From Seattle to Hollywood: Former local hairstylist and budding actor hit it big designing furniture for the stars
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Imagine this client list: Jennifer and Brad, Jada and Will, Madonna and Guy. Throw in a Keri, a Tori and a Kirstie (Russell, Spelling and Alley, respectively). Not bad for Seattle-trained hairstylist Mark Cole.
But Cole hasn't been wielding the scissors lately. In a downright amazing turn of circumstance, he and his business partner, Seattle-trained actor Craig Olsen, have become furniture designers to the stars — and anyone else who drops into their Los Angeles store in search of stylish home furnishings with a decidedly masculine ambience.
Last year their store, called Plantation, did $2 million in business. (Their furniture is not available in Seattle, although it can be bought via the Internet.)
This year they've opened their own factory in downtown Los Angeles to manufacture their $2,400 dining-room tables, $3,500 dressers and $3,000 bed frames. Sofas set buyers back $2,000 to $5,000.
Yet neither Cole nor Olsen, both 32, has any formal furniture-design training. So how did they morph into a design duo that came out of nowhere to land on the pages of InStyle magazine and on television's Christopher Lowell Show?
And how did they have the courage to jettison successful Seattle careers in a gamble that could just as easily have failed?
One hint: Seattle real estate played a major role. More about that later.
The thing about Mark Cole is that he was neither unhappy nor unsuccessful as a hair stylist. Indeed, he says that in the latter stages of that 13-year career, he earned more than $100,000 annually while working just four days a week. Not shabby for an Inglemoor High School grad who briefly attended Bellevue Community College, dropping out when he realized "that was going nowhere."
In Seattle earlier this year for a visit, he said, only half in jest: "My degree is years of doing hair." While working in two of Seattle's premier salons, Gene Juarez followed by Gary Bocz, "I was able to pick the brains of some of the most successful people in the world. What they taught me was that the people who are the most successful are risk takers. To be really successful, you have to put it out there."
Meanwhile, Craig Olsen was graduating from Marysville-Pilchuck High School and Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts on his way to becoming an actor. To pay the bills, he worked in a Seattle antique store owned by the late David Gaines. "I learned about what made a $14,000 sofa a $14,000 sofa," Olsen says. "I learned how to have a little class because David was just the classiest guy. He gave me the knowledge."
The two men met through a mutual friend in 1993. They kept in touch after Olsen moved to Los Angeles the next year to pursue acting. He's appeared in such shows as "Third Rock from the Sun," and "Silk Stalkings," but again it was furniture that helped pay the bills. Working in a store, he began custom-designing pine pieces. That success bred a certain confidence.
It was Cole, who grew up in an artistic family and enjoyed décor, who yearned for something more. He floated the idea that the two should go into business together and never let the intention sink. Olsen wasn't so sure.
"I thought I was really happy with my acting," Olsen recalls, "and I was, 'Mark, you could never give up hair, and you're so happy in Seattle.'
"He said, 'You don't understand. We could create furniture for people, and we could own our own store.' "
In person more quiet than brash, Mark Cole doesn't appear to have an off-the-end-of-the-diving-board approach to life. But probe a little and the self-confidence becomes apparent.
Yes, he was willing to chuck his success here, he says, even though his parents were nervous, and Bocz, his employer, cautioned him he was taking a huge risk.
"I wanted to test myself and get away from the rain. I wanted to know was this just purely luck or do I have it in myself to do something else?"
Later, after some thought, he adds this telling comment: "My thinking was, I'd spent my whole life in Seattle and I knew what the outcome was going to be. But if I started this new adventure, I wouldn't know what tomorrow would be. The fear of the unknown is less fearful to me than the fear of the known."
Says Bocz, "He's a very bright, very creative fellow who's very talented artistically."
And also open to advice. When Bocz suggested that Cole's first business plan was naïve, Cole refined it.
Indeed, he did his homework. For months he racked up the frequent-flier miles spending every weekend in L.A. He scouted the competition, looked for a store location, lined up suppliers and manufacturers.
Finally, the business partners found the perfect spot on Los Angeles' La Brea Avenue just south of Hollywood. The site of a recently vacated shoe store, it was located next to a trendy clothing store called American Rag that's a celebrity hangout. The rent for the 2,200-square-foot space was a "weirdly cheap" $4,000 a month, Cole recalls.
Meanwhile, their creative vision coalesced. Rather than ape what was then fashionable in L.A. — Country French and a weathered rustic look — "we came up with our own concept of fashion in furniture," Olsen says.
It's one he describes as "a world-travel feeling, almost a resort feeling, very tactile to the touch. Leather, grass, water, stone. Bringing those items together and creating something that's not just a chair, but something that's a work of art and could become an heirloom piece."
Most of all, their Plantation line would be masculine — an ambience lacking in much of interior design. "We like to use a lot of textures, men's suit fabrics with mohair, leather and metal together which gives a feeling of traveled masculinity," Olsen explains. Indeed, there's not a floral print in sight.
Still, those dreams didn't put furniture on their showroom's floor. And that's where Seattle real estate comes in. Both had owned houses here, fixed them up and ridden waves of price appreciation. That ultimately gave the pair $240,000 in seed money.
"The day we opened the store we didn't have a dollar to our names, and that was a scary feeling," says Olsen.
"It was absolutely sink or swim," Cole adds.
Plantation opened in mid-December of 1998 just in time to scoop up overflow Christmas shoppers from the clothing store next door. Within the first three days singer George Michael dropped in. Then actor Andy Garcia and James Cameron, director of "Titanic."
Cole says word of their store quickly spread on the celebrity grapevine and sales followed. "To have wealthy people come in and patronize your store when they can shop anywhere in the world is very flattering."
Much of the furniture celebs purchase is custom-designed for them — a service the duo performs for any customer. (Their store is 95 percent their own designs plus the work of L.A. artisans and some imported furniture and accessories.)
Cole and Olsen designed the bedroom furniture used in the Mel Gibson hit flick, "What Women Want," as well as set pieces for TV's "Will and Grace" show.
"They have great stuff; it's younger, hipper, where young Hollywood is shopping," confirms Michael Baker. As head of design services for the 1-million square-foot Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Baker has his finger on the pulse of the California décor industry.
Describing the Plantation look as "very masculine and updated traditional," Baker says "they have a very good eye for things. Their showroom is the type of place you walk in and you want everything. Each piece is really gorgeous."
Today Cole and Olsen's biggest challenge isn't attracting customers. It's staying one step ahead of the competition. Indeed the business is so competitive, "you'd think it was Wall Street," Olsen says. Particularly challenging has been having their designs copied by competitors.
"We'll design something and within a couple of months it will be all over L.A. and we can't carry it anymore," he says. "There's nothing you can do but say we're on to the next thing."
He hopes that next thing will be a Seattle retail outlet. But that's still a dream for a pair who've already made their wildest dreams come true.
Plantation furniture is available on order from the Web site www.ewonderfullife.com.
Elizabeth Rhodes can be reached at erhodes@seattletimes.com