umbra

• Hardware Store Roots: Paul grew up in his father’s hardware store—a formative experience that exposed him to the problem-solving nature of physical products from an early age.
  • “By the time I was 12 years old, I knew 50,000 SKUs, how to something and... I call it applied technology.” (04:47)
• First Steps in Design: After noticing a lack of stylish window coverings, Paul built his own, then partnered with Les Mandelbaum to start Umbra.
• DIY Entrepreneurship: There was no market research or business strategy—just solving a need, making samples, and driving them personally to stores.

2. Umbra’s Business Evolution

• From Local to Global Manufacturing: Started with North American manufacturing, but due to competition, built a factory in Asia for scalability and survival.
• Brand Ethos Formation: Iterative product design, driven by market demands, organically formed Umbra’s brand centered on affordability, modernity, and simplicity.

3. On Formal Training vs. Learning by Doing

• Graphic Design as a Communication Tool: Two years at George Brown College taught Paul how to communicate ideas—vital for entrepreneurship.
• The Value of Generalists: Paul advocates for broad foundational learning before specialization, encouraging hands-on, multi-disciplinary education.

4. Entrepreneurship, Failure, and Pivots

• Leap of Faith: Paul left a stable job in early digital typography to start Umbra—a risk that required courage and multi-disciplinary skills.
• Embracing Failure: Umbra’s first product failed, but feedback led to new product lines and opportunities.
  • “Even though you're confident… you don't know what's going to happen in the marketplace, but to have the courage to pivot and to reinvest to figure it out... that was a huge turning point.” (00:00, discussed again at 42:08)

5. Role of Curiosity and Youthful Energy

• Lifelong Curiosity: Both Chris and Paul recount stories of exploring stores purely out of curiosity—a habit that breeds innovation.
• Value of Young Designers: Internships and university collaborations (like with Pratt, which birthed the Conceal Bookshelf) kept Umbra’s creativity fresh and provided mutual benefit.
  • “Stay close to your school because this is where you're going to get your recruitment... new ideas.” (14:42)

6. Mentorship, Company Culture, and Ethics

• Win-Win Collaborations: Umbra pays student designers royalties and supports schools—a rarity in business.
  • “I wish every manufacturer out there would reach out to their local design schools and universities and create similar programs.” (17:44)
• Empathetic Leadership: Paul describes himself as an accidental mentor and “therapist,” crediting success to compassion and deep relationships.

7. Product Pitching and the Sales Journey

• Overcoming Shyness: Despite being introverted, Paul pushed himself to pitch and present—a skill that grew with necessity.
  • “I'm the shyest person you could ever know...but you have to overcome it somehow.” (22:09)
• Early Sales Experiences: Paul’s straightforward pitch—"I’ve got a new idea... please try it”—opened doors. Testing and relationship building were key.
  • “You never know which ones are going to really take off... Get into the space somehow.” (29:15)

8. Iconic Products and Democritization of Design

• Designing the Garbo Trash Can: A collaboration with Karim Rashid brought iconic, curvaceous design to a low-cost, everyday object, leading to mass success and a MoMA permanent collection spot.
  • "We've proved that there is such a thing as democratization of design. Design doesn't have to be expensive." (40:44, 41:08)
• Iterative Success & Scaling: The Garbo’s massive sales were unlocked by simply resizing it to fit bathrooms—demonstrating the value of continuous iteration and market listening.

9. Learning from Failure

• Flops and Lessons: Not every idea works—Paul shares stories of product failures, including a collapsing storage ottoman, underscoring the importance of pairing creativity with engineering.
  • “If you have pure creativity without really good engineering, I think it can be a flop.” (49:27)

10. Innovation, AI, and the Future of Design

• AI as Tool & Threat: Paul sees AI as a powerful tool for rapid prototyping and presentations, but warns against losing originality and human imagination.
  • “The only way to face the future is through imagination. And I think the computer is only going to... there's a whole sameness about AI output.” (57:12)
• Human Imagination’s Role: He emphasizes the irreplaceable need for imagination, foundational knowledge, and foundational art training, even in an AI-driven future.

11. Giving Back and Designing the Next Generation

• Education & Mentoring: Now retired, Paul focuses on knowledge sharing—especially in Latin America, where he finds deep respect for educators.
• Workshops & Teaching: He encourages both respect for teachers and fostering client-facing, imaginative, and engineering-literate designers.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Imperfection and Innovation:
  “In a perfectly designed world, you wouldn't need a hardware store. Your houses would be perfect, your car would be perfect. ...I sort of built my career on creating hacks like that.” (07:17)

• On Courage and Pivoting:
  “Even though you’re confident… you don’t know what’s going to happen in the marketplace, but to have the courage to pivot and to reinvest to figure it out…that was a huge turning point.” (00:00, revisited at 42:08)

• On Team and Youthful Energy:
  “The young people kept me young. ...The young people were the ones that really... were driving great product development.” (14:42)

• On Mentorship:
  “I always felt like I was almost a therapist in my office. ...I’m so proud when these people I worked with, like 20, 30 years ago reach out to me ...what a great feeling.” (20:04)

• On Democratization of Design:
  “We've proved that there is such a thing as democratization of design. Design doesn't have to be expensive.” (41:08)

• On Failure & Learning:
  “If you have pure creativity without really good engineering, I think it can be a flop.” (49:27)

• On AI & The Future:
  “The only way to face the future is through imagination. And I think the computer is only going to... there's a whole sameness about AI output.” (57:12)

• On Advice to Entrepreneurs:
  “This is the time to get going, and this is the time for all companies to innovate... whatever you do, don't cut your design department.” (36:10)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Paul’s Introduction & Background – [00:34–01:33]
• Umbra’s Early Days & Entrepreneurial Leap – [01:33–04:38]; [10:11–14:17]
• Hardware Store Roots & DIY Spirit – [04:47–07:17]
• Product Pitching & First Sales – [25:26–30:26]
• Working with Students & Knowledge Sharing – [14:42–18:15]; [61:18–63:22]
• Design Process, Failure, and Engineering – [48:44–54:30]
• Iconic Product Stories (Garbo, O Chair, etc.) – [37:47–45:58]
• AI, Innovation, and the Future of Design – [55:28–60:36]
• Paul’s Current Work & How to Contact – [61:18–65:27]

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Further Resources

• PaulRowan.ca: www.paulrowan.ca (speaking, consulting)
• YouTube: "Undesigned with Paul Rowan"
• Instagram: @paulrowan

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Start with curiosity; scratch your own itch and see where real needs and opportunities live.
• Be ready to fail and pivot—almost every breakthrough relies on listening and adapting.
• Build relationships at every level: with team, vendors, retailers, and educational institutions.
• Balance artistic imagination with engineering practicality, and don’t be afraid to let failure teach you.
• In the age of AI, human originality, empathy, and imagination are more vital than ever.
• Stay connected to learning and teaching; collaboration and mentorship drive innovation forward.

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Paul Rowan]

Even though you're confident about what you're doing and you're moving forward in a great way, you don't know what. You don't know about, like, going to happen in the marketplace, but to have the courage to pivot and to reinvest to figure it out, because you know you have something, but it's just not there yet. I mean, that was a huge turning point. You can imagine how financially sustainable we came after that. Hi, I'm Paul Rowan. Literally, you are listening to the future. I'd say imagination is the way to face the future.

[Chris]

Can you, Paul, can you introduce yourself and tell us who you are so that we have some context here?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah. Hi, I'm Paul Rowan, co founder of Umbra. I did retire from Umbra a few years ago and now I'm working on speaking engagements. I do a lot of outreach to colleges around the world. I'm lecturing and it's about, for me, my next phase of my career is really about knowledge sharing.

