Top: Just beyond the entrance to our complex, showcasing the Electric Avenue Studios title. Bottom: Then there's some not-so-gorgeous parking, with Craig's truck. Not sure why we included this one. Frankly, overall, the exterior of the space and its siting is better than these pictures depict.

We love our offices. We love the location (yes, we know, we talk about Venice and Abbot Kinney all the time, but we do love it), we love their non-office-park-ness, we love the light, we love the loftiness.

We’ve been here since March 2002, the full ten years of our existence. I believe I’ve told the story before that just as I’d determined I was indeed going to give this Knock Knock idea a go, I was walking a then-one-year-old Maisie in the neighborhood and saw the “For Rent” sign on the Electric Avenue Studios. When I signed the five-year lease, I thought to myself, “Well, if this venture doesn’t fly, at least I’ll have room for all my arts and crafts supplies.” I took great pleasure in planning out the space and designing its built-in work areas (in Quark; I hadn’t yet been introduced to Illustrator, and I’ve never been able to get over the initiation hump on AutoCAD) and making it the artist’s-studio-plus-a-few-workstations that I never knew how much I wanted. Hell, who wouldn’t want it?

Left: Our original space, with the amazing crafts island in the middle, my dream of many years prior. See how much arts-and-crafts storage space there is against the back wall in the Metro Shelving? Aaah. Top right: The upstairs of our original, single-unit office. Bottom right: The outside of our original, single-unit office. For when the galvanized rolling garage door was up, I sewed that curtain myself out of ripstop nylon and then ran chains through channels at the top and bottom and installed a winch with which to tighten it. So proud. And I think that's an ashtray on the table from when I still smoked. God, I miss it.

In August 2002, we took over a second unit on a month-to-month basis to use as a photography studio for our first catalog; warehouse for our first batch of inventory; and staging area for our first orders. By mid-2003, both spaces were full of people and stuff. With a startup created by a virgin entrepreneur, it’s impossible to know what the future space demands might be. And if you don’t start in an office park environment with prefab modular cubicles and scalable (and leasable) office furniture, you’ll find yourself doing lots of scrambling to create workstations—especially if you’re unfortunate enough also to care what they look like. Thank god for Ikea, which understands that some people like cheap stuff without adornment in shades of bright white rather than faux woodgrain.

By August 2003, we’d moved our inventory and warehouse operations to (fraudulent and incompetent, it turns out) third-party fulfillment company and had begun manufacturing fully assembled product overseas, so we didn’t need the space to store and sort and collate and shrinkwrap and label and ship anymore. The second space evolved into more workstations. Running back and forth between the two nonadjacent units, however, took a togetherness and efficiency toll, and after a while, neither space was well suited for our needs. So in early 2005, we undertook to move another company (oddly, also fraudulent) from one space in the complex to another in order to have two contiguous units. We did a renovation that drew the second floor across the full space (vs. the half-lofts of the original units) and linked the two as open spaces. This was neither cheap nor financially prudent, but we loved it then and we love it still.

The complex, called Electric Avenue Studios, was completed in April 1994 by our landlord, the inimitable Robert Slayton, whose eighty-ninth birthday was yesterday. He’s a lifelong entrepreneur who started out in the garment industry. Robert’s been a support and mentor to me and Knock Knock from the beginning. He doesn’t suffer fools (or crooks—and if I’d taken his advice, I could have avoided a lot of trouble on that front) easily, but I’m grateful that he suffers me. In addition to his business savvy, Robert is incapable of telling a boring story. A Brit, Robert was part of the engineering design team (a stress analyst, to be specific, working in a commandeered golf clubhouse, no less) on aircraft designer Barnes J. Wallis’s “bouncing depth charge” concept, an innovation that allowed the Allies to take out important German dams and cause catastrophic flooding. The bombs had been newly invented to get through torpedo nets by using the physics principle of skipping a stone across water to get the bombs to their targets. The feats were memorialized in a book and movie, Dam Busters. Apparently, in addition to helping the Allies win World War II, this was good preparation for business success.

