All Entries in the "Success Stories" Category
Art, Design, and Manufacturing Intersect in Our Backyard
New York City is often seen as one of the epicenters for the arts, but Our Backyard is quickly becoming a place where artists and entrepreneurs can find success in the intersection of art, design, and manufacturing.
Loren Barham and her husband, Aaron, moved to Rhode Island from North Carolina a year ago. A big fan of history, Loren immediately identified the 750-square-foot workshop in a historic Pawtucket mill to be the home for Loren Hope Designs. What she didn’t know was how fast her business would grow here. After a few short months in Our Backyard, they needed to double the size of their office space to keep up with orders coming in from across the country.
Loren Hope Designs, an evolving line of upscale, handcrafted jewelry, is a favorite on the fashion blog scene and has been featured in fashion magazines like Vogue, In Style, and Redbook – just to name a few.
In just the past year, their wholesale orders have jumped from 5 or 6 orders a week to a weekly average of 100 orders. Soaring demand enabled them to grow from two full-time employees to eight. Loren credits the incredible success in such a short time since the move to Rhode Island to the accessibility of materials and rich history of the jewelry industry that exists here.
“There is no place in the country to manufacture jewelry like Rhode Island,” she explains. “The accessibility to vendors and historic craftsmanship that exists here is unmatched and gives us a huge edge on competitors that are located elsewhere.”
Just ask Otto D’Ambrosio. He began carving wood at the ripe-old age of eight when his parents presented him with a block of wood for Christmas and a knife from the kitchen drawer. From that point on he was hooked. By the time he was 13, Otto was working at Mandolin Brothers and learning the craft of “turning wood into music.” In 1998, he left New York for Rhode Island to work at Guild Guitars in Westerly and expanded his knowledge in repairing, rebuilding, and crafting guitars. Three years later, Otto opened D’Ambrosio Guitars and started making fine guitars by hand.
In an old Pawtucket mill built in 1919, Otto handcrafts hollow archtop guitars and repairs priceless vintage instruments for clients across the globe. His most widely distributed instrument is an electric archtop guitar with a patented technology that provides superior feedback rejection (in other words, it prevents the ear piercing screech that occurs when an electric guitar is faced to the amplifier). The El Rey Guitar, designed for Eastman Guitars by Otto, is sold nationwide and endorsed by local performers such as Mark Cutler and Jim Robitaille.
Sketches for custom concept guitars line the old mill walls of D’Ambrosio’s finishing room. People across the country send Otto requests to bring their creative concept to life in a handmade, one-of-a-kind instrument. He is currently working on several projects, including a guitar for actor Jeff Bridges that is inspired by his charitable work with No Kid Hungry.
Custom pieces often require collaboration with other designers and artists. Fortunately for Otto he doesn’t have to look far for talent noting “that access to the craftsmanship and design expertise found in Rhode Island is a huge benefit of operating a business here.”
There is certainly a unique chemistry that exists between art, manufacturing, and design in Our Backyard. To see more success stories or to share your own story, visit www.ourbackyardri.com.
Providence’s Comeback Story
By Mayor Angel Taveras
These first two years that I have served as Mayor of Providence have been tremendously challenging for our City. Working together, we have accomplished what few believed possible.
As I delivered last year’s State of the City Address, on February 13, 2012, Providence was running out of cash, and running out of time. In the months that followed, there were some who said Providence – like some other American cities – could not avoid filing for bankruptcy.
Today it is my privilege to deliver a much more hopeful report on the State of our City: Providence is recovering. Through collaborative efforts and shared sacrifice, we have all but eliminated our City’s $110 million structural deficit, and we expect to end this year with a balanced budget. We have put Providence on a sustainable path by working together and setting aside our politics for the greater good.
We reached a landmark agreement with our city unions and our retirees to reform our City’s pension system that Moody’s Investor Service lauded as a model for other Rhode Island cities and towns. Governing magazine recently wrote that Providence has become a leader by making our retirement systems more sustainable. We worked with our major tax-exempt institutions, which have committed more than $48 million in new contributions to our City over the next 11 years. And we thank Johnson & Wales, Brown, RISD and Providence College, and Lifespan, Care New England and CharterCARE.
Our City is home to first-class research hospitals and universities and a developing Knowledge District. We have one of the largest industrial deep-water ports in the Northeast. We have one of most vibrant artistic communities in America. Small businesses act as anchors in every neighborhood of our City. Our young and diverse workforce is eager for training and opportunity.
We are already seeing signs of economic recovery. Projects representing tens of millions of dollars are underway in the heart of our Capital City, including the revival of the historic Arcade – America’s first indoor mall – into a mixed-use development of retail shops and micro-lofts; a project transforming the former Providence Gas buildings into residences; Johnson & Wales University’s construction of a new parking garage and physician assistant building; and the creation of six new retail shops on the ground floor of the Biltmore Garage on Washington Street.
