Former software designer designs U.S. made furniture

by Mike Kravinsky

Last week, I watched with interest a news series by my former employer ABC News called "Made in America.”  World News Tonight went to an average family's home and asked, "How many items in your home were actually made in the U.S.?”

The family chosen was sure that the items in their home were all (or mostly all) American made. They discovered exactly the opposite. When the crew removed the furniture, appliances, and household goods that were made outside of the U.S., the house was virtually empty. Just for laughs, World News Tonight made the family sleep in their empty house - on the wood floor. When they woke up the next morning, there was no coffee. The coffee maker had been removed. That showed them!

Throughout the rest of the weeklong series, ABC News replaced all the foreign made furniture (and coffee maker) with American made goods. The series included tips for buying American, cost differences, and how many jobs would be created if people made a point to look for the "Made in America" label. I don't say this too often, but the series was very inspiring.

That brings me to the reason for this article. I'm considering the purchase of a new computer desk. Figuring this was a great time to look for the “Made in America” label, I went to an office supply store. Not one desk in the store was made in the U.S., so I went online. There were some desks that were made in the U.S., but they were very expensive. Then I came across Heckler Design, a company owned by Dean Heckler, who designs and builds his desks in Phoenix, Arizona.

Heckler, I discovered, could also be described as someone who reinvented what he did for a living. He gave up a lucrative career in software development to make furniture. So I gave him a call.

For eight years, Heckler owned a firm that made specialized software and company intranet websites. Initially, he designed the software with two employees. "I would do the design work, the interaction with the clients, and I had two programmers that did the work," he says. He liked what he did and the company was successful.

Meanwhile, his interest in furniture design as a hobby emerged. When a software design job was finished, Heckler would give himself a bonus with which he would design a piece of furniture and have a local fabricator build it for him. "Just make one; just for me," he would request.

As Heckler’s software business became successful, he found himself unhappy doing more travel and less software design. "You know, you travel all week doing sales presentations... in the middle of winter and you come back and yeah­­, you made decent money that week doing the software thing, but you weren't happy. After working so long in software and seeing (that) your career is a stack of discs... your whole career boils down to the latest disc or the latest version," he says.
 
Heckler's interest in furniture design was anchored in the permanency of it. He got a lot of joy out of designing a sofa. It was something that took up space; something that people could understand. "In the eight years of software design, you can't even describe what you do to most people,” he says, “When you design a sofa, the sofa is the result and people can look at it and say, 'I like that'." That made him realize he wanted to build tangible products.

After Heckler designed and made the sofa, he wanted a desk. "The desk that I had at the time just didn't fit," he says, "I just needed a little desk, because I had become mostly digital with my work."

The desk he designed had a modern industrial look. When it was completed, he discovered that people liked it. He also noticed he hadn't seen anything else like it in the market. It became the first product Heckler designed that was worthy of being manufactured. Because of its size and functionality, he called his design “OneLessDesk.”

Heckler realized it was time. His two employees were both heading off in different directions; one to school, another to a new job. The contracts with his customers were all ending. Heckler set his customers up with new vendors and began Heckler Design.

When he finally pulled the plug on the world of software design, he lived a life of what he describes as an exercise in minimalism. "I really cut down, cut expenses and took some side jobs," he says.

Heckler then did something that small manufacturers don't do much of these days. He decided to build OneLessDesk in the U.S. rather than outsourcing to places like China. When he first built the desk, he built it for himself. Since he had found a local fabricator to build his own first desk, he stuck with that company in Tempe, Arizona. "They happened to be a good fit for building fifty," he says. The manufacturer figured out how to refine its manufacturing process to help with the cost.
 
It does cost more to build OneLessDesk in the U.S than to build it overseas; but since the company sells the desks directly to the customer online, Heckler still does well. He did check into building OneLessDesk overseas, but found that companies in China had limitations with building exactly what he wanted. The rounded corners and refined look were not easy to produce there. He remembers conversations like, "’We can't do that - do you mind if we have sharp edges?’  and I'm like no I'm not going to compromise that much."  He also discovered he would have to order fifteen hundred desks.

Another motivation for building the desk locally is that he's very finicky about how it's built. "I have to be able to get in the car, drive down there and push it and look at it and approve it," he says. Heckler believes this attention to detail helped his company grow.

He explains it simply: "Get your production quotes, put a margin on top of that, then put a web site up." As a result, says Heckler, you don't have to do more traditional furniture industry things like finding a distributor. Because of the size and the packaging, Heckler’s OneLessDesk can be shipped by FedEx.

Heckler created an intelligent strategy for selling his desk. He put up a website about it the day before the Macworld convention when the Macbook Air was introduced. "I designed (the desk) with Apple gear in mind." "(The website) got a lot of traffic on the first day," he says. Blogs that posted articles about Apple's new product also discovered and wrote about Heckler's new desk. The pre-orders started coming in. Because of the viral and social nature of getting the word out about the desk, Heckler didn't have to front much of his own money or get loans to build the desks.

Heckler does envision eventually working with distributors. He also has goals of taking sales of his desk overseas. U.S. sales would still continue to occur online. "As I move into selling some things through distributors, I have power,” he explains, “My business works without them…If they help out getting my products into Russia... great.”

Building his desks in Arizona has another more personal advantage. He realizes he's employing Americans. "I have gone and visited vendors and then had people come up to me and they find out who I am and they want to thank me…They associate their employment with my business."  He also points out a paradox to this situaton. "You don't put in an order for a while and you find that they laid off welders, they're cutting back, or they've gone from two shifts to one... You do kind of feel responsible."

I did a video several months ago called “The New Industrial Revolution,” based on an article in Wired Magazine. The article’s author Chris Anderson explains that anyone can be a manufacturer these days. The trick is having a good product. There are plenty of companies that are ready to manufacture what you envision. Dean Heckler not only reinvented what he does, but also created a very cool (to use an Apple term) design for a desk. In the process, he became happier.  "Because I wake up and I do something I like every day, I don't need to buy a fancy car,” he says, "My motivation is - can I keep doing this product design business?"

Visit Heckler Design; http://hecklerdesign.com/

photos by Tyson Crosbie