2016 – The Goods

5 Ways to Attract Retail Buyers to Your Brand

March 16, 2016

*Editor’s note: For many artists, the idea of approaching retail buyers can seem intimidating. We’ve tapped Emilie Shapiro, jewelry designer, instructor and author of the new book, How to Create Your Own Jewelry Line, to share some ideas that budding entrepreneurs can use to attract retail buyers to their brand.

Aquamarine Ebb & Flow Jewelry by Emilie Shapiro

1. Design a Marketable Collection

Whether you are starting from scratch or have created hundreds of pieces, making a collection is very different from designing just one piece. Designing a collection is about translating one design into many different forms. For example, when creating a jewelry collection, you should be able to translate a design for a ring into a necklace, earrings and a bracelet. Every customer will gravitate toward a certain type of piece. Some customers love rings and that is all they buy while other customers want pieces that go together. Retail buyers for a wholesale account will typically want to present the full collection so there is something for everyone.

The Uncommon Life

Uncommon Personalities: Meet Danny Bui

March 16, 2016

Danny Bui – UncommonGoods Software Developer, Technology

The Uncommon Life

Instagram Challenge: SPRING CLEANING

March 16, 2016

The next Instagram Challenge theme is Spring Cleaning. As you may have noticed, our blog just went through its own spring clean. All winter long, the blog team rolled up their sleeves and brainstormed ways to de-clutter, reorganize, and redesign The Goods. We’re still clearing some dusty corners, but we can all agree that the blog looks better than ever. We now have a clean slate to introduce you to more artists, help you discover uncommon facts, immerse yourself in creative design, and get to know the people who keep UncommonGoods going strong.

Whether it’s organizing your home for the new season, or clearing your closet for an updated wardrobe, we want to see how you’re tackling the annual clean-up!

Design

8 Spring Cleaning Tips To Clean and Organize Your Way into a Fresh Season

March 15, 2016

Woo-hoo! Warmer weather is just around the corner, meaning, well, yes, barbecues and bikinis are on the way, but also… ’tis the season for home organization and spring cleaning. ~~Fooey~~ Yay!

Looking for simple solutions for how to organize your home and keep your house clean? (Some of us believe that not cleaning is the simplest solution of all, but we really shouldn’t go there.) We’ve collected some good ideas, ranging from de-cluttering tips to a weekly cleaning schedule. These 8 steps will help you easily and effectively spring clean your way into the season. When you’re done, you can celebrate with some well-deserved cocktails or wine. (Of course, it would never, ever occur to us to suggest a bit of tippling while you’re cleaning. Nor have we ever done this ourselves!)

Shibori Doormat with Bootscrape

Maker Stories

This Just Inspiration: Meet Jolie Bouchard

March 14, 2016

Our makers never fail to motivate us, encourage our creativity, and fill us with inspiration. So, when a new design enters our assortment, we’re always excited to learn more about the people behind the product.

What gets an artist going and keeps them creating is certainly worth sharing, and every great connection starts with a simple introduction. Meet Jolie Bouchard, the artist behind our new Personalized Family Growth Chart, Personalized Constellation Growth Chart, and Personalized Solar System Wall Art.

Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge: Does Hold Music Have a History?

March 14, 2016

Anyone who has asked to speak to a human when trying to pay a phone bill or set up cable knows that being on hold can be a mentally trying task. What makes it even worse? The lilting Muzak that sounds vaguely like something your dentist played during your most recent root canal. Cue dental nightmare flashbacks.

While hold music is a fact of life now, back in 1962, Albert Levy filed a patent for that very same musical mainstay that grinds your gears today. How’d he come up with it? Albert noticed that incoming calls to businesses were often coming in faster than the switchboard operators could address them. He wanted to give callers something to pass the time, but he wasn’t sure what.

Then, Albert’s factory outside New York City had a problem with its phone service. When a loose wire touched a steel girder, the steel acted as an antenna and picked up the signal from a local radio station. The wire tapped into the audio, relaying the music to anyone who was on hold. Turns out, his customers loved it and applauded his entertaining efforts. This happy accident turned into a patent and the future of waiting to speak to your student loan officer was changed forever.

Heavy Metal Rock Band | $48.00

Maker Stories

Inside the Artist’s Studio
with Vedat Ulgen

March 10, 2016

Vedat Ulgen outside his Brooklyn studio, photos by Rachel Orlow

UncommonGoods is a place that celebrates entrepreneurs and makers and wholeheartedly embraces creativity. If you’ve spent much time shopping with us or reading our blog, you’ve seen this celebration shine through the stories we tell about our products and the designers who make them. These stories share what really makes the pieces we sell and the artists we work with unique.

While every product we sell meets standards that make it an uncommon good, every once in awhile something comes along that is truly weird. Weird in the best sense of the word: In the way that weird, new music makes you want to listen again and again. In the way that a brilliant invention makes you ponder how in the world someone actually came up with that. In the way that an eccentric person makes you want to get in touch with your own beautiful inner weirdo.

Vedat Ulgen’s Worn Sleeve Vase and Worn Jeans Stool are perfect examples of this type of “weird” design. They are totally unexpected, look one way and feel another, and are as useful as functional products as they are intriguing as art.

These designs are made from upcycled clothing, so they should be soft, right? But they have a unique texture that’s smooth and doesn’t feel anything like you’d imagine. It seems like the sleeves shouldn’t stand upright and the stools shouldn’t hold the weight of a full-grown person, but they do.

Like his products, Vedat’s studio, Thislexik, isn’t exactly what it seems. From the street, it looks like a stack of shipping containers. Get a bit closer to the five colorful containers, and it becomes clear that the stack is actually a building with a living roof and windows perfectly placed to let in enough light. Inside, Thislexik is rooted in sustainable practices, fueled by experimentation, and filled with dozens incredible designs.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Red Hook, Brooklyn studio myself recently, and as a proud proponent of the aforementioned brand of weird, I was in paradise. It’s hard to convey how inspiring this space is to someone who hasn’t been there, how cool these designs are to someone who hasn’t interacted with them, and how innovative Vedat is to someone who hasn’t met him, but I hope these photos and this interview are at least a start.

Gift Guides

Gift Lab: Are These Unbreakable Cocktail Glasses the Real Deal?

March 8, 2016

Product: Unbreakable Cocktail Glasses – Set of 6

Research:

When I first came across our new unbreakable cocktail glasses (which are advertised as chip, crack, and breakage resistant) I was pretty skeptical. Any type of drinkware, especially the lowball cocktail glass, is usually so delicate it’s almost made to be broken. Cleaning up a broken glass might not be fun, but deliberately shattering glass is pretty satisfying. Intentionally breaking something you’re not suppose to is also pretty entertaining, so I’m sure you can understand my excitement when I set out to test these indestructible drinking glasses.

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