[Chris]

Look, I don't know much about you, but I do know your company. I know the products that you've designed. And when I was looking it up, I was thinking, I think at some point, like very shortly after college, I was probably at a container store buying one of your famous iconic trash cans. And of course, I don't know it's you guys, but I just, I know the brand. I'm like, this is cool. And then as I look into the other iconic things you've done, there's a kind of simplicity and humanity into the shapes and the forms of the things. Now I'm curious, is Umbra a firm? Do you guys make products or you design them and then somebody manufactures them? What's going on?

[Paul Rowan]

We're quite vertical. Like, we started off designing product and even actually manufacturing in North America. So the first products we did were locally made. We did injection molded thermoplastic rubber, we did plastics, we did actually steel. We were really grew a lot of business in the window treatments and drapery rods. Anything casual and affordable and well designed, we did domestically. But then eventually there was so much pressure from all the knockoffs out there that were going to Asia. And when we got above the radar with our retailers, when they started offering really low prices, we knew we had to go to Asia. And we actually built a factory in Asia and employed a lot of people over there and a sales team and quality control and everything. It was pretty big endeavor that really kept us alive, I would say, like, unless you're competitive in our business, I think you're dead. So the first product was something that was done really out of necessity. I'd moved into an apartment, new apartment, and I looked, the windows were bare. And I went out into the marketplace and I couldn't find anything I liked. So I actually went out and bought some architectural paper, Japanese paper, and put them on roller blinds and then eventually started decorating them with graphics. My first one was a Haku Cywave. And so people came to my apartment, said, like, where can I buy these we really love. Well, I just made them myself. And I kept hearing that over and over. So I went to my future business partner, Les Manelbaum in Toronto, who started a small business. I said, les, like, we got a great idea here. Let's just start making it. Like, okay. There was no market research, there was no strategy. Let's just figure it out. So we figured it out. We made it in Toronto, Canada, and started putting the samples in the back of my car, just driving it around, eventually driving to New York. And that was just. Guess it was really a great time for us because there was a movement called lifestyle. And then in the 80s, where it was about a casualization of living. Everything before that was very formal and kind of sticky. And all of a sudden there was like a kind of. It's kind of a Euro style, I would say, casualization of things. I mean, people started. Stopped wearing ties and all kinds of stuff and sneakers. So there was a casualization. We were part of that movement. So there was great reception to it. And then what happened was, as stepping point for the people that are listening, the first product actually did fail after a couple years. But what it allowed us to do was get into the space and start through the demands of the market. Started asking me, hey, like, Paul, why don't you design other things? Where we had our sales force out there trying to sell this stuff. We need more stuff. So I just started inventing more houseware products, types of products. And that's how the brand was built. Very product focused, created the brand. And then after a while, we realized that we had a certain ethos to the brand based on product experience and where we were going and the intuition of our designers and myself. And we started creating these keywords around who we were. And of course, one of them was affordable, modern and contemporary and so forth. So we had these keywords develop, and that really guided us as a brand going forward.

[Chris]

If you take me back to the 80s, when you have this idea, what is your background? That you can just be like, you know, I'M just going to design this and we'll just go make it and I'll be a salesperson. That's like a lot of hats you're wearing.

[Paul Rowan]

True. You know what? My dad had a hardware store. And I think some of that I've had people call me later, oh, my dad had hardware store, too. I was in the hardware store since the age of like 7 years old. Don't tell anybody. It was probably illegal, but by the time I was 12 years old, I knew 50,000 SKUs, how to something and how to like, I know. I call it applied technology. The hardware store, it's just an amazing place to absolutely learn everything. In fact, if I was going to redesign education today, I would just put everybody in a hardware store of high school. Okay, like, and I've met kids, I spent a lot of time in hardware stores. I don't know if you like them or not, but like, when I go to a Home Depot or one of the other Lowe's or whatever, I just like hanging out. And I'm amazed. I'm. I'm amazed by the product knowledge of the people that are there about their training. And so I just took that. What I realized was when I always wanted to build my own business and be entrepreneurial, and I realized that my whole mission was to reinvent what I saw in my dad's hardware store. Because everything was pretty, just functional. It wasn't beautiful. And I didn't know about the price or anything like that, but I knew it had to be affordable to be able to create product and distribute it. But so, yeah, I just looked at everything and started modernizing it. And that was really just the background for everything. Like, look at everything and think, how can I contemporize it, make it more relevant for people?

[Chris]

When I was a kid, before I could work, there was a Home Depot that opened up within blocks of our house. And I didn't even know what that was. But for some reason, I'd get on my skateboard, I'd go to Home Depot, and I literally spent hours walking from aisle to aisle looking at every product and thinking, like, what is this tool or device invented for? What problems does it solve? And I would spend all this time. Then one time, my dad was building something in the back and I said, dad, don't you want to use a chalk line? He goes, what's that? Well, to make sure everything's level, and we snap the chalk. He goes, how would you even know that? And I said, wow. I was at Home Depot and I was Looking at this, and that's what it's used for. I'll be right back. Fifteen minutes later, go to the store and buy it, whatever it is. I bring it back and we snap a chalk line. He's like, huh, how does my kid know how to do this? And this kind of curiosity has guided me throughout my life. Whether it's the library, the computer lab, it's just whatever you get into, just really get into it. And to this day, it brings me a lot of joy to walk through an art store or a home supplier like Home Depot or Lowe's or something like that, just because I just like looking at potential objects that are meant to build something more. And with a little creativity and ingenuity, you can make anything. It's very empowering.

[Paul Rowan]

That's right. Some of my first products were all just based on. On that. But I think for me, the overall problem around a hardware store is that it's just that life is too imperfect. Like, if everything was perfect in your life, you would need a hardware store. You would go into a house, would already have the deck, it would already have the living space perfect. It would have the things hanging on the wall perfectly. But everything is sort of incomplete in life. You need a hard to figure out how to really complete your life and make yourself better. I think everybody walking through a hardware store is trying to make their lives better by buying products, services, whatever, they are there. And because life is not perfect. And for me, in a perfectly designed world, you wouldn't need a hardware store. Your houses would be perfect, your car would be perfect. Everything. In even the electronic stores, when you think about even the most advanced product like an iPhone, they're selling cases, like millions of cases every year. Because iPhone is not perfect. If you drop it, it breaks. Why? So for me, everything I was add on is kind of like a hack for me. And I'm like, I sort of built my career on creating hacks like that, if you want to call it that.

[Chris]

The difference between me, among many things, is my dad did not own a hardware store. So I just went there periodically and there were no child labor laws broken. But do you have formal training on industrial design, graphic design?

[Paul Rowan]

No, it was all based on the hardware store. But then I did do two years for a good graphic design certificate with George Brown College in Toronto. And actually, George Brown College was an amazing thing because it basically taught me how to communicate these ideas. Like, I knew I had this background, very curious, as you said, about everything. But George Brown showed me how to really communicate These ideas and I got my first job through them. I actually got my first freelance jobs after actually even going to school for six months. And I knew nothing about. I didn't even know what graphic design was. When I started Umbra. I really. You asked about all the hats. I did everything. I did all the marketing, I did the brochures, I did the trade show booth, I did the product development. I just did everything well, actually. And the sales and manufacturing too, of course. For the entrepreneurs out there, you really have to know everything about how to make your product and how to do it. And then, you know, when it comes to expansion and everything, you know every job. Doesn't that make sense to you? Like just know everything about everything you can about your product?

[Chris]

It makes sense to me in some kind of crazy way. I'm sure of it.

[Paul Rowan]

I think there's too much specialization maybe out there. Like people need to be generalists. I think first, when I was talking about education too, I think the foundation years of every design course or marketing, whatever should be the foundation course should be that kind of generalist idea and like knowing the history of everything and actually getting your hands dirty. Making things in class and doing things by hand and so forth. Learning things. Learning things by how? Make that mind a hand connection.

[Chris]

I have to figure this out here. How old are you then and what year is this specifically? I want to put a time, place map. Are you 20 years old when you start this company or start inventing products?

