CucumberLab
Owners: Ben Blanc, Andrew Reed
Type of business: Consulting and
product design
Location: 250 Esten Ave., Pawtucket
Employees: 2
Year established: 2004
Annual Sales: WND
Whether it’s a chrome coffee table with detachable magnetic flowers that can stand vertically on the table top, or a phonograph/liquor cabinet with MP3, CD and record-player capabilities, the guys at CucumberLab come up with ideas as fresh as their garden-inspired name.
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Ben Blanc, 27, and Andrew Reed, 26, started collaborating while they were students at the Rhode Island School of Design, from which they graduated in 2004 with master of fine arts degrees in furniture design.
The thought when they finished school was that “maybe we could keep” designing and manufacturing furniture together, Reed said. Given Blanc’s concentration in creating large wooden sculptures and Reed’s interest in combining electrical components into furniture pieces, the two felt their different styles could complement one another in the marketplace.
The result is pieces such as the CL Sound Machine, a new take on the phonograph, which combines Blanc’s sculptural ideas with Reed’s electrical ones. The Sound Machine has won worldwide recognition, with reviews in about 15 magazines, in Russia, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Romania, China, Korea, Australia and the United States.
Some of the recognition came from exhibiting at the juried Milan International Furniture Fair in Italy, Reed said. Attending the show also helped the designers develop a full line of work and a portfolio that will help them land future contracts.
The CL Sound Machine was recently filmed for the HGTV show “I Want That: Tech Toys,” for an episode airing next month.
“The phonograph has been marketing for us,” Blanc said. They’ve sold four of the $10,000 to $14,000 machines, created in their studio in Pawtucket.
“It’s been like free advertising,” Reed said. “It brings people to our site.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s been smooth sailing since the RISD duo started the design firm.
“We’ve been rejected so much in the past two years,” Blanc said. “We’ve heard ‘no’ a lot.”
Besides designing their own line of products, which they either fabricate themselves or contract to have a third party produce, Blanc and Reed also sell some designs to companies that manufacture and distribute them.
Getting a distributor to purchase one of their designs can require a big investment in time. For example, Blanc and Reed said they have called one company every three weeks for the last two years, and still no meeting. That doesn’t discourage them, Blanc said, because being persistent usually pays off.
Reed said they’ve tried to map out a plan of where they want to be in a year, but it never works out that way. Whenever something comes up, something else is pushed to the back burner.
For example, he said, while designing kitchen products for one company, they might have to push back plans for designing another line of products.
They currently take phone orders for the 18 products on their Web site, CucumberLabs.com, and are hoping to install online ordering within the next few weeks, Blanc said. And stores such as risd/works, in Providence, sell CucumberLab’s fashion rings and decorative roosters.
But the challenges are still legion. Finding companies to work with CucumberLab – especially to manufacture their larger and more complex items – continues to be difficult. Many companies, Reed and Blanc noted, don’t want to take a chance on a startup.
Blanc said they decided to stay in the Ocean State because they were comfortable with the area. Plus, they could find studio space at reasonable rates, yet within hours of New York City.
Both are originally from Illinois. Blanc said they strive to instill a Midwestern feel in some of their products, such as the “urban farmer” stool that looks like a cube-shaped bale of hay.
“It hints at a slower pace of life,” Reed said. “It gives people something that has more meaning.”
Blanc said their products are about “putting a story” into inanimate objects. “Putting the life back into them.”
For example, the duo has designed a vase with a neck that curves downward, a lamp with an upside-down cake pan as the shade, and a “butler box” that holds an umbrella and has bristles at its base for cleaning the bottom of shoes.
“We didn’t know this was what we were going to do,” Blanc said of their now full-time joint endeavor. “We were just going to collaborate a few nights per week.”
