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Blu Dot is an American modern furniture retailer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It has 17 retail locations across the United States, Mexico, and Australia. The company has nearly 200 employees worldwide, with the majority based at its Minneapolis headquarters.
History
Blu Dot was started by three founders: John Christakos, Maurice Blanks, and Charlie Lazor. The company was founded in 1997 with $50,000 of the founders' own capital. The three founders met as undergraduate students at Williams College in Massachusetts and conceived the idea for the company during a post-graduation backpacking trip across Asia. The founders cited their struggle to furnish their first post-collegiate apartments as the catalyst for the company. They found that the options for furniture were either exorbitantly unaffordable or designs that they did not appreciate.
In 2018, Blu Dot was awarded for Product Design at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards and in the same year published a memoir written by the founders detailing the company's history, titled "Less Is More (Difficult): 20 Years of Design at Blu Dot."
Development Process and Products
Hot Mesh Barstools and Table
Contrary to other similar brands, Blu Dot has a unique product development process insofar as they control the product from its design through its retail life. Additionally, the company emphasises on co-ideation during the design process, instead of the designer's individual ownership of a product's design. Design ideas are put up in their early stages for critique by the larger design group to refine the idea, in lieu of the initial designer working through the products' creative and practical challenges alone. Therefore, unlike similar manufacturers, Blu Dot does not put its designers' names on the products they sell.
Blu Dot brings this democratic design to a fairly standard but diverse product assortment. Their product offerings include things such as indoor/outdoor dining chairs, glass nesting tables, plastic lounge chairs, storage ottomans, pillows, as well as living room staple sofas.
