Sustainability, design, and the future of work are no longer separate conversations. They're deeply connected. Today, we're focusing on design, not just how things look, but how they work, how they're made, and the responsibility designers and manufacturers carry as we think about the future of work.

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Sid: 

Welcome back, or welcome to the Trend Report, your inside look at the people, products, and ideas shaping the future of workplace design. I'm your host, Sid Meadows, and I'm glad that you've joined me for today's conversation. And I'm excited to welcome our guest today, Todd Bracher, the creative director at Humanscale, and a globally recognized designer whose career spans from industrial design, furniture design, and what he calls contextual design, a way of integrating business, sustainability, and human needs into every product decision. Todd has spent more than two decades designing products that sit at the intersection of human experience, business outcomes, and environmental responsibility. From Denmark to New York to the contract furniture world, his work challenges us to rethink what good design really means.

Sid: 

Well, I'm glad you're here. We got connected through a PR firm and never had the opportunity to meet before. And then we had a really great call together. And I'm excited to share a little bit about your journey and what you do for our industry. And let's just kick off today talking about Europe. Like you've been in the industry or in design for around 26 years, and you started like working in Denmark. So tell us a little bit about the impact that European design, European architecture has had on you and your career.

Todd: 

Well, it's a great question. It is a different continent, literally, when it comes to design. Meanwhile, I'll say, well, we have, you know, Apple computers and Nike and IBM, and it's like amazing, you know. And uh so I think we're just even Coca-Cola, right? Incredible design brand. And they're very just different approaches. And it's kind of almost a boutique in Europe. It becomes more personal. But the big difference I've found between, let's say, the contract furniture folks is um it tends to be uh an owner or a family and then Europe. And it tends to be uh a decision maker who understands design and is like that's your culture. Right. And uh so you're in a room with them, they say it should be green, should be this tall, whatever it is you decide on, and it's done. Whereas here in the US, you tend to be in rooms with folks uh that were selling washing machines last month, now they're selling furniture. Uh there's not a deep cultural understanding of what we're trying to do. It's obviously very financially driven. So it's a different set of parameters. I think they're valid. It doesn't make one better than the other, but I think that's really where the difference comes in, is that a different sort of shuffling of the prioritization.

Sid:  

So you hit on something that I think is really important and something that I think we all know, but maybe we don't really realize it, which is European companies in our world are all relatively small, family-owned, sometimes second, third generation, and the family is actively involved. Not that we don't have that in the United States, but it's really kind of flipped the opposite. Our world in the U.S. is predominantly dominated by major multi-billion dollar brands. And the smaller brands play a major role here, but in Europe, it's flipped. The major brands are, let's call them the minority over there, where that market is dominated by small family-owned businesses. And I personally love that.

Todd:  

Me as well. I think there's also it's relative to the consumer market, or we'll call it the the R the A and D world or this commercial world. Uh, the scale is much bigger. And I think these smaller companies are really built at scale to serve their customers, which are medium to small, right? So it's mostly craft work, it's workshops, uh, it's not huge industrialization. There's not a lot of tooling. So I think that's one of the reasons why the European companies tend to be a little bit smaller, more craft-oriented. Yep. And where the American ones should be more uh high volume, high scale.

Sid:  

Yeah, and I think the word that you hit on there that really sticks with me is craftsmanship. Like the products you see come out of Europe, definitely you know the craftsmanship that is behind them. So let's talk about how you got there and a little bit of your journey into this crazy industry. So, how did you actually get to Denmark first?

Todd: 

Yeah, it it it is a crazy industry. And and I got there from studying industrial design in New York and uh thinking I have a real deep passion for drawing and illustration and uh at the same time science and physics. And somehow along the way, I discovered what was called industrial design uh in the 1990s, which of course has been around for quite some time, but it wasn't as popular as it is today. So I decided to take a chance and I ended up finding out what industrial design was, trial by fire, I guess. And which was very interesting. I finished design school and it changed immediately what my understanding was. So I ended up working for a firm in New York City, a young uh as a young designer and designing a very consumer product, which by the way is industrial design. And I didn't really expect that. I thought it was more poetic, more human size, more sculptural, which I was wrong. It was it was really this kind of hardcore uh I made spice racks, I made barbecue tools.

