Behind the Design: Jamie Young Co.

Style Editor Julie A. Palm chats with co-founder Jamie Young Jeter about a new trio driving design at her company, her guardrails for creative integrity, the inspiration behind some High Point Market debuts, and more.

By Julie A. Palm

With the retirement of half the husband-and-wife team behind Jamie Young Co. last year, the company has hired veteran furniture designer Jenn Gibbs as director of product development. She, along with co-founder Jamie Young and the longtime creative director Charlee Lowery, now work together on product design.

While the trio may be a new leadership configuration, don’t expect the company’s vibe to change. In business for nearly 30 decades, Jamie Young Co., based in Gardena, California, has grown and evolved. But it has always maintained a natural, organic, handmade ethos.

“I want to say we’re authentic. I think that word is overused right now so I hesitate, but authentic is the word. (A Jamie Young Co. product) has to feel real,” Young says.

“People have considered us a coastal brand for many years,” Young continues. “Because I was born and raised in Southern California at the beach, there’s a strong influence for that casual coastal feel. But we have expanded that same casual elegance into all the different looks, from mountain to coastal to city to country. But we always try to stay very unique.”

Her husband, company co-founder David Jeter, remains a consultant for the company and still accompanies Young on her extensive and frequent travels, but the addition of Gibbs “has helped expand our next chapter,” Young says.

“I consider Jamie Young Co. a legacy brand that really is a startup right now and that’s kind of a fun way to look at it,” Young says. “… So, the three of us (Young, Gibbs and Lowery) — with more people that assist us — are really driving design right now. My whole background has been design, merchandising and entrepreneurship, so I feel like I still add a lot to the conversation, but it’s fun to have such great people working with me, taking us to the next place.”

Jamie Young Co. started by offering table lamps with mix-and-match shades and today, about 50% of the company’s line is lighting. It also offers a wide range of accessories and furniture, essentially all key home furnishings, except upholstery, with products manufactured at partner factories around the world.

Design based in DNA

One thing that hasn’t changed for the company: Product design takes 14 months.

“We’ve tried a billion ways to get it shorter, but it really is 14 months,” Young says. The creative process starts by looking at the existing line and seeing what’s missing.

Throughout the design process, Young says, the team asks, “Is it a Jamie Young? Is it in our DNA?”

“We might design something and love it, but if it really doesn’t speak to our DNA, then we’re not going to do it. I think that we stay true to ourselves that way,” she says. “We love mixed materials. We love interesting materials. We love great finishes. … I’ve been doing this for 29 years now, and we have a lot more resources now. We continue to dig into what has always worked for us and expand on that.”

The creative inspiration comes from the team’s travels, from visits to museums and vintage stores, from wandering neighborhoods and from scrolling social media. It comes from everywhere, Young says.

Fashion, travel and hotels are particularly important sources of inspiration for Young.

“I love fashion because there’s such a beautiful mixture of textures and colors and materials. … I love everything from jewelry to clothing to purses to shoes, but also the history of it,” she says.

And, she adds, “hotel design is such a fun place to get inspired because you can do really extraordinary, unique things in hospitality design. … I was just in Vegas for a wedding a month ago and we were staying at a property. I looked around thinking, ‘This is so much fun, look at the way they’re putting things together. It’s so over the top.’ You get inspired.”

The Jamie Young Co. executive creative team meets for a couple of hours twice a week.

“We walk through fresh design and merchandising ideas as far as what’s missing (from our line), talk about what we all have been inspired by out in the world and then we move onto drawings … and follow it through with samples,” Young says. “And we do a ton of travel, meeting with the factories, making sure that we have the right factory for the right material. Sometimes it’s the factory that helps us drive design because they have a material that might be fresh for us and we develop that. It’s an organic process, but it does have some structure and formal processing to it.”

It might be ideal if pure creativity drove the process, but when designing new products, Young is mindful of practicalities, too.

“One of the international challenges today is lead times in every country and how much they’ve shifted based on everything that’s going on globally. So, we start out with a calendar and work backwards,” she says. “Then, depending on what the lead times are, how the world is looking, we move things around. … The typical (product introduction) calendar for us is a January-July introduction. This year, we’re doing things a little differently. So, we will have an April introduction and a Septemberone. With the Atlanta Market now being in June, not July, it’s too close to High Point, so we shifted.” The company will launch about 200 new products across categories at the April High Point Market.

Filtering ideas

Jamie Young Co. isn’t relying on artificial intelligence for design at this point, perhaps in keeping with the company’s philosophy.

“I think you have to be careful to keep the human brain (at the center) from a creative standpoint,” Young says. “Making (products) feel really human is important. One of the great things is we’re actually making things. … We go to these gorgeous factories and talk to these human beings about a shape being shifted or a finish slightly changing or a natural weave that I want thicker not thinner. Those are the beautiful things.”

When it comes to creativity, Young uses some filters and guidelines.

For instance, she’s careful not to take photos of other companies’ lighting fixtures because she never wants those designs to influence her own company’s. (She makes an exception for details of antique fixtures).

“Integrity is critical,” Young says. “I might see a cool color or a finish that makes sense or a material that we haven’t explored but I’m always thinking, ‘What’s our take on it?’”

She’s also thoughtful about who she follows on social media, focusing, for example, on international and architectural accounts. “I find my brain just frying sometimes,” Young says. “So, I’m much more specific about who I follow from a creative standpoint, so that I’m getting inspired properly.”

Three new lighting collections debuting at the High Point Market – Carousel, Confetti and Corset – that incorporate glass beads, metal and rope in various combinations illustrate the Jamie Young Co. creative process.

“Years ago when I first started, there was a husband-and-wife team next to me at the New York Gift Show and they made these handwoven beaded glass frames and napkin rings that I fell in love with that I still have,” Young says. “… (More recently) I was looking at one of those beaded glass frames that has a picture in it of one of my kids when he was a baby, and I was thinking, ‘This is such a great material and we’re not using it.’”

Next step: Taking advantage of the skills and specialties of a partner factory.

“So, I sent a picture of the frame to the factory. I said, ‘Can you find these kinds of glass beads? This is the size we want to develop some chandeliers and mirrors in them,’” Young says. “And they were great. Then we started playing with colors and came up with beautiful wall sconces and mirrors in these glass beads and that became part of a new collection.”

The April market launch also includes Cala and Coronet glass wall sconces, a line extension of glass chandeliers that were inspired by a vintage French chandelier at a bar in Austin, Texas.

“As I said, we get inspiration everywhere,” Young notes.

Bringing Jamie Young Co. to showrooms

The company’s key customers are lifestyle home retailers, interior designers and lighting showrooms.

“Retail stores love to work with us because we make their lives easy. We’re very much in stock and ship quickly. We have great sales teams; we have a good website. We have an amazing customer service department,” she says. “So, I pride myself and the whole company in being one of those vendors that people have a good feeling about.”

The company offers specific programs for lighting showrooms. “… And I believe our collection is something different,” she says. “There are a few big lighting players out there, but we bring things to the table that are definitely a little more unique. For lighting showrooms, we’re offering something they’re not going to get with other lighting vendors. There is a hand-touched feel to Jamie Young — because everything we do is made by hand around the world.”