Top left: A couple permutations after we did the renovation to combine the two spaces; this is now our digital and marketing area. Bottom left: This is the design/production area and sits on the second floor that we drew all the way across from the original half-depth loft. Right: The editorial horseshoe, originally intended just to be a library, but, as with most growing companies, everything eventually becomes dedicated workspace to accommodate the bodies.

Robert owns almost the entire block of Venice that we’re on, including the former art studio of Ed Ruscha, next door, which used to be a beer distribution building with a loading dock opening directly to the Southern Pacific Railroad, on tracks that had still not been entirely covered over when we moved in. Robert purchased the properties in the 1960s, when Venice was far from chic, before Venice Blvd. had been widened to double its breadth, before the remaining canals had been rescued from their squalor, before Washington Blvd. had been renamed Abbot Kinney. (For years, I’d heard tell of the famous Eames studio at 901 Washington, somehow on Abbot Kinney, cemented by Charles Eames’s charming grandson Eames Demetrios’s elegiac 1990 documentary, 901: After 45 Years of Working. This confused me. Finally I learned of the street’s name change and identified the building.) I asked Robert how he’d known to invest in industrial, down-at-the-heels Venice real estate. He replied, and I paraphrase, “I knew that beachfront property is, by definition, finite. I knew that people always want to be by the water. They’d want to be close to LAX and Westwood and Beverly Hills and other well-developed residential areas. I knew that everybody looked to Santa Monica and to the South Bay, but at some point they’d need more room and Venice would appreciate.” Clearly he had the long view, an affinity I sadly do not share. Robert and his family also own property in Beverly Hills and a shopping mall in Seattle, among others, but I find it telling that Robert’s own office is here at Electric Avenue Studios.

Robert’s inspiration for the complex was the town square, two buildings facing a parking lot commons. The units are each 1,100 square feet and consist of a full-footprint first floor with a half-footprint loft as the second floor. His prescience in designing the complex for maximum flexibility continues to impress me. He made the loft construction more hefty than it needed to be in case anyone ever wanted, as we did, to draw across a complete second floor. Every other connecting wall is not load bearing and thus can be taken down to form a double-wide open space. Every other other connecting wall is cinderblock, but there’s a door frame in each to allow for daisy-chaining the units together. Each unit is a mirror image of the one next to it to accommodate these variations. He used simple, honest materials—cinderblock, cement, roll-top garage doors—to create a chic but unpretentious canvas for the complex’s inhabitants.

Top left: The entrance to the latest addition, the third space, which houses the business team (sales, accounting, operations, customer service, and el presidente). See the white "KNOCK"? That's courtesy of our friends at Blik, per a previous blog post. Top right: Where the business team takes care of business. Bottom left: The doorway between the newish third space and KK's second architectural reincarnation, the combined double space. Bottom right: The entrance to our conference room, much needed in the third incarnation. That Knock Knock illustration on the door is some wallpaper I found online for like five bucks.

In late 2009, we needed a third space. Robert had never before been willing to rent out three spaces to one tenant because it’s a triple vacancy risk should that tenant decide to leave, so we were very grateful when he decided to take a flier on us. Having learned some frugality lessons, we built out the third space much more simply than the earlier two-unit renovation. We converted a workstation area into a much-needed conference room in the middle space; moved all the business functions into the new unit; and gave the upstairs of the two combined offices entirely over to the creative departments.

