I think the best place to start is learning a little bit about where you’re both from, where you guys grew up, and if that had any bearing on your trajectory in the design world.

I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, but I've been in New York since high school. So a pretty long time now. I won't give up my age—you might find it in the book if you look hard enough. But New York since high school.

Yeah, I was born in New Jersey. I've lived in Florida, moved to Florida when I was around seven. I was there for about seven years before moving back up northeast to New York. So we both have a Floridian trajectory, migratory pattern.

So you both arrived in New York and prior to meeting, which I know was through the art of buying and selling vintage furniture, you guys had other jobs. What were those?

I went to school for medical lab sciences, but ended up working in hospitality for 10 years. So that's where I was prior to falling into design by happenstance.

And I went to school for communications and marketing and worked a lot in social media, advertising, clothing, styling, apparel, presentation more or less.

And how did you guys meet?

Craigslist.

Craigslist.

It's a great equalizer. Yeah, we met on Craigslist. Jared was selling a chair and I had just began my journey of stockpiling to start a brick and mortar, which was kind of all pipe dreams at that moment in 2017. And just kind of link over an email about a chair that we were both late to meeting for.

Yeah, it was a yellow shell Eames chair, which I feel like is the gateway to design. It's like the first chair. And yeah, I think there's still probably a screenshot somewhere of that initial conversation, but we actually talked about it a little bit on the drive over here. How we met was an equation. I don't think anyone knows where I even purchased it from. . .

Open Air Modern.

Yeah, Open Air Modern. This is a really long time ago, seven or so years ago. They are a mid-century modern furniture store in East Williamsburg. He was selling shells for $50 and I realized you can just get shells for $50, find a base, slap them together, sell them, make your margins, et cetera. It was what I was doing from the sofa, but when I met Ed or before that, I priced it knowing someone is probably going to offer $50 less and they could resell for more. That was the whole strategy of that Craigslist listing. And Ed was the first person to reach out for it because of that same metric. So when I asked him, what are you doing with this chair? He was going to sell it. So that was like the E=MC2 and it was just like, well, we should both be selling it. We both are selling it. We should be splitting costs. And then we got the storage unit. And that was our first “retail experience”—the storage unit.

Ed, you said you had been stockpiling furniture to eventually open a brick and mortar and then Jared came along and then the first store opened in what year?

It opened in October of 2018, I believe. Yeah. So a year after we had initially met and did the storage unit thing.

You shake your head. Was it fast? Was it a whirlwind?

Honestly. I think both of us weren't serious. It just kept getting serious. Right. You know what I mean? It was just like, we're just looking at spaces. We're just going to go take a look just to get an idea. And then, yeah, Ed was really serious about it. I think at the time I was really working in the digital world, so my scope of commerce was entrenched in e-commerce. So my mindset was e-commerce and Ed was absolutely the opposite. And I think that that's what made it the yin and yang. We just weren't thinking in the realms that the other was thinking. Even probably still to this day. . . he's still the handyman and I'm like, I'll get it popping on the ’gram.

I think a lot of people know Lichen, even though you do a lot more now, as primarily a great place to go for vintage and modern furniture. You’ve gone way beyond that, but I assume that is still a significant part of your business. Are there pieces that you've gotten in as someone who's a furniture nerd where you get them and you're like, “This thing is so fucking great, this is so much cooler in real life.” And I'm wondering if there's anything that you got in that you were really looking forward to, but then was actually a bummer? I don't know. Access to all those pieces is really great. And I'm wondering what's been the most and least inspiring thing that you've come across?

The least inspiring. . .

Two different things. Most and least.

I mean, my favorite designer is Gaetano Pesce, and I collect all of his stuff all the time. Whenever I can. And there's actually a story. . . it was probably the first big purchase that Jared and I made. It was for six Broadway chairs. We were going to shoot them, and I think it was the most money we had ever spent on a piece of furniture. It was a thousand dollars for each chair, which right now is a steal. So we go to shoot them and we're carrying them in. And I have two chairs in my hand—$2,000 worth of chairs—and as I tried to open the door, I drop two of the chairs. And they just shattered.