[Paul Rowan]

27. So I was in. Was in the 80s. Yeah. That we started. 79 I think was the year. Yeah. So yeah, so that was after five years of working in Ottawa with a startup that was one of the first digital typography companies in the world. It was really cool. Like I worked with some ex IBM guys that started this company and I learned a lot about just business. So I had the hardware store side, then I worked five years with corporate. So then when I started the business, I really had some great, great experience about figuring things out. But I have to say, even with the first years of working in that great company, almost every weekend with the guys around me working, we'd have beers. Ross thinking about how we were going to start businesses and trying to invent stuff. So the entrepreneurial spirit, especially in like startup companies, like everyone just wants to be a startup too and be an entrepreneur and figure it out. The thing is to get it away. Like how do you launch something after, like just talking about it over like hundreds of beers every weekend and actually making it happen. Okay, that's the thing that leap, that leap of faith, because that, that requires a lot of courage.

[Chris]

Well, that's why it's not for everybody that entrepreneurial journey, because they need security and safety more than they need to scratch that itch. But me looking from the outside in, I think there's this strange and beautiful harmony or dichotomy of two things, which is very analog hardware store, kind of just blue collar stuff. And then you going into the digital typesetting or typography world in that's very early on we're talking about here. And having the kind of white collar professional environment. And then the mashup of these two gives you a different set of skills.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah. Like in high school, I actually did do computer programming. I did Fortran program. I don't. You probably.

[Chris]

Oh my gosh. What kind of machine. What are we talking about here?

[Paul Rowan]

I don't know, because we used to just touch the cards and send them out to get done and everything. So it's like. Yeah, I was always fascinated by it. So I think there was that early digital experience did sort of help me fancy business. I mean, the Internet didn't exist when we first started. That was a big leap forward.

[Chris]

I think not, not to date either one of us. Okay. But when I was. I think you must be a little bit older than me because the. What you're talking about is like, wait, I'm still a child here. I remember my uncle, my uncles worked at IBM or something like that. They'd come home with reams of alternating reams of paper and then they would also have these cards that had little notches in them, which is how they stored files. I think back then we never knew what they were. So we use them like pretend money. And we were just like distributing. I mean, are you at that age where you're using the punch cards to store data?

[Paul Rowan]

Yes.

[Chris]

Oh my God. Okay. So very few people in our audience even knows what we're talking about here, where you and I are getting nostalgic about that time and place.

[Paul Rowan]

I mean, like the people that I worked with, there was a few guys that quit that typography business and had this new idea of actually, why don't we start selling computers in the home?

[Chris]

What a strange idea.

[Paul Rowan]

And I thought, wow, that's bloody crazy. What are you gonna do? Just play games or whatever? Like, who needs a computer at home? But meanwhile, of course, it was an amazing startup and amazing idea. We were at the beginning of all that and it was just, just a really fun time. But then we got back to the window shades, and all the product development was really back to analog. Right.

[Chris]

Okay. Were you working full time and then you're like, designing your home and then you're like, I want to do this thing.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Do you put in your notice and like, I got to go all in.

[Paul Rowan]

On this thing at one point? Yeah. You have to take that big leap. Right. That was tough, I got to say, because I worked there for five years and I was working on different products, all different kinds of company. Like, I had a little publishing company. I had a company that was, you know, we used to do like, print wheels. Okay. I don't think you remember those. The typewriters, the select typewriters were kept advancing so you could do more typography, style typing on a regular typewriter. And so there was a very limited number of fonts available for those spinning wheels. So I actually developed with a couple buddies of ours. We actually started manufacturing print wheels at the time. I always had that entrepreneurial spirit to do almost try anything to get. Just to have independence, you know, I.

[Chris]

Have to say this, and I think it's going to lead us probably to our next part of the story here, which is I find it really difficult when I meet people when they grow up in a certain era, they get stuck to certain ideas. You've been through many eras, many evolutions. What has kept your brain, like, so malleable and you so vital and just like, you know what? I could do this, and then I'm gonna here. And how do you continue to evolve like that?

[Paul Rowan]

There's a couple things. One is there was always a thread about grow or die in our business. So it was like, you know, I always thought, oh, yeah, like, if I get to a million in sales, then maybe I can just relax and just like, make a lot of money and not have to worry about everything. But it was never like that. It was always about what's the next thing. There was, like, everyone, the pressures on developing a business, especially if you have a team like sales and so forth, and you have people in house depending on you for their livelihood, you have to keep, like, going forward, developing, expanding your reach, becoming global. So that was a big challenge. I think that kept me going. The other thing that really kept me going was our team. I eluded the fact that I was doing this outreach with universities. But the reason when I first started, I was designing all the product myself, and I thought, I can't do this. There's too much demand. I went to our local university design school called OCAD U. And I found a couple of designers by the name of Kurt Keller, and I asked them to start designing contract on Kona on a royalty basis for us. And that was the beginning of it. And then when I started doing that outreach with the schools, I realized that there was a continuous flow of young people coming through the studio. I think the young people kept me young. They were the ones that were coming up with amazing. I mean, I'm sure you love it, too. You love having young people in your team. They bring energy, they bring their own intuition, their relevancy about how they want to live. And so, like, I found that the young people were driving great product development with the assistance of the mature designers who knew how to make, shape it and make it happen, go into production. Right. But the young people were the ones that really. I mean, I've been surrounding myself with young people ever since then. And now I'm sort of teaching. I teach in Medellin, Colombia, when I'm down there for the winters. I'm associated with a lot of different design schools that are reaching out to me all the time for different types of collaborations. The collaborations I could talk about, too, a little bit, just to know. I mean, first of all, I always say, stay close to your school, because I thought at first, when I first left George Brown College, oh, I've done it all. Now I know everything. I don't need to go back to school anymore. Why should I? But then I realized later that I went back to the schools, like an OCAD or George Brown, that, yeah, stay close to your school because this is where you're going to get your recruitment. This is where you're going to get your new ideas. Young people are coming forward. And then eventually I started these collaborations. One of the best ones I did was with Pratt University in Brooklyn. I'm sure you know it. I went down there and for our. I think it was our 20th anniversary, I said, like, we're going to do. I'm going to be like your creative director, and we're going to use a team of like 40 students to design a product for Umbra. And what happened was that was the most exciting time you could ever imagine, Chris. They came up with one of these ideas called the Conceal bookshelf. It's one that floats on the wall. Like, you don't see the. You just see the books floating on the wall vertically. And I saw that and I thought, oh, my God. I phoned my part and I said, we're going to make a fortune from this. This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And we went into production. It's still production, like, 25 years later. And here's what happened. We paid a royalty to the designer student who helped launch his career and to the school to develop further programs. And Pratt ended up taking that money and going to the shipyards and building out a special entrepreneurial design school there. So, like, it was amazing thing, like, win, win, win designer launcher, career. We made money. The schools are able to be sustainable. I mean, what a great idea. I wish every manufacturer out there would reach out to their local design schools and universities and create similar programs. It's an amazing idea.

[Chris]

I need to talk about this. I want to applaud you for this thing where if you see something, you want to try to make it a win, win situation for everybody. A more ruthless business owner would just buy the concept from the student, screw the school, take the idea and make a gazillion dollars. And then later on, that student's like, the person who designed the Nike logo or something. It kind of sucks. And what part of you, your upbringing, your moral compass that says, can we all win? We don't have to take it all. Where does that come from?

[Paul Rowan]

I think the whole business about the culture in our business was founded on this sort of principle that, yeah, we're going to support creativity as much as we possibly can within our budgets and so forth. So, like, I don't know, I think it evolved because it was part of our culture. It's not always easy, by the way, because even schools are quite bureaucratic about this kind of thing. So it's not that easy to actually make those relationships happen. But when it does happen, it's amazing if you have the right partners. So that question is a tough one to answer. Like, why we were driven that way. I think because we were in that space too, because there was such an incredible camaraderie. Like, we used to go to this New York gift show and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and exhibit with all these people that were, like minded, young, trying to show, like, advanced design, like, and really just a great culture of people. Like, from sales to designers to the exhibitors, like, such great camaraderie. And also with great support for different charities and so forth. So we came from that. It was just like part of that whole. Our Persona was good guys, you know.