Sid: 

That's sexy business right there, spice rack and barbecue. You know, just as I mean somebody that barbecues, like I love my barbecue tools, so I get it.

Todd:

I mean, it can be for a lot of folks, but that's not as a young designer with big ambitions. So I discovered this idea of furniture, which was a sort of offshoot of industrial design. And I thought this is interesting, and it led me to discovering uh Paul Carol home and uh Arnie Jakobson and the grades of Scandinavian design. I had a colleague of mine at the time, professor, had said you should go over to Denmark, you should study this, you should really pay attention. And uh I said, I can't afford to do this. I think it's expensive, and how's this gonna work? And uh that's when I wanted to develop Fulbright. And I was uh fortunate enough to to pick up a grant to head over to Denmark to start my journey there.

Sid:  

That's great. And how long were you actually in Denmark?

Todd: 

Uh a total of 10 years in Europe, but uh just two years or so in Denmark before I moved to Milan. Yeah.

Sid: 

So when you think about your journey as a product designer, what was the, if you could name one or two things, like what were the top impacts that Europe actually had on the way you design products today?

Todd: 

It's a great question because it definitely influences how I approach my design today. There's no doubt. I think you could have it gave me a point of view, it helped me build a point of view, or you could say I would have built it a point of view, no matter where you were, based up based on the fact I was in my twenties, sure, early 30s. So it gives you that's the time you're doing it. But it gave me access to the factories. And since it's that lower scale, smaller scale craft, yep, it enabled me, I would visit facilities, uh, I would work with the craftspeople. I really learned hands-on how things are made and specifically furniture size. And uh, so when it came back to the US, you're detached from it. And my designers' friends here didn't understand manufacturing because you send drawings and off it goes to China or wherever. Sure. And uh so that gap gave you a huge advantage in terms of really resonating, I think, with design and the market here.

Sid: 

Oh, that's great. So it's always interesting to hear the perspectives of people that design the products that we sell. Because we sit on the furniture side. And I say we're talking about the audience too. We typically sit on the furniture side. So it's always great to get insights about what's influenced you, what the impact of this was. But, you know, you talked about contextual design in one of our pre-calls. So describe what contextual design really is and what it means to you.

Todd:  

This might sound a little uh funny to me because I was thinking, how do I explain this to folks? Because it's very clear in my head. And I have 10 versions of it, but I tried to really simplify it. Actually, quite recently, I said uh your hero is form, false, function, which I completely agree. But uh I often ask, well, then where does the function come from? So I sort of did the new equation, form, false, function, function false context. And uh so when I consider a tree, you know, the tree is, in my opinion, since it's a natural solution, it's perfectly solving its situation, right? It knows how much sunlight it's responding to, it's sunlight, uh, rainfall, and based on species, climate, you you name it, right? The tree is formed by its effect, effectively the environment. Yep. And I call that context. And without the environment, the tree doesn't really know what it needs to be. And you could change the context, move this uh context to South America, and you'll get a different tree. And uh and I think that's effectively what I mean by the context. So we really work to define and illustrate all the must-haves and all the governors that will inform, therefore, what the solution needs to be. That's more important to you than actually making the solution.

Sid: 

So let's I want to restate what you said, and I still make sure I say this correctly. Form follows function, function follows context. Did I say that correctly? And then your example was the tree, which I think is a great example. It's there for a reason and it does something for purpose, which the way that I would interpret that is our products need to serve a very unique purpose and do something that it's meant to do inside of the workplace, whether it's productivity or collaboration or wellness, whatever it might be, that the context of the product should fit the function of the space.

