NeoCon 2010

We’re still flush from our trip to NeoCon in Chicago - forgive us, it was heaven.

The keynote speaker was Yves Behar. He’s Swiss, he works in San Fransisco, and he makes some amazing things. His keynote was pretty special, as well. The topic was Design in the Age 360º.

Essentially, Behar’s point was that new designers had to work between two poles. One pole was personal expression; what you wanted to say, how you wanted to say it, your own taste and decisions. The other was modern technology, the cutting edge of modern design. In a sense, you have to navigate between what you love and what your buyers (clients, users, etc.) need and will find useful.

It’s bold for a designer, especially one as high profile as Behar, to come out even a little bit on the side of the buyer rather than that of the creator, but it’s the right thing to do. We like to think Smart Furniture does it every day. The address was refreshing and apt, and Behar has securely caught our attention as a guy to look out for.

Herman Miller to Re-Introduce the George Nelson Basic Cabinet Series!

This fall, one of our favorite dealers will be re-releasing a classic series of modular furniture, the Nelson Basic Cabinet Series. The last time you could buy these simple, elegant pieces was back in 1958, 13 years into George Nelson’s service as Herman Miller’s Director of Design (1945-1972). The cabinet line was meant as a useful and attractive storage solution, as well as a waiting room set; the centerpiece of the collection is the Nelson Bench. The new line, updated slightly to include the Nelson Bench with metal legs, was debuted at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, ICFF. Smart Furniture was there to see the set’s debut, and we even snapped a few pics: The simplicity of the furniture is emblematic of Herman Miller’s overall philosophy under Mr. Nelson; minimal stylization, faith in simple materials, and a complete aesthetic fitting for modern life. Smart Furniture couldn’t be more excited to be bringing this furniture to our customers, and we know you’ll love the Nelson Basic Cabinet Series as much as we do!

Summer is here, and so is Google Commerce Search 2.0

6/17/2010 08:01:00 AM

School is out for the summer, and that means it’s time for some swimsuit shopping, travel purchases and—before we know it—buying back-to-school supplies.

To help retail sites get ready for the summer shopping season, today we’re launching Google Commerce Search 2.0 for retailers in the United States and United Kingdom. The new version of Google Commerce Search provides a better experience online for shoppers and greater control—with immediate ROI—for retailers.



Google Commerce Search, first launched a little over six months ago, is an enterprise-grade website search solution hosted in Google’s cloud and designed specifically for online retailers. This second release includes a number of improvements:

• More merchant customization: Today we’re introducing a full merchandising dashboard, which gives merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering. Marketers and product merchandisers can now do all of this themselves—no custom code necessary. New intuitive retailer controls like time-based promotions, navigation bar with filters, and simple product ranking rules mean seasonal optimizations can be done on the fly.
• Better shopper experience: With query autocompletion, retailers can offer common queries to shoppers in real time, as they type, without any custom coding. GCS is also faster and more relevant than before thanks to search quality improvements. Because it’s hosted in the Google cloud, search results are returned to shoppers in less than a second. We’ve also added spelling and stemming dictionaries and new custom synonym options to make shopping on a retail site as easy and accurate as searching on Google.com.
• Improved browsing and navigation: Many shoppers depend on the search bar on retail sites when they’re looking to make a purchase, but some people will always prefer to navigate through different categories and discover new products. Now, Google Commerce Search allows visitors to shop by browsing around your site as well as searching directly for products.

Finally, we’re making the benefits of Google Commerce Search 2.0 available to a wider range of retailers by introducing a pricing model that starts at $25,000/year. Get in touch with us to learn more.

As more consumers turn to online channels to purchase and research products, it’s important for your site to keep up with them using the best technology out there. So with summer just around the corner, make sure your sunscreen’s on, your beach blanket is ready and your e-commerce site is optimized with Google Commerce Search.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager

Google Enterprise Blog: A week to celebrate Small Business

Monday, May 24, 2010 at 12:29 PM

This week we’re joining others throughout the country to celebrate National Small Business Week, declared by the President of the United States to recognize the impact of small businesses on America’s economic well-being.

We hear great stories every day about how Google Apps is helping small businesses compete and grow. So, to honor the millions of small businesses across America, we’re kicking off a week-long blog series to share their stories. We’ll highlight some of the outstanding entrepreneurs and small businesses that we’ve worked with over the past few years, how Google Apps has helped them grow, and examples of ways small businesses are using tools in the Google Apps suite.

To start, we’d like to share a story showcasing Stephen Culp, Founder and Chairman of Smart Furniture and CEO of Delegator. Read Stephen's post on the Official Google Blog to see how his business is using Google Apps – and stay tuned for more small business news throughout the week.

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, the Google Apps team

Permalink  

Google Apps Features Smart Furniture Founder

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/hello-google-apps-hello-real.html
Hello Google Apps, hello real collaboration

5/12/2010 02:53:00 PM

This is the latest post in an ongoing series about Small Business and resources for entrepreneurs. Previous posts have covered how Google AdWords and Google Places can help business owners use technology to drive success. -Ed.

I’ve talked to a lot of small businesses that don’t have the budget or the resources to invest in and maintain technology. That’s why I love telling them about Google Apps — a suite of web-based office tools — and how it can help move their businesses forward.

I always find that it’s easier for small businesses to understand the benefits of Google Apps when one of our customers tells the story for us. So I’ve asked Stephen Culp, Founder and Chairman of Chattanooga, TN-based Smart Furniture and CEO of Delegator, to share his experiences with Google Apps, and how he took a company that started out in a Stanford professor’s garage and made it a success. (Sound familiar?) We’ll continue the conversation with Stephen and other Google Apps customers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce America’s Small Business Summit next week in Washington, D.C.

