While working for De La Espada as the Director of Technology, a colleague (Korneel Bouman, Director of Operations) and I were approached by the DLE owners with a proposal — joint ownership of a new furniture brand. Korneel and I would run the business, and DLE would manufacture the product at a factory in Portugal.
Most modern furniture brands are not accessible to people who don’t obsess over furniture or work in the design industry; non-designers care very little about quartersawn versus halfsawn, or inner joints versus glued joints. We wanted to speak to people who had a design sensibility but did not necessarily spend every waking moment reading Elle Decor or Dwell.
To that end, the brand itself was accessible. If the point of your home is to escape the crazyness of the outside world, Atlantico can help you do that. Tranquility, peacefulness, and content — these words shaped all that the brand was. All product photos looked as if they were taken in an actual home, a cup of coffee or an open newspaper sat on top of the table, etc. The retail location furthered the brand identity. We found a loft apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and designed it to look like people lived there.
Because both Korneel and I are technology-focused, we had a secret weapon called Apollo. Apollo was a suite of web-based backoffice tools we developed for DLE; we retrofitted them to match the Atlantico process. We were able to track all inbound and outbound email communication, log-ins to the press section of the public website, usage of the public website, etc. This system allowed us to identity leads by level of interest and communicate with them directly.
De La Espada purchased our stake in Atlantico, and a slightly more insider-focused version of the brand lives on.
