Entrepreneurial spirit takes a seat
Local company takes idea for a chair and turns it into a line of luxury products
“I had an idea one day to create a folding chair. I wanted to make things for people who travel in style.” John Humphreys, designer
At 6-feet, 5-inches tall, John Humphreys practically dwarfs his chair — a collapsible wood frame with a shearling cover that is his pride and joy.
He crosses his legs and glances out the window at the rain pouring down outside the windows of the EaDo industrial space where he and a small staff have worked for the past year at the Texas Rover Co.
It’s taken a lot to get Humphreys to this point, both in his personal life and in this fledgling business he runs from space above the Tout Suite restaurant.
But he has this chair, a good-looking model made of Texas pecan and American shearling. He gets up to show how easily the cover comes off and the frame folds up flat.
Humphreys smiles as he ticks off the list of places where people can buy it: Neiman Marcus online and Man-ready Mercantile in the Heights, Mohawk General Store in Los Angeles, Set & Co. in Dallas, as well as stores in Austin and New York.
The Neiman Marcus version is called the Dollie Sheepskin Chair and sells for $2,799. Elsewhere, and in different frame-seat
combinations, it’s named after its maker, the Humphrey chair, and sells for $1,599 to $2,300.
The frame has been through nine or so prototypes, and he’s tested a variety of rivets, screws and bolts. The seats, well, it took 20 tries to get just the right material attached in just the right way.
“I had an idea one day to create a folding chair,” Humphreys said. “I wanted to make things for people who travel in style.”
Humphreys, 29, and self-taught in the world of furniture, thought it would take a month to figure out. He quickly learned how many details were involved and how little he knew about any of them.
He and a friend decided to try their hand at pattern-making and bought inexpensive fabric as a test. They backstitched over the canvas to reinforce it, placed it on the frame and prepared to sit in it.
“It was a failure,” Humphreys deadpans. It broke on the first try. They learned they needed really strong fabric and professional seamstresses who knew how to finish it.
When an early attempt at a leather version sagged almost to the floor, they learned that not just any leather would work.
When he ran out of hardware and couldn’t find a supplier for a small order of custom-made screws and bolts, production stopped.
“I wanted these bolts made,” Humphreys said, holding up a shiny piece of hardware. An Italian vendor needed a 40,000bolt minimum order. Many phone calls later, Humphreys found a guy who knew a guy who might be able to make the bolts.
“That whole thing took a month and a half. Everything stopped while we scoured the country and the world to find Steve in Lockhart, Texas, to make our brass bolts,” he said.
Rob Enri, a civil engineer and co-owner of Manready Mercantile, has served as a mentor of sorts for Humphreys. They met through mutual business acquaintances, and Enri offered his store as a sales incubator for Humphreys’ chairs and leather goods.
“His brand is right in line with what our brand stands for — Texas adventure and heritage,” Enri said. “It looks like it should be used in the wilderness, but is so nice you want to put it in your home.”
Humphreys’ strength was in creating a product, but not necessarily in sales and marketing. That’s where Enri comes in.
“He was focused on making it the best chair ever and pricing it accordingly and blocked everything else out. I was able to offer Manready Mercantile because it fit. We could incubate it and help him launch.”
While the Humphrey Chair has gotten the most attention — it was named to the list of GQ’s Best Stuff of the Year in 2015 — Humphreys also has a line of leather bags and portfolios.
The chair has its biggest appeal to architects and interior designers who are working on projects, but Enri said his regular customers like Texas Rover’s leather product line.
The Balmorhea Bag, a duffle bag that comes in two sizes, serves as an overnight bag or an alternative to a briefcase. Alpine travel cases serve as protectors for iPads, tablets and laptops, and his Comal dopp kit looks like it could last its owner a lifetime.
His leather goods are all made in New York from leather sourced in Argentina. When it’s time to resupply his bag inventory, Humphreys heads to the East Coast to oversee the work.
He is always thinking about new things to make and sketching ideas for future projects.
His last name might sound familiar to Houstonians; his father, Paul Humphreys, was a University of Houston linebacker, a standout who played a significant role in the Cougars’ 1977 Cotton Bowl win over the University of Maryland. Later, his uncle, David Humphreys, played for UH as well.
A native of El Campo, John Humphreys moved with his family to Austin when he was in middle school. His parents divorced, and when his father remarried, the blended-family dynamic was hard on everyone, he said. Adding to his grief, his mother died when he was 14.
In an effort to recover from a difficult childhood, Humphreys spent some time studying business at Austin Community College, then headed to a transcendental meditation community in Fairfield, Iowa. There, he fell in love with piano and learned to meditate. A friend urged him to move to Houston to tap into the city’s entrepreneurial community.
As part of his personal growth, he’s working to find his focus, and part of that comes in nurturing his creative side. He sketches out things he wants to make someday: a bathroom vanity, a semi-portable sofa, and he talks about taking up pottery making.
He’s both a dreamer and a doer, and for now, he’s imagining the people who will want to buy his chair.
“Anyone who can imagine themselves in a mountain or desert hideaway — any place you want to enjoy the company of someone you love,” he said.