The guy opened the door and was like, “Oh shit was that expensive?” I was laughing. I was laughing. That was funny. You had to laugh. We were coveting it so much that the universe just kind of had to fuck with it a little bit. Karma has a way of doing that, but they shattered like rock candy.

Oh yeah, yeah. You guys seem to have an affinity for USM, and I'm wondering if that is ongoing love with USM or if it just does well? It's kind of an Erector set system that you guys have hacked I think as well

Well. Yeah, USM is a really very well made design. I think with most of our designs or with most designs we carry, there's a reason that supersedes what the thing is. So with USM, what we learned is storage and modularity are the most important thing right now for where we are within design. And whoever is just there is going to be well received. And if it's quality and it's there, it's also going to be well received.

So USM is excellent at the material longevity, the modularity, the idea of modularity, I think most people don't change their unit, but it's the idea that you can, that is almost more valuable than the fact if you do it or not.

I mean I think we could talk about all those furniture pieces for a long time, but I wanted to ask you the question I've always wanted to ask at other panels I've seen you on and no one asks. And that is, where did the name Lichen come from? It seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy for me, but I want to hear your side of the story on the name.

Alright, so this is when I used to be a big pot head, not so much a pot head anymore. But I was high one day and I was really getting into the furniture thing, and I was just trying to think of a name. Lots of bad names, mostly bad names. And Lichen came to mind. And I had just read the definition of Lichen, which was basically a symbiotic relationship between two organisms, whether it's organic or inorganic, and kind of living mutually. And that was my connection to vintage furniture taking on a new life in its new environment and vice versa, but. . .

Also the two of you. . .

Also two of us and our whole team.

And at the time I had started bubbling the concept. I had just started ‘advertising agency life’ and it's all narrative and storytelling and just digging deeper. And Lichen had, when you research it, if you ever chose to research it, it's a fascinating rabbit hole of an organism that has kind of a recipe for how humanity has an option to operate, which is a composite of diversity. And it's not even a singular thing. It thrives in kind of the worst conditions. And I think that's kind of indicative of how business can be operating in New York at a certain capacity. It is just inhospitable. Everything is expensive, everything is tumultuous. We survived a pandemic. We persisted with symbiosis.

And just the more you read, the more and more it makes sense. I started gathering as many books as possible or just reading. A lot of them are very scholastic and are like, well, the sucrose is 2% and it's too heady. But then there's some that have humanized it and you're like, holy shit. We're trying to design things that still can't do what plant life has been doing and Lichen is still undersung. I feel like if we did a documentary, it would be like a nature doc like David Attenborough “Just Living with Lichen” et cetera. I think even in design, we're kind of always in the search for origin. It's always origin based. What's the earliest version you see of a design like, oh, this is dope, and then you keep going and then actually somebody did in the twenties and then actually the reference is this and it's just endless reference. So I think origin is you don't know where that's going to take you.

Excellent. I'm glad I asked. Well I think that's a good segue into this idea that Lichen is an incubator and at a certain point you guys added or started doing things beyond selling vintage furniture. You were designing your own things and manufacturing them at a small scale. That's been growing slowly over the past couple of years, but I feel like there was an inflection point.

Recently you've acquired a new space with some real square footage for a wood shop. And that's a big commitment. Tell us a little bit about that decision and how you came to say, “Okay, we're going to do this. We're going to commit to certain volume and that type of production.” How did you know you were ready for that?

Our first designs were mostly plywood. Judd–esque, if you will. Some our best sellers are still those very things. But we knew if we wanted to take ourselves more seriously, we had to move beyond the plywood for the wood. So we met a friend of a friend who just happened to be a carpenter and started learning during the pandemic. It was in a basement, somewhere in Bushwick. Generally got good vibes from him and we're like, “Hey, why don't you just work in the back of our shop and see what we can build up together?” And that was the beginnings of moving on beyond the plywood.

I think if we didn't move beyond plywood, we probably wouldn't be sitting here today. And that's to say that it just, I don't know. I think we were taken a little more seriously because of that. And then we moved to metal as well, and now we're trying to combine the two and trying to find that harmony.