As of September 1, 2012, we will be the proud and fortunate renters of a fourth space. We’re taking the unit over not because we need it right now this very second, but because we know we’ll need it soon enough and it’s coming up for vacancy. Rather than spend money with a buildout we don’t yet need, we’re going to turn it into a temporary rumpus room. The upstairs loft will be all couches, for impromptu meetings and laptop work sessions, while the downstairs will become our commissary and all-company meeting place. I’m over the moon about the fact that we’re going to be bringing in ping-pong table, because I love ping-pong. We had a ping-pong table early on, but we needed the space so quickly that it was almost immediately covered with inventory assembly materials; I’m really hoping we’ll be able to keep this one for a while. (As it happens, Robert is also quite good at ping-pong, but I’ve forgotten the story behind that.)  We’ll also use this fourth space for an on-display product archive and for our in-house inventory, which we keep for things like PR and sales samples and last-minute birthday presents. At some point, we’ll have to build workstations in the space and link it to the other three, but for now it will be mostly recreational.

My dream is one day—in fact, at the end of the five-year lease on the four spaces that is set to start September 1—to renovate and move into the former beer distribution building next door. We’d have completely dedicated and unified spaces in a free-standing building. Robert is rooting for this plan as well.

When we have the fourth space loosely thrown together (again, thank you Ikea), we’ll post pictures. In the meantime, let’s wish a collective happy birthday to Mr. Robert Slayton, landlord, mentor, and raconteur extraordinaire. I can’t imagine Knock Knock existing in anyone else’s realm.

This study by Chemistry.com named our locale the top city where sex is valued the most.

Note that eight out of the ten cities listed are all in California, and seven of those are in SoCal. The blog post also states that valuing sex may correlate with a higher dopamine level. (Interpret that how you will.)

No wonder we have our own stash of products for lovers. Use them as catalysts if you want:

Check off reasons using our Why I Must Have Sex With You Pad.

Or sound like a sexpert with Sex Chic-chat for All Occasions book.

Nevertheless, if you’re in the Golden State, don’t feel bad about having spring flings—it’s in our geographic blood after all.

Since last week was scattered with drizzles of rain, today’s cloudless, blue-streaked sky (the standard for our Venice locale) was just asking for us to go strolling for a little fresh air. So, on our lunch break, a few of us decided to walk down Abbot Kinney to Abbot’s Habit, a café and coffee hub.

On the way there, I came across little odd and ends that reminded me that yes, we are in Venice.

Here’s a little taste of my findings:

It’s just your typical busy day on Abbot Kinney.

A quick shot of the daily hustle and bustle. However busy and trafficked it may seem (I mean, we’re still in Los Angeles), there’s still an aura of calmness.

I believe these ornaments have been up since October. Who wouldn't want a string of what looks like Village People mermen? (FYI, I was kind of loitering.)

Enda King Men is a men’s boutique created by resident designer—you guessed it—Enda King and has been on Abbot Kinney since 2005. What with all of the window-shopping I do, I couldn’t help but notice this eccentric string of ornaments in their display.

A FAILE piece outside of POST NO BILLS. I feel like the rest of this caption should be in ALL CAPS.

I spotted this street art by FAILE, which is a collaboration between artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. This graffitied Pinocchio is one of many spray painted, poster-like masterpieces that live outside of POST NO BILLS, a go-to print shop. This Venice Pinocchio seems tougher than the Florence Pinnochio from the original story.

Linus Bikes.

Like other Venice residents, our head honcho is big on bike riding. And Linus Bikes’ french-inspired designs look even better neatly in a row.

Zangara's cowboy rainboots. Genius.

These cowboy rainboots sat on the steps of Zangara, a gypsy cart-esque clothing and accessories store. I could have used a pair of these western-inspired wonders last week.

It’s a quiet day at Knock Knock headquarters (every time I write “headquarters,” I feel like a regular gumshoe). But usually when it’s quiet around here (and more so when it’s not), minds are bustling and hustling along.

View from outside our window.

We’re getting ready for the holiday season amid preparing for tradeshows, finishing our Spring 2012 catalog, researching and designing Fall 2012 products, finalizing reports, sending product orders, and really abusing that new Nespresso machine.

It’s also Thursday afternoon and absolutely blah outside. (At least I think so. Check out that pic from our window.) The Venice sun certainly seems to be acting shy today, but I’m sure plenty of us Knock Knockers enjoy the gray skies.