Todd:  

You got it. And one layer that that gets mistaken or gets left out, in my opinion, is it not only has to fit the context of where it's going to go, but it has to fit the context of the company. So there's sort of three layers to this, right? There's the human use, the user, there's the environmental context, let's say the workplace, and then there's the business or the company because they have certain supply chain, they have certain limitations, investment capacity, timelines, you name it, right? There's competitors, there's a whole host of things. So when you sort of throw all that stuff into the sort of the bin there or the box and shake it up, like what you get out should be a contextual-based design.

Sid: 

Yeah. And this makes me think about, and we've often talked about this on the show with other product designers that we've interviewed, is how long it actually takes to bring a product to market from the time it the concept of it enters your head as the product designer to the time that it can be bought by an end user can be 18 to 24 to 36 months, which is really a long time in that process. Is there a way, or is it even conceivable or necessary to try to shorten that cycle time?

Todd: 

Depends on what it is. The slowest part is, well, there's a lot of slowest parts, I guess. But uh I we we try to make the slowest part really the it's the very beginning and it's the very end. So actually, Neil's Diffrient, uh, he had a wonderful quote that said, uh, 90% of the work is 10% of the work, and 10% of the work is the 90%, and uh, which meaning it's easy to get 90% finished, and it's really hard to do that last 10%. And uh I think it's 100% right. So it's almost like a fractal, right? The more you look into it, the more complex it is, and it keeps going. So uh it's quite hard to nail, we'll call it a solution right out of the gate. Sure. So you really have to study, work a lot, understand what I call the context. Uh, there's a lot of information. So I almost do the 90% of the work in Microsoft Word. It's like writing, it's thinking, it's understanding. And when you fully understand it, the design is almost instant. Uh, and then the hard part is now realizing it.

Sid:  

So I think this is interesting because getting it across the finish line is what you're saying is the hardest part. So when you actually see the prototypes of the chair, or the chair, I'm just using chair as an example, or the desk or the file cabinet, storage, you know, whatever it is, you really start to look into all the little details. Does this line up the way that I envisioned it? Does it sit the way that I thought it would sit? Does it upholster the way that I thought it would upholster, whatever it might be? And that's where you really start to critique it and make changes of well, this seam doesn't work right or doesn't fall where I thought it would fall. Can the factory change it? So then you're working across multiple teams in order to get the final 10% of it done so that it can get out to marketplace.

Todd: 

It's like a building. You know, you you know, New York City at least you see a hole in the ground for like two years, and then it takes three weeks, and bang, there's a building. And uh what's happening, right? It's you're all laying all the foundation, the laying the pipes, I used to call it. Uh you do all this thinking and groundwork. And then the building part is actually not the hard if you've done the homework properly. And like once you're in the sort of execution phase, that's not the time. The question uh should you have arms or no arms? You know, that's too late. So you really need to shake that all out early, and that's really where the hard part is. So you have the front end of thinking. The middle part is sort of where you're aligned, so that's kind of easy. And then the hard part is actually now aligning up all the sourcing, the vendors, the manufacturing, everybody to do it. Uh yeah.

Sid: 

So it's lots of things to think about there when you think about bringing it, because you just mentioned a few that we don't always think about, like the manufacturing where the where the raw materials come from, how's it going to ship? What's the packaging look like? What's the environmental impact of those things? Like all these things that we think about as an industry. So you actually have a real live example of this because what you talked about was the contextual design was the blend of human, environmental, and the business needs. And you've been at human scale now for quite some time, and you've designed several of their products. But the example that you've talked about is the path chair. So tell us a little bit about the story of the development of the path chair.