[Chris]

Bad coffee, cold weather, bad coffee, but good guys.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, cold weather is the worst.

[Chris]

Yeah. Okay. You can't recall a story as a child that something happened that shaped this.

[Paul Rowan]

Idea like going back to my parenting.

[Chris]

Yeah. Or something.

[Paul Rowan]

You know, Very, very sweet dad. Very sweet, good family. Very lucky that way. And, you know, I'm sort of glad you brought that up because when we talk about productivity with people and mentoring and so forth, you know, it's not just about the work they do, but you sometimes have to go pretty deep. It's like, why were you so good at what you did? Like, what was in your background that made you so incredible? Or like, why did you have a off day with this design compared to other days? So, like, I think getting deeper, I think for the people that are doing mentor or management up there, I think it's good to go deep into some people's lives and figure out their behaviors and so forth in terms of their productivity. I always felt like I was almost a therapist in my office. Like, the designers would walk in. I used to have this chair called a Q chaise chair by Cara Machid. It's a very curvy thing that flips down from a regular chair to like a lounger. And they'd be lying there, like, was almost like, I just couch and talk to me about their lives and it would be like an amazing relationship. And I think I'm so proud when these people I worked with, like 20, 30 years ago reach out to me and ask me how I'm doing and like, what a great mentor I was to them. I mean, what a. What a great feeling when someone reaches out to you after so many years like that.

[Chris]

I think for you it seems so natural that you may or may not take it for granted that everybody must be this way. And I've talked to lots of people. It's not this way, Paul. It is not.

[Paul Rowan]

But.

[Chris]

Okay, I want to just park it there and just look at something else here. Now, I may be getting ahead of myself here because I just see you as this person who has this kind of optimism, this joy, this kind of exuberance and transparency about you that I imagine you to be like an incredibly infectious salesperson. Whether it's about an idea or your first window covering shade, I don't know. I've only met a handful of people in my life where it's like you could sell me anything. Where do I sign the check? You know, because there's this thing about you. Now, take me back to, like, when you're in those early days in the late 70s, early 80s, when you're out there selling your wares. How did it go? Were you a natural born salesperson?

[Paul Rowan]

No. I am so Shy.

[Chris]

What? Tell me about this.

[Paul Rowan]

I'm the shyest person you could ever know. Like, people used to say, oh, he's the guy that never talks. Like when I was growing up, not.

[Chris]

The guy I'm talking to today.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, I know. And I always encourage, like, if you're an industrial designer, you reason you go into that career is because you are shy. Like, they want to sit in front of their computers and they're doing their CAD work and not engage with anyone. They just want to do their design work and see it happen and turn it to somebody else. They're very, very shy. I always encourage my guys. They had to go every week in the studio and present their own ideas to shoot. And same with in the school, too. Like, when they're ready for their dues, they have to come up there and start presenting. So I think people need to be encouraged or even forced to get out of their shells like that. And that's what happened with me. And it started with, okay, you're not going to believe this, but I have a band, a blues band. I play harmonica and I sing. And this was like, when I was a teenager, I was terrified to sing and be the front man, but all my friends said to me, well, you're the only guy. I can actually sing. You have to go up there and do it. It was like I was pushed by all my, my friends and family to go up there and do something. So, like, that was the beginning of it. It's like you push, push, push yourself. It seems like I'm quite natural with you, but, like, I have to say, when you reached out and said, like, hey, get on the show. It's like terrified, I think, in you. If you talk to a lot of people that are even like incredible actors and everything, they're really nervous about, but. And they're actually shy people. So this is something. It's actually a good characteristic, but you have to overcome it somehow. Push yourself, like, somehow. And for me, it was always about the motivation, about growing the business. And then when we started to have like several hundred people working for us, it was like. And we'd have like a summer barbecue or Christmas party. I think, oh, my God, look at my responsibility for hundreds of people with families and everything. Like, I've got to keep inventing product. I have to keep this thing going to keep this thing sustainable. Right. So people did motivate me. And you've got a lot of people working for you too now.

[Chris]

Well, we have a very small team, but I know what you're Talking about I'm an introvert. I remember one time there was a holiday party and I wanted to. It was such a. Like, it was a banner year for us. Like, it's the most we have ever made. And I was feeling a very generous spirit. So we. I had to give a speech and everybody's gathered around. I don't think there were more than 20 people in this room. And I had written things on a. On a card. And my executive producer was a really extroverted guy. He's like, what are you doing? I just want to make sure I know what to say. He goes, chris, come on, you can say whatever you want, it's all right. And it's like, no, you leave me alone. I have my own process. And so I tried my best to deliver something I had to write down to room of my closest team. It's like, even then. So I can only imagine if you take that number of 20, you multiply it by some factor. That's what you're doing. You're walking around and feeling that. But I gotta get you to answer one question, because I'll ask the question, but I think you give me a different answer. The question is, if you're going way, way back and you have this idea for your very first product and you go out in there and you hit the streets and you're trying to make a sale, take me back to the very first sale. Did you get it? Did you not get it? What happened?

[Paul Rowan]

Well, it would have been the window shape product. Just, I just printed it. I'd rolled it up on the rollers. I put all the samples in the back of my car. I started driving around, like, what kind of store actually would sell this kind of thing? I didn't really go to the hardware stores because I thought they were too mass, that they wouldn't talk to me, that it was too corporate. I started looking for independent retailers and I walked in and started showing this product, but their eyes just popped. Popped. Because people, when they see innovation like that, they just start thinking about the potential. Like, how do you create value in everything that you do so that people will be so inspired? And then the biggest thrill for me also was, of course, like, it's easy to place product relatively in stores, but when a consumer walks in and actually picks up and takes money out of their wallet and pays for it, for me, that's the biggest thrill. That is the validation of everything. Because you can sell in a lot of stuff to a lot of retailers, right? They need to fill shelf space and they have all those demands. But like when a consumer actually starts putting their hard earned money out, I mean this is an amazing thing, amazing accomplishment. That's a huge motivator. And of course we were disappointed a lot of times. Like these big retailers would make you wait in their waiting room for four hours or they wouldn't even see you or they invite like they'd be so arrogant. Some of them, a lot of em are business. The ones that were really, really open minded. Like I remember when I know Bed Bath beyond is out of business right now and it's very sad. I mean I think because of the conditions today, I think maybe overgrown and all that kind of stuff. But when we, they first saw us, they had six stores in New Jersey and the owner's dad knew, knew nothing about contemporary design. They just walked in and said, we don't understand any of the stuff you're doing, but just write an order and we'll test it. And then so there were six stores and there was 60 stores and there were 600 stores and 1200. So we can track a lot of our growth to the retail side, which is the big box store. Now today of course it's a whole bunch of different conditions as we know. So. But you still have to track growth according to who's going to be able to distribute this product for you.

[Chris]

I'm going to ask you to put on your storyteller hat, to paint some details, to share some dialogues and some sensory information. I see as a shy graphic designer, traditionally trained, I have ideas for products, but I never even like went to make it and then think I'm going to just drive around and find people to sell it to because that's beyond my imagination of what I'm capable of. So when you walk into this one that says your first yes, reenact this for me because I don't even know what is the pitch. Like how do you even know who to talk to? What are you saying? Because there are people in our audience listening to this who are in a different place, who are raising hands, like, that's me, I have an idea. I made the mock up, but I can't get to step two. So if you can, this is like it's going to be an opportunity to be very instructive for them. Like here's how Paul did it gazillion years ago, but the principle should still work. Like I am assuming you'd have an appointment. You're just driving around looking for stuff, is that right?

