November. Manhattan. Perched in their crow’s nest in Chinatown, a film crew for Minneapolis-based Blu Dot surveys the streets below. They relay instructions into walkie-talkies. On nearby park benches, accomplices whisper into coat sleeves in reply. The mission: to spy on some Real Good chairs.
In what Blu Dot called its “Real Good Experiment,” the furniture design firm abandoned 25 of its Real Good chairs (normally, they sell for $129) on New York City sidewalks, then watched—through stealth and hidden GPS equipment on 10 of the chairs—what happened. The inspiration came from the “curb mining” phenomenon that Blu Dot principals noticed after opening a store in SoHo in December 2008.
On garbage pickup days, says Blu Dot cofounder John Christakos, New Yorkers routinely cruise the sidewalks for free art and furniture. It’s a socially acceptable variation on shopping, he says: “You see everything from true trash to treasure.”
Christakos and his partners built their company on the “democratization of design”—that is, making good, modern design affordable. He says that made an experiment in free furniture “very fitting for our brand.”
More than giving product away, the point was to bring traffic to Blu Dot’s retail Web site and get a buzz going on social networks. Minneapolis branding and marketing firm Mono was hired to plan and carry out the Real Good Experiment and make a documentary about the chairs and their new owners. It debuted at the SoHo store in conjunction with the one-year anniversary, then was posted at bludot.com.
A chair in Brooklyn was nabbed 10 seconds after its drop-off. Another exited Central Park, then zigzagged south through Midtown Manhattan. One couple toted their chair in and out of NoHo stores through an entire afternoon of shoe shopping. The film crew was in pursuit.
“It was very Secret Service style,” says Blu Dot’s director of sales, Medora Danz. “We even used code names.”