Yeah, the plywood journey, they both needed each other. I feel like internally it's like chicken and steak, plywood versus hardwood.

The world still kind of goes round on plywood. Hardwood is. . . hardwood is. . . I guess even before that, our first table was made by a father and son duo on Craigslist. We drew something up. The table that's on the cover of the book was the table that we drew. And it is if anyone was to get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil and draw a table, that's what it would look like. And that’s what we sent to someone. And they were like, “Clearly you're not designers, you need a cross beam.” And we were like, “That's dope. Do the cross beam.”

Then we sold some of those. They were always meant to be a placeholder. So then it’s day one of Lichen, it's great. We have an amazing starting lineup. That first day the coffee table sells. We did not prepare for not having a coffee table. You know what I mean? We didn't think that far ahead.

You only made one?

Well, we had two or three vintage coffee tables. So when they would sell, it's like, “Fuck, we can't keep replenishing like this.” Especially while trying to be affordable, volume becomes a conversation. So we needed a stop gap. We needed to draw something and have somebody on Craigslist make it, so we can hold space while we source more vintage. The collective mindset that we're in now is very early. People weren't trying to, “Who's Eames?” There was still a lot of discovery. So people would literally just like, “I'm looking for a table that's like this by this and I only want to spend this.” And that was our dimensions. It was like, “Hold your hand out again. . .”

And that's what we drew. And for that price it could kind of only be ply and for our margins, it could only be a stranger on Craigslist who will go get the wood at Home Depot. And that's how it started.

And then I bought some tables on Facebook marketplace from our current plywood manufacturer's son. His name is Ben. And I picked them up and he was just like, “What are you doing?” He's a real old school furniture head. And he was like, “Yeah I make furniture. Whatever you need to get done, we get it done.” So we just showed him the design and he started producing them at the price that worked for us. And then he fell into some shaky waters and he had to close his wood shop. And that's when we were really left with the decision. To keep producing our furniture, we have to invest in the whole manufacturing production side of it, which is a really daunting, super expensive, irresponsibly expensive thing.

But it was that or be stuck pushing vintage. And to your point about the incubator and why we call it that. . . our ideas supersede a vintage furniture store and the worst insult you could say is like, “They're like a vintage furniture store.” It's a thing we do, but we have designers and thinkers and logisticians and carpenters and people with perspective. So to just say it's a vintage furniture store would put us in articles of “Top 10 Brooklyn Vintage Furniture Stores”. And we look at these lists and be like, “This doesn't feel like anything that we do.” We are eating, breathing, sleeping, it. We have invested so much of our time in it.

Yeah, I can think of several vintage furniture stores that I've walked into around here and they just feel like there are rooms full of furniture. But when I walk into Lichen, and this would include your current space and previous spaces and I think others would agree, it feels extremely inviting. There's care and thought put into where things are and why. I know some of your work bleeds into what you could call interior design, and I'm wondering if you ever call yourselves that? Interior designers? Are you interested in doing kind of straight up interior design work? If someone wanted to hire you to do that, would you? Is that something that interests you?

No. We’ve tried it with a couple residential clientele, and it's always what you want versus what they want and they're paying, right? So they're going to get they want. But I think we're learning to build the trust with our clients and have a specific vision and we're getting there, we’re getting there. I don't know if we want to go fully into interior design. Not for us. I think.

I disagree a little bit. Well residential, no, that shit sucks. It's just too personal. It's a couple debating over a sofa. But interior projects are definitely something that I want to flex a little bit more. Like spaces. Piaule was a great experience.

Does everyone know what that is? I've actually never heard that word said out loud, but it's like a cool hotel up in the Catskills.

Trevor and Nolan stopped by the shop years ago, and they just did flatware, flatware and towels. Like okay, it's Loom and then they're like, “We're actually going to just do a hotel instead.”

And this is like, I forget what year it was, but it had a lot of seasons, a lot of pre-pandemic planning. They had to get approved by the city to host to have something. It's like a lot of things. . . you should get them in here at some point. I would be curious to just sit in on what it takes to open a hotel upstate in the middle of nowhere. There's a lot of red tape that they had to work through. We sourced all the stools for the cabins and some art tech, like a Pineo lounge chair for the sauna. And we’ve just maintained that relationship over time. So I think I would say interior consultancy. . . maybe not interior design. . .

