Jeff's desk is well-known. A few years ago, the founder and CEO of a high-design shop called Ugmonk uploaded a few photos to Unsplash, and his ultra- clean setup filled with natural wood and white colors has since been viewed more than 400 million. People have been asking him for a decade where he got his cool monitor stand, even though it's just an Ikea hack. In the corner of a sun-drenched room with so many windows and trees just outside the windows that commenters sometimes ask if he lives in the jungle is the desk, which sits in the home office.
On a bright, hot day at the end of summer, he looks at that desk from the other side of his office. He is wearing jeans and a black T-shirt but he is still limping from a soccer injury. His workspace looks normal enough, a little cleaner than usual, and he just spent a few minutes making sure all the accessories were at perfect 90- degree angles. There are a few people and a lot of camera gear close by. Two of them push a dolly with a red camera on it, slowly, in the direction of the desk, as Sheldon sits down. The shot ends with a perfect picture of a man and his dog lying on a bed.
The crew is here to film a video for Ugmonk's newest project, a line of desk accessories called Gather. It is okay to be messy, but it should be easy to clean up. The designer who has young kids seems to wage a battle between his design tendencies and the realities of life. In one way, Gather is just a set of containers: a wooden pen holder, a padded stand for your phone, and a monitor stand with a dedicated slot for your papers. Gather promises to be a place for everything.
Gather is the most complex and difficult thing that he has ever done. His first attempt to make these kinds of products didn't work out. All the pieces are very high quality and very expensive. He aspires to build things similar to the classic Eames chair. Maybe they won't be heirloom desk accessories, maybe that's not even a thing, but they want to be heirloom quality. Ugmonk wants to make things that last as long as possible.
As the crew resets and Jon Rothermel watches the footage on a monitor in the hallway, the man fixated on the details. The clock on his computer is different than the clock on his wall. He is worried about the way the desk shakes when he sits down, the way the sun hits his face, and the fact that he just left. They do five takes of this shot, which will be the key to the video's success.
A grand switchover happens after a lot of close-up shots of the desk. The Ikea-hack monitor stand, the phone holder, the various bins and containers were all replaced with Gather components. The home office that started it all hasn't been upgraded in years, but that doesn't make it any less ceremonious. Since starting Ugmonk, his home office and desk have reflected his work. He is moving into a new era with a few new pieces.
I might be reading too much into it. I can tell you that he felt it as well. He thinks Gather is more than a bunch of desk accessories.
In 2008 he started a company. He was working full-time at a design firm in Vermont and not making much money because of the recession. He began to win T-shirt design contests hosted by companies like Threadless and Design By Humans after college. They would send you five shirts if you got $500. As he entered the working world, he realized that he was getting the short end of the stick. He says that they are making all the money by printing five, 10, 15,000 of the shirts. I have a check in my hand.
He was confident that people liked his designs and decided to sell them himself. He borrowed $2,000 from his dad, set up a store on the Big Cartel platform, drew up some new designs in his trademark minimalist style, printed them onto 200 American Apparel T-shirts, and began posting his stuff in forums and online. He didn't want to call his shop "Ugmonk" because he didn't want people to think it was "Jeff's T-Shirt Designs." Most of the shipping was done by his wife and he and his parents lived in the basement.
He decided to design a product from scratch. He wanted a place to put his phone, a place to put his pens, and a place to keep his organizing tools. He created a small, modular set called Gather and launched a campaign on the crowd-sourced website. The campaign ended up with $430,960, which was less than the $18,000 that was hoped for. He says that the producers of the Shark Tank called, but he had to turn them down since he hadn't actually made the product.
This appeared to be a good problem to have at the time. It was thought that Gather could be bigger than Ugmonk and could eventually replace it. He thought Gather might go to Target. This was going to be a big deal.
In order to fill all those orders and take advantage of the interest in Gather, he turned to a company in Texas that had a factory in China. He found out how it works to make products at scales. The parts cost less than $1 but the molds cost between $20,000 and $30,000. No small batches, no experiments, only huge orders. The first models that came back from China were not close to the standards of the factory in China. He gave feedback to his contact in Texas, who gave feedback to China, which resulted in more products showing up at his door. Repeated over and over. For a long period of time.
30 percent of the products he shipped to backers had to be replaced, according to a new estimate by Sheldon. He sold out his inventory but too much of it was not up to his standards. He thought about getting rid of the entire idea. He said he was disconnected from the process. I shouldn't have gone to the factory. I wasn't talking. I would wait for the prototypes to arrive at my house. He decided that he didn't want to be a Target brand if it was what it took.
It's a maxim in the tech industry that hardware is hard. There is a huge difference between making one product and 100 and an even larger one between 100 and 100,000. Every step of the way, he was taught this lesson. He learned a valuable lesson when one of his first batches of shirts came back useless. He decided the only way to get what he wanted was to exert more control over the process and aspire to making a few great things instead of countless crummy ones.