[Paul Rowan]

That's right.

[Chris]

Okay, good. So Take me through that. Like when you walk in the store with your hand around merch or samples, what are you asking the person who greets you? What are you saying?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, I'm saying that I've got a new idea. It's never been done before. It's something your customers are going to really like. Everyone's responded well to it. Like personally with me, I think, please try it, test it. I think testing is something and just. And also having a relationship with that, if somehow you can have a relationship with that first client somehow. I think testing is a big thing today. And I love this idea with digital marketing today, how you can test like the more ideas you can get out there and test and test and test because you never know which ones are going to really take off. So I think the designers out there today seem to be stuck on just one idea. Like I had a dozen ideas, so keep the ideas flowing. You never know. Like that first idea pivoted to a lot of different ones too. And it wasn't even that successful, the first idea. So it was like get into the space somehow. But I've had people come up to me and say, I've got a new idea, I want to show it to you. We're patent pending. And then by the end of the meeting I said, well show me the product. And they say, no, we can't show it to you, it's still patent pending. I said, well, like how are you going to ever sell anything if you don't get the thing out there? So just get it out there. Overcome that fear of rejection because you're going to get rejected too many times. But then I think there's, I think it's about the strength of your product and the concept. Okay. That will overcome all the issues of rejection and so forth. And then aligning with like minded people. The store that I went to, I knew they were like minded. They had already created a collection in their store that looked like, oh yeah, this is contemporary, this is different looking, this is maybe are more artisanal. I don't know. It was not your usual a mass merchant. So I obviously were kind of aligned in terms of the, the product, you know, profile, so to speak.

[Chris]

And Today, how many SKUs are there from?

[Paul Rowan]

Oh my God, I can't even say. I mean there might be 20,000 SKUs. I don't know how many. Like it's huge. Probably too many as most companies, most companies usually do too many. That's sort of protection thing in my experience that, you know, once you get some Space in a mass merchant. And then, you know, they say, okay, we're, we're going to reset the space. Like we need more. Like you keep adding more and more skus just so. Because you want to have that kind of virtual space, I think the physical space. But then I think even with dealing with someone like Amazon, you want to have a collection of products that, you know, require like take up some space on the screen so you can get people's attention. Right? I mean, you probably know a lot more about that than I do right now.

[Chris]

I wouldn't say that. But okay, so you're in the store, I think your pitch is great. And then they're like, yes. Did you have manufacturing lined up at this point? Do you have terms and conditions worked out? Or you just like, I got an idea, I'm gonna see if I can sell it.

[Paul Rowan]

I think by that point I'd already had physical samples that we were manufacturing in our warehouse in Toronto. So it wasn't just a prototype. But later on, especially when the ad. When we started putting 3D printers in the studio, we used concept development and 3D printing models a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. Like we would go into customers that we had a great relationship with, show advanced samples, 3D printed mockups, everything because they were working further out anyways. Like they were working, you know, six months out or something. So we could show them mock ups. And particularly now, I think with digital rendering and so forth, you can. So like, why not show a lot of concepts to, to develop an idea and get them to at least hook on one of them or develop a concept. But I have to say, with someone like Kara Machid who first started showing me designs, who did the Garbo can, he started showing me designs in the 90s and like he would come with a book, like a white page book with 500 pages in it and everyone would be filled with sketches of different concepts. So this is a guy that just flowed ideas out and very quickly did renderings and he would just flash through them for me. What do you put this? What about this? What about this? So this is another way, I think just about sheer volume of creativity to somehow get into the right space. Because you don't really know exactly what's going to motivate a client. Like you don't know what they're thinking. They've already got plans to for the next year and everything. You don't really know their business completely because it's probably a secret. So like going in there with some, a lot of different concepts. That's going to really entice them. How do you inspire a customer to really have a relationship with you? You know, and later on too, it protected us too, Chris, because when the knockoffs came, the customers knew that they were going to get original fresh designs from us every quarter. And like, if they bought the knockoff, and we said, no, if you buy the knockoff, we're not going to show you that fresh freshness, that newness. So relationship building just. And protecting it with your own, like, power of, of creativity. Innovation is something that's really important.

[Chris]

I've been talking to Paul Rowan and he's the co founder of Umbra. Pretty amazing company. Fascinating story. I want to do a quick recap of what I've gotten from you so far. So here you are in the world and you see, you have this worldview of nothing's perfect. Everything needs to be tailored for individual taste. Diy. So you look out this window and you're like, something better has to be done here. And so you, you scratch your own itch, you put things together and use your own creativity and ingenuity to make something. And this is the birth of an idea, a product, maybe a company and a brand. And you take a leap of faith, you quit your job, you do this thing, you go all in on this, and what you do is, I love your pitch and I want to share it with the people in case they missed all of this. And all the brilliance that you're sharing with us is you didn't just have like a prototype, it was actually manufactured, you're ready to go, so we don't have to worry about that. You walk in, you say, and here's your pitch. I love it. I have a new idea. It's never been done before, and everyone that I've shown it to loves it. And please test it, give it a try. That's a pretty compelling thing. I mean, we love novel ideas. And then how can somebody's like, well, we're not interested new and we don't care about what people love. It's like, huh? And you go in there with that kind of confidence, knowing that this is something that's really cool. Because when you just did it for yourself, enough people saw it and said, hey, that's really cool. I want that. How do I buy that? So you're doing a little test marketing in that environment, and you're like, well, gosh, people keep saying that maybe I'm onto something here. And I love that. So scratch your own niche and get some Quick validation from people and make sure they don't blow smoke up your butt. Because sometimes friends do that to support us. But it's actually the, the most unkind thing you can do. They genuinely loved it. You did this. And then 20,000 plus SKUs later, we're here.

[Paul Rowan]

That's pretty good summary. Thank you. It sums up my life. And then along the way, there's all that relationship building everywhere. It's a relationship with your employees, relationship with the designers, relationship with vendors. I mean, our first vendor, we had to build this tool for the trash can. It was $100,000 at the time. It was impossible for us to do that. We got this. The belief of the vendor, the plastic injection molder guy, to actually say, okay, I'll build the tool for you, because he believed in us that when he showed him the concept, he said, yeah, it's worth doing because he was going to. He was going to manufacture it, but he also had to invest in it. Right. So even conceptually, when you go into with a vendor like you want, vendor support is a big thing. People always talk about like, but getting a big raise and spending all the money to do all this manufacturing or whatever, research, marketing. But like, the vendor support is so important because they're like your partner, they're like a stakeholder.

[Chris]

Well, that's rare because they don't usually do that. They want you to lay out the money. And that's why a lot of products can be made, because the tooling is so expensive. Right.

[Paul Rowan]

Well, find a vendor that's got belief in you or share the cost at least once they're invested like that, you don't think they're going to do a great job on the quality manufacturing because they've invested. I think there's ways of doing it now. Let's just say about there's a recession going on sort of now almost. I would say people would say, oh, this is the worst time to start a business, whatever. It's the best time. Because this is the time when you can go to businesses, they have capacity, their business is down, they're looking for something that's going to help their future. So I'm saying to the entrepreneurs out there, yeah, this is the time to get going, and this is the time for all companies to innovate. You know, we had an executive come to us at one of the Trade shows in 2008. It was completely empty. It was a financial crisis like you wouldn't have believed. Chris. It was scary. He said, whatever you do, don't cut Your design department. Wow. What an amazing thing to say to me. And I thought, oh, my God, you're right. We're going to keep innovating during this whole crisis and when we come out of it, we're going to be like a leader. And you know what? It's the same today. There's a big retraction going on with every manufacturer and because of the supply chain and the threat of tariffs, people have really stepped back. Like, there's going to be a big hole in product for Christmas even this year, because people have really put the brakes on. The flow of product is not something that you can just start up and start again so quickly. So, like, this is a great time to go to people with manufacturers, vendors, retailers with great ideas because they're going to want in the next two years to really come out of this really strong.