The coffee table story I think was great. Someone's always got something to buy when they come in, whether that space is always filled. Actually before we started, David, a friend who’s here, mentioned that one thing that makes Lichen so special is that you have this mix of these often very, very rare, very interesting vintage pieces and things that are brand new by younger designers who are contributing to that dialogue. And it's very rare to find a space where those two things coexist and then also you can go and you can start flipping stuff over and no one's going to yell at you.

Are there any other spaces or people doing this type of thing that you guys look up to or you see as a source of inspiration? I'm thinking specifically about your trip to Japan. You guys went to Japan recently and it seems like there's an audience there for your work and I don't know if there was anyone over there? Who's making you excited about design that isn't you?

That was a long question. Apologies.

I think Marta Gallery in LA. . . When we went to Japan, we actually met with probably Japan's number one manufacturing company for wood furniture and we're actually working on a line of furniture with them that we design and they produce. So that's exciting and I guess a key step to kind of our consultancy or whatever you want to call it at this point. Yeah, getting closer.

Yeah, one step closer to legitimacy. It's like an in-house thing that me and Ed say to each other. Every time we get a water fountain in the back or new bags, it's just like one step closer. This is kind of a joke in a beautiful way. This was a Craigslist storage unit and now things change. . .

Anyways Moss is cool. Moss is cool and Moss predated us a bit and we kind of live in shadow or a ghost of Moss, mainly because (shout out Tommy) mainly because, well, for a lot of reasons, but also Moss. . . Lichen. . . We definitely share the cousins of material, but I think it helps when you just don't know really what something is? When you just can't put a finger on it. . . What was that? What was Moss? Do you know?

Yeah, it was a very nice design store in Soho. Actually, we can talk about Moss for a very a long time, but I think they presented design in a very different way and curated things. But also it was the place to go see design objects and Studio Yoke stuff and really weird things alongside Vitsoe shelving. So it had the high and the low and the weird and the functional and was impeccably presented. You couldn’t touch anything. Did I touch stuff? Yes.

But it was really a center of energy. . . he was about custom crafted, custom made alongside a bottle opener, but they were both treated with the same respect, the same do not touch under glass kind of thing.

I want to make sure we have time to open it up for questions. I have two more questions. The first is, I think most people will first learn or interact with Lichen on Instagram. I've always felt like you've had a very strong photographic point of view and I think it's really evident in the book. I know that takes effort. I know having someone there with a camera remembering to take photos of your work, et cetera, takes effort. And I'm wondering how you approach the photography and the documentation of your work.

Jared takes all the photos. He’s our point of view man's. He’s our master communicator, honestly. I mean clearly. His point of view is very strong and luckily for him I agree with it. So it makes our jobs easier and there's hardly anything I say no to when he shoots. So grateful. Definitely.

I appreciate that.

Is that something that you wanted to do going into this? Be the photo guy?

Yes. The actual only thing I want to do, straight up. If I could be tucked away in a Queen of England type of thing where it's just like you just take photos, you don't make decisions anymore, that wouldn't be a bad thing. Also, shout out to Eric who's over there being normal. He's also a phenomenal photographer. Eric takes the photos that I wish I took. It honestly is journalism. The root of it is journalism because some of the pieces we get will never be seen again. Just some of them will never be seen again. And you kind of have a responsibility to be like, “I should just get my camera really quick.” We won't know this existed. Even for reference. . .

Yeah, yeah. That's great. My last question is when you meet people or if someone comes up to you and says, what do you do? How do you describe yourselves? “Oh, we own a store or we do this or that. . .” I'm curious as to how you define in so many words what you do. Because it’s so diverse.

My mom still asks me what I do on a regular basis and I try to explain it to her. She gets the vintage furniture, she's like, I don't know how you made money on that. But yeah, I mean I just tell people it's mostly community driven. We do a lot of workshops and classes and even though we sell vintage and make new things, a lot of our designs are based on education and informing people that are relatively unaware about design as a whole. I think that that's a majority of our clientele. Of course we have the people that know a lot about design and such, but I would say we attract more of the people that have no clue about design.

