The Staufenberger Repository

"Big old shoulders and double breastiness"

It's nearly time to unveil The Staufenberger suit.

To keep you occupied till then, here's another timely bit of generic suit coverage, courtesy of The Observer.

Notebook winners

It's time to announce the two lucky recipients of the prototype Staufenberger notebooks. 

John has been touched by the many kind emails sent to him. So much so that it proved impossible to judge on merit, so his nurse put all the names in an envelope and he picked out two at random: congratulations to Gemma and Katie.  Your notebooks will be wending their ways to you just as soon as we find the time to go to the post office.

Staufenberger Tweed

So things are progressing on the Staufenberger Suit.

With its moisture resistance and durability, tweed was always going to be our fabric of choice. But which tweed? We spent hours flicking through endless swatch books...

...debating the merits of Harris vs. Donegal, check or herringbone...oh, the choices.

In the end, there was nothing for it than for us to commission our own tweed. And who better to work with than John G Hardy, who hold a couple of Royal Warrants (apparently, they supply Balmoral tweed to the royal household).

To be honest, we could have picked one the thousands of tweeds already in existence but we wanted ours to reflect cycle culture in some way (even if very subtly). So we set ourselves the task of incorporating the colours of the rainbow jersey into our design.

For the few readers of the Repository who are not bike nuts, the rainbow jersey is the top that the reigning world champion (across the numerous cycle racing disciplines) gets to wear during his/her year at the top of the pile. It looks like this:

So from here the process began.

First, the search to find the yarns that best matched the red, blue, yellow and green of the world champion stripes (we'd already decided the black stripe would be represented by the ground colour).

Once the yarns were selected, a few tests swatches were woven, featuring the colours as flecks:

These we rejected. Not enough colour. Too recessive.

Then we switched to stripes, rather than flecks, for the colours. We ran a few more tests. And then we got it...The Staufenberger Tweed:

We've pushed the button on production and are expecting a delivery of about 60 metres of the stuff in January.

Note to self

Alongside developing the Staufenberger suit we've been exploring other potential products, one of which is a line of notebooks. The first run of 20 prototypes is now in. Each has been lovingly handcrafted here in London EC1, using techniques that haven't changed much in 500 odd years.

We've got two of these to give away, just mail your address and a friendly greeting to John. He'll pick the nicest two emails received.

The Staufenberger Suit

(Photo credit: Brian Wilson. See also A Taxonomy of Amsterdam Bicyclists.)

Regular readers will be well aware that we're a bunch of bikeheads here at Staufenberger Towers.

In addition to the occasional weekend jaunt up Mill Hill and beyond, and the odd spot of bike polo, we cycle to and from work. It goes some way to offset what is probably a pretty shameful carbon footprint.

And seeing as we have the bikes at the studio most days, we usually cycle to meetings. Which has been known to create confusion at our destination: our willfully scruffy attire means we often get mistaken for couriers by our clients' receptionists.

This in itself isn't that much of a problem. The messenger - or fakenger - look is very now for many urban cyclists.

But when combined with the fact that dressing down has lost its rebellious edge - let's face it, most of our clients wear jeans and ironic t-shirts to work - we thought it might be time for a change.

So we've decided to go smart. More precisely, we've decided to make our own cycle-friendly suits.

Obviously, when I say we're making them I don't mean we've invested in a sowing machine and a tin of pins. We're partnering with an established tailor, so they'll look like suits and won't fall apart, and we're spec-ing the cut, detailing and fabric.

We thought we'd document the process in the occasional post. So watch this space for more suit related ramblings.

Day book gems

In an attempt to keep the studio tidy (we've got more people in at Studio Staufenberger), I thought I'd do a bit of clearing out and empty some of those unpacked boxes. Anyway I found a load of my old day books going back quite sometime. I remember being given one on my first day when I started as a graduate and told how I needed to always carry it with me:

This is my day book. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My day book is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it, as I must master my life. Without me, my day book is useless. Without my day book, I am useless.

Going back through them was like reading a personal diary but rather than capturing significant events, history is recorded through a series of status meetings, briefings, brainstorms and random note taking. But the best bits are those pages where you've scrawled down a random idea than never goes any further than that page. It was the idea you had every intention of returning to and working up into a big idea only for it to be confined to a cardboard box under you desk till the office move. So rather than let this happen I had the intention of setting them free one by one. The only problem was they all suddenly felt a bit dated. What were once genuinely 'fresh ideas' all seem a little stale. To avoid this problem when I go through my day books in 2011 every idea I put down will have to be accompanied by a 'use by' date. Or maybe I'll leave my day books in the freezer.

Day book gems 2

Having said all that about stale ideas I quite like this one we had for a high street bank. Entered into the day book sometime in 2002 (before Flickr).

Basically, banks should offer data storage as part of their everyday banking activities. I trust them to look after my money why shouldn't I trust them to look after my digital pictures, my MP3s and my video clips. The banks customers could upload (or deposit through a USB socket at the cash point) their digital assets on a regular basis safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't be lost and the file format would be upgraded over time. So if I wanted to look at a load of jpegs in 20 years they would have been already switched to the prevailing file format of the time.

Rather than just holding my money my bank would hold more personal things like wedding pictures, little Johnny's first steps caught on camera and even that long forgotten mixtape (or whatever the MP3 equivalent is these days). How about that for emotional attachment? 