I thought it would be fun for at least one of the busy bees in the office to take a short break and revisit childhood for a few minutes. So Kelly, our amazing and wonderful customer service manager, filled out a page of our This or That? Activity Book. I decided to fill out the other page to balance it out (and because I wanted to day dream for a little bit longer while I ate my lunch):

Kelly took a short break during this busy afternoon.

Our This or That? doodles. Mine is on the left, Kelly's is on the right. I'm wondering if Kelly subconsciously underlined "beer."

We hope everyone else is having a productive Thursday!

Yesterday, talk of hipsters arose randomly in the editorial aerie (I think we ended the conversation talking about Bob Dylan—known as Robert Zimmerman in his pre-hipster days). The convo reminded me about an instance a month ago, when I was Tweeting with a FOKKer (I handle all social media outreach at the KK office, so in case you thought I was on Twitter while on duty, I was actually working—promise!), and the person called us “hilarious hipsters” from the East Coast. Now, it wasn’t out of bad taste, as so many expect the situation to be when the h-word is involved (the tweetee is a sweet, sweet fan). Still, I was bothered by it for some reason (and not just because our bums actually sit on the West Coast as opposed to the east).

Stereotyping is never good. And this is a bit dated, but it's still pretty accurate.

It’s probably because by society’s standards (in league with my imagination), a person deemed a “hipster” thrives on pretention, throws back a few cold Pabst Blue Ribbons as he/she strokes their unruly beard or mustache (whether self-grown or store bought), while flipping their limbs this way and that to Animal Collective beats at the latest Pitchfork-sponsored music festival. Don’t get me wrong, that’s all fine and dandy (to each their own), but there are so many Internet memes and videos bashing hipsters nowadays, it’s hard associate the word with anything above loathing. And according to a Psychology Today article (sent to me from Jen, our head honcho), “nobody likes hipsters, not even hipsters.”

In short, our team, as individuals and as a whole, aren’t hipsters (although there are plenty of Angelenos hipsters scattered throughout Venice). If you stepped in our office, or scanned any of our In It for the Money posts, you would see that we don’t quite match the description (it’s funny that people may think that though).

But maybe our products exude some sort of hipster nature that’s under my radar? (I could see a skinny-jeaned, scarf-wearing dude reading our Convert’s Bible or handing out Rate That Beer sheets.) What do you think? Does the Knock Knock brand seem at all hipster to you?

Note: After approximately 678 words of exposition, there are many cool pictures with descriptive captions below. If you have no desire to read the introductory essay—and believe me, I wouldn’t blame you—just skip down to the pictures.

Happy dogs at the intersection of Navarre and Seville Courts (in my Venice mini-neighborhood, the alleys all have regal Spanish names: Cordova, Granada, and Toledo are a few of their alley hermanas).

I’d never experienced alleys before I moved to Los Angeles, and to Venice in particular. Right before I landed in LA, in 1998, I freelance-edited a book called Everyday Urbanism (reissued, in 2008), one of my favorite books I’ve worked on. A compilation of essays about slices of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, its timing was perfect; I was just starting to realize, with the help of another book I was overseeing, Hollywood Handbook, created with the Chateau Marmont hotel, that Los Angeles had some guts and depth under its smoggy, Botoxed skin. When you’re raised in the Bay Area, it’s practically your birthright to hate Southern California. We would always explain the “rivalry” like this: Northern Californians think that Southern Californians are materialistic and vapid and dumb, and Southern Californians are too materialistic and vapid and dumb to think about Northern California. Did you catch the superiority complex there? What I learned once I’d been living in Los Angeles for a while is that Los Angeles is huge and San Francisco is small; Los Angeles basically thinks of San Francisco as a hilly bed-and-breakfast. It’s a contest of non-equals in which one side cares a lot and the other side not at all.