Todd:  

Path chair is a great example. So path is a task chair, and there's a lot of versions of the story I can take you down. But if we're talking specifically to contextual design or context-based design, I don't care what the thing looks like. It's sort of funny to say that as a designer. Like I don't, I I say that, but I but I do, but I don't. Right. So of course I care what it looks like, but if I follow the math, it'll look beautiful. The tree, I don't think you question it's got too many leaves or it's too tall, or uh, I think you just say it's it makes sense because it makes sense for what it's solving for. So the path chair, we've done what called math, and it just looks the way it needs to look. So we set in the parameters in the context, we knew we wanted it to be the world's most sustainable chair. And we can get into why, because you know there's a lot of uh it's a it's a huge burden on our environment, task chairs specifically. So uh we needed to make the world's most sustainable chair. We needed to suit 99% of everyone that sits in it, if not 100%. I'm nothing's 100, so I always say 99% with the sustainability, very easy to transport. So we needed to pack down, very easy to assemble, and needed to, of course, be comfortable. We wanted it to have different color choices for people so that they can really design it for their environment. Um, I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. Yep. And what we resulted with was a solution that picks all of the boxes and uh it ships in what I call a pizza box, which isn't true, but it's the idea that it is uh it ships in one-third size of a box. The base is flat because we can stack many, many for shipping, and uh it assembles in three components the base, the the cylinder, and the seat, the upper bed. So it's very, very easy to assemble. It takes two seconds. We used a 3D knit to get rid of the traditional meshes or textile. There's a lot of waste associated. And we therefore using knit, we're able to knit in lumbar support and other features that you need. So you start thinking through all these touch points that we're able to solve a product that really uh I mean it it delivers on the demand. It's it's what we call uh net positive, right? Actually, the living the living product challenge calls it net positive, meaning it actually cleans up the environment. Uh it doesn't have any negative impact on the world at all. In fact, it cleans the environment more than it's like. Right.

Sid:  

I want to ask you about that. But before I do, you said how it ships in a pizza box, and you were jokingly talking about it. But in our side of the world, we call that flat packed. And you said three primary components that put it together, and every salesperson and every installer is going to challenge you on the two seconds to put it together. So it's probably a little bit longer than that because I've been sure they're hearing two seconds, like, yeah, that's not possible, but nothing goes together that fast.

Todd:  

But I guarantee you it's under 10. That's what's cool. Yeah, it might even be seven. So uh you you basically put a base on the floor, you put on the seat, and then you'd pop on the the back. Okay, and set all right, which which is important for the facilities folks, right? You have millions of these chairs rolling around, like you need to have these things quick and easy.

Sid: 

So, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that was a challenge. If you're installing, if you're installing the path chair, I need you to take a video and send it to me, and I'll make sure that Todd gets a copy of it.

Todd:  

There you go.

Sid:  

That's great. But you know, I could be the guinea pig if you want to send me one, Todd. I'll try it out because I won't reveal the chair that I'm sitting in, but I'm a fan of the chair that I'm sitting in. So but uh so go back and tell us what is you said net positive, and it actually cleans the air, cleans the environment. What does that actually mean?

Todd: 

Right. So this is a huge credit to human scale. Uh I know designers' names tend to be on these products and a lot of pads on the back, you know, but there's 10 million people involved that actually are much smarter than the designer in the room. Uh so you've got uh human scale, there's an incredible sustainability team and engineering team. And you know, people ask me, uh, how long did it take to make the bath chair? And I say, oh, you know, about five years. It's a lot of work, a lot of sourcing and this. And then I hesitate and I said, you know what? Actually, it took probably 25 years. And meaning it took that long for human scale to develop relationships, to push the industry to a place where there are suppliers that now have materials that are available, help co-develop materials. There's a whole journey that they've been on that I happen to get to piggyback on to do this chair together. And so what they mean by it is they sourced uh ocean-bound plastic. So there's the notion that there's a lot of plastic waste that's in waterways on their way to the ocean. Yep. Uh, and we worked with a company that Patagonia works with that collects material from the ocean and from the waterways. Uh, and that goes into the yarns and into the plastic of our chairs. Uh, we have also uh it's all made out of recycled aluminum. There's no chrome or any kind of metal that has any kind of chromium in it at all. Uh, so we remove that from any of the factories or the supply chain. Uh, we're using knit so there's no cutoff, cut and sew waste. And the knit itself is made from each chair uses 52 plastic bottles in the in the yarn. Uh so you start to add up all this impact these decisions have, the fact that it ships in almost a pizza box, you have uh wood nets out as a chair that actually leaves the world better off, which is for us uh you know an incredible win.

