76 interiors+sources may2017 interiorsandsources.com
+ Dressing Room
By Kadie Yale | Photography courtesy of Poppin
Nestled in the gray and white of New York City’s Flatiron District is an oasis of color. Above the city street, you can
find Poppin’s headquarters and showroom.
The brand has grown rapidly from its inception,
selling 627 “work happy” SKUs—vibrant
staplers, pen caddies, notebooks, anything
needed to get a day’s work done. Recently,
the company has extended into creating
simple go-to furniture with the same eye to
simple, cost-efficient designs, which can be
constructed and relocated without a team. In
today’s time-is-money office environments,
relying on a facilities manager or pulling
additional help from their computers just
doesn’t make sense sometimes.
As a favorite amongst start-up entities,
Poppin made the no-brainer move to open
a second showroom in San Francisco. Its
products are often chosen by companies
that are looking for inexpensive, laid-back
goods that can do double—or sometimes
quadruple—duty within the office, growing
and transforming to meet varied needs.
Recognizing that environments are as
individual as the members of a team, the
group at Poppin didn’t just transplant a
clone of its New York showroom to The City
by the Bay. Instead, explained Jeff Miller, vice
president of product design, the design of San
Francisco’s showroom was more purposeful
with “a good stable of products,” while
NYC’s space grew up alongside the
company. In the spirit of cordial East Coast
vs. West Coast rivalries, i+s takes a look
at the sister showrooms, and what makes
them each unique.
As Poppin embraces its start-up roots in New York City,
From the Big Apple. . .
Because the New York
showroom sits across the hall from
the floor-to-ceiling windows of Poppin’s bustling
headquarters, there can be a bit of confusion
regarding whether the space is meant to be a
place for designers or an extension of the
company’s offices. Truth be told, it’s a stand-in
for both, giving employees an area to get away
or come together over a game of table tennis
(on Poppin’s Series A Conference Table that
transforms into a ping-pong court), and for
visitors to peruse the wares.
The use of space hits
upon two growing trends in
the industry: adaptation of
interiors as needed on
a minute-by-minute basis,
and providing physical
interactions for a consumer
population that is increasingly
specifying and ordering
online. Studies show that the
“online vs. brick-and-mortar”
question that has grown
over the last two decades
isn’t that cut-and-dry. Instead,
consumers tend to prefer to
do their product research and
purchasing online, but will
make the trek to stores to
test out goods in person.
