Some businesses are the result of rigorous focus-group research and meticulous business plans. Others tend to grow organically, filling niches no one knew existed.
You can place fashion-industry phenomenon Paul Frank Industries emphatically in the latter category. Its namesake, Paul Frank, never harbored any intentions of becoming a fashion designer. Raised in Huntington Beach, California, a laid-back Orange County surf town, he spent his days as a community-college art student and his nights as guitarist in a band called The Moseleys.
On a whim, he bought a sewing machine to experiment with small art and craft projects. One day in 1995, he used some spare orange vinyl to create a wallet. It sparked such interest that Paul soon found himself spending every spare moment sewing vinyl — attaching patches to garments, decorating backpacks, and designing custom guitar straps for cohorts in the Orange County music scene.
A Partnership is Born
“If you liked this guy and his music, rumor had it he might make you a wallet,” remembers Paul Frank president Ryan Heuser. “Apparently I passed muster on that, and we quickly became friends.” At the time, Ryan was the head of men’s public relations at the youth brand Mossimo, and his roommate was dating John Oswald, a venture capitalist and finance major from San Diego State.
When Paul, Ryan, and John began chatting around a kitchen table in 1997, a small business was born. “Paul was the creative mind,” says Ryan, “I had the marketing know-how to turn his persona into something the public would come to adore, and we were lucky to find a business and finance partner when we met John.”
From Slim Wallets to Fat Budgets
What’s notable is how far, and how fast, Paul Frank Industries has come from those humble beginnings. Today, Paul Frank (the person) has moved on to other projects. But Paul Frank (the brand, best symbolized by Julius, its iconic monkey) is a $100-million enterprise selling accessories, apparel, eyewear, watches, and more in 41 countries around the world. They’ve opened a dozen of their own stores in America and Europe, and plan to expand their retail business to 25-50 far-flung locations, from Sydney to Dubai.
Worry-Free IT
That fateful decision suits Jay Potter, the company’s IT director, just fine. “I come from a UNIX background, so the Mac OS X operating system is a natural environment for me. It has the best front end I’ve ever worked with — simple enough for the everyday user, yet sophisticated enough for an IT manager to get into and use with power and efficiency. It’s totally straightforward, and it just works. You can install an OS X Server and know that everything — Macs, PCs, printers — will share happily in one big arena without any tweaking, which is brilliant.”
From the company’s colorful corporate headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, Jay relies on Apple Remote Desktop to single-handedly handle helpdesk support, software upgrades, and communication with all of Paul Frank’s domestic stores, from New York to San Francisco. “We upgrade software pretty often, and when you have nine stores to take care of, using Apple Remote Desktop is a lot better than jumping on a plane,” says Jay. With a reliable VPN [Virtual Private Network] connection to his corporate network and Apple Remote Desktop loaded onto his Mac laptop, “I can even deal with any store’s issues from home,” he adds.
A Commitment to Creativity
“What Mac does for us, as a creative group, is to keep us focused,” says creative director Dan Jensen. “We never worry about maintenance, or viruses, or losing assets on our Xserve. It just doesn’t happen. So everyone is able to focus on the creative tasks at hand — and to be uncommonly productive.
“The iLife suite is an especially simple and effective problem-solver for all of us. When we go out to do a publicity shoot, for example, we load all the shots into iPhoto to browse, sort, and select. The fact that you can share iPhoto libraries over a network is incredibly convenient — we don’t have to worry about transferring files from one machine to another. When we need to manipulate sets of photos on a higher level, we use Aperture.
I’d be lost without my new black MacBook. I mean, aesthetically it’s absolutely beautiful, and functionally it’s flawless. In a business that’s always been devoted to cutting-edge design, how can you beat that?
Photo Gallery
Paul Frank Industries
960 West 16th Street
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
949.515.7950
www.paulfrank.com
Animal Instincts
It makes sense that Paul Frank, a company that’s unleashed into the world Julius the monkey, Clancy the giraffe, and Worry Bear, would have a pet-friendly corporate culture. “We have dogs roaming all over the building,” says Ryan Heuser. “Some are wonderful, some are a bit out of control, but they’re all part of the family.” Recently, a team from Paul Frank’s creative department shot a video of all the company dogs, cut a teaser together using Final Cut Studio, and used it to pitch the story to “Dog Whisperer,” the popular show on the National Geographic network. “It worked,” says Ryan, “they loved the concept, and we’ll soon have a segment on the show. Which is a perfect example of why we use Mac. It just makes it easy to quickly execute any idea. And now we’ll have yet another way to gain national awareness for our brand, on a TV show that everyone watches.”