[Chris]

You've casually mentioned his name twice, Kerem Rashid, and he's an icon within the industrial design world. I think he has some nicknames, but for some reason I think of like the king of plastic. This guy has touched more products in your home than you even know. I think he's Egyptian ethnically, but he's. Is he Canadian?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Yes. And if you don't know, he's like a white and pink guy with funky glasses. He's super tall and lanky. He's been doing some social media posts, so I highly recommend you look him up. He must have been a really young man when you guys met.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, yeah, we were all young.

[Chris]

Are you the first person to discover him?

[Paul Rowan]

No, he was actually starting his career off fairly well with doing tabletop items that were really sort of curvy. There were aluminum cast items that were for tabletop and giftwear. He was starting to get some traction with that and he kept pitching me over several years like, let's work together. But then everything sort of came together together when we realized that we were making some inroads in housewares, that there wasn't a contemporary trash can on the market. They were all just rectilinear. It was like a dirty place for design. Like, why would designers focus on something like a trash can that holds all the things that you really hate? But then, you know, like, we realized that, yeah, there is room for this, to contemporize this whole idea. And then Karam came up with this beautiful curvy thing. I think it was the first injection molded product that had like this type of character to it. And we were able to even patent it with all the characteristics of it shapely oval handles, curved top, translucent plastic. And it became like a brand trademark for us, which we actually very rarely are you allowed to get trademarks for physical product. But we were able to do it with him. And, yeah, that was the launching point for a lot of different product with him. And then we did the chair called the O chair, which was the first beautiful injection molded plastic chair. I mean, these were just, you know, we haven't. You can tell by my tone of voice the passion behind this whole thing, like, oh, my God, Chris. The passion behind getting something like that done, like a very difficult, large plastic molded tool with a huge investment and to convince everyone we have to go forward with this. I mean, this requires a lot of passion.

[Chris]

There's something to unpack here because in the world of trash cans, we think of as, like, it's ugly. I don't want to deal with it. So most trash cans are very geometric. They're cylindrical or they're boxy or some rounded corner version of that. And if you're not familiar with this trash can that you guys have made, it's got like a torso, it's got, like hips or something.

[Paul Rowan]

It's.

[Chris]

It's sexy looking, it's different, it moves. There's some kind of undulation. Like when you look at the back of a Porsche, it says it's got good hips. This has got, like a good bust, I think, right. It's skinny at the bottom and it's wider at the top. It kind of comes out.

[Paul Rowan]

That's why we called it Garbo.

[Chris]

The Garbo.

[Paul Rowan]

After the famous actress.

[Chris]

Is that why you called it that?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, because it was so shapely and, like, stuck. Really? Yeah. And then came Garbino, too. Like, we had variations of it too. You know what? I guess let me just say something about that, Chris, because there was this incredible thing that happened. We got the. The. This Garbo can in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 1996. And it was like Paolo Antonelli was the curator then. It was like, I still have the letter and I look at it frequently. It was like, this 999 product is sitting right beside a Ferrari in the permanent collection. I was like, holy shit, we've done it. But we've proved that there is such a thing as democratization of design. Design doesn't have to be expensive. It was a huge turning point for us in such a validation of everything we were doing. I have to say, like, to get that kind of support from these organizations and award design shows and Everything is really kind of important for everyone, the whole team. Right. It just validates everything that you're trying to do. Well, I'm sure you're involved in a lot of different design competitions too for.

[Chris]

Your work back in the day. Yes, for sure. So you said something earlier about it's one thing to get a retailer to out try it, but it's another thing that's like the moment of truth, if you will, is when someone spends their hard earned money and says, I want this in my home. What was the reception like on the retail level when this thing actually was in stores? How did it do out of the gate?

[Paul Rowan]

You know what, this is a good story because the first version we did was quite a large one. It was like, I think it was about 2ft tall. We thought it was going to be like a big office camp, like every. Everyone would just throw their recycling in it or whatever and it would be a big receptacle or people be. It was multi functional because you could put ice in it, you could put like your beers in and everything. And it did pretty well. We sold several hundred thousand. It wasn't a bad product. But then we realized that if we scaled it down so that it would fit into your, into your bathroom, for example, where there was a lot of need for this kind of thing to beautify this type of product, if we scaled it down, like what would happen? So we did invest in a smaller size and we went from like 300,000 pieces to 10 million. So this is an interesting thing. You don't, even though you're confident about what you're doing and you're moving forward in a great way, you don't know, we don't know about like going to happen in the marketplace, but to have the courage to pivot and to reinvest to figure it out because you know you have something, but it's just not there yet. I mean that was a huge turning point. You can imagine how financially sustainable we came after that. When we did that one, it was like we had three, I think at one point we had three or four molds running simultaneously in different countries for that product. And one thing about mold, I should say molding in that whole style of that manufacturing model is that I got this awareness about like putting the value, the design, the thoughtfulness into the tool is something that's so important because what you're going to do is like that value is just going to explode into like thousands of pieces. So like you see people carelessly making these tools and coming up with this crap and injection molding, because it's injection molding that doesn't make the value low, putting that work into it will. Will turn into, like, exponential financial sustainability. It's unbelievable. And you can be so proud of every piece.

[Chris]

Yeah, you mentioned that before, like, the democratization of good design. It's not that design has to be expensive. It's actually ugly. Design costs way more than good design. You invest that time and energy and creativity, and then the manufacturing process is what it is. Who came with observation, like, hey, guys, I think this might not be the right size. What if we scaled it down a little bit? So people put in the bathroom, because I had one in my bathroom for. For a period of time.

[Paul Rowan]

We have a lot of product meetings and team meetings with various people, product managers, sales managers. I have a lot of respect for the sales team about bringing concept ideas to the table. I mean, we have also product managers that are looking at this whole sort of landscape of what our competitors are doing and what's happening in the market. So, like, maybe it was identified that, hey, like, you know what? We didn't do the right size. We should have done about, like a path size. It is a sort of a little bit embarrassing, that story, because we look like we're heroes in design. But, like, this is what it took, you know, it took us to through that. And maybe the scale of that thing was the one that got the attention of the curator of Museum Modern Art. Right. Like, maybe you have to do bigger things. Like when we did the chair, it wasn't just about creating a product that was going to be really successful, but, like, the scale of a chair gives you that credibility in the market place that, wow, those guys are really serious. Like, it's different than making like a set of bath accessories or some little objects, little artifacts, things. Like, you're not taking that seriously. The people that will write about it, review it in the press, are not going to review bath accessories. They're going to review a chair for sure. So the critics. To get something in front of the critics or the reviewers or the press is really important too. Sometimes you have to do bigger scale things.

[Chris]

So somebody on the sales team said, hey, Paul, maybe we got the wrong size. And you're like, well, let's look at that. And then you guys go do this. And it winds up being a gigantic hit.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Ballpark to date, how many gazillion dollars of sales is that in terms of product sales for that? One can.

[Paul Rowan]

Well, you guys, I don't have my calculator in front of me. But yeah, it was a lot like.

[Chris]

What do you think it is?

[Paul Rowan]

Like what?

[Chris]

We won't hold you to this. We won't. Nobody's going to quote you, but I.

[Paul Rowan]

Don'T know if it was 10 million pieces. I mean, at retail level, if it was like, let's say six bucks. So do the math.

[Chris]

So you think in excess of $60 million in retail? Yeah, it's got to be, right? I think it was pretty ubiquitous at a point.

