The Rise and Fall of Design Within Reach. From $211 million to $4 million market cap. What happened?
At a time when most people thought that Ray Eames was Charles' brother, a company was founded upon the premise to bring good design to the hungry masses. Unfortunately, they forgot the concept of instant gratification. If only one could have left the store with a cool product to take home and place in your home that evening...
Fast Company: "Once upon a time, way back in the 1990s, America was a land of design philistines. Dwell and Domino didn't exist. On TV, people didn't trade spaces, nor did straight guys have queer eyes to help them remake their post-frat-boy apartments.
According to the genesis story of Design Within Reach, it wasn't really the people's fault. We just didn't know. The finer things in life, which the enlightened residents of Europe had come to appreciate over decades of Danish-designed, Italian-made existence, weren't available to most of us. They were cloistered in showrooms open exclusively "to the trade"; only interior designers could give us the golden keys.
Along came a San Francisco-based revolutionary named Rob Forbes. He decided to seize those keys and share them with all of us ... who had the money. (The name Design Within Reach was never meant to suggest that we'd all be able to afford the lovely things.) In 1999, he launched a low-overhead business featuring an online store, an email newsletter, and a direct-mail catalog. These were more than just sales tools -- they were the three main components of a nationwide introductory course in modernist design. He and his company became educators and tastemakers..." in depth article at Fast Company link above.