Do you have a sense of how many people come into the shop just kind of randomly or they heard about you and they're not necessarily design geeks, but they know it's a good place for things for their apartment?

I think it's still confusing to them. If you walk by the shop, you can't really tell it's a store. The store is set up in such a way all the time that it just feels like a communal space of some sort. It feels like a living room, it feels like a dining room, it feels like an office, but everything is technically for sale. So it's kind of hard to explain. I dunno how do you explain it. . .

Yeah, I think we adopt the ethos of there's something for everyone. You don't have to buy anything, but we don't really subscribe to labels. It's not like this is a mid-century furniture store. It's not, not postmodern, it doesn't necessarily have a type, but there is a cohesion. You can get a candle, you can get a chair, you can get a dining table. Most people, I would say walk in. Most people, I would say probably buy something they weren't expecting to. I just came in here and I got a sofa. I just wanted to see what you guys have. But I would say that's probably a majority of our customers. Or you'll learn something. At the very least, if you catch one of us, we will definitely geek out over anything.

And I think Resource Library has been also really, really fundamental with that. And just being a space more of learning and not always just of commercial capitalism. You know? Don't have to buy some things to get a tangible experience and walk away.

Yeah, amen to that. I want to open it up to questions.

You mentioned earlier this idea of origin and then I think also we live in a world of knockoffs as well, where it's all about getting something that's as cheap as possible. I don't really care where it's made. And so maybe just have you speak a little bit to the role of original design in your work and as you move forward with some of the partnerships, like this one in Japan, maybe what you think of when you think about the ethos of Lichen and what that point of view is and what determines something should be a Lichen project versus this shouldn’t. Is that something that's solidified or how has that evolved over time for what's original to you?

Original is interesting. It's hard to even know if it's real. And I mean that in, there's things that we can show the homework on and be like, we drew this and then I drew this and then this and then this, and then we had to produce here and then we changed it and then this. And then there's some French table from the sixties that is exactly that. And even with what Ed was saying. . .we've never been really inspired by Judd just because it was plywood. And if you do anything simple in plywood, it'll be like, oh, it's like Judd. It’s Donald Judd-esque. Just because it's plywood and it's simple and it has 90 degree angles. But I think it's the pursuit that matters. We’ve never stopped looking for the earliest version of it. It's usually always better, you know what I mean?

Even with like dupes or knockoffs, some knockoffs are really, really good and that's just is what it is. And they're made right next to where the originals were. So there isn't always this craftsmanship narrative of why things are better. I think it kind of depends on the individual personally. If you're okay with that, that's fine. Things are really expensive. If you get a good deal on it and it's not real, who really cares. At a personal level, I don't have $10,000 to buy this. That's how you feel. I don't judge that.

I think with what we’re working on in Japan, they have a really rich archive of attempts at originality. But it's like one of the sofas we're bringing back from them, they made in ’82. It could compete with a Togo and they didn't know. It's a really homogenized area. It's very certain perspectives that we were grateful to go over there and be like, “What about this?” And they're like, “Oh, we never thought of it like that. Do you guys like that? Do you think that would sell?” And it absolutely would.

And I will say that I’m grateful. Me and Ed and the members of our team do homework. We don't know everything, but it's our job to keep digging. We do sell a lot of vintage. We can't price. We have to know ages of things to price it. We have to know area of origin to price it. We have to know that even something that's not tagged doesn't mean that it's not authentic. And that's a whole other sub-Reddit. And it is a journey and it's fun, but it's the pursuit of origin that I think keeps us a little, not necessarily ahead, but we are constantly digging in crates. Ed is constantly sourcing. He does not stop sourcing. He's done it since we've been here. If you didn't see it, he's going to be doing it after.

And you learn a lot over years of fucking looking for furniture. You can see the difference. You can feel the difference, and you get obsessed with authenticity and origin and just like that one design that never dropped that you didn't see. . .some George Nelson that he did and it wasn't Herman Miller. So that's crazy.