Anyhoo. Between my newfound friend Laurie Jacobson, a Hollywood historian I’d hired to contribute to Hollywood Handbook, and whose amazing apartment right under the Hollywood sign I’d take over when I relocated from New York City (she was moving to Santa Rosa to marry the man who played Timmy on Lassie, whom she’d met at a nostalgic stars convention; their wedding, at the Hollywood landmark Yamashiro, was like a photo album of child stars, including the Beaver, familiar faces all transposed onto middle age); the pictures we were using for the book, from the Bison Archives, along with the stories told by its founder, the encyclopedically knowledgeable Marc Wanamaker; my increasingly frequent visits to LA that didn’t only involve staying with my grandparents in their trailer park in the northeast corner of the Valley (not a stellar Southern California perch) and accompanying them to malls and amusement parks, I was starting to get the sense that Los Angeles was a pretty rich place. And I now get the sense that that was a pretty long sentence.

I spent about a year and a half under the Hollywood sign, in Beachwood Canyon, before my friends Carrie and Dean exposed me to the beachy, eminently walkable perfectitude of Venice. I seem to land in the Berkeley of wherever I go—Ann Arbor, Michigan; the East Village in NYC; and then Venice. I house- and dog-sat for Carrie and Dean to see if it was a true match and wore out their not-young pug, Doc, exploring by foot. Soon after, Carrie and Dean decided to move back to the Boston area, where they’d both grown up, and I took over the undermarket lease on their house (thank god they moved back a year later, unable to stay away, and bought another house a few blocks away). I now live next door to that house (long story), right alongside the namesake home that has the KNOCK KNOCK on the front door.

As I walked Doc I discovered the alleys and remembered reading about them in Everyday Urbanism. The alley essay talks about the hidden, unspoken economies and social interactions of the Venice alleys—the wealthy homeowners, exponents of rapid gentrification, leaving their castoffs on top of their garbage cans (Venice garbage cans are left and emptied in the alleys) for the homeless walking through; the Central American can collectors . . . there were more layers, but it’s been a long time since I read the essay.

I now walk the alleys primarily because I can let the dogs run and sniff and explore off-leash without endangering them too much, a calculated away-from-the-real-street risk that I’ll be able to anticipate someone pulling out of their garage. I recently mentioned to a friend how much I love the alleys of Venice, how I’d never encountered alleys before LA, and he said, “That makes sense because it’s such a young city. You wouldn’t find alleys in older city planning.” I’m not sure if this is true, but it appears that way to my naked (okay, contact lens–clad) eye.

Venice Alleys: A Photo Essay (vs. a Words Essay):

Typical Venice. Ramshackle original Victorian-ish shingle house, converted into multiple residences, with a newfangled “lot filler” (that’s what I call the big bricks of homes that the newer Venice money builds on the 26-by-100-foot lots; you want a big house when you’ve paid $1 million for a tear-down) in the background (and, of course, a Prius driving by). Paco has found something of olfactory interest on the asphalt (the alley pavements are in terrible condition because the city doesn’t take responsibility for them; I’m not quite sure how they managed to get out of that).

Compare-and-contrast auxiliary vehicles, one of two. On one side of the alley, a vaguely Indian pedicab in the back of a pickup truck of non-recent vintage (protected, of course, by Bel-Air Patrol, despite Bel Air’s being some 12 miles to the north of Venice and worlds apart).

Pedicab close-up. I wonder if it’s related to the incredibly active Hari Krishna center nearby, which holds an annual float parade, the Festival of the Chariots (here are a couple videos: one illustrating the floats in motion and the other capturing musical performance and some unique resident dancers), on the Venice Beach Boardwalk. The pedicab isn’t secured in any way, and it’s been in the back of this pickup for at least a year. I sometimes wonder if anybody would notice if I took it. I won’t, though. Just one of my (I admit, not few) criminal fantasies.

Compare-and-contrast auxiliary vehicles, two of two. Directly across the alley from the pedicab-pickup combo, not 15 feet away, a few lot-fillers, one with a sizeable boat (it’s new-looking and at least 25 feet long) and the other with a new Mercedes.

