A Visit to High Point

The High Point Furniture show has now come and gone. We managed to spend only one jam packed day meeting & talking to our vendors to find any new offerings in their line of products, plus finding new vendors with products that we would like to carry on our newest website, www.patioandyards.com 

It’s always good to meet up with Chris Bruning the owner of Groovy Stuff Furniture. This year Chris was really excited about some new designs that he or rather some college design students were adding to his collection.

 We met Chris about 8 years ago at a Chicago furniture show where he was showing his collection of old teak wood farm implements that have been turned into very useable, eye catching, furniture in the style of southwestern USA.  The only catch is that all the wooden farm equipment, that Chris makes his furniture from is purchased from farms in southeast Asia that have been active for 100’s of years. He has collected a treasure trove of old wagon wheels, that were used on oxen carts, plows, benches, even old tree stumps, (make that teak wood tree stumps), that he has turned in to one-of-a-kind furniture that becomes focal point in just about any setting that they are used in.

Janice Kammler
University of Idaho
Groovystuff
Design Winner High Point April 2012

Chris told us that he had had an epiphany about two years ago concerning his Groovy stuff furniture line. He said he had designed and done just about everything he could think of with the teak wood he was bringing in from overseas, and was basically out of any new ideas. That was until he thought that maybe some younger minds of a new generation might come up with new and innovative designs. So Chris contacted some colleges that offered design courses, such as Auburn and Appalachia State. He went to their classes with the raw material (teakwood), and asked them to come up with designs of their own utilizing the material that he gave them. The results have been fantastic. Chris is now getting several other colleges to participate in his program. At the last two shows that we attended, Chris has created what he calls University Hall where he connects students with the furniture buying industry. At his very large booth, 12 students from each college have on display miniature models of their proposed designed furniture. Chris encourages people visiting his booth to vote on the designs that they like the best. The winner will then have his design go into production and sold as part of the Groovy Stuff line, with the student listed as the designer. And the best part is, that student will receive royalties for any sale of the furniture they designed for the rest of their lives!!! “Pretty freaking cool” if you were to ask me. It’s just a very innovative way of giving students an opening into the furniture industry.

Next posting, I’ll high lite some of the newer products that we discovered.

As for Sinbad, our restoration project, virtually no work was performed this past month other that some additional stripping down of some hardware. Major work won’t start until this website starts to produce some significant income as all the profits from www.PatioandYards are dedicated for this purpose. For the month of April, just $278.71 was deposited into the Sinbad fund, bringing our total to $1,014.22 available, which is not nearly enough to even think about starting work. Pat Cruse of Crusse'n Classics charges $65.00 / hour. Sinbad will need at least 3000 hours of work. He’s the best in the business, doesn’t come cheap, but when your boat is done, it will be better than the day it came down the production line. You can visit his website at http://www.crussenclassics.com/ .