Sid:  

That's awesome. And the perspective of the pizza box is when you think about chairs and how they're packaged, you can't get a lot of chairs in a truck load of leaving the factory coming to a dealer in Texas. You just can't get a lot. But being flat packed, you immensely increase the density of the number of chairs that are actually on that truck, but then it's also easier to ship if you're shipping them via UPS or FedEx or something like that. So it takes up less space that way. So I mean, I think that's a brilliant way to think about designing the product so that it can be in a smaller box, saves cardboard, less cardboard to recycle. I mean, there's so many benefits there.

Todd: 

I mean, here's another contextual design point is the arms are we made we just found the perfect balance. You need arms to be a certain width for the human body. There's no C and the C needs to be a certain width for the human body. But we've designed it in such a way where you can the back comes off the chair when it chips and it tucks right over the seat. So the arms are kind of nose down over the seat. And what that does is enables just that, takes half of the package down. And then the base is flat, and that takes it again another third. So we've that's how we were able to pack this down. So it's not because it looks good that we made this decision. It was to get it to pack because environmentally you're not shipping air everywhere, and that's uh in in an empty half-empty box, which is what the world does.

Sid: 

It's really expensive to ship air when you start to add all this stuff up, right? Regardless of where it comes from.

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Sid: 

So you're an industrial designer, you're a product designer, you're a director of creativity at human scale, you've designed a really successful chair for them. And now, yet again, you're adding to the list of things. After your name, published author. You have one book, you got another book coming out. So tell us about your books.

Todd: 

You know, I appreciate that. I have uh released my first book in uh June in 2024, uh, which was called Design in Context. And uh the subheading there is uh Framework for Strategic Differentiation. And what it is is my playbook, basically. It's how I've been servicing companies in our industry for at that time 20, 22 years. And it's a guide in a way for folks to understand how they can deploy this kind of thinking. It's written for business leaders. Of course, designers could read it, but it's really more for the business folks to understand how they could leverage design and really efficiently meet their market. Because design for me is not about making just sort of nice shapes and cool things. It really has to meet the market. And it's not rocket science. It's I think very straightforward. And I think this framework uh design context is quite clear. And then I've had this nice fortune this year. We're launching a book with Phaidon, and uh this is coming out in March 11, is the official release date, okay? 2026. And it's called Observations, Research and Design, and it's a monograph of my work. Uh at that time now 25 years in this book. 26 chapters, 25 years, and um, it's in the framework of A to Z, which is kind of fun, I guess, because I had reasonably small kids, so I still like this idea of uh alphabet book. And each chapter sort of takes a moment to explore another thought. Sometimes it's a little case study, sometimes it's about the travels I've been on, sometimes it's lessons I've learned, uh, the projects that didn't make it. And so it's been a real fun journey to kind of go through go through it all, I guess you can say, and really revisit it and condense it down into uh really the um a true monograph. So I'm really thrilled to so that's great.

Sid:  

Congratulations on being a published author. That's fantastic. So for those people that don't know, please explain what is a monograph.