The story about how you met. . . with an Eames shell. How you could easily find a base, put them together and sell it to somebody. It's a chair, it's of value to them. How does that kind of ethos differ from, or does your sensibility now differ from your approach then when it was more of a survival and it was interesting and you were creating these artifacts that were maybe cobbled together for survival or just out of curiosity and to create something, but the business of authenticity and guaranteeing or believing that that's of value and authorship and so forth. How has that shifted over years?

We definitely sold a few inauthentic Eames chairs. Yeah. Not for any particular reason other than sometimes we get caught, we just didn't know.

But we try to stay away from it honestly. We respect the designers and what kind of work it took to make those designs happen and the manufacturers that they worked with. We do love a good hack though. Making something updated or contemporary for today's times, I think that's what we strive to do on a daily basis with whoever we're collaborating with. How do we update this design or how do we tell a different story? It can't just be mid-century forever in America, we're in 2024. You know?

But I do think there's certain blasphemy that we stray from. We definitely have principles and we definitely are part of the streetwear culture. It made it very difficult to exist wearing Fugazi, made it very difficult to exist wearing inauthentic. This was a really aggressive time of wearing fake Jordans and getting made fun of in school really, really, really bad. I think some of that trauma translates. . .

Or it has translated into my views on authenticity today where I wouldn't do fakes. But there's tasteful Ikea, there's tasteful Ikea, the best homes that I've ever been in that I've been like, “Wow, this is really fantastic and tasteful.” There is a little bit of tasteful Ikea. I would say that's a compromise of inauthentic. . .

Some Ikea is authentic.

I mean not inauthentic. I mean if the difference is between Ikea, vintage Ikea, or a knockoff. . .

Like Ikea’s Aalto stool. . .

No, no, no. No, not the Frosta. We know now. It's just like, “Oh, there’s something different about that.” You don't want to have something a little different than the Aalto. You can find Aalto for the same price as Frosta if you're looking for it. People throw it out, you know what I mean? Dot stools are thrown out all the time in the city. If you're looking, you'll always find it. That's kind of one of our mottos too. They're like, “How did you get this?” If you're always looking, you'll always be finding. You can get an Aalto stool for a hundred dollars right now if you really, really just kept looking for it.

Do you only buy vintage or will you buy and resell newer launches?

Yeah, new launches too. All of it. All of it. New. . .old. . .if it sells, it sells.

Proud Ikea Ivar owner. If you can't have Vitsoe, Ivar is where it's at. You guys are both documenters and archivists and have your own worm holes that you go into and you’re trendsetters. So I'm curious, what are some emerging trends in vintage that you're seeing in the shop? Whether it's Broadway chairs or what are people coming in either interested in or walking out like, “Oh, sick. I didn't know that.”

Trends in vintage. . . stainless steel is obviously huge in the design industry as a whole. It was like the wood cabin feel a couple years ago and now everyone's going for that sterile stainless steel look, which we definitely partake in that as well. But vintage? I think Togos are out. . .

Yeah, Togo is a bust. It's still fantastic. That's a different conversation. I have it, but it became the Instagram sofa and then it’s just like what's happening in furniture is the same things that is happening in fashion and clothing where it just cycles. To mention Gaetano really quick. . . I think he's probably one of the few furniture designers that is probably more of an artist. And I think that's probably another conversation for another time. But Ed. . . I can see he likes acrylic. I can see he likes acrylic a lot. And I think we've gone from it’s got to be teak—quintessential mid-century. And then it's just like teak and walnut—that’s luxury. And then Aalto, Judd—ply became what's luxury. It kind of put things in a blender a little bit. We're in the romance of hardwood and trying to show people the beauty of something aging better with time. And then stainless steel is king right now. And I would say that that is a response to where we are with humanity. Our relationship with metal is definitely changing. Our relationship with USM is definitely changing. It used to be office furniture, Vitsoe and USM were office furniture and we bought Vitsoe from places that didn't know what it was. They were like, “You want the wall shelving? Take it. If you get this sofa you can take the shelving.” And it's a whole wall of Vitsoe.

