Monday, June 28, 2010

New Blog Location

Hi Everyone! We'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to visit our new blog, located at http://fromthesourceny.com/blog/
Here, you'll be able to quickly navigate from our blog to our new webpage and see the latest that from the source has to offer. Also, remember that our Dumbo location is still having a 50% closing sale on all stocked merchandise. The biggest news is that our Greenpoint Warehouse/Design Studio is now open to the public everyday from 11-6, so you visit any day and get lost in the new space, which we've expanded from 25,000 - 35,000 square feet!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Wooden Trophy Hunter

Bob Fireman, president of From the Source and expert on sourcing exotic woods from Indonesia, is featured in today's New York Times Home section article (D9) titled "The Trophy Hunters". In it, he briefly discusses the legalities of sourcing wood from remote lands and how we apply the ever-changing taste of design to foreign woods and reclaimed materials.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Ample Sample

If you need wood, we sure have plenty variety to choose from. If you're stuck on the fruitful concept of mango but want something with a little more pop, size it up to ingas. If you like the blend of light and dark in our rosewood called sonokeling but need just a little more chocolate, try staining it light brown.

These samples and more can be found at our locations, so you can mix and match, and get a nice visual for how our color-schemes and grain-blends can work with your project. Whether you're building from a blank slate or anxious to move in that one last piece, our samples (not for sale) will help you get there.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

CLOSE-OUT SALE in DUMBO

This summer we're working on some really exciting renovations and updates at our Greenpoint warehouse. If you've been by in the past few weeks, you've noticed the changes we're making to our main showroom...


In the upcoming months we'll be expanding and taking over some new beautiful space there as well, and making many more improvements along the way. Our goal is take advantage of the space, stock and location along the beautiful East River waterfront, and make our Greenpoint warehouse a real FTS Brooklyn destination.

With that said, we will be closing our Dumbo location. In the next few weeks, we will be holding a 50% OFF CLOSE-OUT SALE on all merchandise at that location. If you have been to our Dumbo showroom in the past few months, you know that it has been transformed into the FTS Outlet, selling discontinued and damaged goods at discounted prices. However, we are sending over much more variety and quantity, and again, everything in the store MUST GO, and will be 50% off the retail price.

Sale begins this Friday, 5/28

Come by for a look:

65 Jay Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
718.260.8833

Monday, May 24, 2010

ICFF Wrap...

Whew! It's been a hectic and long show season. We wrapped last week at the closing of this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair. As always, the amount of creativity, innovative use of material and incredible booth construction was both astounding and inspiring. I found the student exhibitors to use the least amount of boundaries, like Michael Savona's "Goose Cones", which completely left me in awe. As he put it "who doesn't stop for geese?". Some other favorites were Courtney Fikri's eye catching booth design for Amaridian's display of Design Africa, and my personal favorite, Saletti's new folding Pantone Chairs.
As you can imagine, we at from the source are really proud of our accomplishments too. Whether you met us for the first time, or are an old friend who came to say hello, we want to thank you. This year our booth was dedicated to raw material, our design and production process, and ultimately, custom capabilities. If you didn't make it to the show, here's a glimpse of what was on view...

Hopefully we can collaborate soon...

Thanks from all of us at FTS

Monday, May 17, 2010

come see the booth...






so the last day of our run at the ICFF is tomorrow. it's our 2nd year having a booth here, and we feel like we learned a lot, a lot of great contacts, and gave us a lot of confidence going into last summer.

as we've talked about, a ton of time and effort went into making our booth this year, from creating & constructing the floor plan to nearly breaking our necks to get the perfect shot for brochures. from the looks of how he maneuvered on that ladder, we think philip may actually fight crime as spider-man in his spare time...

super hero or no, our ICFF team did a fantastic job putting everything together, and if you're not one of our friends from the trade who got a sneak peek over the weekend, we hope you'll get a chance to see us at Booth #1244 tomorrow when it's open to the general public.

here's a preview just in case you can't make it. hope to see you there.






reduce, reuse, reclaim?

Anyone who's ever visited our warehouse (or read our post about those painted reclaimed planks) will know that we're always excited by new ways to showcase items that had another life.

Whether it's eggshells used as vase facing,

using discarded teak scraps to make a mirror frame,



transforming old bottles into frosty blue vessels, or simply giving some love to a starfish top that just a tad too small to be a table,



we just love it when amazing results come from the unexpected.

So for a couple of weeks, we've been pondering a profile of Ecovative Design in L Magazine at the end of April. Not for nothing, we can almost always be enticed to read articles titled "The Death of Styrofoam?" They were profiled in Treehugger & Popular Science last December, and have even showed up on CSI:NY.

Stumbling on methods of manufacture is certainly is of intellectual interest for the sustainably-minded. However, it's of distinct interest here at FTS. If for no other reason than trying to make sure your eco-friendly principles manifest themselves in all your dealings - including packing material for cross-country shipments - is always a challenge. Foam packing peanuts simply can't compare to this...

photo from Ecovative

That's why the profile about Ecovative's Ecocradle Packaging was amazing. Using materials like mushroom roots (aka fungal mycelium), seed husks, and even cotton burrs to create a cushioned, strong, and mold-able alternative to modern petrol-based styrofoam is inspired not only because you can dispose of it by tossing it in the garden,
photo from Ecovative

but it takes the refuse from agricultural production and gives it a new life.

If - like some of us - you're a bit of a specs nut, you'll even be impressed that the folks at Ecovative think enough of us put material specifications front and center, which is further proof of how serious they are about moving from pesky start-up to the global standard that could be used regionally in different ways depending on indigenous agricultural materials.

When we think about all the packing peanuts, foam spacers, and maybe even shrink wrap that could be grown for us instead of extruded it's an encouraging proposition. Ok, so maybe talk of using fungal mycelium as a bonding resin, saving money on costs by using agricultural waste products, and transforming lignin & cellulose into bio-composites doesn't whet everyone's appetite. However, if you're concerned at all about making changes the help our environment, and styrofoam that grows like a garden doesn't move you, we don't know what will.


photos from Ecovative