Todd:  

A monograph, in my words, again, yeah. Now that I am an author, I should probably know this. It's uh in my words, it's really kind of an embodiment of yourself, right? It's really uh self-expression. Uh I guess as a biography might be if someone else wrote it. A monograph is the fact that I wrote it. And it's uh yeah. And and I think I'm I'm thrilled as the first American to be written by Phaidon uh to have a monograph uh as a designer, which I'm really thrilled to have. And and I approached it as a design project in itself. So I think it's thoughtful and considered, but there's moments in it that I think I guess when you do a monograph, you feel like it's how you would like to be remembered in a way, and uh for my family as well, not you know how my kids might read it one day. So I think it's an interesting opportunity to kind of put a bow around, you know, what what do you have you dedicated your life to?

Sid: 

So that's great. Thank you for sharing that. So I'm gonna ask you that question. How do you want to be remembered? Well, that's it. I don't know.

Todd: 

Hopefully I've got some years to think about it. Uh so I don't know. I think I I'm trying to contribute in the world that we're in. Sure. I know, you know, I had a colleague, she used to work in my studio for quite a while, and she would say something like, uh, you know, at home, this is a couple years ago. At home, my husband and I, we like turn off the water when we brush our teeth, we we we eat vegan, we recycle all the trash, you know, we're really doing everything we can. But then I come to the studio and we make that go into the world. She goes, this doesn't reconcile. She goes, This isn't the this doesn't make sense. And I'm like, well, I get it. And this is right. And this was some years back. So we recalibrated how it works. And well, we need to, you know, what can we do? We're just designers, you know, how can we help the world? And uh and then you realize, wait a second, we're the people making things. We should be making things better. And I mean, we've been in meetings where the clients are like, we don't care about sustainability at all. And uh, and it's kind of still there, by the way. It's not totally and it's heartbreaking. And then you meet a company like Human Scale that's literally leading the way. Uh, so we knew if we made this office chair, that's how we contribute to our world. And uh we're actually improving the situation by doing these collaborations. So I think that's how I like to be remembered is ways that we're we're we're doing other projects we could talk about around science too, that really helped with human health and wellness and things. So we realized I'm able to now take design to a level of helping human condition, the human health level, and the environment uh that I think I wasn't able to do 10 years ago. I see it now and now I can.

Sid: 

So that's great. I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you for letting me put you on the spot with that question. Sustainability is something we talk about a lot on the show. And it is one of the single most important, if not the most important, conversation as an industry we can be having to ensure that it's not a checkbox for us, for manufacturers, for distributors, for partners like me. We really need to truly understand this and the impact because as an industry, we use a tremendous amount of the world's natural resources. And it's incumbent upon us to help lead the way to get back and to be smart about how we're doing things. So I appreciate that leadership that you're doing there. And and a human scale, I mean, they are by far one of the forefront leaders in our industry as it relates to sustainability and designing sustainable products that also have a end-of-life purpose as well. So, I mean, that's very important. So kudos to them.

Todd:  

Well, absolutely kudos to them because at the end of the day, I'm just a designer and I can only help materialize a goal a company has. And I I can I'm happy to shout in the room and say, you guys have to do better, and I'm happy to kind of stamp my feet and say, you know, you guys need to be sustainable, but I have no power. It's the manufacturers that own the power. So it's on them to enable it. Designers can push, but they'll just change the designer if they have to. That's fine. So that's why I really give Humanscale a lot of credit. And you have companies out there, a lot of small companies, they'll do, you know, uh, we'll call it a sustainable chair, and uh and they sell five a year or so, and that's I mean, that's great, but that doesn't have any real scale, any real impact. So it's these big companies that there's a lot of inertia, and it's hard for them to shift gears or or change vendors or really take this serious because, on one hand, some of their products are terrible for the environment, so now they're making one that isn't. So that's hard for them to figure that out. So, but they have to. I think this is really the challenge of the next 10 years for these companies. Uh, otherwise, they're they're gonna die. Because I really believe it's these smaller companies will start to take their market share every day.

Sid:  

That's an interesting prediction right there. So let's thank you for sharing that, by the way, and let's talk about the future for a minute. Because in a conversation that we had, you said that you believe that the golden years of the workplace industry are still ahead of us. So, what does that mean?