They were like, “There's an office cabinet over there as well if you want.” And it's USM.

Now people are building USM beds.

Yeah, we've sold one. So material is the trend, I think. And he's not mentioned it, but I can see how Ed feels about certain acrylic. Under the right circumstances, maybe it’s at the early beginnings of coming back around again, like seventies pre-postmodern? But there's been some things that I've been uncertain about. I thought we don't do acrylic. That's one of the things we don't do—acrylic and brass. We don't. Or bouclé. No disrespect. But as time changes, I see acrylic being competitive. It's like a plastic that gives you kind of what glass does. . .I don't know. . . If you see us with a acrylic table, that’s why.

What's the go-to order at Publix?

Cookies and the hot wings, definitely.

Yeah, definitely wings.

Are there any pieces you guys had to keep for yourself and keep at home? Whether it’s vintage or. . .

For me, it's mostly lighting. There's so much good lighting. I think I have too many lamps at home, for sure. I can't get enough of them. I think that's also a really good vintage trend right now that's going on. Vintage lighting is huge right now. We also got a pendant light coming out soon that we're designing, so look out for that. It's really good. Really good.

I dunno. Ed finds a lot of things that I'm also like, “We'll never see that again. I got to have that.” A Murphy bed? I live with a Murphy bed, which we could talk about after. That's an interesting life. And yeah, I can tell you what I missed out on. That is the thing that got away from me that I regret to this day. There's a Prouvé Trapèze table. We drove to Maryland to get it. The sides of the table were trapezoidal, so they went out like this. It was rectangular, but the ends were chamfered out. I really regret, I really regret not keeping that. That sucks. And yeah, Corbusier Apple Box LC15, I think. I wouldn't sell that. We consigned one, but my favorite design is an Apple box hands down. So when we found that, I was not letting that one go.

So you were talking about being legitimate. When was the point, or when did you think, “Okay, things are blowing up.” What happened then? Do you remember that moment of becoming legitimate? Because as I mentioned, I visited your first Williamsburg store and followed this journey. And I remember things blowing up. What happened at that moment? Do you remember?

Herman Miller followed us. We were all like, “Yo, we fucking made it.” We've posted this Tonkatsu Table?

Kotatsu table.

Kotatsu table. And we got the follow. And Aaron, Britt, came by with a business card. And we kept the business card. We're like, “Yo, we're done. We made it. We can retire now.” Yeah, I think that was one of the few times I've been really humbled.

So it was a post?

Yeah, we were just doing our thing, being really consistent. And we also did this fake Herman Miller mug called The ‘Hermano Miller’ mug, and we were expecting a cease and desist, but they were like, “Oh, that's cool. Send us one.” And that felt cool. That was a cool moment. We were bringing some of the hip hop culture to design, which is just remixing things. We had a Flos mug with two Ss. We got a Knoll's tote but it’s spelled like K-N-O-W-L-E-S. I won't say who that is. We don't really want a cease and desist.

Yeah, constant juxtaposition. Just merging these two worlds and expanding these conversations. . . and we actually use the exact same tote that Knoll did.

Before we wrap it up, are there any events coming up at Lichen HQ that we should go to? Openings, parties, workshops?

We have too many workshops. They're great though. Definitely check them out. We are doing one with Vitra at the end of October with an artist. It's going to be like a drawing. Still TBD. There's a student who reached out with this really great VR desk chair experience where the wheels project from the ceiling. Well, it’s a game. I can’t explain it. It’s crazy. And it'd be cool to see who would sponsor such a thing. It's a great concept and it's like recent Pratt grad and like maybe we can ask someone at Herman Miller. Maybe they can do it. It could be a Caper. We know you love Capers. It could reasonably be anyone who produces a desk chair, but that's TBD. But the October one with Vitra is really cool. We're having a screening Sunday night. I'm one hundred percent forgetting something, but we're open weekends! So every weekend, no matter what, if you want to come check us out and see a little bit of what we're about and do a lap, we'll be happy to talk to you about anything.

Great, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone for coming. Thank you Jared and Ed. That's it. Thanks so much.