As the founder of three companies, an attorney, Naval Reserve Officer and former Peace Corps volunteer, I’m a believer in an entrepreneurial approach to virtually everything. Smart Furniture, for example, started back in 1998 in a Stanford professor’s garage, with a new business model called “Design on Demand®” that allows furniture and interiors for homes and offices to be customized for you, and more importantly, by you, all on the web.

Smart Furniture began as a small and growing company with phenomenal people, but limited budget (and time) for technology, especially the wrong kind. We tried for years to scale efficiently without pouring money into the “standard” infrastructure to run our business. We considered the idea of Microsoft® Exchange, and while the idea was great, in practice it got a lot more complicated — and expensive.

Then, in 2008, we discovered Google Apps. We liked the general virtues of SaaSapplications that were inherent in Google Apps, and the fact that the applications improved over time without any effort from our team. Plus, the collaborative benefits were game-changing. Google Apps took that idea of efficient, company-wide collaboration and — unlike the alternatives — made it real.

In other words, for us, Google Apps does just what technology should. It frees up resources to focus on our actual business. It offers tools we didn’t have — or hadn’t integrated — before, including third-party apps from the Google Apps Marketplace. It replaces unnecessary layers of tech silliness with a simple, intuitive, integrated platform that actually serves us — our team and our goals.

Google Calendar alone increases our efficiency exponentially. Everyone can look at the same calendars, create new ones for events, projects or work groups, and share them, without having to master a byzantine instruction manual. Then there are the collaboration benefits. Before Google Apps, we’d constantly lose information as people changed roles or moved on to new projects. With Google Sites, we’ve eliminated the need for shared servers and their little air-conditioned server rooms, and replaced our entire intranet with one comfortably situated in the cloud. We use Google Sites to store company files and team members’ bios, and support our project groups. Meanwhile, Google Docs allows everyone to contribute to projects and idea creation — a key part of our company culture. We create documents to solicit feedback, track ideas, keep common agendas, take notes, prepare for meetings, manage inventory and even organize our company’s softball league. It’s part of almost everything we do.

Yes, our IT guys freaked out at first. Some thought that eliminating the maintenance of our previous system, a.k.a. Frankenstein, would make them no longer necessary. What they didn’t realize was how much better their jobs would get. Now they have the time to work on interesting projects — building, creating and innovating, rather than constantly rebuilding, patching and defragmenting. Our team is amazing, and we’re glad to have them back out of that air-conditioned server room.

At Smart Furniture, Google Apps helps build and support our culture, an important part of the secret sauce that has helped us succeed. Our culture keeps all of us working together, enjoying our days, not peering out the window wondering when we can clock out. As any company grows, it’s hard to maintain the sense of close collaboration that a small business has. Google Apps keeps us chatting (we all use chat in Gmail), collaborating, learning and growing together, as if we were still in the one-room office where we began — which was, incidentally, about the same size as the server room we were planning to build for Exchange.

In our experience, as a small business, the wrong technology can distract your team and drain resources, while the right technology can seamlessly support your goals. Both Smart Furniture and Delegator are on pace for greater than 100 percent growth in 2010. Customer satisfaction rates are at record levels, and we love where we work. For us, Google Apps is the right technology.

Stephen in the flagship Smart Furniture Studio

Posted by Tom Oliveri, Director, Google Apps and Enterprise

Rico's Week with the Generation Chair, Day Five

The seat cushion doesn’t get talked about very much, because of the Generation’s Main Big Deal, which is the back and arms being so innovative and awesome. I’d rather it not get left behind, though, because my rear end is feeling very comfy and has been so all week. I don’t ever feel like I’m sliding out of the chair when I lean back, the seat pan adjusts deep enough for me (I’m 6’1”), and it seems to breathe well even though it’s a cushion and not space-age like some other chairs.
Let’s see, have I left out anything? Oh yeah, design. Other than mentioning that the arms look different, I haven’t really discussed the chair’s design features. When you look at it from the side, you notice that the back curves in towards the lumbar region, then back out again and seems to even curl over forwards at the top. That seems a bit unlike what you would expect in a chair, until you think about this chair’s purpose and construction. Each of the curves accentuates the back’s supportive ability, while still enabling it to flex and move just about any way you want it to.
From the back, it looks awesome because of the way the back is made – colored rubber with holes in it, with a great profile and contrasting colored frame – I mean, you can see the pictures shot from the back. I think that, although the side profile looks a little goofy, the back is stunning enough to more than make up for it.
So my conclusion is: because I prefer to sit still, I wouldn’t go for a Generation, but I love the way it looks. However, having moved around in it for a week, I would be able to honestly recommend it to my sister, who Can’t Ever Sit Still. She’d be very comfortable in this chair long-term.

Rico's Week with the Generation Chair, Day Four

I’m sitting normally today, and by normally I mean facing forward. The only abnormal part of the way I’m sitting is that I’m sort of slouched sideways and leaning on my left elbow while I work. The Generation’s back being so flexible, I am able to feel supported and not strained even in that ergonomically incorrect position.
Do I sound like an advocate for bad posture? I really hope not. I really believe in sitting well for the sake of my bad back, and do notice when I’m sitting wrongly. My back tells me. And then I have to tell my daughters that I can’t pick them up for a while. And my chiropractor tells me that I’m an idiot, and my wallet gets thinner. So I really do have incentive to sit correctly.
Having sat in the Generation for almost a week, I can tell that it’s not noticeably harming me, and so my arbitrary verdict, based on not feeling pain or discomfort, is that it’s a good chair for people who normally have good posture but like to move around in their seats. Bear in mind that my back isn’t yours, nor are my sitting habits yours. That’d be boring, anyways – if we were all behavioral clones of each other …