Todd:  

Yeah, I think about all the time. I mean, I think about Propes and I think about uh Action Office and all this, like um, you know, the good old.

Sid:  

You dated yourself, by the way, using the term Action Office. You totally dated yourself.

Todd: 

100%. And you know, I love I love it. And I think it's made total sense. And I think we're still kind of in a version of it. You know, open plan, I get it, and it's kind of evolved in this concept of reservation and all this. I think that's structurally, it's still kind of the same, and it's just changed kind of uh its flavor. So all these years of working with contract furniture manufacturers, they have the same problem, in my opinion. Um, they often say, oh, which company, you know, not just to me, but the conversation's always around who should we buy, what what resources should we expand? And it's all this kind of consolidation of buying uh brands for distribution or design license or whatever you want to call it. So I always said, no, that you should be buying technology companies because everyone could bend metal and plywood. That's our whole industry and like sew something, you know, that's it. But everyone struggled for how to integrate technology. And Google and the like are starting to tiptoe into our space. And you see a little bit of collaborations here and there, it's starting to happen. But as technology gets fully integrated with their daily work life in the physical form, I think that's when we're really going to unlock the potential of the labor force. And uh, but until then, it's uh, you know, I don't I don't think picking sohas is the future of our workplace. And I'm not sure exactly what it is, but uh in my mind, I mean you see how rapid AI and such is evolving and it's creating and uh enabling folks to just be that much faster in the work.

Sid: 

Sure.

Todd:  

And replacing folks, clearly. But I think when I say the golden era is our golden era is in front of us, I think there's room to rethink how technology is integrated physically within the workplace that really hasn't been done before. And that means in furniture as well. Absolutely. I think the furniture will become vehicles for technology, which right now it's still a wooden board with four legs, you know. And okay, now you can sit-stand, fair enough, but it's still kind of a dumb table, right? It hasn't really evolved. Yeah.

Sid:  

I appreciate that. We sold a lot of dumb tables in our lifetime. I do, I do appreciate that. So I had a conversation not too long ago with Bryce Stuckenschneider, he's the CEO of Loftwall, and he talked about AI. And one of the things he talked about was you can easily tell when it's an AI-first company, like Google, as an example, or Microsoft laying off thousands of employees, replacing them, versus a people-first or AI-forward company. So, what I'm hearing you say is that as an industry, we should look at being a technology forward, an AI-forward industry that tries to understand how to integrate technology into our products and our environments without necessarily replacing people's jobs. Did I hear that correctly?

Todd:  

Well, I'm not so sure it's actually related to AI at all. I think it will be, but but I guess my point is every year you go to these shows around the world, Salone or Neocon, Orcatech and you see just a different shape lounge chair, you know, or another shape of the same old thing. And I guess that's what I mean. There's only so many shapes we're going to want to see over the next, you know, 30 to 50 years. It's another shape. We could make it more sustainable, but beyond that, I think we need to question why is why do we have a lounge chair at all? Why is it the shape at all? And I think that's really where the opportunity, I think, is. Uh, I think we're still rinse and repeating for a very long time. So when I say Action Office, like I think we're rinse and repeating versions of the Action Office, and we haven't really considered, or at least it hasn't met the world yet in a way that's truly rethinking this thing. You know, I I remember I have at this moment I was walking uh my my kids when they were real tiny. It sounds like walking a dog, but I was walking the shit during COVID, actually. And I was sitting there thinking, wow, you know, everything's changed. It's this hybrid work. And uh, you know, we were working on uh some office uh workplace planning projects, and I go, this is a very different situation. And then and I'm thinking, like, what can I bring to the world that's gonna help folks, let's say, get back to the office and all this sort of stuff. And it dawned on me, it doesn't matter, I think, what a company in our leader in our space or a designer has to say. I think the market will tell us. I think we need to let the market, if we listen carefully enough, the the folks will guide us into what's needed. And I think that's the bit of the gap we have today. We're sort of pushing to the market what we think makes sense. And I think that's really where the opportunity is, is to truly understand what the market needs.

