MELVILLE KIDS STUDIOS
FUN FURNITURE
Products for children always provide fun projects for us. We love the ability to be working on a technical gearbox one day and the next, working with something as fun and simplistic as this children's chair. With this particular project, there was an element of additonal fun, as we would also be working with a brand new startup to create it. There's nothing more rewarding than watching children happily playing with a product and watching a startup grow because of it.
We decided that it would be most simplistic if the product arrived at customers' doors flat-packed, both to save on shipping and packaging. We also wanted to utilize as little hardware as possible for assembly, as this would cut down majorly on cost. These ideals are what would set the tone for the entire project. The problem was, how do we make a chair strong enough that uses little to no hardware for assembly? We started coming up with concepts that would provide the solutions we were after and honed them down until we arrived at 'the one'. We eventually designed a product that allowed the customer to take the product out of the packaging and assembly it in just a few very easy steps, without the use of any hardware whatsoever.
Melville Kids Studios has a great background story. A creative stay-at-home dad had created so much goofy imagery to place in his childrens' rooms, that he started looking elsewhere for additional placement. That's when he came across an old family photo of a chair his grandfather used to make for him and his siblings. So, he built a couple of chairs for his children to use and they became a cherished piece since none of their peers had one. After some commercial market research, he thought there was room and a place in the market for a similar chair, which would include his creative imagery. He contacted us to help him create the next level of Melville Chairs to deliver to children everywhere and over the next several months, that's exactly what took place.
Melville Kids Studios also wanted a heavy focus on environmental friendliness in every way possible. It's becoming increasingly important to parents of young children that they know what materials the products they purchase for their childrens' use are made from, as well as where they come from. So, it obviously makes sense that Melville Kids Studios would be focussed on this detail and would want to capitalize on it. So, we worked with them to source a US-based sustainable wood product. Becasue of this, the Melville Chair is 100% sourced and manufactured in the US. This is something that, still to this day, is not an easy aspect to achieve within the product development industry, so all parties were particularly proud that we were able to reach this goal.
Now that the product development portion of this project has been completed, the chair is being manufactured and shipped out of Fargo, ND. The company remains small and has big plans to come out with a childrens' toy chest, as well as a childrens' table. The company also creates artistic vinyl wall decals and window stickers to match the designs utilized in their chairs. We hope their unique vision continues to help them grow, bringing creativity to childrens' rooms and spaces across the nation. Working with kids is a great way to feel like you're never actually working and it also helps to keep you feeling young, so we hope to work with many more companies who keep children as their focus.