Coming around to another alley entirely, on the other side of Abbot Kinney from my home alleys: the Knock Knock alley. That cinderblock building is the backside of our office complex. They’ve recently swept the alley clear to increase parking. The construction on the right is work to convert the former Samy’s Camera building into a new, huge Quiksilver store.

Next door to us leans the detritus of the studio of the artist Laddie John Dill and a slightly improbable citrus tree, even more improbably thriving. A huge piece of Dill’s, similar in approach to this bedraggled outtake, hangs over the bar at Hal’s, one of the oldest restaurants on Abbot Kinney (i.e., circa 1987, also famous as the year I graduated from high school), the exterior of which is often used as a location on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Dill shared the former bottling plant (so sited for convenience to the railroad that used to run through the alley; the city only recently completed covering over the tracks) with Ed Ruscha. Ruscha loved the light at the back of the building, space that was enclosed by a wood shack (you can see where it attached to the building along the midheight wood horizontal). I love the concentric ghosts of the large-scale canvases that he sprayed as they leaned against the wall.

Our office landlords own this building, too, and they battled with the city for years to keep the sheds from being torn down. The city prevailed, and the sheds were demolished earlier this year. Here are a few articles on this, from The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the LA Weekly. The relevance of Joni Mitchell’s now-cliché is almost too cloying: “They paved paradise and put in a parking lot.”

I love walking by this “mural” every day (it’s on my way home) and think it should somehow be landmarked. I wanted to paint a border around it and stencil something like “Ed Ruscha was here: 1985–2011,” and even got permission from the landlords, but I haven’t gotten around to it. The landlords’ only concern was that it would invite more graffiti, and even though we haven’t yet memorialized the spot, that yellow splatter of paint in the middle (which is grotesquely three-dimensional) is new.

I supposed it’s a bit anticlimactic (not to mention loooong) to follow the Ed Ruscha story with more alley pictures of lesser importance, but there are two additional elements of our office alley that I love. One is this this little pagoda-style folly of a building that’s actually the back house of another, newer building that fronts on Abbot Kinney (you can’t see the old pagoda from the street). It’s currently home to the Harlot Salon, recently opened by the friendliest woman, Marylle Koken (“pronounced like the mushroom—morel,” she told me), who doesn’t mind letting the dogs venture through the open back door when I take them out for breaks.

Finally, this great old brick building, currently home to a custom-jeans company called the Stronghold (established, so the site says, in 1895, the first denim brand manufactured in Los Angeles—but with a long break, I’d imagine, since the current company, which makes “reproductions” of the originals, isn’t that old). The building is beautiful . . . here’s a picture of the front, which I didn’t take:

. . . but I couldn’t easily find historical information about the construction other than to learn that it was built in the early 1900s. I only just now learned, while conducting real-time blog-post research, that the Stronghold also hosts secret, quasi-invitation-only “speakeasy” concerts by the likes of Jackson Browne and Ben Harper.

And there, dear readers, you will conclude, as I have, that the Venetian cookie has just crumbled full circle. After writing a magnum blogus about being an insider, at the end of the day (or the end of post), I am ever reminded that I’m never quite inside enough, as so few of us are. Color my paradise at least partially paved.

Sometimes tourists take pictures of these signs—oh, so LA.

Many people think there are no seasons in Los Angeles. The transitions are subtler, of course, and the two yucky ones are infinitely more bearable than those of other climates, but they exist nonetheless. In autumn the air takes a turn toward the crisp and carries the smell of over-eager fireplaces. In winter the light is bluer, rain makes a welcome appearance, and nights actually merit jackets. Spring is announced by the sweet smell of jasmine; we are elated at springtime but much less than those who have just endured a true winter. Summer’s light gets round and yellow and the dry heat sets in, bringing a sense of slowness and playtime. Right now it’s totally summer here in LA.