Sid:  

So slow down, listen to your customers, listen to the people that occupy and own office buildings, and let them tell us what they need next.

Todd:  

I think so. But the of course, I'm sure half of the listeners just said, yeah, but they don't know what they need. And that's kind of not what I need, because I'd I'd also answer it that way. But I think what I mean by that is you test things, put things out there, find out. Like I think there's a process that it can uncover. Because you know, no one, you know, you like classic thing, no one thought they needed an iPhone, whatever that means. But it's a very logical solution in today's world, people, you can't live without it in a way.

Sid:  

Correct. We can't live without apps. Who would have thought 10 years ago there would be such a thing as apps in your phone? Everything would be in an app on your phone.

Todd: 

And then 10 years from now, there'll be no more apps. It'll just be an AI hole that you speak to and it solves everything you need. Like there'll be a new version, right? So and I think that's what I mean. It's it's it's gonna evolve, find some new ground, but furniture is still making the same old thing, just different shapes. That's kind of my my proposition here. That's actually I love that.

Sid:  

So, Todd, this has been an amazing conversation. You've shared so many insights with us. I have one last question for you. So, if you were gonna advise a furniture manufacturer today, what would you tell them to focus on first or next?

Todd: 

Right away, there's so many like uh well depends where what sector they're in, like, you know, all these like questions, but if we sort of skip over that, I think it really goes back to, and and this is one of 50, I think, sure pieces of advice, but one that sort of came up first is really specialized in in something. And I think everyone has become not everyone, but it's so much generalization going on. There's a lot of the sea of sameness, even design-wise, this kind of uh what do they call it now, Scandinavian modern, you know, this kind of it's everyone's sort of copy pasting each other. And I there's absolute room right now to just a brand to just stay in their lane, stick to their knitting, and just do one thing so well. You take like the shelving system, and uh it's been around a million years, D to Rams design, and they only have that. And oh, you could argue they have a chair, I get it, but most 99% of their business is the shelving system. Right. And forever, architects will specify that because it it makes the most sense. That's the symbol of if you know what you're doing, you buy that. And um, you could argue that it's I don't know, it doesn't date, it just lives forever. And I think that's what my my challenge to manufacturers will be to get off this 12-month cycle of something new, really zero in on your core DNA and own that DNA and don't worry about the noise of the competition. You keep going. I think that's really where I like to see it go.

Sid:  

Somebody said recently in a conversation I was having, stay great at what you're great at and really lean into that because we can be, as an industry, as manufacturers, we can be distracted by shiny objects. We can be distracted by like this hot new product over here, and everybody's introducing it. Well, let's us introduce it too. And what you're saying is that's not really the right strategy. Like stay focused on what you really do well, and then just lean into it and do more of that. Better customer service, better product, better delivery, better packaging. Just like lean into that and be the best you can be in your category.

Todd: 

That's the way I love to see it. Yeah, that's awesome.

Sid:  

Todd, thank you so much for being here today, man. I really appreciate it. It's been fascinating to learn about you and your journey, your perspectives on the industry are refreshing, especially where we're headed. So, if our community would like to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Todd: 

Oh, uh, the usual channels, my website, toddler.com and uh Instagram and LinkedIn. These are the usual spots to awesome.

Sid:  

We will drop all of those down in the show notes. Remember, if you do reach out to him, please let him know that you heard him here on the trend report, and that's why you're reaching out.

Sponsor:

We'd like to thank our community bronze sponsors, Catalyst Consulting Group, RESEAT, and Staffing Plus. And I just want to say thank you for joining us on the Trend Report today. Your inside look at the people, the products, and the ideas shaping the future of workplace design.

Outro:

I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Go out there and make today great. Take care, everyone.