It was more difficult than it sounded. He decided to think smaller and more locally with his next product, a paper-based productivity system calledAnalog. He contracted with a printer in Indiana so that he could work domestically. That didn't happen. Quality was hurt by too many orders. He kept a few of the failures as a reminder of how things work, but he threw away most of what was produced. Through a friend, he was connected to a woodworker in Pennsylvania who started his own business after working for his father for many years. They got us connected to the Amish and Mennonite communities after bailing us out of theAnalogKickback.
Hardware is difficult in the tech industry.
About 80 percent of Ugmonk's sales are accounted for by analog. He continued to think about Gather. He had a lot of ideas for new components. Jack Marple, an industrial designer, agreed to help him figure out how to design and manufacture desk accessories in a more predictable, higher end way. They started sending 3D-printed prototypes back and forth.
They built a local supply chain made up of mostly Mennonite and Amish manufacturers who they hoped would make Gather better. It took a lot of time to get up and running. The company that mostly does metalwork for dairy farms agreed to be one of Ugmonk's suppliers after some convincing. "They're making cattle chutes and plow pieces, and I tell them it's a stand for an iPhone..." They were in when they were told about the quality and craftsmanship.
Tim Fortney, who became Ugmonk's second full-time employee earlier this year, is one of five part-time helpers that are part of the team.
The Gather system was a long time in the making.
The manufacturers were bending and powder coating the edges of the metal when they came off the laser cutter. The powder coating will stick to the edge if you don't file the edges correctly. It will accentuate small flaws. No one cares if you are cutting metal for a construction vehicle. Close up, those details matter. The next step in the process is where they file all the edges to get powder coated. It costs more to do but it is worth it for Ugmonk.
Everything is much more expensive because of this. It costs four or five times more to build the new generation of Gather this way than it does the old way, according to Sheldon. He likes watching the test runs in the factory. He likes being able to get rid of the bad eggs quickly. He says there is a level of relationship where you can't hide from someone. He says he is willing to do what it takes to make great stuff, even though he is a control freak. He says he is okay with that.
After a few hours of shooting, the crew mimics their opening shot, a slow roll toward the desk, with the full line of Gather accessories now in place. They relocated to Ugmonk's new headquarters because they were satisfied they had gotten it right.
The backroom of the building has been the site of two separate office sets being built. There is a full suite of black Gather gear in the corner. Plants spilling off of shelves, a pink iMac, and all the white Gather components can be found in the other room. Once the cables are taped to the wall and table legs, both are camera ready. Accepting untidiness is part of the point. He can only take so little.
The purpose of these setup is to show how Gather can be used by everyone. It drives him crazy that people are content to put up with a bad computer stand or a stack of books, even if it's only for a short period of time. He says that caring about your setup is a tech- Geek thing. He wants the space to be a place of design and innovation.
It's a techie thing to care about your setup.
They are still not done after a day and a half. The Ugmonk team spent weeks on every other detail of the launch. They oversaw a test run of 30 full Gather sets in both colors to see how things come off the manufacturing line. There are some small defects that can be fixed quickly. They look at the photos, debate the slogans, and figure out the prices. At the last moment, the project needs to be approved by the crowd funding platform, but luckily that goes well.
The goal is $12,500, which will be achieved on October 18. It reached $80,000 by the end of its first day. When he picked a low number, he was aware that this would happen. He hopes for a number closer to $500,000 by the time the campaign ends in December, and if he is really dreaming, it could even hit seven figures.
It is a big dream and not sure if it will come true. The Gather laptop stand is $129, the organizers are $159 and the full 10 piece set is $779. The set will cost $1,000 when it goes on sale. It's a lot to ask for some desk accessories.
The value will be seen by people. When he announced that Ugmonk would no longer sell T-shirts, people rushed to the site to buy as many as they could. He's concerned about whether he can deliver. He wondered what would happen if we got 5000, 10,000 pieces. It would cost a lot and take a long time.
He has a decade of hard-won lessons in how the industry works and rests secure in the knowledge that it won't happen across the world. He says they can go there after looking at everyone. We open the doors and feel a lot better than the container from China.
I asked if the goal was to become a full-on furniture manufacturer, to move from desk accessories to desks and chairs and tables. He initially said yes, but then began to worry about how shipping would change his company for the worse. He thinks it would be fun to find other places where these small things could be useful. It could go on your kitchen table.
He wants to do a special edition of Gather in a bright orange and just do 100 of them. I would like to use the artists way of doing it. I can make one. He thinks making one is more enjoyable than making millions. He knows how to complete the task.
DavidPierce is a photographer for The Verge.
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