[Paul Rowan]

Isn't that crazy? Yes, I know. It's like a dream come true really, that you have. That brings me to another subject is that like when you talk about brand related to the strength of product. I just was looking at this timeline of defense, different products that we've done over the years. And it always took one product to push us over the top. Like during that year, like, we could do all the experimentation we wanted and fool around all we wanted with like really unique, interesting things. And something had to fall out in or rise to the top out of all those products that would really drive profitability. So like, we were willing to spend a lot of money on R and D and do a lot of different experimentation, but it was still real wide on one product to rise up and really excel. And like when you look at our success, there's always been every couple years something that pushes over the top. And I would say, like, not enough people in our space think about like how to drive really hot product somehow figure it out. I don't know. I'm not sure about the formula, but it's certainly knowing about. I have to say that I attended every trade show in the world at one point. Every single one. I looked at every single product that was available. I can say this, every single product that was available in the world to figure out where the niche was, where I had to go, you know, like, I don't rely on. On market studies only or research, but like, as a foundation, I think that's really important. So like, if I was like a young designer out there or a startup company, I would know everything about everything there is in my space and then figure out where we're going to add value to the market.

[Chris]

Well, you've talked about a couple of the products that are super iconic. If you're a student of industrial design, you already know these things. The garble can, the O chair, there's the hub clock and the penguin soap dispenser. The soap pump.

[Paul Rowan]

I love the Penguin.

[Chris]

It's so cute. It's so freaking cute. It's adorable, right?

[Paul Rowan]

So cuteness really important, isn't it?

[Chris]

Yes. Because it kind of makes you happy. Now we can talk about that. But here's what I want to ask you. What product did you make that you're like, this is going to be a hit and just bomb. I want, I want to see what we can learn from that. Right? Tell me one. The one that kind of like what? We missed that one by a mile.

[Paul Rowan]

There's hundreds. But like, I guess. Well, we did like so many. Like once we were on a roll with the O chair and the Garbino can, we thought, okay, we're going to be the leaders in injection molded plastic, modern housewares. And we started to do a lot of different products like containers, seating and everything. I remember doing one, I thought, oh, let's do a storage device with a cap on it. We'll even, you know, buy. We'll do like blow molded like top on it. So it's got like a foam top on it. You can take the top off like an ottoman sort of with storage and everything. And I remember taking it to the show and then this Japanese customer came in and she really liked it and everything. He sat on it and the whole thing just collapse. Oh my God. Right at the show.

[Chris]

On. At the show.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, the show. It was in a private room so it wasn't in front of everybody. But it's like, oh my God. Like we really blew this one. Like this thing, plastic with this scale and everything. And the way the people on it did not work. So it's like. And we had already like tooled it everything too. So it was a huge, huge flop. So. Yeah, no, there's. And there's hundreds of those. Okay. Like it's just, you know, I would say in. If you have pure creativity without really good engineering, I think it can be a flop. That was always something that was critic we were criticized for is that you don't have engineers like, because most injection molded like facilities are engineering heavy. And that's why some of the stuff that gave us the advantage because engineers are going to do things that are stackable, moldable, but you know, basically ugly. Right. So we had that advantage of trying to innovate. But I think working closely with a. I would say an enlightened engineer would be such an advantage because you can just avoid all those problems that might happen.

[Chris]

Yeah. Okay, you're bringing up another point here. Before I kind of recap that just real quickly. When the person sat on your chair, your ottoman, which was designed to be Sat on, but for whatever reason, it wasn't strong enough and broke. Did you guys just kill it right then and there, or did you try and figure out a way to salvage this thing? Or is it. No, we're done on that one.

[Paul Rowan]

Oh, no, that was done.

[Chris]

That was done. Like, you have good evidence. It's not going to work.

[Paul Rowan]

And nobody really wanted the idea anyways. Like, it was not the right material. I mean, like, I think materiality. So you drive. You go in a direction where you think it's eat, where you have the expertise and everything, but it's not necessarily right for the market. When you think about, like, home decor, you don't want to have, like, plastic storage unit to be sitting around in your. In your decor. Like, you want to have, like, maybe wood or some other material that's a little more homey. And so I think, like, if you just get over. You know, we were obsessed with injection molding at the time. So I think that, you know, maybe that kind of obsession was a failure by trying to apply it everywhere because it was actually, you know, like, of course, you could see the attractiveness. Okay, you invest in the tool, and then you could sell thousands of them, and eventually the tools pay for. And after that, it's like gravy, right? But it doesn't always work. I mean, like, people. And also there's trend, too. Don't forget. Like, you see, you know, we're in an era where we're really, you know, people are really excited by our injection molding. But then, like, hey, like, all of a sudden, like, okay, like, wood is a really warm material and everything. Like, where's your wood products? Like, you know, so like, that requires a lot more research into different vendors that can do craft at a certain price. And if you're doing it in Asia, wood will crack and so forth. So, like, it's a lot more difficult to go into that sort of craft space and where people actually want it. So that required a lot more work and experience. Like, oh, yeah, cracking wood. Cracking, like they. The woods. The woods feels pretty good in Asia. Like, it's nice. It's the right humidity and density there. And then you bring it to the Midwest, to Minneapolis, to the Target headquarters, and, like, every sample will come crack. Okay. It's like. Like, this is something that you go through, and then you realize, okay, like, we better put a lot of quality control on it to do. We do testing for humidity and so forth and do all that kind of stuff and drying wood. And so, like, this comes with those Experience. That experience comes with a lot of failure too. Right?

[Chris]

Because couple of lessons to peel away for our audience, which is, I think with your success you can get into tunnel vision. Like we're going to be the kings of injection molded housewares. And that kind of led you to this place where like a little oversight, maybe that's not the best way to do this. The other thing is to say, look, if you want to be really innovative, you can't let the bean counters, the engineers who seem to be focused on problems, lead the design process. Sometimes you got to just go for it. It's like, yeah, okay, that one didn't work. But if we were engineer heavy or engineer led, we design ourselves into boxy things that are functional but aren't beautiful. And there's this idea that I read this quote recently, it was from Jordan Peterson, I know he's controversial to quote, but he said something like real art is a window into the transcendent. And I'm really kind of stuck on this line where the other line, he said something like art is necessary to make the suffering worthwhile. Like we can endure the suffering if there's art. And you guys are very much the people who bring art into the world to make our places, our homes, our spaces more bearable. And I think there's something to be said about that. Why people love Apple products and don't love other companies products the same way. There's this emotional attachment and I think even to the non athletes out in the world where they don't know what they're doing, but they touch it and they feel it, the materials and all the little kind of invisible decisions that are being made make them feel a certain way. And so putting it out there for all you entrepreneurs, business owners, like, let the artists play for a bit. Let them lead, keep them responsible, but let them lead. Otherwise you're going to just come up with boring, drab, uninspired products. That's my takeaway from your story there.

[Paul Rowan]

But the designers today, I would encourage more of a hybrid kind of designer too that has more engineering background. Like why not? Like part of design is a business. Okay. So unless a designer knows how to, we call it material optimization optimization. Unless they know how to do that, the product's going to be overpriced or over the wall thicknesses are going to be too thick or the connections are going to be wrong. So it has to be something like a hybrid thinker. And I think with the CAD programs that they had today, like SolidWorks is one that we Use quite frequently. Like they can become kind of the engineer, designer, hybrid sort of thing. But I think the imagination of that designer cannot be over shadowed by engineering. Okay. Like, engineering is a killer. And by the way, when we talk about, I think we, we might talk about AI a bit. But like when we have AI, you know, becoming an expert in engineering, then I think we need to get the designers more for focused on the human side of, of design.

