Hans Wegner Loves Twitter
Published on October 10, 2009 :: 4 Comments
Okay, I admit, I am not qualified to make that statement. I don’t know how Hans feels about Twitter (or felt, as he passed away in 2007.) What I really mean is, we love Hans Wegner and we love Twitter. Let me tell you a story.
Steven found a wonderful Hans Wegner J-16 rocking chair for sale in a little weekend place in the Catskills, and bought it. That filled him with glee. We took it to our shop in Hudson for a while, but it did not sell so we brought it home. I wanted to put it in the online shop attached to this site, so I took lots of pictures of it. And then I tweeted:
“Photographed stuff yesterday for the online shop – Hans Wegner rocking chair and fabulous industrial ceiling hook. Happy w/the pics.”
No big deal. Not a Twitter marketing campaign, or even a link to anything. I would have posted a link to the shop listing eventually, but I wasn’t there yet. Just one update among many on the activities of my life and work.
And then I got a direct message, asking if I would divulge the price of the chair. So I did, and offered to email pictures. He said sure, send pictures. So I did, and he and his wife offered to buy the chair. And they did. It never made it into my online shop at all. The power of Twitter at work – casual, almost effortless, but effective.
The other half of this happy equation is Scott Lindberg – @SllabStudios on TW and the author of a well-written and interesting blog called ars longa – described as “a journal of fine arts, modernist design, and thrift shop archaeology.” An appropriate new home for our iconic rocking chair.
Between the initial Twitter communication and Scott and his wife’s receipt of their new chair, was a crazy and educational week in which I researched how to get this sizable piece from upstate NY to IL without breaking the bank, and Steve packed and boxed it so it could travel without breaking the chair! I learned a lot about shipping services and options, and I also learned that when you saw blocks of styrofoam it makes an incredible mess!
When you have a package that is too big for FedEx or UPS to handle, you have to get creative. In the end, we put the chair on the bus. Greyhound Package Express is a cool service, costing far less than any other shipper I spoke with, and delivering the goods in fine shape. They do not quote or guarantee a delivery time, so it only works in situations without a tight deadline, but otherwise I found them easy to deal with and extremely reasonable.
So you see, it is a nice story with a happy ending. And the moral is: Twitter is good for us, and facilitates connections, relationships and even commerce with people of similar interests that we might never have met or connected with otherwise. To see what I mean, follow me here: @tandemantiques.
** update 10/13/09: Scott posted about the chair and our transaction over on his site, here. Check it out.