Last Wednesday, I attended events to celebrate the opening of Andy, Jr.’s, an Italian restaurant in the heart of Providence’s historic Federal Hill; Ellie’s, a Parisian-style bakery that recently opened its doors at the Biltmore Garage; Ameriprise Financial’s new offices downtown; Citizens Bank’s grant to help revitalize our City’s Olneyville neighborhood; and a topping-off ceremony for Brown University’s new, state-of-the-art environmental research and teaching facility.
Providence is recovering.
At the same time, we have not lost our focus on improving public education and strengthening our neighborhoods. We are working to make Providence the best urban school district in America. And we have put into effect measures to protect against the blight of abandoned and neglected properties in our neighborhoods hit hardest by foreclosure.
Last year, we were selected as a finalist by Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge for our proposal to boost education outcomes for low-income children by increasing the number of words they hear by their fourth birthday. Providence has been recognized by the White House Office of Faith-based Initiatives efforts to support struggling schools. We were named one of our nation’s “100 Best Communities for Young People” by America’s Promise Alliance.
We have learned there’s nothing we cannot accomplish when we are united.
(+) Thinking™ Can Transform into (+) Learning at Alex and Ani Corporate University
Momentum in manufacturing happens if the marketing “stars” align and the bullwhip effect has been tamed.
If you work in supply chain management or recall your MBA days, maybe you remember the Near Beer study? Forio.com provides not only a wonderful explanation of the conundrum framed by the study but also offers a nice (but frustrating) simulation game.
For those folks unfamiliar with bullwhipping, imagine the complexities of obtaining the raw materials for a jewelry manufacturing process, client backlogs from demand, wholesaler management and inventory distribution, and retail sales. Now, imagine that the upsurge in demand keeps growing and forces the manufacturer to “catch up” as work increases by two and three-fold as Olympic demand lights up more sales. What a whipping effect!
I recall when Saybrook professor Doug Walton introduced the “bullwhip” effect to my doctoral systems class as if it were yesterday. The game of “catching up” is a systems theory game germane to proving why organizational complexity is indeed a reality to any organization.
On a Monday evening (4) months ago, I returned from facilitating the company retreat for Alex and Ani, a business that produces energy jewelry. Alex and Ani is actually a (+) Energy™ company developing a lifestyle brand around this concept. This inaugural event had more than touches of humanistic leadership, cultural intelligence lessons, and collaborative teaming touches. It embedded the courage to create and self-express in art workshops, “appreciation circles,” and film screenings. The positive-feeling tone was set and the shift towards interdependence was clear and it’s still fresh in my mind.
In a line of business such as jewelry making via (+) Energy™, the bullwhip effect can promote confusion and contention in organizational life ultimately leading to an emotional bullwhipping too. Emotions can run lean before rushing to highs and even overflowing as the amount of work varies hindering organizational productivity. We all know that people responding to their emotions frantically can whip us all.
In The Power of Framing, Gail Fairhurst discussed how “emotional contagions” making the statement that negative “contagious emotions” create toxic work worlds. On the flip side, by framing or re-framing events with positive language, we can create a workplaces filled with folks exemplifying not only what positive emotions can sound like, but what they also feel like in organizational life. I like this alternative.
Learning to be response-able at work, however, requires formalization of such a stance. Alex and Ani has opted to support the human side of the enterprise. By creating a Corporate University supporting learning journeys, courses and workshops to enlighten self-awareness en route to organizational transformation and collective consciousness, Carolyn Rafaelian (the Founder) and Giovanni Feroce (the CEO), have added humanity to the work equation. After all, we all know that to be Y O U at work in the 21st Century requires some educational moments; it simply does not come so easily.
I just completed (2) sequential cohorts teaching the PLUS™ Core Training program now required for all Alex and Ani organizational members. The PLUS™ Course ensures emotions and communications are clear and clean. PLUS™ has (4) modules: P =Positivity, Attitude, & Emotional Intelligence, L = Language Use, U=Understanding, and S= The Synthesizing Mind. Can you imagine an organizational caring to ensure positivity happens by making such (+) Thinking™ convert to a learning reality for its members?
Not every company leads a “charmed life,” like the folks at Alex and Ani, nor does every company necessarily have a manufacturing facility to creatively engage team members when launching retreat-like events, nor do they stake the claim that people matter by building a Corporate University and housing it in a Downtown building worthy of such a cause. What every organization does have, however, is creativity, and courage. Converting courage to a system of supporting learning is the key though. Alex and Ani’s Corporate University proves to be such an example of courage converted.
As human beings, getting to “love” and “service” as guiding principles takes complete engagement, total commitment. By studying creativity, courage, collaboration, and cultural consciousness as key themes, along with dialogue, identity’s role in work life, and rethinking retail encounters, the human side of Alex and Ani is being realized birthing story after story of positive energy internally fueling the production of a product, a brand, that is pure.
You see, life is complicated enough without manufacturing complexities or emotional ones, but that is life-it’s complex. To add to that complexity, we live in a hypercompetitive world rough with added pitfalls. By focusing on the power of the collective formally and adding individual learning programs to encourage transformative thinking at work, the mission of loving one another along the way and honoring during each conversation can happen for Alex and Ani team members. After all, those “humans” that create the positive charges inside the organization actually infuse the supply chain indirectly so that their mission can be actualized. Abraham Maslow would be proud.