[Chris]

I think it's a pretty good bridge. But I want to ask you this question, it's a technical question. Is the software that you use to design products now capable of running simulations based on the material, the density and gravity and the forces applied to it, where you can run sims on the machine to know it's going to work or not?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, I think there are. Like my experience was, I think in Penn State they had a mold flow analysis program that they developed. It was quite, that we used quite a bit to see how they would actually show the simulation of the product flowing through the mold to see if it actually reached the extremities of it. So this was a really valuable thing because actually all these products that you see, they're injection molded. There's certain wall thicknesses that are varying through it. You don't really notice it unless you cut it in half. But like, this is an important thing. So there's a lot of different programs available now for that kind of analysis. I think that really aids the designers still. I still encouraging everyone to still pick up a paper and pencil right now and get back to the foundational stuff about art and design. And I would encourage, like all designers moving forward, that the foundation year should be about the history of art. Just like really immerse yourself in it. Even if you want to talk about, okay, prompt engineering and all that for it, you still need to have all that history to be able to, able to talk to computer, to sort of develop your concepts.

[Chris]

Now we're in the age of AI, when every professional field is going to be threatened, replace, optimize and downsizing, all that kind of stuff, right? We can see that you can take a sketch, a really rudimentary sketch, and the machine will draw it and build it and render it just in ways that exceed human capacity to do in such a short time. What is your take on this? I just want to open it up as a very broad question.

[Paul Rowan]

Like, I have mixed feelings about it. Like on the positive side, I have a little design team that I've been working with called Archive. We use AI to do like renderings for conceptual presentations all the time. And we can do hundreds that we would only in the past, maybe could do one in the same time period. So you know all about that and everybody does out there too, right? So it's helped a lot to just present a lot of different ideas to clients in a very short period of time. As a stepping off point, my fear is that for. And there's this laziness and I think we've all felt it like using chat GBT or something to create our papers or concepts or whatever. It's just that that reliance on it is really a killer in terms of like your imagination like and we need to. The only way to face the future is through imagination. And I think the computer is only going to. I find this. There's a whole sameness about AI output is that you just. It smells right when someone sends you a document created by Chat D don't you just know? So like I almost want to do in the prompt, like make it like human, like make mistakes in it or something because you, you. It sounds too perfect and it always sounds the same. So I think there's this kind of lack of originality that's coming out of too. I've been commenting about it and getting a lot of different feedback about it. But like where's the original design? Like where's the designer in all this? Is even if AI develops a pretty brilliant idea, it's still using sources like can it name sources as primary sources? Like everything had to come from somewhere. Are people in the future not going to know anything about original design? It's bad enough now when you go into a store, like what's original? Like 99% is probably not original. So people just have a lack of understanding of what original design is. Original design is what's going to carry us forward to keep advancing. All these great things, things that have happened in the last 100 years since the Industrial revolution have always been really imaginative. Things that have changed the way we live and the way we think about things that going to happen in the future with just relying on AI, I worry about that.

[Chris]

Yeah, I think that's a reasonable concern because the mass people who are using this, they don't have the eye, the training, the history to know like good imagery or good writing or good music that's being generated. They're like, that's pretty close. And to people like you and me, I'm like no, it's not close enough. I think AI is a great tool to get you 80% of the way there and then a human for now needs to put that 20% of their own spin, take, revise it. So I love this industrial tool that we have to like generate anything I love to get to some point where we can highly art direct it so that you can do most of it. But right now we use those concepts and then we got to really get in there and, and put the things that we know are going to make it great to go from good to great. It's not that last 20%. It's a very difficult last 20% to get to.

[Paul Rowan]

But even like what are the things that we don't even, can't even imagine? Like we need humans to imagine this new way of living that we're going to be presented with. And like young people today, are they going to have that kind of encouragement to be imaginative like that, to invent to make the products and services around them more relevant to them. Is it going to come from AI or is it going to come from humans? I think it has to come from humans.

[Chris]

Yeah. Well, are you familiar with, I'm sure you are, the term general AI?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah.

[Chris]

So we thought we were closer, but then Apple said we're not close at all. It's pretty garbage, the output that we're getting. So there's some divided thoughts on this. But at some point, however long it takes, the machine will actually be smarter than any one of us and can probably exceed our capacity to imagine. Until then, we still have some time to play and figure this thing out and we'll just kind of bookmark this conversation there and see like, let's see what happens. You said early on you're retired now, you want to give back, you want to help the next generation, you're going to pay it forward. As an educator, a person who speaks, who runs workshops. Talk to me about this and where you headed with this.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, well, I want to give back, but it's very reciprocal. I think you get the same enjoyment that I do about knowledge, knowledge sharing, like and working with people. Like first of all, to actually say the things that are on your mind and to enact them this way is such a reinforcement of what the way I think. And it's like I just get excited by hearing myself talk about the things that were so successful or not so successful and so like it's a very two way benefit for the student. I mean I get a lot of respect for, I have to say in, in Central America or South America, Latin American countries. I really do get a lot of respect from the people down there. Because they do seem to have a more respect for education. And I feel that the people there, they're very family oriented and when they send their kids to school and they, and they work with their professors there, they have a lot of respect for them because they're actually saying, hey, I'm giving you my child. There's that kind of respect. And I find in North America a little bit like, critical of like teachers and professors or whatever. Like those that can do. Those that can't teach or like thing. It's like, yeah, bad attitude. We should respect the professors. We should really hold them to high esteem and. And because they're taking care of our, our children. Right. So it's like, I think that's really important. I find that in Latin America. So I. They're very receptive to me coming down there doing collaborations. I bring international speakers to the shows there. I do collaborations with the students, like first semester, like 40 students. I find a sponsor to do, let's say a furniture manufacturer down there, and then we do a project for them. So it's really. And then the idea is too, that I have. The outcomes will be shown at some sort of design show down there. So we actually have. It's not for me just to do a semester and then walk away from it, but I want to be able to show it. And then, you know, when it happens at those shows, Chris, it's so touching. Like there's. Every family member will come down to it. Like the booth will be packed with family members and supporters. Like looking at the student work, the ones that were. That won the competition, for example. It's just a wonderful, wonderful feeling when I, When I see something like that.

[Chris]

Yeah. Have you taught or done workshops in parts of Asia, like Singapore?

[Paul Rowan]

Well, I have done some online work with some various schools. One in Moscow and I think one in. In Italy. I mean, online. But I would love to. I'd love to go. Yeah, I'd love to go to Singapore to do. I mean, it'd be very. What a great advanced city, dude.

[Chris]

Yeah. Living in the future, I think.

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, I think so too.

[Chris]

So the thing I learned about Singapore is this, is that they're consistently ranked like top three in the world in terms of the education system. People there have a healthy respect for education, love education, and have the means to pay for education. So this is like a fantastic thing for me because I'm an educator, I need to get paid to. So I would strongly encourage you to purchase, perhaps do something in person. Now it's going to be Humid.

[Paul Rowan]

I'd love to teach or lecture there, for sure.

[Chris]

So, Paul, if somebody's listening to this and they want to book you to speak or teach, run a workshop or have you consult or do something like that, where can we send them?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah, go to my website, www.paulroen.ca. and also on YouTube, there's going to be my new show called Undesigned with Paul Rowan. Rowan.

[Chris]

Wonderful. That'll be on YouTube where you can check that out. And do you have an Instagram account?

[Paul Rowan]

Yeah. Paul Rowan.

[Chris]

There you go. That's probably how people can message you. Send them a dm. And if you're from Singapore or one of these other countries where you're like, we need a person like Paul and we. We need to show them a different. A better way of thinking and designing and building, I can't think of a better person to have run something because I know this is what you do and seems like you're very passionate about.

[Paul Rowan]

About it. Hello, Singapore.

[Chris]

And English is the first language, so this is very easy. Okay, Paul, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. I'm glad I got to meet the man and hear some of the stories behind the products I've seen, touched, and loved in my life. And it's just. It's a weird thing because early on in my design life, I couldn't afford nice things. And it's like, it was a delight to find cool stuff that I could actually afford that was modern, that was contemporary, and what's the end of my budget was budget friendly. So, Paul, really appreciate you.

[Paul Rowan]

Thanks so much for putting me on the show. I just love talking to you. I hope we can do it again. Sometimes.