Today we’d like to introduce you to Peter Dunn.
Peter, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I spent the first decade of my career in consumer products working for a French company in the art industry, eventually overseeing brand management, product development and sales for North America. The company was, at its core, a centuries-old paper mill, making some of the finest art papers in the world. Products once used—and in some cases created—by Degas, Chagall, Picasso, Matisse… I fell in love with paper products while earning my branding and managerial chops.
During that time, while in my early 30s and visiting my parents, I came across one of my mom’s personal treasures—a vintage photo album with black paper pages, bound beautifully. It contained a variety of photos of all the special people in her life, with handwritten captions on the pages. The album was a work of art and captured her happy childhood in Nebraska. Being in the fine-paper industry, I wondered why elegantly bound photo albums were no longer available in the world. Photo albums in the ’90s were a disaster, with cheap plastic pages. Like a lot of people who start companies, I just wanted to create something that I myself would want but couldn’t find in stores.
So I left that company and co-founded Kolo in 1998. We made beautiful, archival-quality photo albums with cloth-hinged pages, premium papers and Italian book-cloth covers, and our first product, the Newport, is still a best-seller. In our first year, we cleared $2 million in revenue, and thanks to my previous relationships in retail, we were selling Kolo products in about a thousand locations all over the country. Within a few years, Kolo became an iconic niche brand and leader in its class, selling our goods all over the world in many of the same places that brands like Moleskine notebooks were sold. Japan became our second largest market, thanks to the Japanese obsession with design and high-quality products, not to mention photography.
In 2014, I left Kolo to help Itoya, our best Japanese customer, lead their U.S. business called Topdrawer. They needed help and I needed a change. By revising its mission and product focus, the business quickly took off, and has grown about 45% annually since then. It was fun to be part of a start-up again.
In late 2016, we decided to buy Kolo and merge the two brands and companies, establishing the headquarters in Boston. We now have six Topdrawer stores in Boston, San Francisco, Osaka and Tokyo, with a new location opening in San Francisco in June. About half our business comes through our web site Kolo.com. We also recently re-launched the wholesale division, and sell some of our Kolo branded products to specialty retailers.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Like most companies, we have had amazingly rewarding moments and very challenging moments. Building Kolo allowed me to travel the world extensively and build great partnerships and friendships in many countries, but the Great Recession of 2008-2009 nearly took Kolo out. Retailers cut their inventories so fast; it hurt us and we didn’t cut overhead soon enough. Then the photo book craze took off with a lot of people uploading their photo files to sites and having photo books printed instead of making traditional photo albums. That was a challenge for Kolo for several years.
But it’s funny, trends go in cycles. The analog movement, which recently has fueled the explosive growth in things like vinyl records and instant cameras, has also rubbed off on photo album brands like Kolo and notebook brands like Moleskine. It’s interesting to see that the average age of our customers is young, ranging from 25 to 35 now. That’s true in our Topdrawer stores, too. Young adults are really embracing analog. So, both Topdrawer and Kolo have had to completely reinvent ourselves and gear our business to meet modern needs. Thankfully, people have responded well.
Please tell us about Kolo Topdrawer.
Kolo Topdrawer is a company based in Boston and Tokyo. We have design teams in both cities, so it’s a unique American and Japanese collaboration inspired by both cultures. We make photo albums, notebooks, bags and accessories under the Kolo brand. Topdrawer is the name of our retail brick-and-mortar stores. Both our stores and our web site www.kolo.com sell what we have trademarked as our slogan, “Tools for Nomads.” That is, useful items for people on the move.
The way people work and live has radically changed in the 21st century. People are more mobile, and most urban professionals live life on the go. They’re working on a train one day, and in a hotel room or design studio the next. Their “office” has to fit in their bag. Thanks to laptops and smart phones, they can work anywhere. So, we sell the things that complement those devices. And it turns out, in a digital age, many people crave analog things like fine pens and nice journals, and other functional objects like good-looking bags and cases, premium electronic cables, bento boxes, stylish and light rain gear, etc. And yes, these people take lots of photos, too, and they print them the old-school way. So, classic albums are hot again. I’ll admit, the analog trend was a lucky break that made our Kolo album renaissance possible.
At Kolo Topdrawer, we offer better gear for creative work. So, our early adopters and biggest fans are usually designers, architects, photographers and entrepreneurs. These people, like me, are sick of buying junk that ends up in a landfill. They want products built to last, like good tools your grandfather used to buy. And you’re not going to find that level of quality at the bloated office-supply stores geared toward work in the last century. It’s a new era, people work differently now, they’re mobile, and they want better tools for work and daily living.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I could do it all over, I would have gone into retail sooner. I spent too long only in wholesale, listening to many retailers who dumbed down their product offerings to hit price points they imagined in their heads. It was like a race to the bottom, quality was sacrificed, and frankly, many of our old retail customers went out of business. For example, remember Charrette in Boston? That was a big customer, and they’re gone now.
I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying retail. I like creating the shopping experience for our customers (in our stores and on our web site), something you can’t control when you’re the wholesaler. I just wish I had done retail sooner. But timing is everything, as they say. I learned a lot along the way, and it seems like all the tough challenges of my early entrepreneurial years were leading to this. So, all in all? No complaints. It’s an exciting time to be in business.
Pricing:
- Kolo Newport Scrapbook 11×14 ($45) – https://www.kolo.com/products/newport-scrapbook-11×14
- Merippa House Shoes ($55) – https://www.kolo.com/collections/merippa-1
- Kolo Portland Day Pack ($78) – https://www.kolo.com/products/kolo-backpack
- Romeo No.3 Ballpoint Pen ($120) – https://www.kolo.com/products/romeo-wide-ballpoint-pen
- Color Chart Cloth Covered Notebook ($12) – https://www.kolo.com/products/color-chart-notebook-cloth-covered
- Color Chart Escaine Notebook Band – Pen Case ($25) – https://www.kolo.com/products/ecsaine-notebook-band-pen-case
Contact Info:
- Address: 273 Newbury St
Boston, MA 02116 - Website: https://www.kolo.com/
- Phone: 857-305-3934
Image Credit:
Kolo Topdrawer (www.kolo.com)
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