The charm I wear around my next daily is not only a “been there-done that” artifact signifying my retreat experience. It will undoubtedly serve as a reminder that it takes effort and focus at times to ensure ONE+ is lived out in daily practices as the President of ALEX AND ANI UNIVERSITY Professional Development LLC.
The Alex and Ani Core PLUS™ learning journey may be a course, but full engagement of the material is a daily choice I am witnessing Alex and Ani (+) folks make. From my perspective I have been blessed to receive feedback from the organization-learning happening live from front row seats as the President of this Corporate University.
Not all Corporate Universities take the time to plan how organizational systems and systems thinking with a dose of humanistic studies can be parlayed into special transformation programs. I am both appreciative and honored, but mostly spreading the word lately with more enthusiasm because what you see and feel with this organization is actually what you get, then some. But, (+) Thinking™ requires (+) work.
Whether you are inspired to learn more about this emerging international organization or spark learning in your workplace, be sure to know and respect that learning journeys should be difference-makers today. And, if learning at work is ever offered to you, engage it with vigor and care. As an adult learner such opportunities can in fact be not just organizational difference-makers but life difference-makers that ignite self-reflection and unsuspecting personal transformation.
Alex and Ani: A Vision of Positivity
Alex and Ani: A Vision of Positivity Makes Waves in the Ocean State and Beyond
In a world where the original Ben & Jerry’s may only be a memory trace for many young Americans, Alex and Ani is creating a deep offshore swell of waves prompting many to grab their organizational surf boards and join the team.
This movement birthed in Rhode Island appears to be the first positivity movement in jewelry to date. Not unlike Ben & Jerry’s or Tom’s Shoes, Alex and Ani’s momentum is in part due to its strong alignment with humanistic values.
Owner and designer Carolyn Rafaelian truly fuels this organizational spirit. As her personal calling, Rafaelian awakens the essence of team members by embodying the spirit of being human each day herself never seeming to lose sight of her guiding role. It is her life’s work to inspire her customers to relish what is unique and authentic about their selves.
Self-expression and autonomy are rich realities for us as humans. We want to move about as we decide where to eat, work and of course what to wear for clothing and jewelry. I call Alex and Ani products “love-identity” objects since the company spotlights our feelings and focus on connection.
When I first met Alex and Ani’s CEO, Giovanni Feroce, I was struck by his clear intention to bring a new standard industrialization code (or SIC) to Alex and Ani products. Feroce wanted a new SIC labeled “positivity energy.” Not only does he seek reclamation of American Manufacturing, but he also considers this “mission” a requirement amidst the climate of economic uncertainty for most human beings today.
I couldn’t help but reflect on how the combination of Rafaelian and Feroce have ignited a spark heard around New England. Deeper, however, is my sincere appreciation for their ability to gel requisite talent to ensure that the collaboration and shared leadership is a practice, not a chant.
Belongingness is a key “pull” we have as humans, which is something Rafaelian and Feroce want to cultivate through this venture. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs notes that “belonging” is a pre-requisite to “feeling good” before a person reaches “actualization.”
I know Rafaelian and Feroce are outlier humanists to be sure. I don’t know whether Rafaelian and Feroce ever studied Maslow, but it actually doesn’t even matter much now. Their plan is “in action” and their keen sense of understanding what people need outside of the organization—such as self-expression—and inside the organization —making it a place where they can showcase their personal gifts, for example—gives more than just “hope.”
The story of Alex and Ani is still fresh. I equate this movement to reading a Harry Potter book for the first time. You may not know much about the main character, but you know his world is a bit magical, rich, and deep with connections and possibilities of what may be.
Alex and Ani is a positivity movement. Of course, the manufacturing requirement has prompted an expected 200 plus new jobs in Rhode Island alone during the next 18 months. As stores open internationally and Internet sales peak, know that recycled metals are used in the jewelry, the company’s products are made in the U.S.A., and the company’s greater purpose is to connect people. Each artfully designed piece of Alex and Ani jewelry is accompanied by a “meaning card” explaining the background and meaning intent behind each piece.
The culture inside the organization is amped. Charges of positivity make the plant and design areas as vibrant as Walt Disney Studios during its animation hey-day. There is a clear “feeling tone” amidst the folks at headquarters. Renee Levi, Ph. D., calls such wisdom at work “group magic.” I have felt this magic at Alex and Ani each time I visit or work with one of their leaders.
So when have you felt commitment, connection, and humanity lately? Have you considered how there may be a “movement” that can serve as a positive, wave-making machine for human potentiality? I think I’ve found one. Do yourself a favor, take a peek at their website and let me know if it is the “Charity by Design” or the “Path of Life Expandable Wire Bangle” that hits the mark for you. Chances are you’ll find what I discovered: that there are organizations out there establishing a systemically robust approach to marketing meaning-full work.
