Interview with Joey Cofone of Baron Fig

As designers, we have the incredible ability make something from nothing, to innovate on past solutions and grow a brand with a loyal following. There's not many people who do this better than my friend, Joey Cofone.

Joey is the co-founder of my favorite sketchbook company, Baron Fig. I've been using their products ever since I met him in 2014. This week I reached out to get inside his head and learn about what it's like to run a company that makes physical tools for creative thinkers.

What is it like to run a company that serves thousands of artists and designers around the world?

To be able to contribute to creativity on a worldwide scale, however simple notebooks and writing instruments may seem, leaves me with a sense of awe.

Every now and then I pick my head up from the work we’re doing at Baron Fig and I can, if only for a moment, appreciate the scope of what that means.

A day at the studio is pretty straightforward. We’re a playful team, we work as hard as we joke, and we do our best to create products that inspire. There’s a lot of collaboration, experimentation, and learning.

You're a designer by trade. Was there a specific moment in time where you decided to focus specifically on making tools for other creative people?

Definitely. When I was studying design at the School of Visual Arts here in NYC, I realized just how important the notebook is as a tool. It dawned on me that the notebook is to the creative what a hammer is to the carpenter. Every idea starts with pen to paper, which allows a freedom that computers and screens can’t replicate.

I believe that analog tools have just the right amount of limitation that helps the creative process. They aren’t hyper functional like a computer, which opens up a thousand doors all at once and introduces a paradox of choice, but they aren’t extremely limiting in that it serves up complex parameters to work within.

What has been one of the biggest challenges in growing Baron Fig?

The biggest challenge is balancing all the small ones. Every day is comprised of a hundred tiny challenges that all equally require clarity, presence of mind, and decisions to be made. It’s easy to let things fall through the cracks, especially as the day wears on.

Thankfully I have an awesome co-founder, Adam Kornfield, as well as a skilled, intelligent, and supportive team. Together we work through our challenges one by one, little by little.

My own personal challenge is to make sure everyone here knows that their work is appreciated, that their opinions matter, and that a high level of excellence and independence is required to create things infused with meaning.

Baron Fig collaborated in the past with some highly talented lettering artists and illustrators for The Poster Project. Why did you to select those specific artists and what came from that series?

The Poster Project was a ton of fun, though I had no idea what I was getting myself into back then. We had just spent the last year designing our first notebook, the Confidant, and launching the company.

Everything was focused on setting things up—production, logistics, finance, the website. When we finally got all the cogs in place and running, we realized that we had to figure out what to do next. That’s when the Poster Project idea came about.

From the beginning Baron Fig has put emphasis not on what you do in your notebook, but what you do beyond it. Creating a dozen inspirational posters—all which started in the artists’ notebooks—was a perfect example of that.

I chose the artists through research and prior relationships. My goal was to put together a lineup of artists with various styles. Hand drawn, vector, minimal, complex, dense, sparse, illustrative, type-heavy, and so on. This way there was a poster in the collection for everyone.

The project was a huge hit. Our customers loved it, we sold hundreds of them, and the press had fun writing about “Inspirational Posters that Don’t Suck.”

Do you have any advice for someone who is selling their own products online or thinking about starting an online shop?

My number one piece of advice is don’t start a notebook company, or I’m going to come after you. ;) If you plan on selling goods online I recommend using Squarespace to get your site up without having to code. Make sure your photography is simple and straightforward, and that it doesn’t take too many clicks to find and purchase your goods. (Literally count the clicks.)

Be sure to get an email list going as well. There are a lot of channels to communicate to your customers— facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, etc.—but nothing comes close to the effectiveness of direct email. Start collecting addresses and sending out content regularly.

Don’t be afraid to say, “Hey, here’s our new product, buy it.”

Your company had a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. Would you recommend others to use a platform like Kickstarter, Etsy, Threadless, etc., or just going all in on building their own brand's store?

I wish I could say that there is a catch-all, but it really depends on what you’re making, how much cash you have access to, your timeline, and the audience your product would appeal to.

Kickstarter worked great for us, we’ve used the platform twice and raised over a quarter of a million dollars. The nice thing about Kickstarter is that everybody wins: the customers get the product earlier and at a discount, and the sellers get funds in advance of production without giving away equity.

If you’re looking to sell some goods on the side, perhaps sites like Etsy and Threadless are the way to go. They take care of the majority of the work—you just make the product and list it. If you’re looking to make this a full time gig, and to create a brand around your products or yourself, your own independent e-commerce site may be the best bet.

Regardless of what you end up choosing, just remember that business reflects the creative process. You’re not going to get things right on the first shot, there will be a lot more failure than success, but in the end, if you keep going, you’ll get to a place you never dreamed you could.

If you could give a few words of advice to your past self, after graduating college, what would it be?

Hm. I don’t know if I have anything for my past self at that point. Not that I did things perfectly, but I just don’t have any regrets. Every failure is a lesson learned.

If I were to give a few pieces of advice to someone graduating, I’d say 1) trust your gut, 2) stand up for yourself, 3) and learn how to create value.

Hope that helps!