In Venice on a summer weekend, it seems like the whole world is on bikes. I just got a new one, in Knock Knock orange, and I feel like I’m flying. Errands seem more fun, and I’ve learned that the Viceroy Hotel has an incredibly crowded bike rack. The Viceroy’s bellmen wouldn’t valet my bike but there are actually bike valets in Los Angeles, at events like the Sunday Santa Monica Farmer’s Market (where the valets often find themselves parking fancy baby trailers and fielding requests for Bugaboo storage so the children they contain can ride the ponies) and the Twilight Music Series at the Santa Monica Pier. In a not-unsurprising turn of character, I had never, in thirteen years in Los Angeles and twelve in Venice, gone to the Twilight Music Series. I thought it would entail standing around with people on the pier. It turns out you bring a picnic and wine and sit on the sand looking up at the pier after parking your bike in the most orderly way possible. I can’t believe it took me twelve years to get there (a friend was visiting, of course; otherwise I never would have tried it).

At work, we have every other Friday off between Memorial Day and Labor Day, our Summer Fridays. After Labor Day, the resumption of regular Fridays feels a little like when it’s dark early right after daylight saving switches back over—a bummer. Though this year we’re inaugurating two new practices to foster inspiration among the creative team: Freedom Fridays and Afternoon Delights. Freedom Fridays will fall once a month. For the first half of the day, we won’t be allowed to do any assigned work. Instead, we have to pick a non-work-related creative activity, whether reading a few of the gazillion art and design books in the office or sketching out a new, unassigned product idea. Then at lunch we’ll come together and share what each of us did. Afternoon Delights (in our definition) will be field trips to museums, Color Me Mine (just joking—but we do want to try a craft class), and shopping areas (for corporate espionage, i.e., understanding the marketplace), and will happen once every three months on a Wednesday. With all our deadlines—and we pump an awful lot of work through a lean, productive, talented group—sometimes we have a hard time remembering to feed and replenish our creative juices and think more freely.

I have no idea how well the bike valet industry pays, but its workers seem committed.

It always takes new Knock Knock team members a while to wrap their heads around our business seasons, which are completely different from the life seasons at hand. Right now we’re putting the finishing touches on our release for Spring 2012, which will hit the trade show circuit in January and find its way into stores and onto our website in early February. All the products for Spring 2012 need to go to manufacturing by Labor Day. At the same time, we’re starting work on Fall 2012, which will go to manufacturing by Christmas and will make its debut at the National Stationery Show in May. I’m no longer confused by our product seasons, but I sometimes forget where I myself actually am in the year.

From a business perspective, about halfway through a year, at the six-month point, it feels like the year is effectively over because we tend to know how the year will finish in terms of revenue and our products for the year are all released. At the nine-month point, we start convincing ourselves that the year to come is the one that will bring all the good things, all the successes, that we didn’t necessarily have in the current year. After Labor Day, we start projecting and budgeting the following year, a process that used to be infinitely more arduous before our financial statements became almost entirely formula driven and before we started projecting in a rolling (vs. trailing!) way, meaning that we constantly update our projections so that we have twelve months of visibility at any given date, not just on January 1.

And because I’m a self-flagellating neurotic, around Labor Day I start regretting all the summer things that I didn’t do and transition to theoretically looking forward to them for the following summer, even though I probably won’t do them then, either. You know, stuff like hiking every weekend and swimming in the ocean once or twice.

But I love the fall, and I love transitioning into work on a new product season. By this point in the development of the Spring release, all the products are known quantities, many of them finished. To be honest, at the end, we’re kind of sick of working on them. So turning to the new list is exciting and reinvigorating. I look forward to dropping teasers about it in the near future. We’ve got some exciting and surprising (truly!) new things on the docket for 2012, some of them top secret, and we look forward to your reaction as they emerge.

Note: One of my favorite quotes is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead,” variously attributed to Samuel Johnson (a dyspeptic-looking man, it seems, at least in his Wikipedia portrait) and Mark Twain. Have you noticed that’s my approach to writing?