New year, new office

After a long search, late last year we found a new home. It's near Smithfield Market.

To mark our arrival, we've renamed the area the meatpacking district. What? New York's got one, why can't we? They trade and pack meat here, it's a recognised district...you know, it makes sense. If West End estate agents can rename Fitzrovia as North Soho (or worse, Noho), it's fair game as far as we're concerned.

We moved in over the last week, a process that was elongated by a frustrating series of delays to our broadband installation.

But we're in now and rearranging furniture and the obligatory Playlounge product on a daily basis. When we're happy with the arrangements, we'll post some photos.

Starting a business

Staufenberger Smith & Butte LLP is 1 year old. Well, it was a few weeks back but we didn't notice.

They say that if you can get throught the first two years you'll be OK. So by that measure, we're halfway there.

Not sure if it's any use, but we thought we'd share our top tips for starting a business, or getting through the first year. No doubt this list will have changed another 12 months from now.

1. It's not about us - no creds on a first date

Since we launched we've only presented credentials once and that was one too many. We quickly realised that it's not about us and what we've each done in the last 10 years. It's about the people we're talking to, their brands and how we can help. Our past work on brands such as PlayStation, BMW, Ocado, 118118 and others is what got us in the room in the first place, that first meeting is about future possibilities not past glories.

The relief is practically visible on their faces when we announce there's no powerpoint to sit through.

2. Don't be afraid to say no.

This one tends to polarise. Do you drop your pants, er costs, to get clients to try your services? Or stick to your guns, say no and risk losing the job?

In principle, we would always go the latter route. But, of course, the realities of setting up a business (without heavyweight backing or a big chunk of savings) sometimes mean that principles like this get ignored.

Thankfully, we haven't had many instances in which we've needed to do so. And we don't like to, because, you know, we're worth it. It costs what it costs. And sometimes that means that you have to say no.

3. Don't be afraid to give it away for free.

This is something we picked up from one of our heroes, self-proclaimed small business marketing guru, Chris Cardell. He's kind of evangelical about it, as a guru type is likely to be, but beneath the motivational hyperbole lies an obvious point: one of the best ways of convincing clients that you're worth it is to give free advice.

And so we see this as the corollary of the previous point (not reducing your rates) rather than a contradiction of it. At first, for an outfit that exists to give advice, it feels like commercial suicide. But in reality it's the consulting equivalent of the crack dealer giving away rocks to get kids hooked. And it seems to work.

4. Don't be afraid.

This is a bit of advice that we were given early on and it's served us well.

You need a bit of recklessness to set up a business in the first place. But the challenges don't stop once you get past the initial jump. Unless you're someone with the profile of Trevor Beattie, say, it's highly likely that you'll face some tough patches after you've got yourself up and running. And the advice we were given, when we were faced with these tough patches, was hold your nerve.

It might sound trite or a bit obvious, but you've just got to hang in there. It will get better. And if it doesn't, then you really are fucked. How can you tell when you should hang on and when you should cut and run? We haven't worked that out yet.

5. Never stop feeding the furnace (or somesuch metaphor).

The reason we had a tough patch was that we got busy earlier in the year and stopped chasing new business leads. Schoolboy error. The projects that had been keeping us busy came to an end in mid summer and we had nothing lined up for the usual late summer/early autumn seasonal lull. And it hurt. We won't be making the same mistake next year.

6. Talk to everyone

And by that we mean everyone. It doesn't matter if they're not obviously in a position to give you work. But you just never know who they might know or what they might hear about. And often you don't realise how they might help until they do.

7. Be nice to people

People like working with people they like and get on with. It's not rocket science. If you're self-important and arrogant, chances are you won't be asked back. So be nice.

So there you have it. There might be a few other points (like, don't forget your VAT returns, that sort of thing) but these have been the recurring themes Chez Staufenberger over the last year.

Anyone else have any others? We love to hear them.

Meme meme meme

There's been a lot of talk about memes recently. There must be something in the air.

And in similar territory, our recent thoughts on making things happen (in particular, the utility of reinterpreting existing ideas) got me thinking about standards. Not web standards but standards standards: jazz numbers, show tunes, rock and pop anthems. Songs and tunes that become famous through repeated reinterpretation.

It seemed the perfect excuse to talk about a music blog I discovered a while back, Music For Kids Who Can't Read Good, and a great post there about the numerous cover versions of Gnarls Barcley's Crazy.

But in returning to it now, I find that the MP3 links are all dead and - via the tune's Wikipedia entry (I know, it's, er...crazy. Sorry.) - that Slate has written about it more fulsomely and in far better fashion than I could have been bothered to attempt, let alone pull off.

The Slate article appeared a few months after the Music For Kids post and in that time, even more artists have covered the song and lots of fans have uploaded videos of those performances to You Tube. My fave, from The Kooks, is here:

Clearly, Crazy is the music meme of 2006.

But all this talk of memes leaves us Staufenbergers slightly perplexed. Beyond providing a rationale for basing communication activity on existing (film, art, tech) ideas, what use is there in the concept?  Leland has made a good case, but we keep coming back to a but: memetics is great for explaining a phenomenon in retrospect, but how can it help provide direction for future work?

All contributions, constructive or otherwise, gratefully received.