A few months ago we got a visit from the incomparable Ron Fiore, Creative Director of Hickory Chair. Ron is a sort of superstar in the furniture industry, a creative genius quietly living outside of High Point, NC. It was just after this past Spring market when he came by our studio with our friend and photographer, Kenton Robertson. We were chatting about Hickory Chair and how the Suzanne Kasler line came to be and the story he told us was so interesting, we thought we’d share.

Prior to Suzanne’s line for HC, there weren’t many furniture lines rep’d by large companies that had great feminine appeal. Ron and Jay had been talking about the future of HC, and how they needed to tap into the female buyer- what did she want, what did she need, what was she looking for? Women still spend 85% of a household’s income, and while we personally see more husband-involvement in client purchasing now than ever before, it’s true that women hold the purse strings.

One night Ron had a dream, and woke up thinking “POWDER BLUE”. Powder blue, powder blue- it was just stuck in his head, this color, some kind of significance was attached to it in the dream -but he didn’t know it’s meaning.

The next day he was standing in the reception area at Hickory Chair. The door opened, and in walked this woman- precisely dressed in powder blue Prada drivers, a powder blue Prada bag, wrapped in a powder blue pashmina.

POWDER BLUE! It was Suzanne Kasler.

Suzanne had come to Hickory Chair to present a line based on her personal collection of antiques and a few custom designs she had completed for clients. Ron told us that they were so impressed with her vision, which tapped right into the need they were seeing in the marketplace at that time. Since then the Kasler line has been a complete success, starting the move toward designer lines produced and sold by Hickory Chair. We have to admit, there’s hardly a piece of her line that we couldn’t use in any of our current projects.

Here’s a pic we shot that day of Lisa & Ron (who, we’ve heard, is rarely seen sans Yankees cap). Thanks, Ron, for sharing that little bit of serendipity with us. Even in the world of design it seems there are sometimes greater forces at work!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Designer Confessions, What they said.... You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.