Suann Song has been a force behind many of the D.C. places you know and love. Before diving head first into her new desktop product company, Appointed, she worked in PR and then at the Kennedy Center. Her resume also includes design branding work through her own studio, Simple Song Design, for the National Mall and West Elm.
Now, Song has dived head first into one of her passions: starting a product-driven company. Appointed designs desktop products like notepads, sticky notes and planners. She came with the idea for Appointed four years ago, and in March 2015, she raised a little over $50,000 from a Kickstarter campaign. Her goal was $25,000. And they just reached their goal to be in 200 stores by the end of 2016. (It's early November, in case you were wondering.)
I had pretty high expectations for the company, but it's like exceeded all expectations.
Tell me a little bit about Appointed and the growth since you launched a year and a half ago.
I always wanted a product-based company, and I love paper, so I came up with the idea for Appointed about four years ago and designed what would be my dream line because no one was necessarily making a full suite of desktop products — especially American-made products. So that's what we consider we do is tools for your everyday work. We don't do stationary. We don't do greeting cards. We do anything like adhesive notes, notebooks, notepads, but on an elevated level.
My aesthetic is very clean and simple, like gender neutral products. So I sat down four years ago and designed for a few months what would be my perfect line. Researched manufacturers and prototyped the products and did that over a year and wrote the business plan, and then figured out how much funding I would need to at least even start the company. I ended up doing a Kickstarter campaign last March of 2015, and we reached our goal of $25,000 in the first 7 days and doubled our goal in the 30-day campaign.
So ever since then we've just been going, trying to keep up with the growth. I had pretty high expectations for the company, but it's like exceeded all expectations.
Why desktop products specifically?
For me, as a graphic designer by trade, there are three things that I grab every day: My phone, my laptop and my notebook.
While I spend a majority of my day on the computer, all of my work always begins and ends on paper. It's part of my everyday life. And I would always get notebooks from Japanese makers or European makers, but they were either not necessarily the right size, or the grid lines were not quite to scale with what I needed.
So [Appointed] started from a completely functional personal point of view of creating a product that would work for me because there are a lot of great paper and stationary companies, but there was no one who was making really clean, simple but super functional products.
No one was necessarily making a full suite of desktop products — especially American-made products.
In what ways do you want to see the brand grow?
Going into this I had pretty high expectations for where I wanted to take the company. This year, we've surpassed our goal of wanting to be in 200 stores by the end of the year and having at least 60 to 75 different products or skews.
Next year, we're launching into leather products. So [this] week, we're launching a leather pencil case that we've designed and prototyped for the last six months, and then in the spring, we'll launch several other products within that category. Then we're going to go even further into desktop trays and organizers for your desk, and those will likely be wood.
So we want to move into those categories, but always stay true to the desktop and your workflow, but overall in the next five years, my goal — I know it's lofty — but is to be a go-to within our category and price point for desktop and paper products.
For you, what do you consider good design?
It's totally subjective because there is so much good design out there that might not be my own personal setting, but I appreciate either the craftsmanship or the talent or skill that goes into it.
For me personally, anything that is just super thoughtful that's really thought out and purposeful. And it can be really clean or it can be very intricate and busy but appreciate anything that is very thoughtful, and there's purpose to the design so it's not just five fonts for the purpose of having different fonts. Like each of those fonts have a purpose.
There's a huge variety of design that I appreciate.
What makes innovation in D.C. unique?
It's such a major market, but I don't think people realize. While it's growing, we're not necessarily known for our creative scene, and we're definitely not known for manufacturing products or for being a product-driven market.So I think for us because we're both a creative company and a product-based company, we're a little bit different from our average company that you see coming out of D.C. — right now, a lot of people are talking about the restaurant scene or obviously politics.
If you love what you're doing, just keep on trying.
When you have something that's good and strong that the market needs in general, let alone D.C., D.C. will rally behind you. D.C. has been such a strong part of our growth and the creative community has been so supportive of us.
What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs?
One, follow your gut.
Two, if you love what you're doing, just keep on trying. And network and use whatever support system — whether it's your family or colleagues or friends in the field.
