Anew Nature, The design firm with a twist
So last week we got talking to Robert from Anew Nature, and what they do guys, well its amazing. They offer furniture design internships and unbiased employment to men, with past felony convictions, and give them the confidence to strive within the community. Robert is growing his scheme more and more every day and helping more and more people, it's truly inspiring. Take to scroll and read our interview below to learn more about what inspired us.
Design Update Can we start by you telling us a little bit about you and what inspired you to set up a new nature?
Anew Nature I grew up in Jefferson county MO, in the boonies and had a fairly narrow worldview until I started volunteering with Mission: St Louis in my early 20's doing home repair and teaching county people to do home repair in the grove area to stop eminent domain from kicking low income families out for minor code violations. I did that for about 4 years until Josh (the executive director of MSTL) offered to me to teach the same skills to men who had been incarcerated, as part of a program they run. I only taught for about 12 hours a week as a volunteer, and after working with my 2nd set of 5 interns I was crushed by the realization that I was, as a whole no different from the men I was working with who'd been incarcerated. It's different saying "everyone is equal" your whole life, but until that truth smacks you in the heart, it's not much more than a phrase. I immediately began to try to make teaching the class a full time job and started refinishing, building and selling furniture. Fast forward 6 months and I began to want to hire felons specifically, due to the difficulty to employment for them specifically, that's when we really started pushing our custom furniture and began to do really fun and unique designs to set us apart. Since then, we've hired 6 different interns until we got them GREAT jobs, for lengths of time between 2 months and 2 years - and had over 4 dozen men come through our program and get the necessary skills for employment.
Design Update What is your favorite success story?
Anew Nature There are a few great ones for sure, it's really hard to pick. I would say, one of our "short but sweet" stories would be an intern we had come through (who will remain nameless for his sake) I'll call him Big-Tex. He came after serving time in the FED for more charges than I can imagine, after being wrapped up in gang activities since the age of 13. He ran a group of more than 30 gang members, and even money laundering businesses, until a close family memeber was killed in a mistaken attempt on his life from a rival gang. When he came to us, he had more motivation to stay out of the system than I've ever seen. Even to the point where, when another interns stole something from our shop and we were all talking about it, he said "I can't be here with this going on" and walked out because he couldnt even be close to a crime. I followed him out trying to get him to stay, and it took me about 2 weeks of contacting him to get him to come back. He DID finish the program, with flying colors and now manages a local business here. He has more "go get em'" than me, I'm truly inspired by Big-Tex.
Design Upate What was your first ever project?
Anew Nature My first build would have been a farm house table, where I repurposed the legs from a ruined dining table, and built a pine top for a client of ours from our church. ...I had NO IDEA what I was doing when I began so of course the top failed (cracked in like 4 places) so I built a second top free of charge and replaced it. We ended up using the top that failed for a DEEPLY distressed table where we beat it with chains and cut it with a chainsaw blade, filled the voids with clear epoxy and finished it again. It's now in an awesome local coffee shop called Rise coffee
Design Update How do you celebrate success?
Anew Nature Well, like awkward men would in any shop I'd imagine. Pats on the back, fist bumps and hand shakes. We're always quick to say "you're doing an incredible job" etc to our interns while we're on session. But most guys can't hadle being gushed over right at the beginning - so we work to really enourage our guys and let them know how important their work and success is. Mostly we celebrate with a few clinks & drinks after a hard day, or a big delivery and at the end of the internship, Mission St. Louis has a BIG party and pinning ceremony. So that's always a blast!
Design Update What does a typical day look like at a new nature?
Anew Nature I strive to make Anew as close to a normal business as possible for our interns, as they may not be working with us forever. It's important to know what a normal job looks like, especially if you've never had one. Or at least, a business I would want to work with. We start our days between 8:30-9am, as many of our interns take the bus to us, I like to have an "arrival window" with lots of grace. If the bus is 15 mins late, it could mean a "no call" at a bigger business. NOT here. The obstacles our interns leap over to get to work on time are more than most people can imagine. So we make sure to make the distinction between a hardest effort to get to work and work hard - and taking advantage of understanding. It's part of our "boot camp" approach. ANY job is what we LIVE to do, not do to LIVE and it's got to be treated that way, you've got to WANT it hard enough to make sacrifices, or you'll never succeed or excel. Once we start work, I guess it's like any other company, lots of dust, sweat and fist bumps and when possible, we end the day with a crisp glass of whiskey to honor a hard day's work.
Design Update What is your favorite project by a new nature?
Anew Nature I think my favorite project was my most difficult one (and consequently the most educational) A solid steel, 6x6 conference room table for a wonderful repeat client. It weighed over 1000 lbs, was a hand finished, high gloss white lacquer with a concrete composite we developed specifically for this project as the legs. In the center of the table are 5 compartments containing 48, surge protected outlets and cable storage space. all trimmed in beautiful walnut in a pinwheel pattern. Just moving that piece, was incredibly hard, but getting the combined finished together just fit and mechanically sound with lift top compartments led to many more than one loud explitives from a few of our staff (myself included) bu everything good is costly, and this piece really shows its unique beauty in the hardship of creation
Design Update What’s your favorite part about working here?
Anew Nature I would say how brotherly we all are. After the first 2 weeks of being with new interns and the first typical guy awkwarness is out ouf the way, we start to really get to know eachother and care of eachother, like you can only do at work. If you want to know who I REALLY am, work with me for a month. You'll see how I treat my wife, how I react to smashing my finger, taking praise from a client or co-worker, making a business mistake and losing money or fixing a product we damaged while moving. We are who we REALLY are when our defences are worn down by the day. So we get pretty close through the course of our 8 week sessions. I LOVE that. it's real, more real than some friendships could ever be.
Design Update What are your plans for the future a new nature?
Anew Nature My longterm goal is for anew nature to grow to the point where we can be accepting HUGE numbers of interns, and have our teachers all be graduates and hires of our program. After we fund our kickstarter, I want to continue adding lines of furniture to expand our employment opportunities and unique training experiences - but the BIG goal is to have anew nature totally operated by graduates of our training, who have felonies on their record and my goal is to get us there as fast as possible.
Design Update What's your favorite office tradition?
Anew Nature Probably the first hour of every day - We're all shaking off the day before and waking up, but it starts with hand shakes, bro-hugs, fist bumps and conversation about what's happened since we saw eachother last + what we're going to accomplish tomorrow. I love the relationships that little window of time builds.
Design Update Does anyone on the team hang out outside the office?
Anew Nature We do! I try to take us out for drinks whenever time allows and be able to connect in a personal way outside of work. But more often than not, we open a bottle of something together after the power tools get put away and sit around to chat
Check them out on kickstarter using this link
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/796234615/anew-nature-furniture-design-job-training
